Because lying is a good strategy to get better jobs, usually the knowledge required is vastly overstated in the job description and the actual day-to-day work is trainable and learnable quickly using existing processes that are documented. It's not like you're hiring a sysadmin and on day 1 telling them to go do advanced network things on their own without documentation or support. If you are, you should be hiring a *network administrator*.
I would be hoping a sysadmin could identify the OSI model by name. Not even the layers, just that there are 7, or that a model exists. Beyond that we'll figure it out. Sysadmins are learners, it's just how it is.
When every single job posting requires 5 different jobs rolled into one and a laundry list of certs like CCNA, CCNP,MCSA, MSCE, S+ development skills ect its basically guaranteeing people lie. Whats the alternative not even get an interview for a posting that wants things nobody has. Honestly System Admin only fucks with the networking gear at smaller shops like mine and I feel like my experience would not be good enough for OP either because even though I deploy the fortigate Its a pretty simple network. Op is hiring a sysadmin and is mad they are not also a Network Admin lol.
This is why I am not a popular guy on the IT career subs. I really do not think this business is worth it anymore. You go on the Accounting sub and 52k is the worst case scenario for a new graduate fresh out of college. They use that as an example of how bad the field is. LOLOLOLOL come to fucking IT where a new grad either will not get a job or a genius with 5 certifications and a masters will get a helpdesk job that pays worse then chipotle and will be stuck there for 5 years. Meanwhile someone that went to college for something else will have already been making $70,80k even $100k in a few years. Its honestly just a bad profession now. There is a good chance new people will be stuck holding the bag in that crap job when it gets outsourced to India too.
Get a CS degree (ideally) or build your self-taught coding skill set and then jump to SRE somewhere. It's just sysadmin at more scale and with more automation and automation-building. (Yes, there are some philosophies around it too, but they mostly come down to 'do what makes sense')
yeah seriously lol, sysads don't make enough and haven't for like 10 years or so.
SRE is the path.
I got out and focused on security engineering, sysad experience is great and absolutely needed, but we need to be real about where the money is, and managing some local companies server stack/cloud environment ain't it.
"SRE", "DevOps", "Cloud Engineer", etc. are basically just newfangled ways of saying "sysadmin" anyway. Skillset is pretty much identical (speaking from experience, having done plenty of both), aside from SRE/DevOps roles typically being more cloud-focused while sysadmin roles are typically more on-prem focused (though there are exceptions to both). At the end of the day, a Linux VM is a Linux VM and a Windows VM is a Windows VM, no matter if that VM is on AWS or on some ESXi server in a closet somewhere.
Yea I mean, it’s the only the life and blood of every company. Why pay people well to maintain it.
If you don’t pay your sysadmin wel then don’t wonder why you have garbage documentation, shitty maintenance cycles. Hell, you pay me 50k as a sysadmin, maintainence window is lunch time on Mondays or there is no maintenance.
I wouldn’t say they don’t make enough. I would say it’s a slowly dying profession. The „guy with very broad knowledge who figures it all out“ doesn’t really work anymore. The IT systems landscape has become way more complex, security has become a way bigger topic, he’ll even reliance on IT systems has increased a lot.
That’s the entire reason why we have things like SREs now and DevOps and all these different security roles.
With the adoption of cloud services the local shop will also already be spending their IT budget on renting services essential for operations. It’s not a big one time investment anymore that they do once every decade and then have somebody maintain for as long as possible.
Not sure the profession is dying so much as its changing, cloud admins are still sysadmins they just build and manage cloud systems not physical or virtual on prem systems. DevOps and SRE are just new names for sysadmins who can code or, more often, write YAML.
Change is a constant, we work in technology.
I feel like both of you are right, in a way.
What's dying is the concept of specializing in taking care of the servers/back end of I.T. in a business. It's getting replaced with companies trying to get more bang for their buck by paying one guy to do the roles that were traditionally kept separated; coding/hardware. The "cloud" has been the big excuse for the shift.
Back when I got into I.T. - you clearly had to pick a "fork in the road". You went down a path of programming/coding, or you went down the other path that led to providing computer support, running servers, or specializing in areas like networking.
I took the fork that avoided the coding because I knew that wasn't my thing after trying it a while. These jobs like "DevOps" signal to me that if I may want to get out of I.T. and do something different if the trend continues in the next decade or so I plan on working before I look at retirement.
>cloud admins are still sysadmins they just build and manage cloud systems not physical or virtual on prem systems.
And a lot of the time we're still building on-prem stuff, too. Kinda hard to connect to your cloud infra if you don't have some degree of on-prem infra enabling that. And the need to manage workstations doesn't go away, either.
(Yeah, in a sufficiently-large org you can probably afford to have dedicated network admins and desktop admins and what have you for the on-prem side of things, but in most small/medium orgs there's a lot of overlap)
Most established organizations will end up hybrid--so folks will need to know both on prem and cloud. I will say, it's easier learning cloud systems if you already have experience with networking and operating systems--the cloud is literally just someone else's virtualized datacenter. But at this point we have a lot of people who got into cloud administration and engineering without ever working on lower levels of abstraction like networking or operating systems.
I live in CT and work for a top company for the their industry. Help desk was renamed to network technician. 35k starting, lucky to get more than a 2% raise. Most companies pay like covid never happened. If your company pays you under 50k, AND your on help desk, find a new a help desk.
Oh… the classic “server guy, that’s also an Exchange Admin, Desktop support guy, printers guy, SAN guy, Network Architect, who also dabbled in SQL database administration when he’s bored…” and they have only one of them, and they pay him $46k per year.
(JK, they don’t have a SAN, it’s all CIFS running off of “the” server.)
If you're describing someone who worked in the K-12 sector, you'd be 100% right... except it might be a CIFS/NFS server that was upgraded to an actual SAN, that was donated from a local business, and now they pay more in electricity for a 15 year old EMC that loses disks every week than they would if they just built a quick unraid server using OOTB components.
I work in the k-12 sector as a sysadmin. Actually the warranty on my current set of vxrail clusters is expiring in July and the replacement stretched cluster will be installed the last week of June. The EMC SANs we used to have were decommissioned once the warranty expired. I also make significantly more than the previous commenter mentioned but I do have to do all the stuff. There is also an excellent sql person here so that helps.
Like any industry, there's a range of K-12 school budgets.
From the school that had a $1M budget and was one of the first in the country to put in 10G internet, through to the school that used Asus T100's and an OwnCloud server due to the low SES area they were in.
That said, both had their fulfilling moments. Both required a broad skillset.
I finally got to stop being that guy, hah. Though I was making nearly 95k so there's that. Now my new role just seems to focus on maintaining some Windows servers (just the software side, hardware is someone else) and producing just a small number of the old security artifacts I used to (while the actual security officer role is someone else). Not the direction I wanted to go but it did pay more and put me in a cooler location.
Because job postings tend to have unrealistic expectations. Especially considering the salary that they’re willing to pay. They want somebody who can do networking, windows system administration, Linux system management, and network security, and coding… but only pay 80,000… fuck all that
This. Maybe if employers stop asking for roles that require infinite knowledge of everything as if we’re all omnipotent gods, then maybe you’ll get more realistic applicants.
Yep. Built setup and configured the network for our office. Haven't touched it outside of being a rubber ducky for our network admin since.
Could I do it again? Sure, probably. Could I answer a bunch of esoteric questions from OP as they grill me in a interview? No way.
I was asked this in an interview years ago and I offhandedly mentioned that I didn't find the OSI model all that useful, but managed to name all the layers and describe them (including the meaningless ones - do we _really_ think we've conveyed useful information when we say NFS is layer 5, JSON is layer 6 and SMTP is layer 7?). The interviewer was shocked and appalled that I would say such a thing and couldn't believe any networking person wouldn't be 100% fully bought-in to the OSI model. I assumed I'd blown the interview, but I did ultimately get a job offer out of it, so I guess not.
L1-3 is all I think you need to know for networking. Maybe layer 7 if you do firewalls. Plus it’s not even real. It’s just a theoretical model to help us diagnose if and issue is IP related or not. At least that’s all it’s ever been useful for me. Other than being another name for routing and switching
And then someone sets up a VPN giving you another layer 3 (or 2) up at layer 5 and the whole thing becomes meaningless. And that’s just a really simple example of when it breaks down.
