nanog mailing list archives
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:49:29 -0500
On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said:
I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data.
OK, so I'm not a mentor from a Tier-1, and I don't directly monkey with routers as part of $DAYJOB. But anyhow... :) With great power comes great responsibility. Be prepared for high stress levels. ;) Also, keep in mind that unless you're insanely brilliant, three things will happen before you get experienced enough to be a senior tech at a Tier 1: 1) You will have grey hair (at least some). 2) The half life of technical know-how in this industry is about 5 years. You'll have been through several half-lifes of what you'll know when you escape from college. Develop the skills needed to learn the next 3 or 4 Next Big Things quickly. 3) You'll have learned that handling a big pipe at a Tier 1 isn't all there is to running a network - and in fact, quite often the Really Cool Toys are elsewhere. Sure, they may have the fastest line cards, but they're going to tend to lag on feature sets just because you *don't* want to deploy cutting-edge code if you're a Tier-1. As an example, AS1312 deployed IPv6 over a decade before some of the Tier 1's could even *spell* it (find out why 6bone existed - it's instructive history). I'm sure that MPLS didn't make its first appearance in TIer-1 core nets either. And the list goes on.. (Hint - where did the Tier 1's get the IPv6/MPLS/whatever experienced engineers to guide their deployment? :)
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Current thread:
- Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Tyler Haske (Nov 20)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Christopher Morrow (Nov 20)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. jim deleskie (Nov 20)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. bmanning (Nov 20)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Valdis . Kletnieks (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Tyler Haske (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. bmanning (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Jared Mauch (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. jjanusze () wd-tek com (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Mark Foster (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Tyler Haske (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Bill Stewart (Nov 30)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Tyler Haske (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Christopher Morrow (Nov 20)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Keegan Holley (Nov 21)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Matthew Petach (Nov 22)
- Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. JC Dill (Nov 25)