Looking into being a Network technician and I have some questions.

Topcat26

New Member
Hello, I was hoping if any of you in the field can answer some of my questions/ give me advice before I go to school to get my Computer technology, Networking electives, associates degree. I have a lot of questions so any of them that you are able to answer will help me out a lot, thank you.

1. Do you enjoy it, what do you do daily?

2. Is there good job security?

3. How easy/hard is it to find a job?

4. With an associate level degree will I get outplayed by someone with a bachelor level degree easily?

5. Is there opportunity for overtime?

6. What is the pay like with an associates degree compared to bachelors?

7. Is the field growing?

8. I know that it varies for everyone but are the people you work with in this field good to work with? (Do you enjoy working with your coworkers?)

9. How are the internships? what do you do? do you like them?

10. What are all the other things I can do with this degree?

11. What do Network technicians with an associates degree do daily compared to someone with a bachelors degree?

12. Is there a lot chances for promotions?

13. Anything else you would like to add that you think I should know?
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Sure I'll bite, we have a few professional network engineers here.

1) somewhat, enjoyment depends largely on what kind of management and organization you are in. About 75% of my role is new project work (VPN, dedicated mpls circuits, setting up new cloud environments) and about 25% operational 'break/fix' kind of work.

2) sure, there will always be networks that need people to maintain them.

3) it depends a lot on the organizations around you and what they do. If you don't have very many larger organizations around or a small IT presence where you live then it will be comparatively harder.

4) depends, on paper usually. If you have a high level of knowledge and some experience it doesn't matter much.

5) depends on the specific policies of the specific organization. A lot of times you will be salaried but expected to work overtime such as On-Call schedules and after hours maintenance work

6) depends as per a couple of the above points. I only make about 10k more after finishing my bachelor's versus when i just had a high school diploma.

7) somewhat. The traditional network engineer is evolving a bit into more of a devops role, more emphasis on automation and scripting which requires some programming knowledge in order to excel

8) debatable. Sometimes you can see your teammates limitations very quickly although they still have super huge egos.

9) we have an intern currently, we're really understaffed so we just give him some of the more basic stuff to do and free reign to do it. Pretty much just like having a jr engineer on the team. Some places will be more limiting on what you can touch.

10) whatever you want really. The degree commonly ticks the box with the hr department. The rest depends on what skills you have.

11). No real difference in our shop, as before it's based more on individual skill. Some people with bachelor's degrees can still really suck at their job.

12) depends on the specific organization and their needs.

13) are you considering a certification track as well like ccna?
 

Topcat26

New Member
Sure I'll bite, we have a few professional network engineers here.

1) somewhat, enjoyment depends largely on what kind of management and organization you are in. About 75% of my role is new project work (VPN, dedicated mpls circuits, setting up new cloud environments) and about 25% operational 'break/fix' kind of work.

2) sure, there will always be networks that need people to maintain them.

3) it depends a lot on the organizations around you and what they do. If you don't have very many larger organizations around or a small IT presence where you live then it will be comparatively harder.

4) depends, on paper usually. If you have a high level of knowledge and some experience it doesn't matter much.

5) depends on the specific policies of the specific organization. A lot of times you will be salaried but expected to work overtime such as On-Call schedules and after hours maintenance work

6) depends as per a couple of the above points. I only make about 10k more after finishing my bachelor's versus when i just had a high school diploma.

7) somewhat. The traditional network engineer is evolving a bit into more of a devops role, more emphasis on automation and scripting which requires some programming knowledge in order to excel

8) debatable. Sometimes you can see your teammates limitations very quickly although they still have super huge egos.

9) we have an intern currently, we're really understaffed so we just give him some of the more basic stuff to do and free reign to do it. Pretty much just like having a jr engineer on the team. Some places will be more limiting on what you can touch.

10) whatever you want really. The degree commonly ticks the box with the hr department. The rest depends on what skills you have.