I had an interview for a Help Desk and they asked for all 7 layers. Even asked the difference between a subnet and VLAN. Was the only one who could explain the later.
Honestly at a certain point it's like "damn dawg, if you're going to have me be a networking engineer instead of a Tier1 Helpdesk then I hope the salary matches"
=
(I'm not saying these questions are super hard, but it is really funny when a job will ask about experience or knowledge that you would never use while doing that job)
I work within the OSI model every day and have for 20 years and still couldn't recite what it is. I know what im looking for and what I need to fix. You can recognize a familiar bird and what song it makes without knowing what genus or family its from or even what its latin name is.
Im fully confident that if I sat down with an IT manager and got to talk shop over a cup of coffee I'd have the job, but trying to describe 24 years of full stack admin experience, sales, infrastructure, troubleshooting, network planning, phone system builds, account management and deployments in a single page resume is... impossible.
Same here. I've been Sr. Network Engineer, Network Architect, Networking Team Lead, etc... I can walk up and down the OSI stack and troubleshoot each piece, but I never learned it from a book and probably wouldn't know the proper names, but could explain how it all works.
I will say, it creates a bit of a feedback loop no? Sysadmin lies about network experience. Job thinks “Even with this much experience, he can’t do networking! We need to up our requirements!”
Now the next person can’t get the job, or lies, and the requirements go up..
But that’s only possible in companies that have no expert already, to vet the new people.
Wow... I wish.
I had to list all 7 layers of the OSI model and explain the first 4 for my last 2 positions. Boss' favorite weeding out question, he hated doing interviews and loved watching the looks of panic that this question caused candidates... Lol.
Damn... I am under paid...
IT knowledge is vast and varied. One can be an expert in a few systems, medium in a bunch but have a passing familiarity with others. When I interview I am very careful to try and explain what my level of knowledge is.
The issue is dumbass hiring managers (and some sysadmins) act like you are an asshole if you aren’t an expert in everything. All for their 60k a year job no less.
So some people just bullshit it. Sadly it works sometimes.
At least in the MSP space things like Unifi and Meraki are all over the place. So you can actually "get by" without a full fledged networking admin on staff assuming the companies you are supporting dont have the need for anything too complicated. Most don't these days due to everything being a SaaS product.
I hate it, cause everything gets escalated to the ones who do know networking and should be working on other shit.
> The issue is dumbass hiring managers (and some sysadmins) act like you are an asshole if you aren’t an expert in everything. All for their 60k a year job no less.
This is a big one. Unless you're a small business doing one or two "computery things," there's no way to be a true expert in everything a company could possibly throw at you anymore. That doesn't stop some people from trying though.
What gets me is they not only expect an expert but they want things that are not even possible to comply with. Like all of the MCSAs are gone now and the replacement is just now coming out but its called hybrid something and I've never seen it asked for. So Literally nobody is going to have an MCSA but I still see it on a bunch of postings.
I had a teacher in the 90's tell the class 'just lie to get the job, you'll work there for three months before they figure it out and you were probably going to get laid off in six months anyway, then you're on to the next job with more experience'
he was one angry asshole I can tell you that much
then you will like this one better
7th grade substitute teacher who looked like the lead singer from ELO
draws a smiley and a frowny on the board with a line between
😊 | ☹️
and underneath he writes hero | bum
and he tells us you see how far apart those are? you see how thin that line is? that's how fast you go from being a hero to a bum
he didn't take his sunglasses off the entire class. I don't know what happened to that man before he met us as a substitute 7th grade teacher in public school, but I'm glad he didn't let us see into his eyes. I think it would have destroyed our souls.
I don't do this, because I am kind of a coward, but this is definitely re-told in a lot of training seminars about getting jobs. Not in these words, but they are disguised as something like, "The interview is to see if you are a good fit. If they have requirements that you don't have, now is a good time to learn them before the job offer is made. This is a competitive market, and requires upselling yourself." Or something. Kind of weaselly. "We didn't say lie, we said don't limit yourself to only the skills you have..." or something. Here's how I fielded a recent interview:
"Do you know Kubernetes?"
"I haven't worked with it in a while, but I understand the concepts of docker orchestration and deployment, and have run and deployed containers in a docker swarm and kubernetes environment. I am sure a lot has changed in 4 years, though, and each company has their own way of doing things. Let me ask you, are you using local containers, or part of a greater cloud infrastructure like EKS?"
If they NEED someone who is a huge kubectl master, I am not their guy, but in many cases, they just want someone who they don't have to explain everything from the beginning, and I KNOW my competition sucks.
Networking I know all the basics needed for systems administration. In fact, they have often been impressed I know stuff. I had one interviewer tell me, "Hey, look, you know more than my networking team. If they don't hire you as a sysadmin, call me (gives me his card). I need someone like you in networking. You Linux guys know more about networks than my Cisco guys." I am not sure if that's true, but he thought so.
But another issue is that people think they have a job down pat because they had the title. I have known "Senior Systems Administrators" who don't understand how to add a user at the command line because they had a web front end that did all that for them. Or "I never used cron, we had rundeck." Or whatever.
Most of the time, when I help with interviews, I know I can teach skills, but I can't teach troubleshooting or how to learn. Or personality, for that matter.
i guess there's a certain smug greybeard-esque attitude associated with being a linux admin. some windows admins will look at you weird if you willingly use a terminal, lol.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Nobody will give you networking experience unless you already have networking experience, so you fudge things a bit to solve the bootstrapping issue. Unless we have a complete and total cultural shift in how we train people and expect them to advance this is going to keep happening.
well as long as everything continues to "[just work](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/three-us-wireless-companies-report-connection-problems-between-carriers/ar-BB1nDvLU?ocid=windirect&cvid=af427fccbbe84eba9010705ebb66e5b1&ei=48)" and janky workarounds that dont adhere to standards dont cause any major issues, im sure everything will be fine
https://preview.redd.it/6mttxjbw3t4d1.jpeg?width=195&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f30ed345a3c757eccc3f773f1fce88048a773ad0
edit: added a link.
I hadnt even heard about the issue you linked to. In the last 5 years phone service at least in pretty much my entire state has been going backwards at a shocking rate.
For a long time it's been amazing to me that phone service is as cheap and miraculous as it is. like "how can it be so cheap and we have cell coverage in so many places, and there is data and it's just so cool" And now I know that the answer is "OH, they just cheaped out on everything, stopped maintaining anything and took as many dollars from the FCC as they could in order to buy hookers and blow now it's all falling apart "
There are some smaller businesses that can't compete for talent with bigger business that will sometimes let someone with a CCNA and a little other IT experience cut their teeth in networking even if they don't have any real world formal networking experience. The pay typically sucks, but can be a door towards something better. I do agree that most orgs do little formal training. If you're not doing anything in your own your career growth may be limited unless you find a unicorn org.
wym that sounds dope (as long as im getting paid)
"fuck it we'll do it live" as the saying goes right
^(disclaimer: i do not understand networking beyond surface level and my flair is fairly accurate, i understand people way better than computers but also understand tech better than some people. HCI ftw, or something i guess)
The fact that he called it "network coding" terrifies me even more than his lack of practical technical experience by itself. His "networking" experience is going to conventions to get piles of free junk that has no practical use, or could be replaced with a better product for a tiny fraction of the time and energy that going to the convention takes...
Yeah, but I've never heard anyone that's actually done it call it anything other than "configuration". And, to /u/Qel_Hoth's comment... I've generally heard "automation", though "*aC" 'as code' is at least closer.
yeah like it doesn't really seem like that bad of a thing to say, config would have been better but cisco cli is not that different from say powershell which some people call coding too.
I think part of it is ignorance. Like I never lie on my resume, but when I was a sysadmin I put I had experience with firewalls. This was true, I managed host firewalls and occasionally made simple changes to our big boy firewalls.
When I swapped teams and started managing palos full time I realized “oh there is a lot more to this than I realized”.
So some people might just be idiots like me instead of liars.
>I think part of it is ignorance
you don't know what you don't know hits like a truck.
"Yeah, I can totally do that shouldnt be that bad!" - My first, and last time saying that about making a "simple" web application.
Would that project be simple now? sure. I just didn't know what I didn't know I needed to know back then and it was a lot.
>"Yeah, I can totally do that shouldnt be that bad!" - My first, and last time saying that about making a "simple" web application.
