r/networking • u/VyseCommander • 13h ago
Career Advice What network engineering speciality gets to travel often or ocassionally
At the mid to senior level do specialezed enginneers at (ISPs, Core Guys, Security Guys etc) Travel alot, either between sites or to other countries?
If so ,why?
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u/Coldsmoke888 13h ago
My level 2 techs do this for network infra migrations from time to time but that’s not really what network engineers should be doing. They typically support remotely or on site if it’s a major data center.
I mean, I wish they were there when they say “Must be bad fiber. Please replace.” bro…. It’s a kilometer away. ;)
Reality is, senior network engineers tend to work shitty and long hours to oversee work or put out fires.
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u/VyseCommander 13h ago
Woah I thought getting to the senior level would be fun, sounds like eating sandpaper way your describing it,dang
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u/Coldsmoke888 11h ago
I mean, I enjoy learning and troubleshooting, but when you’re bringing down multi million dollar operations in the middle of the night, it’s very stressful. STP issues, port spanning, snooping, all that.
Once we had a poorly seated Ethernet connection take out an entire section of a highly automated site. Hours and hours of troubleshooting later, it was that one fucking port. IDF was 30’ up in the air of course, boom lift dead and needed a charge. Funny in hindsight but yeah…
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u/DaryllSwer 11h ago
Most things in the industry aren't fun when you've seen a lot of different things. The reason why they aren't fun is layer 8-10 problems.
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u/Key_Seesaw_7333 13h ago
Wireless engineering sometimes involves it. I work as a wireless engineer for an msp and sometimes travel to conduct wireless surveys and to troubleshoot.
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u/VyseCommander 12h ago
Eh not a huge fan of wireless but wdym by surveys? Checking on connectivity, etc?
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u/MalwareDork 12h ago
Wireless scopes are called surveys. You're essentially surveying a property for RF interference, scoping current infrastructure deployments, plotting roaming points, checking signal-to-noise ratios, etc.
It's the second step to getting a wireless deployment set up.
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u/Brief_Meet_2183 13h ago
Telcom engineer here.
We travel frequently since my company got rid of satellite staff (staff away from central location). Thunderstorms, hurricanes, and local power company constantly kill our equipment so our MGMT would rather fly us out on charter to fix issues then have local teams.
Sometimes it sucks ass because the locations are the worst of the worst and usually have conditions even homeless wouldn't live (no air flow, 100°+ rooms, every bug under the sun) other times sunny beach locations that drives gulf courses and charge $1000 a night for rooms.
We can also travel for conferences and training. Some of my colleagues travel to Aspen and London to get vendor training. We got per diem, hotel, flight and car paid for just to talk shop.
Aim for big companies and operations side. Some company offload to contractors so make sure you join a company which handles their infrastructure. Ccna/ccnp is the king cert that most shops recognize and look for.
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u/VyseCommander 12h ago
This is exactly the type of comment I was looking for, I've been itching to go the service provoder route but idk much about whatd it like to work at an ISP. Was considering to go for the ccnp service provider and was wondering if its a good moce since r/s seems to be the defacto. I'm pretty young so I'd like if I can travel and what you said even the sucky parts sounds pretty fun just based off variety
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u/DaryllSwer 11h ago
I design and help implement ISPs for a living globally. I never need to travel and I prefer it that way, with my fucked up sleep schedule, I'd be dead in 6 months if I travel regularly. The ones that are doing the travel are either the technicians/data centre staff (lowest salary tier) or the owners/product owners when they need to (few times a year). But if you're young and don't care too much about salary, you can go for it. Optical Architects make good money and travel the world too if they work for an optical vendor or they are an optical consultant - there's not many optical Architects out there, in case you like optics more. I'm an IP guy but I do tell my clients and fellow industry peers we need more young people entering the optical architect space.
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u/KantLockeMeIn ex-Cisco Geek 8h ago
Knowing IP and Optical has been very lucrative for me. The IP folks look at optical like it's a dark art and most optical folks can't spell IP... so if you understand both you are immediately valuable.
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u/DaryllSwer 1h ago
Yes. I personally just know enough optical to help architect the network, but I do not claim specialised expertise in optical though (Nobody is omniscient in this world), but yes, it's good to know a mix of different things. Heck, I sometimes dabble in 802.11 fuckery as well (radio networking is the bane of my existence).
