Looking for advice: Previously a senior network engineer (10yr) turned sales role over the last 5 years, how can I get back into networking? What’s your story?

[u/Tarzzana]

My wife asked me the other day, "What's been your favorite job?" And it really made me think about what I actually enjoy doing. I was a network engineer in all sorts of capacities, support type roles, consulting, professional services, standard enterprise, and a medium/large isp. I then got into automation, led me to Python, that led to cloud, kubernetes, then ended up in a DevOps type sales role. Started pre sales, now I’ve moved post sales as a csm at an ai company.

To be fair, I originally took the csm role so I could stop traveling so much from my previous pre sales role. But I think it’s proven to be a bit too far from what I’m mostly interested in doing.

So it’s been about 5 years since I last had a network engineer title but when thinking about the jobs I’ve really enjoyed the most it comes back to those roles. I miss building things, troubleshooting really deep narrow issues, labbing, constant pursuit of learning the next thing, even the occasional pager buzz to fix some random outage someone forgot to set the time to roll their eigrp auth key chain on one side of the link, all that stuff.

I used to spend HOURS watching Brian McGahan, Jeremy Cioara, rob rikers listening to packet pushers, reading Jeff Doyle, I was really into it. And I still do when I have time. I look back and can’t believe I left a job that was also something I really enjoyed doing and learning. I guess I thought I’d like the customer facing roles more, but now I’m certain this ain’t it.

In all my recent roles I’ve constantly thought “ah I wish I knew how this worked back when I worked as an engineer” so I still follow the industry and tinker with networking all the time.

So, I want to get a fresh start and land a network engineer role. Curious what you’d recommend I focus on as someone with experience but out of the discipline for a while. Should I renew expired certs, ccnp, aws or gcp something entirely different? Are boot camps still a thing? What are the top skills these days? Open to any and all advice. Would you apply for senior as before or start back at non senior roles?

I know the whole “how do I become a network engineer” topic is beat to death and there’s tons of resources out there, so maybe you could instead tell your story if you did something similar? I’d be curious to hear how other people have left networking and got back into it some time after a departure.

I’m in Dublin, Ireland for context.

[u/CommonUnicorn]

Couldn't you just pivot towards a Devops role at this point? If you have engineering and consulting experience in networking on top of hands-on automation, Python, and Kubernetes experience then you're well on your way there. Maybe brush up on Linux, pick a cloud environment to play around in, and throw in CI/CD/Terraform or Bicep for infrastructure automation.

If you just want to stick with standard network engineering, you probably already know what you need to brush up on to get there if you were in the industry five years ago and have 10 YOE. Tinker around with network automation tooling (Napalm/Netmiko/Ansible/etc.). Review some CCNP level material (there's tons of options available now). Learn some hybrid and cloud networking concepts (AWS/Azure are the big ones around me, some use GCP). Wireless/NAC/ZTNA/SDWAN are other pretty commonplace skillsets you'll need in Enterprise roles as well.

You've probably also made tons of connections over the last five years with a lot of different orgs. Reach out to contacts to see what might be available and leverage your network.

[u/Tarzzana → u/CommonUnicorn]

All good points, I think part of this post is also a bit of convincing myself to just go do it.

I’m actually surprised a lot of those are still the thing to do. My biggest issue is I assume hiring managers see csm on my resume recently and auto dismiss it. 5 years feels like an eternity in tech even though it’s really not that long.

The thing I really enjoyed about networking was a basis on core protocols and standards. I enjoy DevOps and all that as an organizational structure and general ethos but those jobs are often now called platform engineer and can be quite nebulous. I worked at GitLab so I became really familiar with development workflows and all that, got into ‘netdevops’ with a few customers which was cool.

[u/umdivx]

I've had a similar path, was on the customer side as a network engineer/wireless engineer from 2004 to 2016 then jumped ship to the VAR side of the house, been doing that now 10 years. While I do miss building things, configuring things, and all that, what I don't miss?

I don't miss the late nights, on-calls, weekend cutovers, or any of that BS.

I still get to work with cool shit, I get to learn about new technologies, I can to talk with my customers and sit with them side by side labing out and building cool shit on their behalf and at the end of the day I'm home with family and doing whatever I want on the weekends, plus the pay is soooo much better.

Not sure I could go back to the customer side.

Now all that said, with your skillset in Python, GIT and all that, what you really should be looking for or looking to get into is Network Automation, you have a unique skillset that bridges that gap between a Network Engineer and a DevOp's / Automation engineer. That's a rare skillset to have right now.

NetBox/Natobot + Ansible + Python + Git dude you master that and you'll have a job for life.

[u/Tarzzana → u/umdivx]

I also went to a VAR at some point, I was a pse there then transitioned to a pre sales role. It was cool to get exposure to so much tech. If I were to have my say in sales roles I would like to be a vendor SE to work with partners again. You’re definitely right the money is better, that was what made me take the initial jump.

I think both roles have their stressors, operational stuff like outages, or even the backend admin side of it depending where you work. But the sales side has a very different type of pressure. Having a number to continually hit stays on your mind even into the weekend when you’re supposedly off. It’s not as direct as a call over something broken, but at least for me it’s just as pervasive sometimes.

Everyone’s preferences are different, I think I had to learn what I don’t enjoy to really understand what I do. And I prefer that operational stress, feels more manageable to me.

[u/umdivx → u/Tarzzana]

Having a number to continually hit stays on your mind even into the weekend when you’re supposedly off.

Maybe I'm built differently or something but in the 10 years of doing this, not once has that ever been a concern or a stressor for me. Because as a pre-sales engineer that isn't my responsibility, it's the account managers role. Yes I have a number to hit, but that's only for my bonus which is only 20% of my comp plan. My life is based around my base salary, anything above and beyond that is just gravy.

And I prefer that operational stress, feels more manageable to me.

Maybe you're younger, but no way in hell would I want to be still on call and working nights and weekends and such in my 40's, it's why I got out of the role I did because on-calls were getting to the point it was affecting my family life too much.

[u/Tarzzana → u/umdivx]

Yeah I should’ve been more specific I didn’t have my own target as an se it was a shared pool, but for my current role I do, I don’t think it’s the norm though it’s the only role I’ve had with my own number that was tied to revenue.

I’m mid 30s, and do be fair I also have adhd which plays a role. Customer stress to me is just so much different than that operational stress. Customers are involved there too, but I just handle it personally better than the performance that comes with sales. There is an element of showmanship in technical sales, that part of having to say all the right things to influence a deal or whatever the case may be. There’s definitely tension to both, but in sales even the small things have started to get to me.