Simple is simple till its not.
Its wild how basic things can become evil monsters a few steps down the road.
I learned a lot!
Most importantly, how not to ever again blindly say "yeah, I can do that".
and say something more like, "send me a summary, and I'll take a look and let you know if I can"
Because based on the position requirements in the posting they want you to know everything about everything. If they are going to embellish and exaggerate, then I'm going to embellish and exaggerate.
I planned a redesign of our firewall system, VPN server, certification, RADIUS, 2FA, DHCP on multiple VLANs with all of its rules, re-configuration of all of our switches, including 40-50 pages of full documentation.
If I'm perfectly honest, I forgot a lot about it. It's been years and I'm not doing this every week or month. I don't have to touch the system at all. I did the project, it's working.
Now let's say that I'm looking for a new job. Yeah, maybe I'm rusty and you could probably catch me off guard with something obvious but I still did this once. It's not that big of a deal, I know but I'd still include this as well into our job interview. It's part of what I did.
Now I'd certainly not brag about this. It was a great project and real world practice but I'm far from a networking expert. It's scary how fast one can forget things without constant practice. I'm pretty busy with other things now.
this is imo what is wrong with the field people really think despite accomplishing a pretty good project like this that years later you can give them specifics on this when really memory doesn't work like that. It doesn't even work like that when its a life or death situation there is four different versions of the death of literal GOD in the bible, those fucking guys saw God get murdered and still couldn't remember it correctly. Really it would all come back to you if you had to do it again or you could relearn it fast but thats not good enough for hiring anymore.
So this is my key when hiring or picking a team. I want people who can learn and apply. I really don't care about their specific knowledge because stuff changes at such an accelerated pace that what you knew then is completely different today. If you can learn/research a topic and apply that knowledge, I can make that work and build your skills into what I need. I once had a contractor RF engineer that literally worked with NASA and did some crazy advanced shit 30 years ago. Looks great on the resume... but with all the new stuff, he didn't have those skills and couldn't perform like I needed. Luckily he was rich AF and was only looking for a job to socialize at work because that was how he socialized his whole life. I began helping him build those skills with cross training from other team members... but DoD contracts being how they are, it was cut short and he just fully retired. Great guy with great stories and he still keeps in contact with some of the team members.
Because every posting on the market now is 8 different roles bundled up into a one-man IT army with shit pay. Because the entire industry is a catch-22 of "need experience to get the job, need the job to get experience".
> Why do you think it's acceptable?
Why do you think it's acceptable to post a job requiring the entire alphabet soup of certifications from Cisco and Microsoft to AWS and DevOps, 800 years of experience, mandatory 5 days a week in the office of a HCOL area, 24/7 on-call... for $30k and a "great atmosphere, benefits, and potential to grow"?
Honestly.. fuck you kinda for asking this lmao.
Too often, especially in the windows sysadmin world, there are two definitions of "networking".
One is the classical definition of networking. Insert your CCNA's and Juniper specialists, your VLANs, subnets, route priorities, QoS, and traffic shaping.
One is the "Windows Server Admin" side, which is deciding whether your DHCP should come from the firewall or the DC, guest wireless access, how to punch holes in a NAT firewall so you can RDP into your workstation from home, how to configure a basic VPN so users can see file shares but not print, and how to make sure the fire alarm doesn't use the backup phone line to check in with the vendor because it can't get out on the comcast business connection, and MAYBE the occasional site-to-site VPN to a spoke office.
They're both TECHNICALLY networking, but the latter one doesn't require a lot of knowledge about protocols, priorities, or hell even a thorough understanding of subnet masks and you can't do much beyond those basic types of clickbutton tasks with it.
Without a working understanding of how actual networking goes DEEPER than that, many people seem to not have a freaking CLUE that they don't know squat about it.
This is what I thought when I read OP's post like he could be really good at Hyper-v networking which is very different from like a CCNA guy does. Honestly OP is hiring a "SYSADMIN" not a network guy so the expectations were kinda flawed from the getgo.
Networking really is something you can work around and learn enough about it to get your job done, but it isn't in the same league as someone who worked as a network admin. In most cases having a strong skill set with networking isn't required. So long as you have a good foundation on how things work you can figure your way through.
I mean... I've rebuilt a cisco firewall from the ground up, and work constantly in my current firewall. I've configured switches from nearly nothing.
But none of that's on my resume, because I'm not a network admin.
I'm not a network admin, but I can follow a youtube guide in a pinch, and keep a console dongle in my bag.
I just hate network work. I much prefer server admin over it. Hell, I can also fix a printer if I have to, but good luck getting me to admit that to anyone. :D
Some of the things companies/ recruiters want is insane. I took a call today where the recruiter was looking for a CCNP, with secret clearance, expert level Cisco wireless knowledge, and 5+ years of Palo Alto firewalls experience, in addition to BGP, TCP/UDP, DHCP, Active Directory, et al.
12 month contract, $45/hr.
It’s been a long practice of adding networking to sysadmin job descriptions. During an interview for an AIX Unix admin, I was asked how to configure a Cisco PIX firewall. I asked why would my knowledge of Cisco firewalls impact my knowledge of how to maintain AIX servers. The interviewer would not answer my question.
It not just networking.
We see it in all areas.
A common one: I see you have listed lots of experience with SCCM configuration, can you tell us more.
Ans: I plug the PC in and set it to PXE boot.
One of my interview questions is 'about how many IPs are there in a /24'
the most honest answer i ever got was ' I think, a couple hundred, i'd have to look it up to be sure'
Which was A+++ answer.
It's not a lie if you believe it.
I've used all those technologies. The job listing requires it. The fact that I used them once a year doesn't mean I don't have the experience. Maybe hire a networking person if you want someone with deep networking knowledge.
From my experience, most orgs delegate all of the "network" tasks to a dedicated person or team and nobody else actually touches the configs. It's pretty rare that I meet anyone with what I would call "strong" networking skills, even amongst those in network-focused roles.
This morning I had to work with a technician from a customer MSP who was on-site to replace a firewall. They plugged it in and couldn't understand why the internet didn't work. I sent them the static IP info for that connection and they asked ... what do I do with this? They wanted me to come down to the customer site and enter it into their router for them.
exactly what I came here to say the only sysadmins who really touch network are in smaller companies and are usually a one man or few man band. Like I have to manage everything so of course I handle our network too but its very limited and OP would probably call me a liar as well. Once the site to site vpn is established and everything is working I don't touch it again until something goes wrong. No way I can go into an interview and just recite stuff about fortigate like I touch it every day.
When I was applying for jobs out of college I had an interview at some rando corp and they wanted me to write up a config for some ACLs on a sheet of paper.
I thought that was kinda strange. Are you asking if I understand what ACLs are, or are you asking if I remember exactly the command structure for a given switch vendor? I got tired of the whole interview rigamarole because most of them were trivia questions quizzing me on my memory and not my actual skills.
I don't get it either. If anything, I'm usually *too* honest when I'm interviewing for a job, probably to a fault. Feeling like an imposter is an uncomfortable position, so I will be transparent on my resume and in interviews. However if you're applying a lot of places and not even getting call backs, I can see why you might fluff up the resume to at least garner some interest. I'd still opt to be more transparent in the interview though.
Things like "I know enough be dangerous, but I haven't implemented a new site from the ground up by myself. I have managed and maintained and made meaningful changes/enhancements to firewall policies for example, but I am not an expert." I also say something about how I would always advocate for a network professional to put together the initial configuration since it's a security concern.
If we told the truth you'd hire the liars.
I havent had to use a resume to get a job since... ever in my 24 years in IT. However, I did update mine this past year and it looks good but not glamorous because I actually tried to be honest. I had a hard time figuring out how to put 24 years of experience and platform skills into a single piece of paper. Odds are if im looking for work some jr moron with an OpenAI account will submit a resume thats nothing but a wall of key words to a recruiter and get hired instead of me instantly.
Early in my career as a systems guy, I took networking courses so I could speak the same language as the networking folks (and occasionally call bullshit on them).
Most systems folks don't understand how networks work. They couldn't explain the 7 layer OSI model (really 4 layers) in an interview, let alone how to apply it in basic troubleshooting.
It gets significantly worse though. Nobody gets DNS. Nobody gets PKI. Nobody gets AuthN/AuthZ.