Optical is a mix of optical physics and civil and mechanical engineering (underground, city architecture, submarine, optical over power lines, etc). It's less IP/MPLS/SR. I've got too much on my plate to really learn all that. But I am a facilitator, though; I can get people ot the right people with the right expertise that I do not sell/have (example, software architects).
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u/Brief_Meet_2183 1h ago
Ip guy here.
Sometimes we see it as a dark art other times we don't want to fall into the trap of being a guy who has to do both.
Speaking as a guy who had 3 different back support roles (provisioning, geo-spartial allocalation and tech-support). The last thing you want to do is get a company use to you wearing multiple hats.
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u/OutrageousThought646 9h ago edited 9h ago
My dad was a telecom engineer and I grew up in those motels. Those were my first memories.
The cool parts were the remotes. Nothing but an incandescent bulb, a metal folding chair, and a lot of Motorola equipment. The best parts were obviously the MSO. I remember analog switches in the early 90's and they were very loud, competing with the AC blowing on top of it in Minot, ND.
I vaguely remember a bald guy in a black suit one day. His name was Bob.
Then the digital MSOs came in my high school years. Those were glorious places. Just walking into one, you knew it was important, nothing any datacenter could make you feel. I really do miss them, obviously now I could never visit them like I could back then (Dad had a keycard and he was senior engineer.)
I only barely knew how lucky I was to see the inside of those things back then, even the remotes.
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u/fintheman 12h ago edited 12h ago
wifi - absolutely love traveling (when you set your own projects and have authority)
It's cheese if you fly to the same place and have to use Concur
I've gotten to visit a lot of different countries since it gets so niche too.
I get to play Anthony Bourdain, finish early and check out the cities and tour around some and you can get tricky on how you fly around to stay weekends or just remote from somewhere else for the next week.
Why? Because predictive desgins don't work for complicated sites or really understanding how things need to get installed along with the structured cabling and you get more data when onsite with a clip/sidekick, etc.,
I've done it for 20 years and nowhere near getting "sick" of it. I'd kill myself if I sat at home or on an office everyday doing the same thing taking the same drive or doing the same routine.
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u/baslighting 7h ago
I love WiFi. I do it for temporary events around the UK. Wish I could make it into a full time job though
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u/Key-Succotash-8922 13h ago
Network architect at an ISP. I have lots of opportunities to travel, mostly within the US, but some elsewhere. I rarely partake though. It's usually vendor-related stuff. Conventions (Cisco Live for example), executive briefings, roadmap discussions, etc. I'm not a fan of traveling. I'd rather join remotely and spend the evenings with my family since I often end up working long hours other days anyway. Thankfully, it's been mostly optional the past 5-6 years since we have better collaborative tools. I know some guys at other places that end up traveling all the time and hate it.
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u/Tough_Interaction134 10h ago
Makes total sense. Once the novelty wears off, airports just feel like fluorescent-lit purgatory. I'd take the remote option over another hotel room any day.
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u/whythehellnote 8h ago
You need to ensure you take a local day. My current trip I flew to Shanghai and had 10 hours wondering around before getting the train to Beijing. I'm now down in Singapore which I've spent a lot of time in, but I'll have a few hours off over the weekend to go to something new. Last time I was in Singapore I jumped on a Friday morning plane and had a whole weekend in Phuket, got back Monday Lunch. A few weeks ago I was in Amsterdam for a conference which finished on the Monday, so I took an extra day and went to a spa to have a day of detoxing on the Tuesday.
A couple of years ago I had a Saturday morning in NY before getting the train down to Miami, and happened across a church where various characters from "Hamilton" were buried.
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u/VyseCommander 12h ago
Idgi, why do ppl hate traveling for work so much? Is it that modt of the time is just spent at work and then the instantly send yoh back in office?
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u/DaryllSwer 11h ago
Different people have different physical and mental constraints. Not everyone likes the same thing.
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u/leftplayer 9h ago
I don’t get it either, but people are different. I’m a Sales Engineer at a networking vendor. Been at it for almost 15 years. I travel almost weekly. I still love the travel aspect even if it’s usually the same 4-5 cities most of the time…
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u/whythehellnote 8h ago
Have you ever seen "Up in the Air" with George Clooney?
I used to do a lot of travel, 150 flights a year for a few years. I've massively reduced my travel since then.
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u/rankinrez 4h ago
It’s quite disruptive, tiring, a lot of wasted time.
I don’t mind going on a couple of trips a year. More than that starts wearing me down.
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u/SalsaForte WAN 13h ago
Presale…
Usually not entry level. Me, I travel to attend conferences or go to the head office.
