What's next after NOC?

Interested to hear from those who have moved forward from being a NOC engineer. How long did you work in NOC? Anybody went to corporate IT? Went for specialization (Cisco, VMware)?

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E Double U

I worked in a telco's NOC for a little over four years. From there I moved on to two other teams within the same company: config/migrations (year and a half) and SOC (less than a year). Been on a bank's Info Sec team for close to two years now.

stryder144

I worked in a telco's NOC, as well, for almost two years. Based off of what I noticed in our NOCs, people tended to stay where they were at and, consequently, were most comfortable. It was a mindset that I did not understand. As such, I moved out of the NOC and am now in training.

kohr-ah

My path so far is:

1.5 years help desk
1.0 years Jr network admin
6 months NOC lvl 2
1 year cloud services network engineer
(All above was at same MSP)
1 year 3 months corporate networking

I specialized in Cisco but am now branching out a bit to juniper, Aruba, and learning Linux.

knownhero

My Path:

4 years NOC work
3 years Jr SQL Administrator minor SharePoint/PowerShell work

Now I'm a SharePoint Analyst

Its the mindset. As soon as I saw SharePoint 2007 when working in the NOC I knew I wanted to do that as a career.

anhtran35

2 years Help Desk; 3 years NOC; 5 years Windows System Administrator.

kurosaki00

How do you do the jump from NOC to Eng/Admin?
All positions I see and interviews I get is people asking me config, config, config. Which is what I want to do, (and Ive done) but there is barely any config in a NOC position.

shodown

you jump from NOC to engineering by getting higher level certs and trying to get involved as much as you can. This is where picking your jobs is very important.

I worked at a job where all we could do was call the telco is something was wrong, it was pretty much a waste of time.

SixtyCycle

What type of troubleshooting do you guys do and at what point do you escalate? It seems like it differs a lot from one company's NOC to another.

N2IT

Soc?

shodown

one Noc I worked for was no troubleshooting, you couldn't even open and shut an interface.

another noc, I troubleshot, BGP, OSPF, MPLS, added ACL's, built on the fly VPN tunnels for people out in the field in Afghanistan/IRAQ, and troubleshoot VOIP outages.

E Double U

I got out of the NOC by getting the CCNA and applying for the config position since the NOC work was being outsourced.

dsgm

I am also in this , at my NOC i been here almost 5 months, i do troubleshooting on live gear but i cant change anything, i do get to provision customer CPE before they get sent out from time to time because i ask to do this but i still want to get more hands so i hope labbing and certs will help me move on

I see a couple guys who are comfortable here, been here up to 6 years, one guys has his CCIE written for the second time ( i will not and do not think this is right to have a CCIE at the NOC level )

I do get to do snapshots and stuff with vmware

anhtran35

SixtyCycle wrote: »

Interested to hear from those who have moved forward from being a NOC engineer. How long did you work in NOC? Anybody went to corporate IT? Went for specialization (Cisco, VMware)?

This is where a decision needs to be made:

a.) Networking = Cisco route.
b.) Systems = Linux and/or Microsoft route.
c.) DBA = Oracle and SQL route.
e.) InfoSec = SOC environment and Top Secret Clearance. Security+, CEH and CISSP route.

anhtran35

dsgm wrote: »

I am also in this , at my NOC i been here almost 5 months, i do troubleshooting on live gear but i cant change anything, i do get to provision customer CPE before they get sent out from time to time because i ask to do this but i still want to get more hands so i hope labbing and certs will help me move on

I see a couple guys who are comfortable here, been here up to 6 years, one guys has his CCIE written for the second time ( i will not and do not think this is right to have a CCIE at the NOC level )

I do get to do snapshots and stuff with vmware

Do you like NETWORKING? Can you intern with the Networking Administrators? Shadow them on your off hours? If they allow you to work with them and you do what they do then stick it on your resume and after a few years in the NOC apply for Network Administrator positions.

pevangel

I spent about 8 months in the NOC before becoming a Network Engineer. I've specialized in Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, and Palo Alto.

dzzwhut

My Path:
a) 2 yrs Desktop Support
b) 2 yrs Field Support Engineer
c) 1 yr NOC
d) 12 yrs - Active Duty Military Officer

dsgm

anhtran35 wrote: »

Do you like NETWORKING? Can you intern with the Networking Administrators? Shadow them on your off hours? If they allow you to work with them and you do what they do then stick it on your resume and after a few years in the NOC apply for Network Administrator positions.

I love networking and will be doing exactly what you have suggested, plus planning on getting some real gear at home and i do stay after hours sometimes.

SixtyCycle

At our NOC we handle everything from install,config,migration & troubleshooting and the only time we pass it to our field engineers is if an onsite is really necessary (hardware issues). I don't see it a benefit transitioning to an engineer role (at least in my company). I do however want to get into the 80K-100Kup range and I know it won't happen at our MSP unless I get into an Account Manager role and start bringing in new clients. I'm thinking of moving to a new company in a different industry and would like to get more insight on this. Will it be banking? Tech? Should I look into DevOps? (I'm studying Python).

AwesomeGarrett

I worked at a MSP NOC for 1 year and 3 months. In this time, I attained the CCNP R&S certification. After completing the certification, I aggressively looked for next level jobs and was hired on as a level 2 engineer supporting a global network. I was in this role for 1 year and 1 month and during this time I made 1 pass v5 workbook I. Through my studies I was able to get a better understanding of QoS, multicast, and IPSec. This allowed to confidently interview for level 3 and senior roles and receive an offer from all jobs I interviewed.

The real question is, how desperate are you to make a change? Once you answer this question, you'll know what you're willing to do in order to get what you want; whatever that may be.

snunez889

AwesomeGarrett wrote: »

The real question is, how desperate are you to make a change? Once you answer this question, you'll know what you're willing to do in order to get what you want; whatever that may be.

I like this...

reboot570

AwesomeGarrett wrote: »

The real question is, how desperate are you to make a change? Once you answer this question, you'll know what you're willing to do in order to get what you want; whatever that may be.

Me too...