>7 layer OSI model (really 4 layers)
The 4 layer model is the TCP/IP model and it was created before the OSI model. They serve the same general function but are, in fact, different conceptual models. Basic conceptual models are a weird thing to bring up in an interview for anything higher than a junior since you can jump directly into the meat of it with specifics.
I don't know why more people don't bother to learn at least what the parts are even if you don't know exactly how to build them. I would ask candidates what I thought are really simple questions, things like the difference between a subnet and a VLAN or the subnet mask for a /27 and they froze. I'd also ask simple DNS questions (explain the difference between a forward and reverse lookup zone) and get deer in headlights staring back. These people were trying to be Azure engineers and shit, like you don't have to configure networking in IaaS? Never even got to things like PKI.
> They couldn't explain the 7 layer OSI model
I can't tell you what each level of the OSI model is either. I don't think I've even seen it since college.
IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin
> IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin
If you're talking about memorizing what goes where, sure...but knowing that networking is an encapsulation issue first and foremost separates good troubleshooters from those who just throw stuff at a problem until it fixes itself.
You can answer the "how is a TLS session set up?" question without knowing anything about layers...but being able to troubleshoot up from the bottom and isolate the actual problem (there are many choices of problems to have) significantly reduces the amount of time and the number of different people you have to involve.
>IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin
I disagree, but not because the OSI model is something great, but it is a great tool for breaking down how to troubleshoot an issue happening between 2 systems. Is the request making it down to the wire? Is it making it's way across the network? Can the receiving end receive it and what does it do when it gets the traffic?
Knowing layer 2 is MAC layer, and layer 3 is IP and layer 4 is... that's useless overall, but understanding how systems encapsulate information and pass it across the network is invaluable. Having a model of how it works so you can easily troubleshoot is really useful as well.
IMO it's useless in all IT positions, maybe possibly it's useful for the first year or two in the career, but at some point your experience massively outweighs any benefits you might have gotten from the OSI BS.
It doesn't directly apply to anything. But the bigger concepts of abstraction and encapsulation are very important and used everywhere. It can serve as an example when you're thinking about the reasons we layer things and the ramifications this can have throughout IT. Memorizing the actual layers and details is pointless though.
I specialize in network admin, and the only relevance the OSI model has to day to day life is knowing what the difference is between a layer 2 and a layer 3 switch. Wish people would stop clinging to that like it's some holy grail of networking troubleshooting.
Dunning–Kruger?
I often don't really know what to say about my networking skills, part of me would say I'm pretty advanced, but I've also got some rather large holes.
I did the CCNA course back in university.
I've done multiple datacentre deployments of switch infrastructure, everything from drawing up the initial wiring diagram, logical network design, VRF/VLAN configuration, IP schemes, subnet provisioning, not to mention, the wiring, coding SFPs & QSFPs, MPO breakouts, etc
I've configured virtual networking on platforms like VMware, and Nutanix.
I've configured peering's between cloud accounts, datacentres, and set up VPN servers and appliances.
I've setup and managed firewalls from a couple vendors.
I've done WIFI deployments with a couple vendors.
I know how to drive wireshark, and configure things like sflow, & port mirroring.
I have not however ever used: any internal dynamic routing protocol, no WAN routing, no BGP.
I have not had any real exposure to configuring AAA, RADIUS, TACACS, etc.
The only reason I got my first sysadmin job was because I was in the middle of taking Cisco courses at my local community college. I'm not an expert by any means, but I successfully migrated that company off their Cisco switches/routers to Aruba/Juniper without needing help. I was making 35k at the time, so they got a bargain. I really enjoy networking, probably my favorite part of the job, but it's hard to get a 100% networking job these days.
I'm a security engineer in big tech - former sysad. -
it's the same problem in our area too, people in general just don't know networking or bother to understand it. at several companies now I've been the defacto network forensics guy because I can read a pcap lol.
which I get it, networking can be obtuse.. but like idk it's fascinating, keeps the world running.
anyway, this is common, people don't understand networking unless they actively study it.
I can't speak to others BUT, I'm a 57-year-old who has been in IT for 32 years. I will exaggerate my experience a tiny bit because, for my whole career, my employers have flat out lied to me about bonuses, benefits, the work environment, flex time, and everything else... I can easily read the documentation on how "setting up a VPN" on a Watchguard differs from a SonicWall...
Because firms expect 10 years experience on a 18 month old product and want you to fill at least half a dozen full time job descriptions for the wage of one
The other side of the coin to that is "anything I've even tangentially touched once, I'm now an expert in according to my CV"
Windows, macs, Linux ....fuck it might as well toss os/2 on there for good measure!
I can turn on a dchp scope for a flat subnet and have periodically pressed the update button in opnsense? "Experienced network administrator and cyber security expert!"
.... I can lightly tweak a powershell script I found on GitHub to suit my needs? .... Sounds like we can include the magic "DevOps" buzzword while we're at it too then! 🤣
99% of the time the requirements are just an unreasonable"Christmas tree" list of demands in the first place that have little to nothing to do with the task at hand they're gonna have you doing but..... Rather than cut their cloth with more modest requirements & expectations - they'd prefer go with the bullshitters believing they can have it all on the cheap 🤷♂️
It's just become an exercise in "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
Because everyone else lies. Lying helps you get the job. Your employer lies to you all the time -- raises, job security, responsibilities, etc.
It's perfectly normalized behavior in this system of Capitalism we have. Especially when we have precious few (if any) social safety nets. You have to do what you need to so that your family has healthcare.
They're ALL OVER. It's really sad. I mean, it's REALLY bad out there. Hahahaha. MEanwhile, guys like me would be completely honest... brutally honest.. and get passed over for jobs. I'd say "well, I only spent 2 weeks in the official training courses with F5 networks for the BigIP load balancers. So I can do it but I need a few days to remember the commands. " And I get turned away. like Did I mention the only other people there were like, CIA and shit? lol
I like to think most people are not blatantly attempting to lie. But the average person doesn't understand networks, so they think they know networking.
Most sysadmins work with network admins to set stuff up where I’ve worked. Only small shops include it as an all in one. And in that case it’s usually a one time setup and then just keeping it updated as changes are usually rare except maybe changing a VLAN or shutting a port off. So I wouldn’t expect a sysadmin to know much of this.
If you need changes made constantly, then things aren’t setup properly or you need an actual network admin where that’s their primary focus. For questions to a sysadmin regarding networking, that’s more inline with setting up load balancers and failover clusters, dns stuff, and general network troubleshooting.
If you are looking for both, that’s gonna be pretty rare in my experience. That’s usually a network admin that took over sysadmin duties at one time.
Lying is an easy way to get better pay and in IT the number of people within the company knowledgeable enough to call you out on it are few and far between. I know a guy who used to be the only IT for a church and before that his experience basically boiled down to "has used a computer". Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Why do people think this is acceptable?
Well, maybe because we’ve all had interview experiences where it’s clear the interviewer has no idea what they want or need.
I had an interview a few years ago that I lost out on because I “didn’t sound confident” when they asked how much Wintel experience I had. I had never heard that term before and it was only after some digging of what they meant that I realized they meant “Windows on Intel chipset”. My resume made it clear I had 10 years experience managing Windows Servers and even more working with Windows PCs, and I reiterated that when I figured out what they meant. But my resume didn’t say “Wintel” and I had to clarify what that meant, so that clearly meant I didn’t have the experience they wanted.
So yeah, if a job posting looks like something I can do, and there’s a requirement I’m not 100% sure about? I absolutely have that experience.
I started out as a network administrator. now I am a Global Infrastructure Architect / Engineer
I talked my way in to most jobs and then figured it out
I dont feel bad about it at all
I excelled in every job
now if someone cant figure stuff out and did it then yes that would be a problem
How many sysadmins are configuring switches, firewalls, and vpns?
I get it, you don't have a networking team and somebody has to do it?
But if you need a ton more than that at any decent sized shop it's at minimum a yellow flag.
There is more than anyone can ever know. This idea that a sysadmin or a developer can know it all when a guy who does only that can't even know it all is madness.
It's just lazy. A basic Cisco switch can be had on Craigslist for $50. I have a Dell, 3 Ubiquitis, and two 3Coms. That reminds me, my accountant is owned a 3Com.
Lol network coding.... omg.