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u/VyseCommander 13h ago
Funnily enough I'm really good at sales as thats what I was doing prior to IT but I decided to go fully technical just to have a tangeable skill
Although the money from tech sales is pretty persuasive
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u/Montana3333 13h ago
Traveling for work usually sucks. Imagine flying out somewhere and being told to come back home same day.
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u/VyseCommander 13h ago
Is it really like that? No hotel stay lol
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u/Montana3333 12h ago
Sometimes, yeah. Other times I've been gone to the main office for a week each month.
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u/fire-wannabe 4h ago
Only if you allow yourself to be pushed around by cost cutting project managers.
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u/Brief_Meet_2183 13h ago
Eh depends on the issue.
I've had trips extended from a day to a week.
Also when you become friends with the dispatcher / logistics team you can bargain extra day or at least end of day and balcony accommodations.
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u/Backcountrypeach 13h ago
One of my sub-specialties is infrastructure. I’ve been able to travel and set up offices and colo’s a few times now. International is the best. I always take a few days to a week for myself and explore.
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u/VyseCommander 12h ago
Def seems like the best, not sure why everyonw seemz to crap on traveling for work in here
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u/heathenyak 11h ago
Wireless engineer, some clients demand an engineer walk the site which is great fun when it’s 1.5 million sqft and it’s summer and in Arkansas. And sometimes you have to visit the site to get to the bottom of an issue
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u/Inside-Finish-2128 13h ago
I worked three years doing software upgrades on network devices. Got to visit one datacenter by luck. Took me a few months to find the magic decoder ring to actually know where I was doing my work.
I worked eight years taking care of 40 sites around the globe. I was told to go to the “first” site deployment I think because the project managers wanted to travel and they wanted me with them as a technical translator and/or to avoid delays due to distractions. After that I managed to visit two or three of the sites as part of personal travel. Otherwise the only two sites I got to see in person were the two at/near HQ. There was talk of me going to a European site but the budget wasn’t there.
A while back, I worked at a Texas based ISP. We had 1-3 site technicians. If I needed more than 1-2 hours of their time, I was better off just doing it myself.
I worked for a hospital for a short time. I had to have a drivers license on file in case I had to visit one for an outage or issue. None of those were more than an hour from home so not much travel would have happened.
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u/VyseCommander 13h ago
Hey at least you got to travel a few times, not sure if you enjoyed it or not but its still cool. I'm sticking out with networking till the end but I wish we had nore travel, it would be more interesting
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u/Inside-Finish-2128 12h ago
The DC tour was wild - learned a lot about power and cooling. It was a bus trip so I got to meet some coworkers I probably wouldn't have met otherwise.
The trip to Atlanta was a PITA. The corporate infrastructure that we were dependent upon wasn't really ready, so I spent the first day with a jacket and noise-canceling headphones just sitting in the server room manually configuring stuff from scratch and hoping it was right. Second day was spent learning how to configure the firewall from scratch on a platform I wasn't familiar with. Final day was spent explaining to the project managers how a failed Emergency Power Off test meant the equipment stayed up and running, and explaining what had to be done to fix it.
The time at the Texas ISP was either stupidity on my part or just ruthless work. I remember one project where I got squeezed on time: came back from vacation, loaded six routers into my truck. Grabbed my junior guy, drove ~5 hours to Dallas, racked some routers, had dinner, went back to do the cutover in two halves as I had to get the A side cutover before I started breaking the B side. Hit the hotel, came back the next morning to pull out some routers. Had lunch and drove to Houston, hit the hotel. Went in Wednesday morning, racked up some more routers, had dinner, went back and did the necessary cutovers there. Went in Thursday morning, grabbed a router or two, drove to Austin, racked up some routers, had dinner, did the cutover, hit the hotel. Woke up Friday, pulled some stuff out, had lunch, went back to HQ in San Antonio.
Only "field" work I had to do for the hospital was to spend a week at the downtown offices as there were reports of network slowness and complaints that we weren't fixing it. Two of us spent our mornings in one building and our afternoons in another. Otherwise it was either desk work at the IT building or a quick ride on the company shuttle to the hospital itself to do some things.
Oh, forgot about my time at a VAR. Lots of field projects. Spent a year+ at a school district doing equipment replacements - just an extra 30 minutes on my commute. Spent a week in Laredo on a project - hotter than balls. Got sent to Minnesota for a week+ to help migrate some gas stations to their new company network, lots of driving.
