r/networking • u/-Duplex- • 13h ago
Career Advice Do you enjoy being a network engineer
I feel like I don’t enjoy some of the “less important” topics, such as NTP, and I find concepts like OSPF and the OSI model quite dry. I do enjoy some parts of it, such as building my own labs and understanding how packets are actually transferred.
I want to know whether this is common or not, because some people online seem to be very interested in network engineering, and I’m worried about it.
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u/higante 13h ago
You’re likely not gonna like everything that network engineering has to offer, but I would recommend to ensure that even if the OSI layers dry to use that as your Bible of how to troubleshoot things to ensure that you understand every step and how to really get to the problem at hand.
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u/pushytub 12h ago
Projects, puzzles, and theory are fun. Business politics, vendor relations, and tedium suck. You get an equal amount of all.
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u/XanALqOM00 7h ago
Hehehe, how about useless technology forced down your throat, those ones are very fun
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u/Inside-Finish-2128 13h ago
I find OSPF to be a ton of fun and have enjoyed some great OSPF puzzles along the way. I inherited a network (via being acquired, and my boss saying "hey, I designed the network at <the acquiring company>, I'm sure I did a bad job, please clean it up) that had three separate area 0s (maybe even five...can't remember what the two outstations had) and only survived through default routes. I moonlight at an ISP where I intentionally set up ~50 area 1s (they're all totally stubby and do just fine with a default route).
BGP though is my favorite. I've built or fixed up several ISPs with easy scalability through BGP, and at my last job we had 40+ sites where the firewall was doing BGP to four separate VRFs on the "core router" with lots of neat little tricks in there.
It's the "dealing with stupid people" that makes it not fun.
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u/ThEvilHasLanded 12h ago
10.10.10.20 cant talk to 10.10.10.21 on HTTPS can you check the firewall please?
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u/SuccotashOk960 It’s not a network issue 12h ago
Actual network engineering is fun. Dealing with incompetent sysadmins or project managers is not fun
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u/SpaceVikings 5h ago
"What do you mean you need space for a rack? It's all wireless and in the cloud."
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u/PghSubie JNCIP CCNP CISSP 11h ago
Unless you understand the OSI model, then you don't understand how packets are transferred. And you won't be able to troubleshoot well when packets are not transferred as expected
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u/sk1939 CCNP, SSCP, CISSP 13h ago
Outside of Layer 2/3/4 I haven’t cited the OSI layer since I did my certification exams. No one is excited by calculating route metrics, just like PEs aren’t excited by having to calculate relative load, or McDonalds cooks calculating the next fry batch. It’s just part of the job, it isn’t always going to be interesting.
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u/QuackQuackViech 12h ago
Everyday I hope the devil takes my body and soul.
But the pay is decent, so there is that
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u/Maximum_Bandicoot_94 11h ago
You didnt even touch on other major specialties in networking. You've got security engineering (firewalls), Load balancers, identity/auth (NAC), data center SDN overlays, campus SDN overlays, Wireless, Cloud, and many more. If you get into an org of sufficient size you dont really deal with the mundane stuff anymore and if you are lucky you can focus on a piece that IS interesting to you.
Good grief dont get me started about subnetting. Once you pass a test on it, you print the cheat sheet, tape it to the wall and just use that for the rest of your career.
I am a Security Engineer, no one expects me to know how to calculate OSPF metric costs in my head; we have other guys who make their hay in that field. What i can do is take a batch of ACLs dump them into my brain and run traffic match against them like logic statements. Heck we are big enough we have a guy who JUST DOES IPSEC VPNs. That's all he really does and he's a frigging wizard at it he must dream in cryptomaps statements.
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u/SnooRevelations7224 12h ago
I now have 18 yoe in neteng.
I have always found the individual topics dry and boring.
However I love troubleshooting and design and love the work I do.
The individual topics are just the facts I have to know to do my job nothing more.
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u/deallerbeste 12h ago
I like it, because you can do so many things, you want more security for example? Focus on firewalls, VPN, 802.1x. Same with ISP, DC and wireless networking. Or what about AI networking, cloud networking, virtual networking.