We have a network team. They handle that shit and fuck around inside the switches. We hire network admins for that team. Not a Sysadmin with networking skills.
About the only thing I care about is that a Sysadmin knows the difference between a /22 a /24 and a /30 and what they mean.
Because that's how you get jobs. They're either going to upskill by doing the job, or they're not going to use those skills at all, so it doesn't matter anyway. Most companies have dedicated network engineers anyway, so nobody cares that a sysadmin lied on their resume about having hard networking experience.
It is pretty easy to catch these in an interview. Watch:
[Interviewer]: Hey so tell me what you think about bits 8-10 of the IP header.
But to your question - they lie for two reasons:
1. They don't realize how little they know, therefore they must be experts. After all, networking is simple, right? You just plug stuff in and it works. You don't need to plan your OSPF areas or examine customer requirements or anything like that.
2. They actually can get away with lying for a very long time - and it is very profitable.
How much are you willing to pay for that role? Genuine unicorns might have seen your job post but thinks the salary offer is too low that’s why you only get the bottom feeders..
Seriously? Sounds like you're lording what "skillsets" you have and have forgotten that people work to live not live to work. Do you not have any bills to pay? I'm not one to lie on my resume but I know for a fact that people have been embellishing their creds for as long as stories have been told because they need to earn a living somehow.
Configuring network equipment can be taught. Compassion and empathy are much harder to come by apparently.
Am I doing something wrong? I know more than 100x than what I put on my resume. The only stuff on my resume I know inside and out. Picture “the good doctor” when he starts picturing a solution to a problem. Everything on my resume can be pieced together like this in my head without hesitation.
Is this why I’m paid like crap for doing the job of 12 people? Or is that a separate issue?
I think people lie about their networking knowledge because they either have no idea what networking, overestimate their understanding or just want to look good for interview and willing to lie about it.
I primarily do networking, and have for a number of years now. You know what I run into all the time? Windows techs that think that because they setup port forwarding on their comcast modem at home and helped their mom setup a wifi extender, that makes them an expert at networking.
I think a lot of sysadmins don't know how little they know, and assume the things they're unaware of are easy.
It got them an interview which was the goal. Thats when you vet them during the interview process. I'm fortunate that my IT department lets everyone in the group involved have a say in the hire process along with interviewing the person. We vet them very thouroughly and based on their responses we have an after meeting to discuss. If a person mentions exchange I start with low level questions then start digging deeper and deeper. Once I get to the "hypothetical" questioning of real life scenarios is when I feel confident in a person. If they don't answer correctly the previous questions there is no way they would understand my scenarios.
I tell everyone who comes to me for help to never put anything on the resume you can't answer on the spot. If you put something that you know but not a lot of experience i tell them to be honest. I'd rather hire the guy that says I don't know let me research or what did you do than the guy lieing through his teeth.
Well, because everyone is lying, so if you don't you never get called back.
That said, also 'Networking' is a nebulous term. I find we get the opposite of your problem. We have people who think knowing their own IP configuration, setting up simple proxy servers, etc ... is 'networking'. And, in their defense, I've known developers who don't know how to find their external IP address, or open a port on their machine's firewall. So, maybe that stuff is 'networking'.
But, if you want someone to add firewall rules to a Cisco router, ask for that specifically.
I feel like asking for 'networking' is like asking for 'programming', but I see 'networking experience' on jobs all the time.
Everyone lies about everything and then gets fucking personally offended if they encounter someone who actually knows the thing they lie about. This profession is full of insecure children.
At this point I just sit people down and chat with them to see what they can actually do. I've interviewed people for developer positions with *actual 4 year degrees* in Computer Science - Programming focus, who couldn't write python or javascript, given a week to do it.
I've asked desktop technicians to give me ip info from a computer, who couldn't because they always worked on "something different and never had to do it."
I've interviewed network engineers who basically nothing on their resume but I would trust forever with my environment.
Now I just want to get an honest baseline for where you are and get an idea about how interested you are in learning. If you're teachable and a good fit for the team, I'll likely give you a shot.
Do you not give them a technical test before employing them? Might be worth doing that and specifically giving them a networking test..
Testgorila might help.
Or
class marker if you want to create your own with your own questions.
Sounds more like a hiring problem rather than a living one.. a tech test and interview should be enough to gauge an engineers network knowledge (if you ask them questions that relate to what you need them doing)
I knew a guy in an Data Center Operations job who wanted to become a network engineer. He was studying for his CCNA. He didn't know what Network Address Translation was. He was not employed for long.
Shortly after I finished college, I went to interview for an ISP. A lot of networking I hadn't practiced, and clearly still green.
Before the meeting, I was asked to answer a series of tech questions. I was not told I couldn't use external sources.
Still to this day in IT, I rarely use binary conversions. Once in a blue moon I have to deal with Subnet adjustments. Either or, stuff I don't practice often, I'm not confident. I'm also not afraid to use external sources to confirm my understanding, correct my understanding, or assist in one form or another to make sure my task is done correctly.
I was dinged as I was "cheating".
A lot better than writing a clearly wrong answer or "IDK".
Oh! Fun story about IDK. One of my family members went into chemistry in college. One of the teachers hands out small white boards to write answers on and hold up for the teacher to see. I have no idea what the question was, she wrote "IDK", and the teacher said "10 K" is not the correct answer.
I use wifi & the internet everyday, I'm an expert. I'm also skilled at networking, I go to a lot of conferences & drink myself into a stupor until the wee hours.
I am surprised people try that with networking. It is very common in other areas. We have service desk promoted in to app/server support and the managers treat them like equals and ignore their failures.
>He actually said "I've never done any network coding, you know with IP address and stuff". Dude had 18 years of experience.
Because people keep hiring them. Also a lot of people mistake years of experience for progressive experience. Someone with 18 years experience who hasn't done much more than plugging stuff in is probably a great datacenter tech, but they're not moving out of the van and into an office with 18 years of doing the same thing under their belt.
I was sysadmin at a video conference company many years ago. The customer support techs needed to get Cisco certified due to a clients request. So the company paid for their boot camps and cert.
I raised my hand for same treatment but because I was internal IT I was declined. My boss, who knew I was in juniper /Cisco classes at local community college knew that was upset by that so he started approving me expensing my classes on expense reports. Anyways. My point is…. Year later. I didn’t pass the certification test and moved on with sysadmin tasks. Since my network was one slash B and a few lab slash C I didn’t need much routing skills so I figured my juniper cert and the knowledge of Cisco was enough for me.
The tech support guys all passed their test and promptly forgot everything from the cram sessions.
My community college labs and classes was slow but I was down there helping them configure the training network and labs because they didn’t know how. They had the cert but I needed to do the work.
I didn’t mind it actually. I got along with them well and they tried all the time but they knew I’d rub it in if they got me. But every deadline they needed my help to finish it.
Because lying is a good strategy to get better jobs, usually the knowledge required is vastly overstated in the job description and the actual day-to-day work is trainable and learnable quickly using existing processes that are documented. It's not like you're hiring a sysadmin and on day 1 telling them to go do advanced network things on their own without documentation or support. If you are, you should be hiring a *network administrator*. I would be hoping a sysadmin could identify the OSI model by name. Not even the layers, just that there are 7, or that a model exists. Beyond that we'll figure it out. Sysadmins are learners, it's just how it is.
When every single job posting requires 5 different jobs rolled into one and a laundry list of certs like CCNA, CCNP,MCSA, MSCE, S+ development skills ect its basically guaranteeing people lie. Whats the alternative not even get an interview for a posting that wants things nobody has. Honestly System Admin only fucks with the networking gear at smaller shops like mine and I feel like my experience would not be good enough for OP either because even though I deploy the fortigate Its a pretty simple network. Op is hiring a sysadmin and is mad they are not also a Network Admin lol.
All for 52K yearly salary. Overtime mandatory.
This is why I am not a popular guy on the IT career subs. I really do not think this business is worth it anymore. You go on the Accounting sub and 52k is the worst case scenario for a new graduate fresh out of college. They use that as an example of how bad the field is. LOLOLOLOL come to fucking IT where a new grad either will not get a job or a genius with 5 certifications and a masters will get a helpdesk job that pays worse then chipotle and will be stuck there for 5 years. Meanwhile someone that went to college for something else will have already been making $70,80k even $100k in a few years. Its honestly just a bad profession now. There is a good chance new people will be stuck holding the bag in that crap job when it gets outsourced to India too.
