Senior Engineer - NOC

laidbackfreak

Ok guys I’ve been approached about a role as Senior Network Engineer for a managed service’s firm. My only reservation is that its in the NOC.
I know very little of this type of environment so would like to know if anyone on here can provide me with a little insight as to what the role is like or likely to consist of ? The Job Spec is a bit woolly in detail.

GAngel

laidbackfreak wrote: »

Ok guys I’ve been approached about a role as Senior Network Engineer for a managed service’s firm. My only reservation is that its in the NOC.
I know very little of this type of environment so would like to know if anyone on here can provide me with a little insight as to what the role is like or likely to consist of ? The Job Spec is a bit woolly in detail.

My second job was as an admin in a NOC. I would say the only difference between it and a regular environment is you don't get end users coming around so much. Ask to see the place and talk to the other engineers. If they hate it they're usually not afraid to let you know.

apd123

A NOC is a great place to learn. Not only are you dealing with hands on issues but there is some down time. This reply is extremely based on my own anecdotal evidence.

Forsaken_GA

Well, NOC's differ. My NOC is a fun environment to work in (though I really wish we could find the remote and get the channel off of CNN.. only so many times in a night you can watch Larry King before you want to start shooting people). NOC's aren't quite as bad as help desks. You'll still be getting issued passed up to you, as well as doing some proactive monitoring, but the people you deal with will generally have something resembling a clue. Depending on the company, it may be high stress, or you get some time to study or work on your online Hold'em skills.

shodown

Hate it and love it. My 1st job was working 2nd level support where I was fixing problems and actually doing some design work depending on the situation.

I'm a Tier 2 NOC person right now. You really can't make changes(which you shouldn't), but its kinda boring. We troubleshoot normal everyday network and voip problems. Spend time doing engineering orders. With the down time I have been studying for certs and working on college so I put it to good use. The pay is very good, so that keeps me. In the end you have to have a out plan as your room for learning shrinks and you will need to move into more challenging assignements. Here we have WAN people on the NOC floor, so that may be my next move.

laidbackfreak

Cheers guys much appreciated, gives me summit to think about and plenty of questions to ask should I follow it up.

veritas_libertas

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Well, NOC's differ. My NOC is a fun environment to work in (though I really wish we could find the remote and get the channel off of CNN.. only so many times in a night you can watch Larry King before you want to start shooting people). NOC's aren't quite as bad as help desks. You'll still be getting issued passed up to you, as well as doing some proactive monitoring, but the people you deal with will generally have something resembling a clue. Depending on the company, it may be high stress, or you get some time to study or work on your online Hold'em skills.

Larry King? Have you seen the notorious Larry King Internet interview? I'm not a CNN person but when I heard about this interview I started laughing and looked it up:

Think Progress Larry King Admits He’s Never Used The Internet: ‘Do You Punch Little Buttons and Things?’

I don't know anything about the rest of the web site if anyone is wondering...

Hypersonik

I have been working in a NOC for 2 1/2 years.

It used to be really good, but as the company has grown (800 to 1400 employees)this has meant a lot of segmentation and specification.

So from building servers, swapping BGP peers, netscalers and other configuration, we mainly watch for alerts and fill out reports

Don't get me wrong, it's a great way to get your foot in the door and you may join a company that sets out a good career path/training schedule.

But don't, as I did, let the relatively decent starting pay corrupt what your ideal job spec would be.

Forsaken_GA

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Larry King? Have you seen the notorious Larry King Internet interview? I'm not a CNN person but when I heard about this interview I started laughing and looked it up:

Think Progress Larry King Admits He’s Never Used The Internet: ‘Do You Punch Little Buttons and Things?’

I don't know anything about the rest of the web site if anyone is wondering...

