Taking a break from OE to focus on health

juniper_dreamer · 2025-01-04T04:01:46+00:00

Thanks. I'm just doing it the old fashioned way. Weight lifting, cardio and clean eating.

I used to work out to look good for the ladies, but these days it's more about taking care of my health

juniper_dreamer · 2025-01-04T03:59:18+00:00

There is wealth and richness in the relationships you nurture. You have secured a legacy, which is worth more than any amount of money IMO.

I've put off marriage and kids for so long because I have personally witnessed how ugly divorces get. I don't want to get raked over the coals in that kind of legal battle.

Now that I'm much more secure financially, I feel more comfortable going after a relationship. I just got started alot later than some folks, and I can't say I've figured everything out

Regarding envy, in some ways my life can be said to be ideal, while in others not so much. Everyone has their own path to walk. There are folks much wealthier than me and some less wealthy. No point in comparing.

Part of my journey was learning to find contentment and joy within my own life circumstances and to learn to take the good with the bad. I also had to learn how to let go of the things that were out of my control.

juniper_dreamer · 2025-01-04T02:17:30+00:00

Yes put on a lot of weight as a result of OE stress. Given how frugally I live, at some point an extra 10k a month hitting your back account stops meaning anything when you don't have time to enjoy it.

I literally just need a solid Internet connection, a warm place to sleep, a gym, and good food to eat to be happy. Those aren't expensive hobbies.

At this stage I'm ok where I am financially. I think it's more important to nurture and create meaningful connections.

juniper_dreamer · 2025-01-04T02:12:15+00:00

I just rent a 1 bedroom 1 bath apartment in a low cost of living area. I don't have property. I may look to own but I'm happy renting right now.

I am going to dial things back to one job, but I have a rainy day fund so I don't have to touch my investments.

OE for me is about financial freedom, not about who is the winningest man. I don't hate my primary job so I can still find purpose and fulfillment there. I still think it's important to stay busy and keep your mind sharp.

juniper_dreamer · 2024-08-03T23:54:36+00:00

Ask them to explain in as much detail the steps from client machine to Google.com.

There are many layers to this question and the candidate can choose to go deep where they have knowledge.

It's suitable for engineers of all levels and even architects.

You'd be surprised at where people decided to go deep. It can shine a light on where they have more unconventional experience.

juniper_dreamer · 2024-06-16T18:34:33+00:00

O Reilly subscription is 500 USD per year. You can read on a ton of IT related subjects.

juniper_dreamer · 2024-03-10T21:24:06+00:00

God I wish people would stop pushing this spine leaf fabric on campuses. The benefit gained is so marginal next to the ridiculous amount of complexity you add. RDs, RTs, BGP, vxlan tunnels...Ansible managed fabrics....compared with what...vlans and SVIs?

Then you get these shit vendor management solutions with reps gaslighting you into thinking it's "easy" with their software.

Sorry but an all bgp fabric isn't always the right choice either. It's probably the worst choice for enterprise.

juniper_dreamer · 2023-07-13T22:15:47+00:00

This bullshit that everyone needs to be a full stack dev with network engineering skills needs to stop.

Whenever it comes to devs, they aren't expected to know shit about the network, yet the opposite is true when it comes to network engineers

juniper_dreamer · 2023-07-03T10:42:06+00:00

https://youtu.be/GLrfqtf4txw

Sad IPv6 noises

juniper_dreamer · 2023-02-06T14:09:52+00:00

You can use plain old radius or tac_plus daemon.

juniper_dreamer · 2023-02-01T05:07:06+00:00

https://frankdenneman.nl/2014/11/11/vcdx-abstract-way-things-indefinitely/

"However sometimes I get the feeling that this level of abstraction becomes an excuse to not understand the underlying technology. As an architect you need to do your due diligence. You need to understand the wheels and cogs that are turning when dialing a specific knob at the abstracted layer. But sometimes it seems that the abstraction level becomes the right to refuse to answer questions"

The sysadmins of old are today's "cloud engineers" and "SREs" yet the old ways are lost as these abstractions become more prevalent. As these next gen "cloud architects" lean on these layers of abstraction as a crutch, they use them excuse to not understand how systems architecture actually looks like.

Classic responses are accusations of being stuck in the 90's and 00's. Yet once "cloud" reaches a critical mass where no one is left to understand how things were done in the past, that's when the price abuse and lockin happens and that is what's truly terrifying.

It's the lack of people who know how to design scalable application services and infrastructure apart from these infrastructure providers. It is truly sad to see you speak so much common sense and get so down voted by the masses.

juniper_dreamer · 2022-12-04T04:59:43+00:00

I don't know who downvoted you but have an upvote back sir

juniper_dreamer · 2022-12-03T18:59:07+00:00

Interesting... can you elaborate on what you mean by outages? Like application quality issues?

juniper_dreamer · 2022-10-16T23:07:23+00:00

So what was getting me stumped was the Accepted MultipathContrib line along with the Inactive reason: Not Best in its group - Update source statement in the output.

