Those Working At the CCNP Level - Please Describe Your Job

Alexf302

I am currently knee-deep in my CCNP studies, with a goal of having the cert in-hand before summer of next year (hopefully much sooner if I can maintain my current pace). While studying I often find myself wondering what the actual day-to-day looks like for folks who work with CCNP-level stuff professionally every day, whether they are certified or not.


Specifically I am wondering about the following:

Do you work only on the infrastructure owned by the company you work for, or do you have multiple clients that you service?
Do you work exclusively at the same location? If not, how much travelling do you do?

Do you perform only configuration? Design? Troubleshooting? A mix of each?

Are your days extremely busy from start to finish? If not, how much down time do you typically have?

How much time do you spend on the phone versus working on actual gear?

Do you work amongst several coworkers in, say, a busy NOC environment, or do you spend more time at your own desk and/or in front of the networking gear itself?

How often do you find yourself working more than a 40 hour week?

Are you ever responsible for off-hour support/emergencies? If so, how often?

If you could move from your current Cisco role into a different Cisco role, what would you move to?

Do you find your job to be fast-paced, relaxed, or something in-between?

How often do you work with non-Cisco routers and/or switches?

Anything else that you would care to add would be helpful. Thanks in advance for any responses!

razar

Do you work only on the infrastructure owned by the company you work for, or do you have multiple clients that you service?
Currently I work for an enterprise so only work on their own network, personally I'm not ccnp certified yet but when I am I think I might prefer to work for a service provider as I think you may learn more and quicker that way.

Do you work exclusively at the same location? If not, how much travelling do you do?
Mostly at my location but sometimes travel to the co-lo's or other offices abroad.

Do you perform only configuration? Design? Troubleshooting? A mix of each?
Mainly troubleshooting and a bit of config, we have a senior network engineer who does most of the design.

Are your days extremely busy from start to finish? If not, how much down time do you typically have?
Mostly very busy, the issue in my role is that i'm more of a systems engineer so i have to work on other stuff as well as the network.

How much time do you spend on the phone versus working on actual gear?
I'm hardly ever on the phone.

Do you work amongst several coworkers in, say, a busy NOC environment, or do you spend more time at your own desk and/or in front of the networking gear itself?
Mostly at my desk working alongside the senior engineer.

How often do you find yourself working more than a 40 hour week?
Every now and then, mostly when travelling the hours rack up.

Are you ever responsible for off-hour support/emergencies? If so, how often?
Basically once they give you a blackberry you're always on-call. Some companies have a pay structure for this, unfortunately mine doesn't.

If you could move from your current Cisco role into a different Cisco role, what would you move to?
A role where I can work on different networks, have been in my current role for just over a year now. And it is a good network to work on with different protocols used. We manage the enterprise side of things such as eigrp, bgp and we have providers who manage the wan side such as mpls, vpls. I think this is quite normal for an enterprise setup.

Do you find your job to be fast-paced, relaxed, or something in-between?
Relaxed until something goes wrong.

How often do you work with non-Cisco routers and/or switches?
Hardly ever, a few HP switches now and then but my company uses mostly Cisco gear, 6500s, 3750s, 7200s, asa's etc. The non-cisco devices I work with are things like wan-acceleration devices.