Need an opinion on my job...

Gpdriver17

I've been working in a NOC for about 4 months now, this is my first IT job. I have passed the CCNP Route and I'm ready to take the Switch exam, but keep stalling because this job confuses me about my career path. In the last 4 months there has been only been one time that I ever seen anything from my studies (CCNA/CCNP RS). Everything is so convoluted. For example I'll get a call from someone in India I can't understand and after 10 minutes I'll finally understand that Citrix servers are unreachable and that they are on the 10.23.143.49 subnet, which means about as much to me as it does to any of you. I have no access to network diagrams, have never been told how ANYTHING is set up or what we support. Then it turns out one of the Citrix servers was moved to a different VLAN and all the others communicated through it somehow? One more example, I got 8 A tickets the other day because ELV equipment wasn't connecting to wifi. ... I was never told we had wifi at any of our sites and didn't know what ELV equipment was. Every single day major problems come up with things I never knew we supported and don't even have access to work on and I'm the only person at work. Sometimes we even have customers call from companies I didn't know we supported! Not once has a problem ever had anything to do with anything on the CCNA/CCNP. So I don't know how to even go about learning networking (if this is a typical networking job). I have a feeling the company I work for isn't normal.

So how do you learn networking? It seems like the CCNA/CCNP studies didn't prep me at ALL for my NOC position. Since I have no idea how anything is set up or connected it's really hard for me to do anything. The few things I have learned from this job have been spot knowledge, like 'It has to be this way to work'. And that's it. Is this normal? Or do most companies do more to teach their entry level employees? There's never time for me to even google or research things on my own at work, I'm always doing mindless tickets (resetting phones) non stop and escalating anything interesting because I have no clue how any of it is set up.

Does this sound like a typical NOC position?

Do most companies either give their employees time to research things and learn or have someone explain things to them?

I really want to learn and do well in this field, but (if this is a normal job) I don't know how to even go about that. Even if I had a CCIE RS I'd be absolutely clueless here and I'm not learning much of anything on the job. I'm starting to consider getting out of networking if this is a typical job.

Node Man

For me, prior to working in a NOC, I discovered the Cisco certification process. I heard angels and trumpets and thought mastering Cisco would be the only thing I ever need to learn. After getting a NOC position I quickly learned that Cisco is one piece. Its a big piece, but only one piece of a very large puzzle. Every NOC is different, but they have many of the same pieces. Its often a shock for a new person how much non-cisco equipment can be in a network.

The positive news is that good troubleshooting skills are universal. All the best technicians and engineers that inspire me, maintain a play book of best practices. Good troubleshooting means understand what to expect from a network. Often the pattern of problems can be determined. It may take months or a year or two, but we can look that "50% of our problems are layer 3", "25% are dhcp" etc etc.

From what I seen, on the job training can be very minimal. We may have to do that at home on our own time. I've built a large lab for that. And that often separates the good from the great engineers. Ive seen engineers built ridiculous labs for self study. VOIP networks, POTS networks. Even one guy built an entire CMTS system in his basement.

When new in a position, keep detailed notes is very important. Build your play book. Pretend you are writing an introduction for the next engineer. It may be a long time in between seeing certain problems again.

Regarding network diagrams - make you own. Run tracert's and keep topologies. DRAW.IO is becoming my best friend.

Also, and this is very important - Get used to language barriers. It gets easier to deal with.

Just my 2 cents.

Gpdriver17

Thank you, it's good to hear someone else felt the same way. Everyone says I'm learning fast and doing well, but I feel like I'm drowning every day. On weekends I'm alone, usually with 3 calls going in 2 different cubicals and another phone ringing off the hook, tickets I can't get to, people asking me questions about things I've never heard of and companies I didn’t know we even supported calling in asking questions about their networks I don’t know how to even access. I feel so stressed and clueless. This isn't at all what I thought I was getting into. Which would be alright if the pay was decent, but at 10 dollars an hour I'm considering other options.

It's mostly the data centers than I don't understand as far as network mapping goes. But we had a team of 3 people try to do it for a few months and they gave up.

I hope the language barrier gets easier! I feel awful replying to someone that just spoke for 2 minutes with, "What?" And then not understanding any better the second/third time.

Thanks for the advice though! I'll start taking notes make a list of things to learn.

Node Man

I would imagine that with a solid 12 months at that job, a resume will probably look awesome. Beating $10/hr at that point may be easy. With a year at that job and a CCNP, I would expect $30 an hour.

Gpdriver17

That was the plan, but I feel like every time anything goes wrong I call our on-call and they fix it. So I'm not really learning a lot. Motivating to hear 30 an hour though!

Node Man

Gpdriver17 wrote: »

I feel like every time anything goes wrong I call our on-call and they fix it.

Bingo! With a little time on the job you will be able to predict what the on-calls solutions will be before you call them. That is experience.