Nah, I hate Larry King. Unfortunately, working overnight weekends, with a tv that's only tuned to CNN, I get to watch quite a bit of involuntary Larry King just by raising my eyes away from my monitor

Hyper-Me

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Well, NOC's differ. My NOC is a fun environment to work in (though I really wish we could find the remote and get the channel off of CNN.. only so many times in a night you can watch Larry King before you want to start shooting people). NOC's aren't quite as bad as help desks. You'll still be getting issued passed up to you, as well as doing some proactive monitoring, but the people you deal with will generally have something resembling a clue. Depending on the company, it may be high stress, or you get some time to study or work on your online Hold'em skills.

Buy one of those universal remote watches for like 30$ and noone will know whos changing it.

Mrock4

I currently manage a NOC, and have for about 1 1/2 yrs. It's OK. As others have said, there is some downtime, which is great for studying. On the other hand, you may or may not get the technical experience you want, depending on the place.

I also get sick of CNN/Fox News, although we can change the channel sometimes..not as much as I'd like

networker050184

The guys in our NOC do a lot of monitoring and getting the correct groups involved with issues. They mainly do just enough troubleshooting to know (guess most of the time it seems like) who needs to be called to fix the issues. They also clear all the alarms after any maintenance. The work isn't very technical, but like others have said the word "NOC" has many different meanings depending on the business.

RomBUS

Sorry for barging in on this but I was also curious to know what a NOC person does because Ive seen a couple of recommendations for this as well. So NOC is an overnight position or its regular work hours?

networker050184

RomBUS wrote: »

Sorry for barging in on this but I was also curious to know what a NOC person does because Ive seen a couple of recommendations for this as well. So NOC is an overnight position or its regular work hours?

NOCs are usually 24hrs from what I've seen.

laidbackfreak

networker050184 wrote: »

NOCs are usually 24hrs from what I've seen.

Yeah thats what I've heard too, it's one of the things that puts me off if I'm honest. Most jobs I've seen advertised in NOC's usually state the rota as 24/7.

That aside it looks like it's gone internal now so decision made for me

Mrock4

I look forward to night shift usually...ample study time.

knownhero

Been working NOC for 2 1/2 years. Currently just do maintiance and call people that need to be called for network issues. Though I'm hands on with troubleshooting a product called Mimecast, spam filtering and mail routing etc.

Plenty study time and nights involve xbox, PS3 and movies. Oh and study now seeing as I need the 291 for the MCSA. Other than that I'm stuck with SKYNEWS when I want to watch FOX.

RomBUS

networker050184 wrote: »

NOCs are usually 24hrs from what I've seen.

What do you mean exactly? They stay on-site all the time (no home life??) or is it an on-call style, such as if you get a call 3 AM you have to be there?

shodown

RomBUS wrote: »

What do you mean exactly? They stay on-site all the time (no home life??) or is it an on-call style, such as if you get a call 3 AM you have to be there?

Most NOC's have people there 24/7. Usually the day staff has the most people then you kinda go down for swings and mids. Usually you have the more senior people there during the day, and a combo or mid and junior people at night. Usually if you have to esclate at night you can have a senior guy log in from home and get to devices. Some companies allow this others don't.

Forsaken_GA

networker050184 wrote: »

The guys in our NOC do a lot of monitoring and getting the correct groups involved with issues. They mainly do just enough troubleshooting to know (guess most of the time it seems like) who needs to be called to fix the issues.

It's not guessing, we're doing the jedi thing!

Forsaken_GA

shodown wrote: »

Most NOC's have people there 24/7. Usually the day staff has the most people then you kinda go down for swings and mids. Usually you have the more senior people there during the day, and a combo or mid and junior people at night. Usually if you have to esclate at night you can have a senior guy log in from home and get to devices. Some companies allow this others don't.

It depends on the company. Before I got promoted, I'm one of the really bright guys, and when we had an employment shortage, I got stuck by myself for 12 hours at a time simply because the senior folks wanted to sleep on the weekends. I rarely need to escalate anything (and when I do, it's usually a matter of 'I don't have access to this' instead of 'I don't know how to fix this'), so when I call, they know it's time to pay attention.

