Well, big surprise, most people know I'm active Army. Well, I've had a variety of roles since being in, from voice, to server work, to being a general network guy, to handling strictly layer 2 issues...to my current position of 2 months- basically a NOC manager. Absolutely horrible. The highlight of my day is creating some powerpoint slides and DISCUSSING circuits..nothing technical...
Well, since starting my CCIE study, I have had my books at work every day (well, night..I was on night shift for a while), and one of our gov't contractors pointed out my CCIE exam cert guide, and said our network section had a guy who was a CCIE. My ears perked up and I looked the guys e-mail up, and contacted him.
Turns out he had failed the CCIE twice, but knows his stuff, and is "the" go-to guy at his shop. We have talked over the last few weeks about the CCIE and various technical topics. Eventually, he asked why I wasn't working in the networking section. When I couldn't answer him properly, he spoke to his boss, who spoke to his boss, etc..
Fast forward to this morning, a guy I had never seen comes in and tells me I'm now working the network section. This network is ridiculously huge...I'm talking nodes in 20-25 countries, god knows how many WAN links, a very impressive LAN with all the up-to-date gear a cisco geek could wish for, etc. Not to mention, the majority of the guys who work this shop are very skilled....it all encompasses a fantastic opportunity that would have never happened had I not talked to this guy and BS'd with him about everyday life a little..
So lesson to be learned, do not underestimate networking professionally.
Oh, did I mention my hours just got shortened from 12 hour days to 8 hour? Oh, and no more weekends