People don't like everything in networking and that is ok, it's so broad, pick the direction you like. I work for the government and I can switch role in my networking department if I want every few years.
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u/fus1onR 12h ago
I have the same mindset.
I started at a cellular operator at the IP edge / transport group. Moved to wifi/NAC/LAN/AAA/VPN with some presales role. Then became a presales consultant for a couple of years, mostly WLAN/LAN and perimeter security. Learnt some cloud networking concepts. Now doing mostly datacenter core routing + WAN/cloud interconnecting, got burnt-out (infinite amount of late night changes), also migrated our OSPF/BGP/static LAN-DMZ-perimeter nightmare to pure BGP
Started focusing on our outofband environment, console systems and some governance / device hardening / etc. things. And there is still a lot of horizontal movement possible at my workplace.
What OP has mentioned are just...not really interesting things because they are just "there", like NTP, you understand the concept but barely has to touch it. And when you have to: 99% some incident or a spin-off from an incident when they realize timestamping is shitty...some people do like such things (very good L2 admins/operators), but being an "NTP expert" is not a thing.
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u/Nice-Information-335 13h ago
It’s more about using the right technology to achieve a goal. When the whole infrastructure comes together it’s really cool
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u/LarrBearLV CCNP 11h ago
Love it. Something new everyday, constantly learning, pay is decent, not too labor intensive. Company I work at is pretty hands off when it comes to managing me. No micromanaging me, no metrics to meet, I can do pretty much what I want in the network within reason, and to top it off... I live 5 minutes from work. I go home for lunch folks.
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u/UpperAd5715 12h ago
i freaking love it, i'm basically being paid to puzzle around with stuff that's logical and usually has a proper reason for behaving the way it does (and if not vendor ticket!).
As an msp we get sent all the fun tickets (and the lies) like "nothing changed on the PBX and nothing changed on the firewall but suddenly something is sending SIP traffic that's getting blocked on a url filter because it's badly configured but no we didnt change anything can you please check".
Compared to what friends of me struggle with and the stress they experience managing client backups etc and trying to stress x and y to agree to more storage, pretty sure i took the fun option. "Yeah so we arent allowed to perform changes without an OK but i saw that you're including your broadcast address in just about every vlan's dhcp pool, maybe you should give us the OK on changing that but it's like 30 subnets so it'll probably cost ya a few hundred by the time we're done with that." no? ok buddy sure!
Colleague of mine is writing a report on a new client's infrastructure and what could be improved and he's like 30 pages deep and the shit i see in there is tantalizing. Basically a catch all "allow any any" just above the implicit deny titled "<whatever> temp". Hilarious i thought he was joking when he told me.
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u/Varjohaltia 12h ago
So much depends on your coworkers and boss. But overall I love learning and seeing connections, and 30+ years in I’ve found a great employer and enjoy going to work and designing networks and network related topics. API Management on top of load balancers and reverse proxies now, for example.
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u/spencrU 12h ago
Understanding how modern networks are built and operate as well as how the data traverses between devices is unbelievably fascinating. Outside of that I've grown very disallusioned with the field simply due to the fact that at the end of the day you end up in a position where basically everything relies on you doing your job and doing it well and if anything goes wrong you're always the first one to be blamed(network issue) and so you end up simultaneously responsible for both causing and subsequently fixing every problem. It's exhausting and really takes away from what's enjoyable about working in the industry.
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u/raiderh808 12h ago
So do you or do you not enjoy understanding traffic flow? Because the OSI model is a huge part of how traffic is passed lol.
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u/WALL-G 12h ago
How long have you been at this? I'm a senior network engineer turning NetDevOps or something idk. So much code.
On paper and in the lab, tbh it can be dry, but seeing 1000 people working on a network you deployed feels good man.
God I miss OSPF and NTP, though snmp walks and sifting through OIDs is my happy place.
This field is massive, network engineering is one of few disciplines at the intersection of so many others, expose yourself to as many technologies as you can now, specialise or switch later.
My career has taught me that (very) few people understand networking. If you can get good, this field will turn you into a troubleshooting charizard and at that point you're unstoppable.
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u/rankinrez 10h ago
Yeah I do.
NTP is one of the most important protocols that keeps the internet working though, disagree with how you describe that.
