As a Senior Network Engineer, this rings so true... Your stress level is based on a mixture of core competencies (active recallable knowledge) + (corporate network design) + (type of Business and how impactful an outage is). A 24/7 eCommerce company has more sensitivity than a dental office that runs from 7 am to 4 pm. Make sure your pay (whether in experience, knowledge,work/life balance, salary and benefits) is worth it to YOU based on what type of environment you are in or interviewing for!
I'm absolutely with you on this too Jeremy. For far too many years I've been the guy who can get things done on a tight budget and as you say, you know what, when it doesn't work nobody cares how much you saved, they just want it fixing. We still have a single points of failure around the organisation, but instead of adding more redundancy to fix those systems we're working to migrate away from them and onto newer infrastructure and services that are more redundant out of the box and the stress level certainly does go down.
Awesome Video. I can 100% relate to it. Very recently, One of the Core Switch in a Switch Stack went down for no apparent reason. The actual blast radius of that one core switch being down was literally from east to west as well as north to south in the Network. The concept of complete redundancy in the network from access to Core to Edge saved my day. I was calmly working on faulty switch while the entire network was functioning as if nothing happened. 2 is 1 and 1 is Zero - Spot on.
I'm so thankful my company knows the value of a stable network, and we have two of everything. Also the network I'm inhereting was done by a person with 20+ years of experience, so I, as an entry level person, can take my time to get to know everything.
I thought about to two exact things, how good is your design and how redundant is it. I suppose being competent about the technology your supporting reduces some stress. Also, your years of experience adds into the equation. However, I’ve never thought of it as I’m taking a hit health wise when we don’t implement redundancy. That’s a great point! It’s often over looked by lesser experience admins.
Just had a "22" stress week. Lightning strike fried 3 underground power wires to buildings. This caused the substation to blow 2 major fuses. Our whole campus generator kicked on and immediately tripped the circuit breakers. Maintenance sent me a text at 2:19am that I slept through. UPS's batteries died 1 hour before the text was sent. Once power to the 8 buildings were restored (days later), all physical and virtual servers and my network came back up perfectly. The stress was not knowing if the servers survived the event.
This is the thing that I am always fighting with. No matter if you work for clients or you are in-house net engineer/admin, they ALWAYS want to cheap out.
@Viatto Knowing that this is a year old video but still very relevant. I must just say the following, I have worked as a network engineer for around 8 years and have found out that the other side is true as well, meaning that if the client is educated to where the common flaws are, they can prepare a backup procedure in cases where the budget does not allow for the redundant connection. So the saying goes, "a relationship is a two-way street".
Funny you post this after the night I had. Upgrading firewall chassis firmware. All is well, traffic is flowing and then all at once it dies..at midnight..Stress level 100 lol
How much time you allow for your design phase and how much time you get to deploy has a lot to do with it too. Hes 100% right that the only way you will learn this is the hard way. This is why experienced engineers are more desirable than just ones with alphabet soup after their name..
Yup 100% agree. I went from a place with no redundancy or documentation to a place with great documentation and two of everything. The stress for me is just the massive amount of projects I am on to deploy all new gear. Hopefully once everything is new and up to design standards it will be easier to sleep.
Making me think twice about going into msp . I work in operations and services for one company that has several campuses, pharmacies, and apartments with 1200 employees. Our stuff has redundancy at the most mission critical areas.
Isn't this true only if you accept private gigs? If you're working for a multinational company, you may end up getting called if you're the on-call person, but you can do your job from home instead of having to travel.
100% right , but as a network engineer what should i do when the company refuses to pay for redundancy , like you said I also like to sleep peacefully at night , but my question is should i just continue supporting a design with no redundancy or should i quit? or maybe present the idea in writing so when outage happens , i could show them that paper and say "I TOOLLLLD YOU!!!"
Just stop caring but never let that “i don’t care” attitude ever seep out into your quality of work. If the boss won’t add redundancy it’s not your problem until it’s time to call TAC and badger us on WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?!?! Because boss man is mad he didn’t buy two and wants an RCA why he lost 50k in a 2 hour outage
If they refuse to pay for redundancy, the only real option left is to get them to put their decision in writing that they actively choose to not have redundancy. Bonus points if you send the email first, and CC all of the people/sections that would be affected by said single point of failure :). At the end of the day, it's a cost/benefit analysis to management. You, as the network engineer, can only really provide the information to management to make decisions.
The stress level of the network engineer is directly related to how well the network architect did his/her job.
As a Senior Network Engineer, this rings so true...
Your stress level is based on a mixture of core competencies (active recallable knowledge) + (corporate network design) + (type of Business and how impactful an outage is).
A 24/7 eCommerce company has more sensitivity than a dental office that runs from 7 am to 4 pm. Make sure your pay (whether in experience, knowledge,work/life balance, salary and benefits) is worth it to YOU based on what type of environment you are in or interviewing for!
I'm absolutely with you on this too Jeremy. For far too many years I've been the guy who can get things done on a tight budget and as you say, you know what, when it doesn't work nobody cares how much you saved, they just want it fixing.
We still have a single points of failure around the organisation, but instead of adding more redundancy to fix those systems we're working to migrate away from them and onto newer infrastructure and services that are more redundant out of the box and the stress level certainly does go down.
