Absolutely floored in a Net Eng. discussion today

apr911

EdTheLad wrote: »

The guy seems a little up himself to me. It sounds like you work in configuration and implementation and he works a pre sales role trying to design a network. When i mean trying to design i'm putting emphasis on trying. I work as a test engineer which means i deal with design engineers everyday, most of the time their designs don't work as they don't understand the nitty gritty of how protocols work together. This happens as the design engineer moves further from the config aspect and more to a higher overview. Now if i heard one say how i'm a technician because i configure etc i'd probably punch him in his face. Maybe the guy you spoke with was rusty on the protocols etc you were chatting about and used the technician line to avoid going more in depth while at the same time making himself look superior, anyway some people are ******!

So very true. I worked a "network architect" who was so far removed from the actual configuration that he was convince you couldn't route RFC1918 addresses. Every single one of his designs was absolutely horrible and caused no end of trouble to setup and troubleshoot for the admins supporting the environment.

Ive also worked with a CCIE who drew every one of his network diagrams upside down with the internet at the bottom. Functionally not an issue but it caused no end of confusion when trying to interpret which portion of the network he was referring to. He was also convinced the entire environment required public IPs for what was largely intranet routing.

It seems the OP has since come to realize this same thing given his own experience with this particular engineer.

Iristheangel wrote: »

It also can be the way he asked the question. Saying "Let's talk about XYZ protocols" instead of asking "Why would you choose OSPF over EIGRP" or ""Which methods would you use to load balance and why would you pick one over the other?" or some question like that is going to illicit a different response.

It doesn't sound like he was entirely clear with what he was asking or expecting as a response and when you didn't respond the way he figured you should in his head, he tagged you a break/fix config guy. While that might be true or not true, the framing of the questions is very important or else everyone is doomed to fail this guy's standards.

Also very true. Question framing is a very important part of the question and a very overlooked skill to have.

I once was in an interview where I was asked a question, to which I asked very specific qualifying questions and got the question right in 3 steps. Because of the framing of the question and the interviewers insistence I continue troubleshooting, I went further in my troubleshooting. About a dozen steps in I threw up my hands and expressed not knowing what the issue could be. Turns out they framed the question poorly, ignored the specifics of what I was asking in follow-up and were convinced since it took them half a day to solve the issue in production, there was no way I could have solved it in 5 minutes and 3 steps so I must have been guessing (even though my process was very logically spelled out).

I pointed out the flaws in the question and asked quite seriously how anyone was supposed to answer the question correctly given the assumptions that were misrepresented as facts.

MacGuffin

I have this discussion on engineer vs. technician quite often. There were several times where I mention to people that I am a computer engineer. I recall getting a response like, "Oh! Then you might be able to tell me why Internet Explorer is acting funny on my computer." I have to find a way to politely tell them that I am not a computer technician. I don't do help desk work, at least I have not in a long time. I write code. I design networks. I don't know a whole lot about Internet Explorer. I rarely even use Microsoft systems. Some people don't understand that there are computers that don't run Windows, but that is another rant for another day.

I saw this in college. The university I attended had a computer science major under the liberal arts college and a computer engineering major under the engineering college. Some colleges and universities will put the computer science program in the engineering department, but not here. This reflects on the education they received. This university taught computer science as what I would describe as applied mathematics. The people that graduated from there with a BS in computer science knew how to program but they did not understand engineering. There were exceptions for the few that sought out courses on software engineering.

I heard from some recruiters, off the record, that they preferred candidates that would do software development with degrees in computer engineering or electrical engineering than computer science. Sometimes the preference would be for people that studied in the field that the company was in but took programming classes on the side, a bank would prefer accounting majors for example.

The reason is that the company can teach people the tools and the language they need for the job much more easily and quickly than teaching them engineering or about the field they are in. I understand things have changed since then at the university. One change is the addition of a software engineering program within the engineering college. There was also a change to the computer science program.

I'm not going to rip on all computer science majors, I'm sure many of them have grown into becoming great software developers. They just didn't get that from their education at the university. I'll also rip on some of the computer engineers. I've seen computer engineers that did not know what I would consider pretty basic computer skills. They were great engineers, wrote beautiful code. Problem was that they would come to me wondering why they couldn't get the floppy disk back out of the computer. (Yes, I've been doing engineering for a while, we had floppy drives on our SPARC stations.) They did not understand the disk had to be unmounted before it could be ejected.

Another funny thing about engineer vs. technician. I was living in Texas when Microsoft got in trouble for giving out "Microsoft Certified Engineer" certificates. In Texas law, and I assume many other states have laws like this, where one could not claim to be an "engineer" unless one of two conditions were met. It was either:
A) The person had earned a professional engineering license from the state or,
The person drove a train

So, Microsoft had to change the name of their certificates or face legal issues for implying they had the authority to issue professional engineer licenses.

Right now I have to decide if I want to continue as a technician, or get back into engineering. I never did have a professional engineer license but since the laws are different here I can still claim to be an engineer. That just emphasizes a point made before in this thread. Being an engineer is more than a job title, it's a way of thinking. An example would be a person that claims to be a "doctor", it's one thing to have a doctorate in medicine, it's another to be a licensed physician. People used to be able to be a licensed physician without having a doctorate, but talking about that is outside the scope of this thread.