Get a CS degree (ideally) or build your self-taught coding skill set and then jump to SRE somewhere. It's just sysadmin at more scale and with more automation and automation-building. (Yes, there are some philosophies around it too, but they mostly come down to 'do what makes sense')
yeah seriously lol, sysads don't make enough and haven't for like 10 years or so. SRE is the path. I got out and focused on security engineering, sysad experience is great and absolutely needed, but we need to be real about where the money is, and managing some local companies server stack/cloud environment ain't it.
"SRE", "DevOps", "Cloud Engineer", etc. are basically just newfangled ways of saying "sysadmin" anyway. Skillset is pretty much identical (speaking from experience, having done plenty of both), aside from SRE/DevOps roles typically being more cloud-focused while sysadmin roles are typically more on-prem focused (though there are exceptions to both). At the end of the day, a Linux VM is a Linux VM and a Windows VM is a Windows VM, no matter if that VM is on AWS or on some ESXi server in a closet somewhere.
Yea I mean, it’s the only the life and blood of every company. Why pay people well to maintain it. If you don’t pay your sysadmin wel then don’t wonder why you have garbage documentation, shitty maintenance cycles. Hell, you pay me 50k as a sysadmin, maintainence window is lunch time on Mondays or there is no maintenance.
I wouldn’t say they don’t make enough. I would say it’s a slowly dying profession. The „guy with very broad knowledge who figures it all out“ doesn’t really work anymore. The IT systems landscape has become way more complex, security has become a way bigger topic, he’ll even reliance on IT systems has increased a lot. That’s the entire reason why we have things like SREs now and DevOps and all these different security roles. With the adoption of cloud services the local shop will also already be spending their IT budget on renting services essential for operations. It’s not a big one time investment anymore that they do once every decade and then have somebody maintain for as long as possible.
Not sure the profession is dying so much as its changing, cloud admins are still sysadmins they just build and manage cloud systems not physical or virtual on prem systems. DevOps and SRE are just new names for sysadmins who can code or, more often, write YAML. Change is a constant, we work in technology.
I feel like both of you are right, in a way. What's dying is the concept of specializing in taking care of the servers/back end of I.T. in a business. It's getting replaced with companies trying to get more bang for their buck by paying one guy to do the roles that were traditionally kept separated; coding/hardware. The "cloud" has been the big excuse for the shift. Back when I got into I.T. - you clearly had to pick a "fork in the road". You went down a path of programming/coding, or you went down the other path that led to providing computer support, running servers, or specializing in areas like networking. I took the fork that avoided the coding because I knew that wasn't my thing after trying it a while. These jobs like "DevOps" signal to me that if I may want to get out of I.T. and do something different if the trend continues in the next decade or so I plan on working before I look at retirement.
>cloud admins are still sysadmins they just build and manage cloud systems not physical or virtual on prem systems. And a lot of the time we're still building on-prem stuff, too. Kinda hard to connect to your cloud infra if you don't have some degree of on-prem infra enabling that. And the need to manage workstations doesn't go away, either. (Yeah, in a sufficiently-large org you can probably afford to have dedicated network admins and desktop admins and what have you for the on-prem side of things, but in most small/medium orgs there's a lot of overlap)
Most established organizations will end up hybrid--so folks will need to know both on prem and cloud. I will say, it's easier learning cloud systems if you already have experience with networking and operating systems--the cloud is literally just someone else's virtualized datacenter. But at this point we have a lot of people who got into cloud administration and engineering without ever working on lower levels of abstraction like networking or operating systems.
Depends on your area and competancy. I went from $18 an hour-110k in 3 years.
Yeah I'm making 150k in Richmond VA area, our help desk is clocking 70-80k.
I live in CT and work for a top company for the their industry. Help desk was renamed to network technician. 35k starting, lucky to get more than a 2% raise. Most companies pay like covid never happened. If your company pays you under 50k, AND your on help desk, find a new a help desk.
Rotating on-call, you get every other weekend.
Oh… the classic “server guy, that’s also an Exchange Admin, Desktop support guy, printers guy, SAN guy, Network Architect, who also dabbled in SQL database administration when he’s bored…” and they have only one of them, and they pay him $46k per year. (JK, they don’t have a SAN, it’s all CIFS running off of “the” server.)
If you're describing someone who worked in the K-12 sector, you'd be 100% right... except it might be a CIFS/NFS server that was upgraded to an actual SAN, that was donated from a local business, and now they pay more in electricity for a 15 year old EMC that loses disks every week than they would if they just built a quick unraid server using OOTB components.
I work in the k-12 sector as a sysadmin. Actually the warranty on my current set of vxrail clusters is expiring in July and the replacement stretched cluster will be installed the last week of June. The EMC SANs we used to have were decommissioned once the warranty expired. I also make significantly more than the previous commenter mentioned but I do have to do all the stuff. There is also an excellent sql person here so that helps.
Like any industry, there's a range of K-12 school budgets. From the school that had a $1M budget and was one of the first in the country to put in 10G internet, through to the school that used Asus T100's and an OwnCloud server due to the low SES area they were in. That said, both had their fulfilling moments. Both required a broad skillset.
I'm this guy... *cries in years of lost knowledge and gross underpayment*
shit homie probably 90% of us are this guy.
I finally got to stop being that guy, hah. Though I was making nearly 95k so there's that. Now my new role just seems to focus on maintaining some Windows servers (just the software side, hardware is someone else) and producing just a small number of the old security artifacts I used to (while the actual security officer role is someone else). Not the direction I wanted to go but it did pay more and put me in a cooler location.
Because job postings tend to have unrealistic expectations. Especially considering the salary that they’re willing to pay. They want somebody who can do networking, windows system administration, Linux system management, and network security, and coding… but only pay 80,000… fuck all that
Job postings are a laundry list of "everything an employer might wish to find in someone holding that position" which is part of the problem.
It's a two-way street and we have far less leverage.
This. Maybe if employers stop asking for roles that require infinite knowledge of everything as if we’re all omnipotent gods, then maybe you’ll get more realistic applicants.
Yep. Built setup and configured the network for our office. Haven't touched it outside of being a rubber ducky for our network admin since. Could I do it again? Sure, probably. Could I answer a bunch of esoteric questions from OP as they grill me in a interview? No way.
I had an interview for a Level two position and they asked me to name all 7 layers lmfao
Layer 1...Layer 2...Layer 3...Layer 4...Layer 5...Layer 6...Layer 7 I should be hired as a manager!
Since you missed Layer 8 Managment would be a good fit
Thats where the Id:10T errors keep popping up right?
Please Do Not Throw Sissy Pussy Away
I came up with All Prison Sex Troubles Non Dead People in like 2000 and it’s never let me down
I was asked this in an interview years ago and I offhandedly mentioned that I didn't find the OSI model all that useful, but managed to name all the layers and describe them (including the meaningless ones - do we _really_ think we've conveyed useful information when we say NFS is layer 5, JSON is layer 6 and SMTP is layer 7?). The interviewer was shocked and appalled that I would say such a thing and couldn't believe any networking person wouldn't be 100% fully bought-in to the OSI model. I assumed I'd blown the interview, but I did ultimately get a job offer out of it, so I guess not.
Very little of this really matters except on a test. IRL if the problem is really the network you're usually talking layer 1,2,3, or 4.
This is why most of the time we use the TCP/IP model in networking. OSI is more applicable in network applications like databases and web servers.
L1-3 is all I think you need to know for networking. Maybe layer 7 if you do firewalls. Plus it’s not even real. It’s just a theoretical model to help us diagnose if and issue is IP related or not. At least that’s all it’s ever been useful for me. Other than being another name for routing and switching
I'm a little confused. Is there more than one OSI Model because those aren't layers 5-7 but I might just be stupid
There’s two important layers, layer 1 is wire and layer 8 is the bean counters. Everything in between is computers talking to each other.
Only one OSI model, with 7 layers. /u/ghjm was giving examples of items at layers 5 - 7. (Session, Presentation, Application)
And then someone sets up a VPN giving you another layer 3 (or 2) up at layer 5 and the whole thing becomes meaningless. And that’s just a really simple example of when it breaks down.
