How much stress in Daily Life of Networker?

Dingdongbubble

Hello

Well I havent decided on what career to pursue. I wanted to ask the networkers over here a few questions.

What are the typical tensions and stress levels in the daily life of a typical networker?
A business executive or someone keeps worrying about the market prices and stuff. An engineer has to meet deadlines etc. So similarly how much do networkers worry? Do they have to keep thinking and worrying about whats going on once you are 'off' work?

networker050184

Depends on how the network is performing or how your project is coming along. Any job can be stressful. Its not the most stressful job you could have, but it when the network is down you have a lot of people breathing down your neck.

It really all depends on how you handle stress. Like the saying goes if you can't handle the heat get out the kitchen!

phantasm

Do a few years working for Uncle Sam and stress with be a welcome friend. lol.

Dingdongbubble

^I am not really a bright person lol but err what did you mean by that?

phantasm

In other words, being in the military taught me everything I needed to know about stress management.

If you have a problem with stress, then you may want to choose a slower pace field.

HeroPsycho

Most of my stress tends to come from end customers and management.

Customers, and I typically mean the business "decision makers" by that, tend to often times make these decisions on everything but technical merit, and in fact often make decisions in spite of technical merit. This often leaves you feeling frustrated, especially when you do what they tell you, it consequently blows up, and they blame you for it.

Management can also be an issue. I often find it a fight to get the training I need to successfully complete projects. They'd typically rather not pay you to keep your skill set up. Also, it's common practice to pay good money when you're walking in the door to the job, but horrendously bad raises thereafter.

Mrock4

phantasm wrote:

In other words, being in the military taught me everything I needed to know about stress management.

If you have a problem with stress, then you may want to choose a slower pace field.

If only it would teach me anger management..I've got rage issues now..

JDMurray

Mrock4 wrote:

If only it would teach me anger management..I've got rage issues now..

Next on Dr. Phil: Rage Management

Dingdongbubble

So do you guys worry about 'work' even when you are back at home? Or is networking just a technical so called 'labour' job where you just configure and troubleshoot stuff and normally are confident that it will work?

How worrysome are the jobs of multi CCIE's?

networker050184

If you are looking for a completely stress free job, then IT is probably not for you.

It can consist of LONG stressful hours when there are issues, but you can also get a lot of down time.

I try to leave work at work, but when I get home I still think about issues most of the time.

I'll get back to you in a few years on how stressful the job of a mutli CCIE is

Dingdongbubble

ok forget about stress. Tell me about the worries. Do you ahve tensions and really tense times where you are worried about whats going to happen in the future. Do you ahve sleepless nights just worrying about whats going to happen?

Or is it like this:
You configure/troubleshoot routers
You are confident that you ahve taken the right measures
You leave work and get home
you just think about what steps you would take next at work if the routers fail to do what you wanted them to do.
after 'thinking' this up, you just enjoy your family life and stuff?

royal

I really enjoy what I do. I worry about what I do, but not in a sense where I'm stressed. I'm worried that i won't do the best job I can possibly do, so I read and read and read to make sure I know the ins and outs of what exactly I'm doing. Because of that, I do quite a bit of reading in my own time. But I don't mind this since I enjoy it. It also helps me make sure I'm top of my game which of course benefits you in several different ways: recognition among your peers, professional references, raises, etc...

dtlokee

I don't worry about anything, just always make sure you have an upated copy of your resume

Stress comes with the job. We support the network that enables a business to function. Without it normal business operation will come to a halt, and that costs the business money and can hurt their reputation with partners, customes, and investors. What we do right or wrong can have a profound impact on the company and in some cases can even put a company out of business (I know a company taht couldn't recover from a 2 week outage and eventually went under).

Like Royal said, do your job to the best of your abilities, read and understand what you're doing and you shoud be fine. Call in specialists when necessary, for example if you aren't up on all the latest security trends you'll sleep better at night if you call in somone who is even if it costs the company some money to have it done properly. proactive monitioring can help reduce failures and therefore stress.