If I want to move into Networking, Exchange and datacentre based, what should I be learning?

[MissChief]

I've been at my Employer (Many will know which one!) for 15 years and moved into Wholesale Ethernet Leased Lines three years ago but my exposure to the technical stuff is limited. I've picked up what I can and I'm seen as the expert in the Team but I don't know a lot about the real 'nitty gritty'. Our team acts as a go between for Openreach and our Partners who place the orders and act as the ISP. It's basically answering the phone, replying to emails and supplying updates. The hours are good, the pay is decent for glorified call centre working and the quarterly bonus is usually £1k+ based on my own performance with targets that are easily hit by simply being diligent. There's no hard sell, we never speak to end users and it's relatively stress free.

However I feel that it's a 'dead end'. There's little progression possible as we just promoted a Senior from my team (I applied too) and while the team is continuing to grow (there were four of us in 2019, now we're going to be 12 once two new hires come on board in a few weeks) I still feel a little bit hemmed in. We have contact with a lot of highly technical people who work at the Network level and deal with upgrades and changes to our own network and this seems like something I should be looking to get involved in. In such a small team I'm being recognised and asked to help with small scale projects regularly now as well but should any more technical position come up I'd like to actually know what I'm talking about! Any basic, beginner courses I should be looking at? I have access to LinkedIn courses and someone recommended some Udemy courses as well? I think there may even be some intgernal training on it as well but I'll need to ask someone about that.

Anyway, as I'll be 48 next month I feel this could possibly be the last chance to 'get off the phone' into a deeper more technical role. Any recommendations? : know @dessimpson and @DRZ are doing that sort of thing and we've had a few chats while getting lasered by some controller weenie on Apex, but I want MOAR.

 

[malachi]

I've been at my Employer (Many will know which one!) for 15 years and moved into Wholesale Ethernet Leased Lines three years ago but my exposure to the technical stuff is limited. I've picked up what I can and I'm seen as the expert in the Team but I don't know a lot about the real 'nitty gritty'. Our team acts as a go between for Openreach and our Partners who place the orders and act as the ISP. It's basically answering the phone, replying to emails and supplying updates. The hours are good, the pay is decent for glorified call centre working and the quarterly bonus is usually £1k+ based on my own performance with targets that are easily hit by simply being diligent. There's no hard sell, we never speak to end users and it's relatively stress free.

However I feel that it's a 'dead end'. There's little progression possible as we just promoted a Senior from my team (I applied too) and while the team is continuing to grow (there were four of us in 2019, now we're going to be 12 once two new hires come on board in a few weeks) I still feel a little bit hemmed in. We have contact with a lot of highly technical people who work at the Network level and deal with upgrades and changes to our own network and this seems like something I should be looking to get involved in. In such a small team I'm being recognised and asked to help with small scale projects regularly now as well but should any more technical position come up I'd like to actually know what I'm talking about! Any basic, beginner courses I should be looking at? I have access to LinkedIn courses and someone recommended some Udemy courses as well? I think there may even be some intgernal training on it as well but I'll need to ask someone about that.

Anyway, as I'll be 48 next month I feel this could possibly be the last chance to 'get off the phone' into a deeper more technical role. Any recommendations? : know @dessimpson and @DRZ are doing that sort of thing and we've had a few chats while getting lasered by some controller weenie on Apex, but I want MOAR.

Getting a cert such as Comptia Network + or CCNA will help you learn networking stuff. I definitely recommend looking at the CCNA 200-301 official cert book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exam-Offic...301&qid=1661413781&sprefix=ccn,aps,124&sr=8-3. I have it myself for a nice reference guide on networking and its enough to cover if you want to do the exam. Which I suggest you do if you want move into networking.

If you want to move more with the times, you need to also look at Cloud technologies such as Azure or AWS. As that's where the future is, even if you randomly got a job working in one of their data centres doing the back-end networking.

 

[dessimpson]

I don't do networking, other than a bit of fault finding on NSX. The last Cisco course I was on was ICND, in about 2002
I'm a Wintel Engineer and as I've pretty much always contracted on Gov projects it's always been on-site stuff. As has been said above. Most of the networking guys I've worked with all started with CCNA then moved up from there on the route they preferred. Although they do tend to need a broad-ish knowledge on many technologies. Be it Wi-Fi, Firewalls, UCS etc. They tend to specialise more in one area.

 

[dowie]

There's little progression possible as we just promoted a Senior from my team (I applied too) and while the team is continuing to grow (there were four of us in 2019, now we're going to be 12 once two new hires come on board in a few weeks) I still feel a little bit hemmed in. We have contact with a lot of highly technical people who work at the Network level and deal with upgrades and changes to our own network and this seems like something I should be looking to get involved in. In such a small team I'm being recognised and asked to help with small scale projects regularly now as well but should any more technical position come up I'd like to actually know what I'm talking about!

Did you get any feedback re: why you didn't get the position this "senior" whatever person got instead?