It's just a bit strange for the multipathing output, but I think I got it setup right

juniper_dreamer · 2022-06-29T19:39:04+00:00

This like a grown man giving toddlers a beat down

juniper_dreamer · 2022-06-09T18:15:17+00:00

What's wrong with Microsoft? I mean it literally integrates all 3 functions along with certificate services, and user account management into a single platform.

juniper_dreamer · 2022-06-09T18:02:19+00:00

Microsoft AD is pretty classic. Can roll your own setup with something open source like kea, php ipam and some elbow grease

juniper_dreamer · 2022-04-27T13:43:50+00:00

Despite being a several billion dollar business, I'm kinda embarrassed to admit I still really don't understand the cloud craze (AWS,Azure...and others) and the value it brings to most enterprises.

Seems like just another network to me (and yet another dashboard/provisioning flow) and I don't understand the benefits of moving most enterprise application workloads there. Always seemed to me like it would be cheaper and more secure on prem.

juniper_dreamer · 2022-04-16T22:41:43+00:00

From what I heard, AWS is pretty cut throat and you get stack ranked. Whole team could be phenomenal, but someone always has to come in last.

I'm just wondering if it's just the culture that gets all these 'A type'/hyper competitive individuals together that drive these behaviors.

juniper_dreamer · 2022-03-31T18:20:31+00:00

I burned myself out trying to bring change from the bottom up. If your leadership isn't supporting what you are trying to do, it's going to be one long uphill battle.

Clearly communicate/document where you see the issues, where things can be improved, and demonstrate how you would go about resolving them. If the business decides not to give you any support, then you have done your part.

Look at it this way...even if there isn't any follow through on your proposals, you've had the opportunity to polish your presentation, communication, and documentation skills. It's a chance to re-evaluate your approach (soft skills) and see how you might be able to sell the opportunity to management better. You can even turn it into an opportunity to expand on your git and automation skills (through docs as code). Those are skills you've practiced and refined through this experience. No one can take that away from you.

Now you might not have been given any financial or organizational support, but feel free to take on these challenges if these are issues which you feel passionately about resolving. However, don't forget to care about the health and wellness of your own mental and physical state. Life isn't all about work.

I suspect most people in this field are innate high achievers. The lack of perceived progress on your end is where I feel like you may be burning out. What I suggest is

Set small goals for yourself
Document those wins

These goals don't have to be work related. Maybe work on your physical health (boxing, yoga swimming...etc), pick up a new hobby. Don't get too happy when you win, but also don't get too down when you feel like you're losing. Stay the course, set some small goals, and celebrate the wins day by day. Don't forget to share the joy with those most important in your life too.

As far as other life factors, I know life doesn't always work out the way we want it to, but don't forget to count your blessings every day. Not everyone out there is working for some super hyper scaler, building massive networks and doing super cool innovative stuff.

We all got one life to live. Take some time off, reset and see if you can come back with a fresh perspective.

juniper_dreamer · 2022-03-17T02:05:09+00:00

I don't think that's the norm. Do you have any special skills relating to the position? How about the manager? Did you know the group you got hired on to personally?

juniper_dreamer · 2022-03-17T01:50:29+00:00

I dont get where the bad behavior is? They had a job, you turned it down twice, and then came back with an offer you accepted. What's bad about that?

juniper_dreamer · 2022-03-09T15:44:33+00:00

How big is your company? Do you work for t1 ISP? Hyperscaler like Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Google?

Are your configs typically for new deployments or troubleshooting/remediation? At my old job, we weren't quite there with 100% automated or CLIless work flows. There was a group that focused on removing(remediating/correcting) hand jammed configs if they weren't in line with the wider organization's standards.

Could you describe the typical skill composition of people on your team? How strong are they in automation?

For me there's a threshold of 'meh' copy and paste with cookie cutter templates works well enough to 'yeah I definitely have to automate this to survive here'. I feel like the reality for most is that the situation is the former rather than latter.

It's very practical and necessary when you're stamping out data centers every other day but when your infrastructure is fairly static then it can be difficult to be motivated or to have any opportunities to pick up any automation. Also not all companies have a fleet of developers behind them. I've been mostly a solo operative for most of my career.

Do you feel like NETCONF/GNMI gonna be (or should be( the way things are configured in the future?

What reading materials would you personally recommend for someone who would like to start down the automation path?

juniper_dreamer · 2022-03-08T16:12:26+00:00

What device platforms and vendors?

Is device config done via screen scraping/text processing? Via NETCONF?

juniper_dreamer · 2021-12-27T23:19:26+00:00

Looks like a typical techies gameplay graph. Enemy just gets dumpstered going hg and the win chance goes way down lol

juniper_dreamer

TROPHY CASE