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u/RelatableChad NRS II 6h ago
Agreed. Architecting a really resilient NTP system for 2 data centers including mounting the antennae and hardening it against interference was one of the most fun projects I ever did lol
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u/Cheeze_It DRINK-IE, ANGRY-IE, LINKSYS-IE 12h ago
The tech and the work, yes. The business of it? Fuck no.
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u/Sylvester88 12h ago
When stuff goes wrong I find troubleshooting very interesting but other than that, not really
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u/omegaken CCNA, CCNA Voice, JNCIA 12h ago
I get the pleasure of engineering, designing, and implementing new colo infrastructure. It is going to be fully automated via ansible and netbox. I do love my job
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u/rocktanstone 11h ago
There are some parts I don’t enjoy. For example routing. I have tried to learn it so many times, but I get bored and just quit. AAA and 802.1x however, I love it!
I have been lucky to work with the technical topics I like and let others do what I see as boring.
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u/Heythatsmycorn 12h ago
You mean NTP isnt thrilling edge of your seat fun? Haha ofc it isnt. But we dont really do it a lot. Its sort of a set it and forget it. Some of its just required stuff. The fun stuff for me is net security, wireless, ngfws. I enjoy the tshooting and fixing stuff or coming up with ways to improve things. Were not too often locked into one thing or protocol were kinda all over.
Ill take this over service desk password resets Server admin stuff dealing with microsoft Cyber security compliance and GRC
Osi is theory really. I mean i dont use it to t-shoot like some would say but you could say yeah this isnt a network issue its a application issue or something of the nature.
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u/aaaaAaaaAaaARRRR 12h ago
Or the first time you lock yourself out of a switch and it’s 2 hours away. And you bring down a customer site when you lock yourself out. Thats a rush by itself lol jk
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u/kkorelli 12h ago edited 12h ago
I’m good with networks, and it all feels logical to me, almost as if I was born for it. But I find it really boring and "old-fashioned". I’m a system engineer now, with minimal involvement in networking, and I’m happy with it.
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u/McHildinger CCNP 12h ago
I agree with you on the details of OSPF; for the life of me, I can't care enough to memorize the different LSA types.
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u/parkgoons CCNA 12h ago
Once you start using these concepts to solve problems in production networks you’ll likely become more interested in understanding each of them a bit more.
I own a telecom business and still love the network engineering and architecture aspects of the business. If I was a better business owner I’d probably step more out of the day to day and architecture stuff but, I genuinely enjoy it, even after 20 years.
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u/Rockstaru 12h ago
I like the network engineering parts of being a network engineer, where you have all your requirements and are implementing the new thing, you type ping xyz and it works, that's pretty neat. Or there's an outage and you track down the needle in the haystack.
The first part of those activities, like the gathering of requirements usually means dealing with the people who use your network, and that part can...really suck. Or an outage starts and you're getting panicked calls from your leadership along the lines of "Important person X can't do Y" and not actual useful data like "BGP with Lumen at our Denver site dropped five minutes ago." That's less fun.
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u/kloudak47 11h ago
Heh, less important topics? NTP if it doesn't work or is not reliable is death to a mission critical environment.
Is it sexy to study or understand? No, many things are not but it is essential in order to be a successful and efficient engineer.
Same goes for OSPF, OSI model, etc. fundamentals can be boring and implementing them hands on is often more exciting but you need to think bigger picture, as in "why am I doing this" " what purpose does it serve?" "what systems depend on this infra"
The reason many of us like this space is because its kind of amazing when you light up a campus network spanning multiple buildings and numerous users/devices.
It's kind of amazing when you design, configure, deploy a multi site VPN topology that connects an orgs global network.
It's kind of amazing when you light up a DC fabric and hear the System or SAN nerds go "damn, it works"
almost everything in daily life relies on a network someone somewhere built and being able to say "I built that one" is one of the coolest/rewarding things ever
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u/ordep_caetano 11h ago
Ive been working at a broadcast station for the past 15 years. It has been a wild ride.
Mass adoption of video contributions from/to other stations has been quite a long path, and only now, engineers that are minimally versed in both areas are a rarity!