Awesome Video. I can 100% relate to it. Very recently, One of the Core Switch in a Switch Stack went down for no apparent reason. The actual blast radius of that one core switch being down was literally from east to west as well as north to south in the Network. The concept of complete redundancy in the network from access to Core to Edge saved my day. I was calmly working on faulty switch while the entire network was functioning as if nothing happened.
2 is 1 and 1 is Zero - Spot on.
This definitely changed my perception on things. Thanks for this Jeremy.
I'm so thankful my company knows the value of a stable network, and we have two of everything. Also the network I'm inhereting was done by a person with 20+ years of experience, so I, as an entry level person, can take my time to get to know everything.
The stress depends on how the engineer knows about the system and what is going on with it.
U made my day Jeremy. Thanks for reposting my question. I really appreciate it
Thank You for all of your videos that you did. I am enjoying all of them
I've watched a lot of Jeremy's videos. This one resonates with me the most.
This video is really insightful. Don’t let the job stress you out by being cheap.
The real stress comes always from this two.
1) MANAGEMENT PRESSURE
2) Network outage
You forget to mention one thing,
When a unique error occurrs
You 200% correct.
I wish companies can have that mindset
I thought about to two exact things, how good is your design and how redundant is it. I suppose being competent about the technology your supporting reduces some stress. Also, your years of experience adds into the equation.
However, I’ve never thought of it as I’m taking a hit health wise when we don’t implement redundancy. That’s a great point! It’s often over looked by lesser experience admins.
I know that laughter Jermey 😄
So grateful for this! Thanks Jeremy
Just had a "22" stress week. Lightning strike fried 3 underground power wires to buildings. This caused the substation to blow 2 major fuses. Our whole campus generator kicked on and immediately tripped the circuit breakers. Maintenance sent me a text at 2:19am that I slept through. UPS's batteries died 1 hour before the text was sent. Once power to the 8 buildings were restored (days later), all physical and virtual servers and my network came back up perfectly. The stress was not knowing if the servers survived the event.
Wow
this is spot on.....thanks Jeremy
Thanks for this one.. Got me thinking.. work-life balance is super important..
This is the thing that I am always fighting with. No matter if you work for clients or you are in-house net engineer/admin, they ALWAYS want to cheap out.
@Viatto Knowing that this is a year old video but still very relevant. I must just say the following, I have worked as a network engineer for around 8 years and have found out that the other side is true as well, meaning that if the client is educated to where the common flaws are, they can prepare a backup procedure in cases where the budget does not allow for the redundant connection. So the saying goes, "a relationship is a two-way street".
2 is 1, 1 is none.
Well said Jeremy.
Hey Jeremy, I couldn’t agree more. Redundant highly available networks should be the standard requirement for support
Funny you post this after the night I had. Upgrading firewall chassis firmware. All is well, traffic is flowing and then all at once it dies..at midnight..Stress level 100 lol
YES, well done!!! 👍👍👍 👏👏👏
How much time you allow for your design phase and how much time you get to deploy has a lot to do with it too. Hes 100% right that the only way you will learn this is the hard way. This is why experienced engineers are more desirable than just ones with alphabet soup after their name..
Great insight and well explained.
No truer words ever spoken!
Very insightful!!
Yup 100% agree. I went from a place with no redundancy or documentation to a place with great documentation and two of everything. The stress for me is just the massive amount of projects I am on to deploy all new gear. Hopefully once everything is new and up to design standards it will be easier to sleep.
Absolutely agree!
Stress level? Yes/10
If at an MSP? 10, almost every day
are you tony? and is this why you cant dance?
@@fdude555 i miss dancing man 😭
Making me think twice about going into msp . I work in operations and services for one company that has several campuses, pharmacies, and apartments with 1200 employees. Our stuff has redundancy at the most mission critical areas.
That is so true.
Isn't this true only if you accept private gigs? If you're working for a multinational company, you may end up getting called if you're the on-call person, but you can do your job from home instead of having to travel.
Oh I like this video
100% right , but as a network engineer what should i do when the company refuses to pay for redundancy , like you said I also like to sleep peacefully at night , but my question is should i just continue supporting a design with no redundancy or should i quit? or maybe present the idea in writing so when outage happens , i could show them that paper and say "I TOOLLLLD YOU!!!"
Just stop caring but never let that “i don’t care” attitude ever seep out into your quality of work. If the boss won’t add redundancy it’s not your problem until it’s time to call TAC and badger us on WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?!?! Because boss man is mad he didn’t buy two and wants an RCA why he lost 50k in a 2 hour outage
If they refuse to pay for redundancy, the only real option left is to get them to put their decision in writing that they actively choose to not have redundancy. Bonus points if you send the email first, and CC all of the people/sections that would be affected by said single point of failure :). At the end of the day, it's a cost/benefit analysis to management. You, as the network engineer, can only really provide the information to management to make decisions.
Oh the pain of a lateral coming out of one building ... Fibercut within 20 feet to the building and you thought you had protection.
You thought you purchase from 2 separate carriers when you just had an the same underlying carrier go down.
When things work, you are their best friend. When things go south, you are the enemy! 🙄
agree 1 to 50 (out of 10)
they need to add a few more levels because 1-10 just doesn't cut it.
My average stress level is a 2. But then again I am 1 of those Sr guys now so.........
😆
The annoying background music could be lowered or eliminated.
I've seen this before.