11). No real difference in our shop, as before it's based more on individual skill. Some people with bachelor's degrees can still really suck at their job.

12) depends on the specific organization and their needs.

13) are you considering a certification track as well like ccna?
Thank you very much for all the answers, and to question 12, yes at my school to get your degree you have to pass A+ in the first year and CCNA in the second year. I was told by the department head at my school, that because of those certifications I wouldn't need a bachelors degree to get a job do you know if that is true or not?
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
It's a lot more difficult to get a job when you have no degree and no experience. Some places will be hesitant to hire a CCNA with no other experience unless it's either specifically a Jr. role or you can completely melt their faces with knowledge in the interview :p
 
Depends on the environment, I was a network engineer when I first left university working in a remote Data Centre hosting around 2,000 Servers all all types from Windows Servers, IBM crunches running Z Operating Systems, Sun Servers, ISS, Apache, you name it, was the easiest job in the world and paid decent money, basically the job was to be first on call if a problem was reported with any of the servers and get the ball rolling to get it back up ASAP, so we would get a phone call telling us of an issue with a server, we would locate the server within the centre and go check it out, 99% of the time was just a matter of rebooting the server, checking for any warning lights and filing a report, more serious problems, we would simply call on external support from the company responsible for the server, hence if it was a IBM server we would have a IBM engineer onsite within a couple of hours replacing parts due to warranty agreements.

The place was so strict on security that we where not even allowed to touch a server without opening a work note that would be issues to us and we would report back every action taken, even just a reboot, time dated extra, when external engineers where onsite we would supervise there work, complete the paperwork of there activities and hep them locate the server they where working, so there was no freelancing to do what you can, running updates etc, its was more tight procedure and insuring all security was followed.

Basically I was one of 4 engineers working around the clock 24/7 365, plus our team leader making 5 who would have to cover any shift that could not be covered by anyone else, the deal was there was always one of us on site at all times working 12 hours shifts, days and nights, so was long hours, and if some was off sick or holiday, there was a buddy system where you could take overtime to cover them else the team leader would have to cover no matter what, he could be away on holiday and would have to fly back to cover a shift if needs be, but overtime was so well paid, you would find a take, in 24, 36 hour shift, because the job was easy, you where there to respond in case of an issue 99% everything running smooth meant we could do anything except leave site and answer that phone when called, and I mean anything, we had our own office with around 6 work stations connected to different networks to give us some access if needed, but only when needed, plus we had a personal PC online unconnected to any of the private networks we where monitoring, that was there only for our own amusement, so we could go online to entertain ourselves, plus we had our own TV with a full sky package so could watch sports or whatever if working weekends on rota we would watch football, we had a DVD player, we coudl bring our own box sets in, I for example I watched every episode of "24" while at work amongst others, all Star Trek and I mean all from TOS to Enterprise, we had our own Kitchen so we could proper cook for ourselves, there was even a fold away bed, yes we could sleep as long as that phone was next to us and answered when called, the entire set uo was mapped out to give us max comfort to wind down long ours, and all we had to do was insure security standards where met, all paperwork was complete for any work we did, but the fact is, we could work 4 repetitive 4 hour shifts and not have to do a single thing.

The company put us all though an electrical course and made us all 17th edition electricians, for one single reason, so we could work with the electrical cables feedback the server racks, and we where been paid £35,000PA basic, after OT this was more like £45,000 PA, to land the job we needed a computer related degree although a monkey could have done it, but the company we worked for was dealing with multi-million dollar deals, at part of the contact was that there was an engineer on that site 24/7 365 to contact for any given problem, and the best part was it was not even a "Live" data centre, it was a backup data centre, yes the entire centre was constantly collecting backup date from a range of live data centres around the world, well I say world, was actually form all the UK, Germany and France, the rest of the world must of had there own backup centre for an American international company dealing with Military contracts amongst other things.

Great job to be fair, very easy but demanding on hours.
 
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