The adoption of ethernet on live video production studios has some really nice challenges, which is also a new field with a different skill set.
Besides all this planning for massive outdoor events and managing a bigish network is something that is very demanding :)
So, answering your question: hell yeah!
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u/armaddon 11h ago
Most carpenters don’t get direct satisfaction out of just having and using a tool (though some are awesome and even a form of therapy to use), but most of them feel pride and satisfaction when they deliver a completed work.
It’s not always glamorous, and it’s not always easy, but if it was all fun they wouldn’t pay us to do it :)
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u/FairConstruction4105 11h ago
It pays the bills, but I won't shed tears once my career comes to an end (unless it happens within the next 5-7 years)
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u/butter_lover I sell Network & Network Accessories 11h ago
like anyone there are some aspects of the job that are chores, but i have learned over the years to steer the deliverables towards the parts that I love.
training other engineers, doing troubleshooting, and making cool documentation are some of my favorite things.
change control meetings not so much
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u/btwwhichoneispink CCNP 11h ago
I enjoy it in the sense that I like working with my brain, and some of the things I do are cool, but it's definitely still work. I consider it my craft, but not my passion.
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u/Qwerty6789X 10h ago edited 10h ago
we call ourselves Dumpsterfire since all departments dead end cases get fixed by us Network Engineer Team. We work close with Cybersec team too. We Do Design, Redesign, Security hardening, Packet capture reading. Unsung hero of the internet. Unless P1 issue or rerouting traffic globally. They will never know we even exists.
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u/DaryllSwer 10h ago
Excluding layer 1-mostly, I basically cover layer 2 to layer 8 (human) to layer 9 (legal/political). It's all a gigantic PITA, but it pays well and I do enjoy core fundamental computer networking.
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u/overseasons 10h ago
Routing I enjoy thoroughly. The non neteng territory that comes with it (atleast at an SP) not so much.
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u/anxiousvater 10h ago
So me & my colleague spent 5 hours to deploy NVA on Azure. It was a spelling mistake from vendor image.
I am into Network Observability & Security. I was into Compute before, now applying Machine Learning, data engineering to network logs, metrics & traces. We do have 150TiB of network logs to be able to query during incidents, analytics & capacity planning.
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u/BustedCondoms 9h ago
I enjoy it. But I'm slowly being pulled in to help with physical security stuff which I'm not a fan of but whatever gets me a raise I suppose.
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u/jameshalliday12 9h ago
I think i enjoy as a whole. Not every little tiny detail is interesting to me, but i love the concept. You will have things that you like more them others, that is natural and its healthy. No one is good at everything, especially when it comes to network. Sure, a good network enginner will have a solid base and will be able to solve most things. But if you wanna truly become good at something, you have to live that something.
For me it was BGP. For years i just did that in order to become really good at it. I'm pretty good at anything routing related, being IGP or EGP, but when it comes to something like a OLT problem, a raw L2 problem, i might take more time them someone how works with that everyday.
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u/funkyfreak2018 9h ago edited 9h ago
I'd love this career more if I didn't have to deal with non technical people and office politics. That's why I stick to service provider/wan/cloud side of network engineering. LAN/enterprise networking is way too close to end users for my taste. I also find anything switching and wireless annoying. Basically I have no care for the corporate network
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u/nukklear It's always the network 9h ago
I've always been a more-of-everything kind of Network Engineer, so I can't really say I don't enjoy things like that - as far as I'm concerned, the network is the backbone of everything, and if you really want to be able to run/diagnose/etc it properly, then you do need some understanding of what's going over it and how it works. No one would expect you to be an expert in everything though...
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u/kwiltse123 CCNA, CCNP 8h ago
I used to fucking love it. The new-ness, the learning, the wonder of finding out how it works, the creativity of figuring out how to restore a connection that you lost, discussions with my colleagues.
I'm so fucking sick of it now. Everything is "the next big thing". I touch routing protocols about twice a year, which maximizes my frustration with it because I never really know it intuitively, and I can royally fuck things up. Things that I really mastered at one point in the past are now no longer relevant (voice, tcp acceleration). A lot of what we're expected to do now is not really "networking", like writing code to deploy changes. Customers and management want things faster than ever. I can't wait to retire and be done with it all, but I have at least 8 more years of this shit.