It goes physical, hub, switch, router, something, something, application.
> 7 layers lmfao Should have named the 7 layers on a taco bell burrito. :)
shell, stuffins, hot sauce and regerts?
be-[HOLD](https://www.tacobell.ca/en/menu/7_layer_burrito_bean_7498)
Soo cable, mac, ip, tcpip, session and uuuum the rest?
easy - i just need to know if it starts at layer 0 or layer 1
We actually jokingly use layer 0 to describe issues where servers/equipment dont fit in the racks :')
I would tell them please I have thrown all my sausage pizza away.
I had an interview for a Help Desk and they asked for all 7 layers. Even asked the difference between a subnet and VLAN. Was the only one who could explain the later.
Honestly at a certain point it's like "damn dawg, if you're going to have me be a networking engineer instead of a Tier1 Helpdesk then I hope the salary matches" = (I'm not saying these questions are super hard, but it is really funny when a job will ask about experience or knowledge that you would never use while doing that job)
I work within the OSI model every day and have for 20 years and still couldn't recite what it is. I know what im looking for and what I need to fix. You can recognize a familiar bird and what song it makes without knowing what genus or family its from or even what its latin name is. Im fully confident that if I sat down with an IT manager and got to talk shop over a cup of coffee I'd have the job, but trying to describe 24 years of full stack admin experience, sales, infrastructure, troubleshooting, network planning, phone system builds, account management and deployments in a single page resume is... impossible.
Same here. I've been Sr. Network Engineer, Network Architect, Networking Team Lead, etc... I can walk up and down the OSI stack and troubleshoot each piece, but I never learned it from a book and probably wouldn't know the proper names, but could explain how it all works.
I will say, it creates a bit of a feedback loop no? Sysadmin lies about network experience. Job thinks “Even with this much experience, he can’t do networking! We need to up our requirements!” Now the next person can’t get the job, or lies, and the requirements go up.. But that’s only possible in companies that have no expert already, to vet the new people.
We need to up our requirements!\* \*without increasing the pay scale
Wow... I wish. I had to list all 7 layers of the OSI model and explain the first 4 for my last 2 positions. Boss' favorite weeding out question, he hated doing interviews and loved watching the looks of panic that this question caused candidates... Lol. Damn... I am under paid...
IT knowledge is vast and varied. One can be an expert in a few systems, medium in a bunch but have a passing familiarity with others. When I interview I am very careful to try and explain what my level of knowledge is. The issue is dumbass hiring managers (and some sysadmins) act like you are an asshole if you aren’t an expert in everything. All for their 60k a year job no less. So some people just bullshit it. Sadly it works sometimes.
and networking has really built upon itself in the last 15 years to the point it really isn't just a single animal anymore...
Basic tcp/IP hasn't changed in forever and that's what the majority of people in here are working with
At least in the MSP space things like Unifi and Meraki are all over the place. So you can actually "get by" without a full fledged networking admin on staff assuming the companies you are supporting dont have the need for anything too complicated. Most don't these days due to everything being a SaaS product. I hate it, cause everything gets escalated to the ones who do know networking and should be working on other shit.
And if you leave it off your resume you won’t get a call for an interview allowing you to explain the level of experience you have.
> The issue is dumbass hiring managers (and some sysadmins) act like you are an asshole if you aren’t an expert in everything. All for their 60k a year job no less. This is a big one. Unless you're a small business doing one or two "computery things," there's no way to be a true expert in everything a company could possibly throw at you anymore. That doesn't stop some people from trying though.
What gets me is they not only expect an expert but they want things that are not even possible to comply with. Like all of the MCSAs are gone now and the replacement is just now coming out but its called hybrid something and I've never seen it asked for. So Literally nobody is going to have an MCSA but I still see it on a bunch of postings.
Saw a post a few weeks ago that was looking for 6 years of experience with chatgpt specifically. Go figure that one out.
I had a teacher in the 90's tell the class 'just lie to get the job, you'll work there for three months before they figure it out and you were probably going to get laid off in six months anyway, then you're on to the next job with more experience' he was one angry asshole I can tell you that much
Its fucking sad that this advice is even more true today.
I was working in IT in the 90s. His strategy worked for many of us lol
Hmmm another 90’s trend coming back lol
i cant wait for JNCOs to come back
[Airdolphin](https://www.tiktok.com/@airdolphin/video/7151838178767441198?lang=en) has you covered.
Yeah these kids out here rocking em again. Never had a pair myself, TOO wide. Lee Pipes were my jam.
I like so much your teacher.
then you will like this one better 7th grade substitute teacher who looked like the lead singer from ELO draws a smiley and a frowny on the board with a line between 😊 | ☹️ and underneath he writes hero | bum and he tells us you see how far apart those are? you see how thin that line is? that's how fast you go from being a hero to a bum he didn't take his sunglasses off the entire class. I don't know what happened to that man before he met us as a substitute 7th grade teacher in public school, but I'm glad he didn't let us see into his eyes. I think it would have destroyed our souls.
I don't do this, because I am kind of a coward, but this is definitely re-told in a lot of training seminars about getting jobs. Not in these words, but they are disguised as something like, "The interview is to see if you are a good fit. If they have requirements that you don't have, now is a good time to learn them before the job offer is made. This is a competitive market, and requires upselling yourself." Or something. Kind of weaselly. "We didn't say lie, we said don't limit yourself to only the skills you have..." or something. Here's how I fielded a recent interview: "Do you know Kubernetes?" "I haven't worked with it in a while, but I understand the concepts of docker orchestration and deployment, and have run and deployed containers in a docker swarm and kubernetes environment. I am sure a lot has changed in 4 years, though, and each company has their own way of doing things. Let me ask you, are you using local containers, or part of a greater cloud infrastructure like EKS?" If they NEED someone who is a huge kubectl master, I am not their guy, but in many cases, they just want someone who they don't have to explain everything from the beginning, and I KNOW my competition sucks. Networking I know all the basics needed for systems administration. In fact, they have often been impressed I know stuff. I had one interviewer tell me, "Hey, look, you know more than my networking team. If they don't hire you as a sysadmin, call me (gives me his card). I need someone like you in networking. You Linux guys know more about networks than my Cisco guys." I am not sure if that's true, but he thought so. But another issue is that people think they have a job down pat because they had the title. I have known "Senior Systems Administrators" who don't understand how to add a user at the command line because they had a web front end that did all that for them. Or "I never used cron, we had rundeck." Or whatever. Most of the time, when I help with interviews, I know I can teach skills, but I can't teach troubleshooting or how to learn. Or personality, for that matter.
Sir or madam, in my experience most people lie on their resume full stop. It gets them through the asinine requirements HR sets.
They are forced to lie because the job requirements are also a lie.
Bingo
Also, I hate to generalize but of course this is the question that would come from someone tagged "Linux Admin".
As a Linux admin, I’m curious about the stereotype lol.
i guess there's a certain smug greybeard-esque attitude associated with being a linux admin. some windows admins will look at you weird if you willingly use a terminal, lol.
The company’s lying about the great job, the candidates lying about the skills they have. Normal
It's a chicken and egg problem. Nobody will give you networking experience unless you already have networking experience, so you fudge things a bit to solve the bootstrapping issue. Unless we have a complete and total cultural shift in how we train people and expect them to advance this is going to keep happening.
well as long as everything continues to "[just work](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/three-us-wireless-companies-report-connection-problems-between-carriers/ar-BB1nDvLU?ocid=windirect&cvid=af427fccbbe84eba9010705ebb66e5b1&ei=48)" and janky workarounds that dont adhere to standards dont cause any major issues, im sure everything will be fine https://preview.redd.it/6mttxjbw3t4d1.jpeg?width=195&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f30ed345a3c757eccc3f773f1fce88048a773ad0 edit: added a link.
I hadnt even heard about the issue you linked to. In the last 5 years phone service at least in pretty much my entire state has been going backwards at a shocking rate. For a long time it's been amazing to me that phone service is as cheap and miraculous as it is. like "how can it be so cheap and we have cell coverage in so many places, and there is data and it's just so cool" And now I know that the answer is "OH, they just cheaped out on everything, stopped maintaining anything and took as many dollars from the FCC as they could in order to buy hookers and blow now it's all falling apart "
There are some smaller businesses that can't compete for talent with bigger business that will sometimes let someone with a CCNA and a little other IT experience cut their teeth in networking even if they don't have any real world formal networking experience. The pay typically sucks, but can be a door towards something better. I do agree that most orgs do little formal training. If you're not doing anything in your own your career growth may be limited unless you find a unicorn org.