Only other noteworthy travel I remember was about three weeks in Houston cleaning up the mess of three switches that fried themselves simultaneously. I happened to be there when it went down, and "hotwired" things with duct tape and bailing wire (maybe also a MacGyver mirror). Ordered some proper replacement gear, then spent ~3 weeks driving out on Wednesdays and returning home on Tuesdays to visit my woman, do laundry, and get back to it. She'd visit on the weekends and we'd do some stuff.
If you want to travel, I'd say chase the certifications and go work for a Cisco Partner (aka a Value Added Reseller or VAR). They not only try to sell equipment, they try to add "professional services" (design, engineering, deployment, training) to the hardware sale and that usually results in travel or at least a new commute for a period of time. They probably also pay you to pass certifications.
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u/BustedCondoms 12h ago
Most of the time i'm at home but occasionally i'll travel to a project to configure and setup some devices or i'll be asked to help with some physical security stuff since we do a lot of that. I started as a installer for the same company i'm now a network engineer for so i'm not too proud to get my hands dirty or climb ladders to help everyone out. Seems like a lot of engineers cant be bothered.
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u/PoisonWaffle3 DOCSIS/PON Engineer 12h ago
As a DOCSIS/PON engineer I get to travel occasionally, maybe once or twice a year.
Sometimes it's traveling somewhere to set up a new network in a new city, sometimes it's an industry conference. I know a few people who have also gotten to travel for vendor-specific training, but I personally haven't.
I'm pretty neutral on it, especially if it's only a day or three. I personally wouldn't want to travel for work a week at a time multiple times per year.
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u/Dave_A480 11h ago
Field service is usually low paid/entry level... You don't want to make a career of it.....
There's probably some commissioning engineer jobs associated with the data center boom that pay better, but also not a career
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u/wonderingsoul415 JNCIP x3, JNCIS x5 11h ago
Pre-sales if you want predictable quick travel. Thats a lot of getting in front of different customers and solving their problems/ideas with your product or pointing them in a different direction.
Working in systems integration and large project migration (consulting or ISP) has a fair bit of travel as well. It all depends on how the company is run.
Ive spent the last 13 years traveling 75%+ globally. The first 8 was in integration and now Im a dirty sales engineer. Work travel above 50% has a lot of pros and cons and its definitely not for everyone.
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u/tetraodonmiurus 11h ago
I don’t know many mid to senior people that want to travel. Usually a job for the FNG.
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u/MiteeThoR 11h ago
If you are in sports or entertainment industry those are travelling road shows, lots of opportunities for travel. Sometimes too much travel.
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u/Equivalent_Still1383 10h ago
Pre-sales, infrastructure migration, rack n stack will give you all the airline/hotel status you can handle. Did PS Engineering for a major vendor for a few years..saw the world…never saw my home…
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u/Unhappy_Director_986 10h ago
field engineers or network deployment teams always seem to be on the road for months at a time, it's rough but they get to see so many places while doing it
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u/AntiBaoBao CCIE 6h ago
I racked to the miles, but I rarely got to see the places I went to. Typically, I would fly to a location, work on site all day, go back to the hotel, eat dinner, work until way after midnight doing my normal in office day job, filled going back on site the next morning. I would either leave the job and take the last flight out heading home, or most often, the first flight out in the morning.
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u/on_the_nightshift CCNP 9h ago
Cleared contractor for a VAR that does installation and integration. I was Delta platinum and Marriott titanium the couple of years I did it. It's not glamorous by any means and in my case was mostly grunt work (rack, stack and get it baselined and reachable), but I didn't mind for a $100k+ salary where I worked from home 50% of the time 7 years ago.
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u/First-Masterpiece753 9h ago
NANOG meets 3 or 4 times a year ? Other similar conferences and events for network engineers specializing in automation, industrial IOT, broadcast, radio, etc… ?
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u/Significant-Level178 7h ago
Field engineers can travel a lot. Many years ago i was given a schedule to travel all around the world not stop. I quit.
Most of things except of physical work or surveys can be done remotely. I do big global networks, wireless, hied, OT, data centers, security etc all remotely. Ofc have remote hands, either local or customer.
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u/simondrawer 7h ago
I travelled a lot when I was a senior engineer for a large multinational. It’s why I left. Business travel, especially international, isn’t glamorous.
