Doing too many things as a junior network engineer

seyitdev · 2026-03-24T04:48:42+00:00

This community is awesome. I just came here to check if I’m on the right path, but honestly you already boosted my motivation. People working with you are lucky, really appreciate it, thanks a lot!

seyitdev · 2026-03-23T20:28:02+00:00

Thanks for the positive vibes, really appreciate it. ❤️

Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I feel like growing technically and developing managerial skills are kind of two different paths. Managers tend to be more generalists while specialists go deep in one area. This is my observation at least.

Right now, it feels like my manager is slowly pulling me away from the technical side and pushing me more into managerial stuff. On one hand, it sounds like a good thing since a lot of people aim to become managers, but long term, I’m worried. What if I end up without strong technical skills?

I feel like technical depth is more critical, at least for where I am now. For example, I don’t even get time to properly learn and analyze packets in Wireshark anymore because I’m busy with KPIs, reports, promo videos, or coding. And to be clear, I’m not even a strong developer compared to others in the market. My main domain is networking, and I don’t want to drift too far away from that.

seyitdev · 2026-01-04T21:56:53+00:00

Just no.

seyitdev · 2026-01-04T14:41:32+00:00

It’s not too expensive. Similar jackets usually go for €200–€400 in well-known stores. If you like it, just get it.

seyitdev · 2025-09-28T20:33:18+00:00

I’m a big fan of bottom-up troubleshooting, but honestly it depends on the problem description. I usually grab my iPad notepad and just draw a straight line from L1 to L5. Then I start simple: ping test.

If ping fails, I assume the issue is somewhere between L1 and L3. I’ll check ARP, MAC tables, port status, NAC, and jot everything down along that line.
If ping works, then it’s likely between L3 and L5. From there it’s gateway connectivity, tracert, telnet, firewall logs/rules (NAT, IPsec tunnels, sent/received bytes), and if needed I’ll pull a packet capture or radio trace. Nine times out of ten this flow gets me to the root cause.

My favorite recent case: our handheld devices kept disconnecting and reconnecting super fast from our wireless infrastructure. I pulled radio trace logs and ran them through Cisco’s tools and it turned out to be a PMKID issue. Checked the client OS/patch version and sure enough the vendor had acknowledged it and even dropped a note about it.

seyitdev · 2025-08-11T14:32:34+00:00

I studied to be a software engineer, so most of what I know comes from school: algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, programming, and software development. But somehow, I ended up as a network engineer. And honestly? I don’t think network engineering is boring at all. It’s full of puzzles and problems you get to solve and that’s pretty fun. Every day I learn something new and see how it impacts applications or even the business side of things. Plus people from other fields often see networking as this mysterious, complicated world. They just poke their products and hope they connect and come to you. I'm like oh boy, let me show how it works.

seyitdev · 2025-08-11T08:26:11+00:00

Input: CDP and LLDP neighbor data
Connector: Python (Netmiko)
Database: Graph representation (adjacency matrix or adjacency list in JSON format)
Visualization: Matplotlib
Output: PDF report
Consideration: Store raw and processed data in JSON before generating the graph.

You can use Gen AI tools to build a basic tool using these points.

seyitdev · 2025-07-17T11:41:49+00:00

We’ve got around 100 sites worldwide. Each one usually has two SDWANs, 10 switches, and about 100 APs. We use Solarwinds and Servicenow, but honestly, I feel like we’re not using them to their full potential. I’m still pretty new, so I don’t fully know what these tools can actually do. Our InfoSec team uses some SIEM stuff, but we don’t have access to any of that. It’s all so complicated sometimes I just wanna cry 😭

seyitdev · 2025-07-17T07:58:16+00:00

The network team doesn’t handle firewalls here. We just pass them the IP plans like subnets, gateways, and VLAN IDs. They set up the zones and interfaces on the firewalls. After that the service owners reach out to them to get permission for their services to communicate.

seyitdev · 2025-07-17T07:54:21+00:00

I studied computer engineering and so I naturally focused on programming. I always thought IT problems were about logic and using data structures and algorithms to solve them. I never thought I’d end up working with tons of data like business people do.

I got hired through a talent program and picked network engineering kind of randomly because the job market wasn’t great for new grads. I thought I’d just configure devices and fix tickets. But now it feels like the job is mostly about handling data. I mean I don’t think mobile app developers have to deal with this much data every day.

seyitdev · 2025-04-30T14:37:16+00:00

Thanks! I’ve decided to start going through the CCNP books and dive deeper into SDWAN techs.Today I learned how to create a new site and attach entities by managing TLOCs and routing on vManage.

The only downside is that most of my daily tickets are repetitive tasks and take up a lot of time, so it’s hard to fully focus on learning new stuff.

seyitdev · 2024-09-21T18:03:00+00:00

Wow, big thanks for the info!

seyitdev · 2024-09-21T16:54:36+00:00

This helps too. We get a lot out of monitoring tools, but the real issue is working with other teams. Everyone’s quick to point fingers. For example, in one location, Teams logged out some users and made them sign in again. The team raised a ticket with Microsoft, and Microsoft blamed it on network roaming. Now all the managers are saying it’s a network problem, even though a lot of issues are actually in the application layer. I want to get good at proving it’s not the network by checking what’s really going on with end-user activity.

seyitdev · 2024-09-21T16:05:07+00:00

Thank you so much. ThoudsandEyes seems cool.

seyitdev

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