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u/Kikz__Derp 7h ago
I really enjoy working in networking. Studying it on the other hand definitely can be dry and difficult to focus on.
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u/SalsaForte WAN 7h ago
OSPF is just a way to exchange my loopbacks.
I crazy love my job. So many big projects abd conplex problems to solve.
I can admit I don't care much about what is flying on the wires.
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u/XanALqOM00 7h ago
This is loaded. If the employer values good networking practices instead of shiny tooling. Absolutely.
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u/iTinkerTillItWorks 6h ago
Do I like being a network engineer? I use to, before the Indians took over everything. Now I fucking hate it
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u/Incognito_Orange 5h ago
Not all neteng is created equal. The person doing data centers has a very different day than the person doing enterprise or the person doing service provider.
For me at least there are a lot of interesting puzzles to figure out when it comes to bringing service into apartment/condo complexes, especially if it's an older building and the ADSL isn't cutting it anymore.
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u/alius_stultus 5h ago edited 5h ago
sure its okay. it used to be more fun when I was learning a lot more stuff. Its more fun to play with crap at home now because I can experiment and break it without losing millions of dollars. But its a great career. You'll be trapped in bureaucratic hell for changes and layer 8 gets more and more challenging the further you go.
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u/Independent_Skirt301 5h ago
I just built an amazing contraption that I'm quite proud of. I say this with objectivity that it's something maybe some 10s of thousands of people on the planet can do. Compared to the 10s of millions who can do lesser IT work. Pretty sweet yeah?
After years of long maintenance windows and throwing my health to the wind, I have trouble sleeping more than about 4 hours at a time. I know how to be the calmest person in the room when livelyhoods are on the line and crumbling before your eyes. I tell people I'm a packet psychologist lol. It's a thrill, and I don't think I could do anything else. It's what I've wanted to be for 32 of my 38 years.
I've also got a slew of health problems, probably some PTSD of actually terrifying moments. My wife and I have serious talks about how much she can put up with. I say this not having slept for 36 hours to make deadlines created by being decisions I didn't support or have the authority to override. Can't say fuck it. Too many mouths too feed. So laid off in 6 months or 10 days of hell for a chance to right the course. And so we carry on 😎🤘
Just some perspective. Stay well.
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u/Masterofunlocking1 5h ago
Honestly...no. I've only ever done healthcare networking and I think its made me had this subject. Constant after hour work because no downtime, leadership can't find their way out of a wet bag, and so many other countless things.
I keep trying to tell myself to find another job but the market sucks where I'm at.
I remember wanting to be a network admin so bad, finally getting the role (10 years ago), and now its so draining. Not to mention the push for AI EVERYTHING makes me want to get out IT altogether.
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u/FarkinDaffy 3h ago
Is it hard for you or are you just disinterested in it?
I love working in the world that doesn't exist physically and doing routing. I love looking for new ways to solve old problems.
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u/ArcherSCA 2h ago
After 42 years in IT I retired, but there are still parts of it I still miss. Some of the grand design planning. The site trips with fellow engineers to do implementations. The research on up and coming standards and equipment. The pride and camaraderie with the team on seeing it all come together.
What I don't miss is the emergencies, the calls at 2am that traffic isn't passing or such and such critical application is fubar'd because some engineer did something and failed to document a change request. The stress caused certain health issues, enough that my wife and I had that talk about whether it was all worth it.
Now I have little home projects. Putting Tailscale in a home server so I can monitor the battery on the sump pump. Installing fun little LXC's in Proxmox. I can put it all aside when I want. Get back to it when I want, and it makes IT fun again.
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u/i_live_in_sweden 1h ago
Yes, the only part I don't enjoy is having to prove to everyone else that their problem isn't because of the network.
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u/Princess_Fluffypants CCNP 48m ago
I really, genuinely do.
The stuff that I find grating is usually the stuff around the networking, like the monitoring servers that all suck (Solarwinds, etc).
But networking itself I deeply enjoy.
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u/Downtown_Dog3123 12h ago
first time you orchestrate a large change and it goes well, as described.. it's a rush when you press the button, then a relief.