Also, it would be worth talking to these highly technical people you mention tbh. they're going to be best placed to give you advice re: the level of knowledge you'd need to do their job and also just "networking" in the non-technical sense with the team you want to join is probably as important if not more so than swotting up on that area in advance in the hope some position comes up. Not only might they give you a heads up on any future position but some of them might be the guys making the decision so getting friendly with them in advance could well be the most important thing if you want a job with their team/department specifically!

Anyway, as I'll be 48 next month I feel this could possibly be the last chance to 'get off the phone' into a deeper more technical role.

Hardly... I mean you're already "old" as far as the tech/IT industry is concerned but so what, it's not like there is going to be any significant difference to you trying to make this transition at 48 than if you were trying to do it at say 52 etc.. you can take as many shots as you like and you don't need to necessarily constrain yourself to waiting until a specific internal role comes up either... Might be good if you like the company and are well known/well regarded there but if you're really keen on a particular career path then don't be afraid to look elsewhere too.

I guess the usual certificates have been mentioned above, do you have an undergrad degree? If you do then perhaps you could look at MSc courses - plenty of part-time options out there for example the OU offers an MSc and AFAIK you can study for the CCNP and earn credits towards the MSc at the same time, there are other MSc courses on coursera and Georgia Tech in the US offers a well known online "MS" degree in computer science with specialisations where you could pick some networking modules.

 

[Felon]

I've been at my Employer (Many will know which one!) for 15 years and moved into Wholesale Ethernet Leased Lines three years ago but my exposure to the technical stuff is limited. I've picked up what I can and I'm seen as the expert in the Team but I don't know a lot about the real 'nitty gritty'. Our team acts as a go between for Openreach and our Partners who place the orders and act as the ISP. It's basically answering the phone, replying to emails and supplying updates. The hours are good, the pay is decent for glorified call centre working and the quarterly bonus is usually £1k+ based on my own performance with targets that are easily hit by simply being diligent. There's no hard sell, we never speak to end users and it's relatively stress free.

However I feel that it's a 'dead end'. There's little progression possible as we just promoted a Senior from my team (I applied too) and while the team is continuing to grow (there were four of us in 2019, now we're going to be 12 once two new hires come on board in a few weeks) I still feel a little bit hemmed in. We have contact with a lot of highly technical people who work at the Network level and deal with upgrades and changes to our own network and this seems like something I should be looking to get involved in. In such a small team I'm being recognised and asked to help with small scale projects regularly now as well but should any more technical position come up I'd like to actually know what I'm talking about! Any basic, beginner courses I should be looking at? I have access to LinkedIn courses and someone recommended some Udemy courses as well? I think there may even be some intgernal training on it as well but I'll need to ask someone about that.

Anyway, as I'll be 48 next month I feel this could possibly be the last chance to 'get off the phone' into a deeper more technical role. Any recommendations? : know @dessimpson and @DRZ are doing that sort of thing and we've had a few chats while getting lasered by some controller weenie on Apex, but I want MOAR.

I think my advice to anybody who wants to get into network engineering would be the same to a 48 year old, as it would be an 18 year old - learn and master the basics, if you can do that - everything else will fall into place, give or take.

There are so many different courses, exams, certifications to choose from, but in all honesty I'd say ignore everything else and just do a CCNA. The CCNA remains probably one of the best ways to learn and master the basics of network engineering, whilst at the same time - being universally recognised by just about everybody as being valuable in the industry.

If you focus on and master the CCNA material, you'll be setup to move into more advanced topics and/or start looking to get hired in an engineering role as you learn, the things you learn in the CCNA will be directly relevant to "on the job stuff" so you will use a lot of what you learn.

You'll hear a lot of talk about automation, coding and stuff - but I wouldn't be too worried about those things at this stage, to get into network enginering you need to understand how data flows, how packets are encapsulated, how IP addressing, routing protocols, routers and switches work etc. The more complex stuff like automation, data centre fabrics, ISP technology and stuff will come later on, once the basics are nailed.

Also, don't worry about the words like "cloud" too much, the basics are still relevant - nail the basics, then worry about buzzwords and fashion later, no course does the basics better than the CCNA. (I used to teach Cisco and Juniper specialist courses when I worked for a partner a few years back, so I know a bit about the materials)

Having said that, I'd avoid expensive courses for a CCNA, some of them charge £thousands, when all they really do is read the contents of books at you. Unless you really really feel the need to spend a fortune on a course*, any of the official study guides will contain everything you need, anything written by Todd Lammle will suffice; https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=ccna+study+guide&crid=3IJRB5JQV0VMN&sprefix=ccna+study+guide,aps,56&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 or something like that, will contain everything you need (just make sure it's the latest version)

* The reason I have this opinion of courses, is that in my 22 years as a network engineer - I've seen countless people spend £thousands on courses, to get nothing out of them. Compared to others, who simply hammer the official study guides at home, and very quickly get through the exams.