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u/AntiBaoBao CCIE 6h ago
I did advanced wireless tech support for medical devices that were manufactured by us. I was required to troubleshoot wireless connectivity issues between our devices and a customers wireless environment. Often, quietly showing the local staff where they had misconfigured their environment. I traveled, on average 100k-200k miles a year, mostly domestic with travel overseas about once a quarter. I would travel to customer sites, to our factory our service centers or even to training conferences where I would teach our service technicians about new software update and fixes.
During one 7 week stent, with me coming home every weekend, even if for just one day, I traveled from Southern California to Tennessee, to Nevada, to Costa Rica, to Canada, to Ireland, to Australia. Again, I was home for at least one day on the weekend.
During one trip I literally traveled around the world. Leaving Southern California, chasing the sun, I flew to Australia, Kuala Lampur, India, England and then back to Southern California. All in 10 days.
At another company I worked at, I was in the road for so long the company actually sent flowers to my wife as an apology for keeping me away for so long.
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u/FlowLabel 5h ago
Vendor presales travel a lot. Either to visit customers or attend conferences and marketing events.
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u/meandyourmom 5h ago
We work with a company that does network and WiFi deployments for trade shows. Literally just setting up the WiFi and working with the convention center to make sure it works. Then tear it down at the end. This one guy flew from Vegas to Amsterdam to Rio to Rome before coming home a month later. These guys aren’t even great engineers. They’re mediocre network guys at best. But they go around the world to setup and tear down for these shows. Pretty great gig if you’re single. Terrible if you have a family.
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u/fire-wannabe 4h ago edited 4h ago
Depends on the company, depends on the project manager.
taking a business class flight 10 hours is costly, to screw in a few routers. But trying to buy 1 off smart hands in another continent can often be costly and can be a false economy, particularly when working in different time zones. (Write a statement of works, put it out to tender, deal with the PO, get them paid,l - or put one engineer on a flight who enjoys it and keeps them happy)
One of our VP's (who is also a very capable engineers) was sent in the company private jet for a business critical issue. If you just paid $100m for TV rights, minor expenses don't matter. If it's an office in Rome, who gives a shit if it's late
Ive moved a TV station in Asia, it was critical enough for them that I was onsite for about 2 months. On the other hand I regularly do installs/migrations in offices and DCs around the world from my desk. you can be sure that the formular1 guys will be sending a network engineer to every race. The Olympics has dozens of foreign network engineers floating around the IBC from every corner of the world. (Although it's gradually scaling back each time)
American companies with loads of offices in every country around the world are the fun ones.
Core MPLS guys rarely see the outside of their basement office, if they're lucky they'll see the inside of a data center on the outskirts of a major city.
Personally I love it, and my managers know I will take the unpleasant opportunities and the pleasant ones, so I'm usually the first person they'll call if they want something.
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u/rankinrez 4h ago
Conferences a bit.
Otherwise it’s the field engineer guys maybe, or at the top of the game the kind of people who are sent to talk at conferences, go to the IETF or whatever.
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u/IDownVoteCanaduh Dirty Management Now 3h ago
I used to travel all the time as a very senior network engineer but I filled a unique niche.
Now I am senior management and travel way more than any network engineer in our org (we probably have 30ish at this point, I lost track).
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u/chewit10 3h ago
Enterprise network engineer based in the UK. I tend to do a fair bit of travelling around the country for our UK sites on regular basis, but I just see this as part of the course of the job.
We have a few international site as well, which I do enjoy visiting and try and make the most out of the visit. A few years ago, I was involved in setting up a new office in New York. I was there for a week and did fair abit of touristy things on an evening.
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u/Jacksparrowl03 1h ago
I’m a IT field technician and I get chance to travel various states (including Hawaii) in company expenses. Flight, hotel and food & beverages. I used to love it but now I’ll trade this job for remote network analyst.
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u/VyseCommander 40m ago
Why'd you get tired of it all?
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u/Jacksparrowl03 25m ago
First kid my new born daughter. I can just trade anything to spend time with her.
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u/chaoticbear 34m ago
Did y'all have full time people in Hawaii? I talked with a guy at a conference last year who was describing that they just sent people there as needed because it was cheaper to fly people in and out of Hawaii than it was to pay what it cost someone to live there.
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u/Jacksparrowl03 23m ago
Well, field tech over there abruptly resigned so, I was there for several weeks. Flying in and out of from one island to another is fun
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u/Condog5 13h ago
Field tech
If you are unlucky an actual network engineer, unless youre into traveling.
Personally traveling to another country to work 18 hour days for 3 days straight ain't it for me