I also do a fair amount of strategic bitching about working overnights. As far as everyone is concerned, I hate working nights, when the truth is I don't *want* to change shifts. But they don't need to know that... when I'm ready to go back to working days, it won't be hard for me to lean on the director to get a shift change.

shodown

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

It depends on the company. Before I got promoted, I'm one of the really bright guys, and when we had an employment shortage, I got stuck by myself for 12 hours at a time simply because the senior folks wanted to sleep on the weekends. I rarely need to escalate anything (and when I do, it's usually a matter of 'I don't have access to this' instead of 'I don't know how to fix this'), so when I call, they know it's time to pay attention.

I also do a fair amount of strategic bitching about working overnights. As far as everyone is concerned, I hate working nights, when the truth is I don't *want* to change shifts. But they don't need to know that... when I'm ready to go back to working days, it won't be hard for me to lean on the director to get a shift change.

My nights come with a shift premium. Which is nice. But its time for me to move into a network engineering positon from the NOC. I really enjoy the work and the new Cicso exams seems to be what more of what I do, but this is not the career for me. Very easy, but stressful work.

Forsaken_GA

shodown wrote: »

My nights come with a shift premium. Which is nice. But its time for me to move into a network engineering positon from the NOC. I really enjoy the work and the new Cicso exams seems to be what more of what I do, but this is not the career for me. Very easy, but stressful work.

I still get to work nights as a network engineer. Mostly because I'm the Junior network engineer, and lord forbid the high and mighty Senior do such menial things as replace switches, run cable, upgrade software, and so on.

The upside is, once my list of work is done I can do whatever the hell I want hehe

shodown

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I still get to work nights as a network engineer. Mostly because I'm the Junior network engineer, and lord forbid the high and mighty Senior do such menial things as replace switches, run cable, upgrade software, and so on.

The upside is, once my list of work is done I can do whatever the hell I want hehe

Ain't that the truth. Thats what we all do once the basic work for the night is done which is only 2 hours of a 8 hour shift. 6 hours to do what you want. Some people study. Some people do college work, others sleep, others watch TV.

Kaminsky

laidbackfreak wrote: »

Yeah thats what I've heard too, it's one of the things that puts me off if I'm honest. Most jobs I've seen advertised in NOC's usually state the rota as 24/7.

That aside it looks like it's gone internal now so decision made for me

LBF I went for a shift job few years back and turned it down initially due to the 4 on 4 off. Took the job and absolutely loved the 4 on 4 off. 20% extra pay for it as well. Yes you had to work weekends and nights sometimes when your turn came round but that wasn't that big of a deal.

The 4 on 4 off was amazing. It was like I was unemployed but getting paid for it, and very well too. Me and the mrs would drop kids off at school then go shopping, down the gym, off for a pub lunch. First time we had been able to do that in 8 years since we started having kids.

Gone back to a 9-5 now when that client contract ended so I moved in the company. Hurt losing the 20% but really hurt losing the 4 days a week off.

Kaminsky

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

As far as everyone is concerned, I hate working nights, when the truth is I don't *want* to change shifts. But they don't need to know that...

We had one guy that would only work nights. He would usually sleep most of the time anyway. When he got forced to go on days, he left..... Turned out he had a day job as well for some other company. How they never found that out is beyond me.

Forsaken_GA

Kaminsky wrote: »

We had one guy that would only work nights. He would usually sleep most of the time anyway. When he got forced to go on days, he left..... Turned out he had a day job as well for some other company. How they never found that out is beyond me.

Well, it's not really a companies business if someone has another job, unless it's working for a direct competitor and they're suspected of sharing trade secrets or something. Sometimes you have to work multiple jobs, I've had to do it a couple times. Right now we work 3 on, 4 off, 4 on, 3 off, so I could probably get a day job and make some extra bank, I just happen to value my free time and don't particularly need the extra money