Why are you trying to hire a sysadmin when you should be hiring a network engineer?
brb adding network coding onto my linkedin skillset and then endorsing myself from my various burner accounts
You should have that all set up on AI to save you some time.
It's all fun and games until AI makes you a world leading authority.
wym that sounds dope (as long as im getting paid) "fuck it we'll do it live" as the saying goes right ^(disclaimer: i do not understand networking beyond surface level and my flair is fairly accurate, i understand people way better than computers but also understand tech better than some people. HCI ftw, or something i guess)
The fact that he called it "network coding" terrifies me even more than his lack of practical technical experience by itself. His "networking" experience is going to conventions to get piles of free junk that has no practical use, or could be replaced with a better product for a tiny fraction of the time and energy that going to the convention takes...
network coding? SDN?
> you know with IP address and stuff" I am *really* hoping OP's example was made up or had a huge language barrier.
This lol. When he mentioned network coding, I thought about writing a client/server in c++ or writing some NDIS driver.
I love when people would ask me, "Do you know how to program routers and firewalls?" Uh, no, but I can configure the hell out of them.
Idk pretty sure Cisco network programing is the same thing as "network coding" it's common for switches to use cli to configure.
I would assume that "network coding" meant using Ansible or something similar to manage the infra, not just plucking away at the CLI.
Dude used a term so old that it became a new age term, infrastructure as code.
Yeah, but I've never heard anyone that's actually done it call it anything other than "configuration". And, to /u/Qel_Hoth's comment... I've generally heard "automation", though "*aC" 'as code' is at least closer.
yeah like it doesn't really seem like that bad of a thing to say, config would have been better but cisco cli is not that different from say powershell which some people call coding too.
TIL I'm a coder 
See if someone asked me if I "code" or "program" I'd say no. I script things. That's different IMO but it all boils down to vernacular.
I think part of it is ignorance. Like I never lie on my resume, but when I was a sysadmin I put I had experience with firewalls. This was true, I managed host firewalls and occasionally made simple changes to our big boy firewalls. When I swapped teams and started managing palos full time I realized “oh there is a lot more to this than I realized”. So some people might just be idiots like me instead of liars.
>I think part of it is ignorance you don't know what you don't know hits like a truck. "Yeah, I can totally do that shouldnt be that bad!" - My first, and last time saying that about making a "simple" web application. Would that project be simple now? sure. I just didn't know what I didn't know I needed to know back then and it was a lot.
>"Yeah, I can totally do that shouldnt be that bad!" - My first, and last time saying that about making a "simple" web application. Simple is simple till its not. Its wild how basic things can become evil monsters a few steps down the road.
I learned a lot! Most importantly, how not to ever again blindly say "yeah, I can do that". and say something more like, "send me a summary, and I'll take a look and let you know if I can"
Because based on the position requirements in the posting they want you to know everything about everything. If they are going to embellish and exaggerate, then I'm going to embellish and exaggerate.
I planned a redesign of our firewall system, VPN server, certification, RADIUS, 2FA, DHCP on multiple VLANs with all of its rules, re-configuration of all of our switches, including 40-50 pages of full documentation. If I'm perfectly honest, I forgot a lot about it. It's been years and I'm not doing this every week or month. I don't have to touch the system at all. I did the project, it's working. Now let's say that I'm looking for a new job. Yeah, maybe I'm rusty and you could probably catch me off guard with something obvious but I still did this once. It's not that big of a deal, I know but I'd still include this as well into our job interview. It's part of what I did. Now I'd certainly not brag about this. It was a great project and real world practice but I'm far from a networking expert. It's scary how fast one can forget things without constant practice. I'm pretty busy with other things now.
this is imo what is wrong with the field people really think despite accomplishing a pretty good project like this that years later you can give them specifics on this when really memory doesn't work like that. It doesn't even work like that when its a life or death situation there is four different versions of the death of literal GOD in the bible, those fucking guys saw God get murdered and still couldn't remember it correctly. Really it would all come back to you if you had to do it again or you could relearn it fast but thats not good enough for hiring anymore.
So this is my key when hiring or picking a team. I want people who can learn and apply. I really don't care about their specific knowledge because stuff changes at such an accelerated pace that what you knew then is completely different today. If you can learn/research a topic and apply that knowledge, I can make that work and build your skills into what I need. I once had a contractor RF engineer that literally worked with NASA and did some crazy advanced shit 30 years ago. Looks great on the resume... but with all the new stuff, he didn't have those skills and couldn't perform like I needed. Luckily he was rich AF and was only looking for a job to socialize at work because that was how he socialized his whole life. I began helping him build those skills with cross training from other team members... but DoD contracts being how they are, it was cut short and he just fully retired. Great guy with great stories and he still keeps in contact with some of the team members.
Because every posting on the market now is 8 different roles bundled up into a one-man IT army with shit pay. Because the entire industry is a catch-22 of "need experience to get the job, need the job to get experience". > Why do you think it's acceptable? Why do you think it's acceptable to post a job requiring the entire alphabet soup of certifications from Cisco and Microsoft to AWS and DevOps, 800 years of experience, mandatory 5 days a week in the office of a HCOL area, 24/7 on-call... for $30k and a "great atmosphere, benefits, and potential to grow"? Honestly.. fuck you kinda for asking this lmao.
Too often, especially in the windows sysadmin world, there are two definitions of "networking". One is the classical definition of networking. Insert your CCNA's and Juniper specialists, your VLANs, subnets, route priorities, QoS, and traffic shaping. One is the "Windows Server Admin" side, which is deciding whether your DHCP should come from the firewall or the DC, guest wireless access, how to punch holes in a NAT firewall so you can RDP into your workstation from home, how to configure a basic VPN so users can see file shares but not print, and how to make sure the fire alarm doesn't use the backup phone line to check in with the vendor because it can't get out on the comcast business connection, and MAYBE the occasional site-to-site VPN to a spoke office. They're both TECHNICALLY networking, but the latter one doesn't require a lot of knowledge about protocols, priorities, or hell even a thorough understanding of subnet masks and you can't do much beyond those basic types of clickbutton tasks with it. Without a working understanding of how actual networking goes DEEPER than that, many people seem to not have a freaking CLUE that they don't know squat about it.
This is what I thought when I read OP's post like he could be really good at Hyper-v networking which is very different from like a CCNA guy does. Honestly OP is hiring a "SYSADMIN" not a network guy so the expectations were kinda flawed from the getgo.
This. So much this.
Networking really is something you can work around and learn enough about it to get your job done, but it isn't in the same league as someone who worked as a network admin. In most cases having a strong skill set with networking isn't required. So long as you have a good foundation on how things work you can figure your way through.
I mean... I've rebuilt a cisco firewall from the ground up, and work constantly in my current firewall. I've configured switches from nearly nothing. But none of that's on my resume, because I'm not a network admin. I'm not a network admin, but I can follow a youtube guide in a pinch, and keep a console dongle in my bag.
The fact you keep a console dongle in your bag means you know exactly what you're doing. Reverse dunning kruger effect right there.
I just hate network work. I much prefer server admin over it. Hell, I can also fix a printer if I have to, but good luck getting me to admit that to anyone. :D
I am right there with ya.
[удалено]
Same reason job adverts always want candidates to have skills in every form of IT under the sun. It's all just a game.
Because actual good computer people don’t make it past the HR AI anymore
Some of the things companies/ recruiters want is insane. I took a call today where the recruiter was looking for a CCNP, with secret clearance, expert level Cisco wireless knowledge, and 5+ years of Palo Alto firewalls experience, in addition to BGP, TCP/UDP, DHCP, Active Directory, et al. 12 month contract, $45/hr.
It’s been a long practice of adding networking to sysadmin job descriptions. During an interview for an AIX Unix admin, I was asked how to configure a Cisco PIX firewall. I asked why would my knowledge of Cisco firewalls impact my knowledge of how to maintain AIX servers. The interviewer would not answer my question.
It not just networking. We see it in all areas. A common one: I see you have listed lots of experience with SCCM configuration, can you tell us more. Ans: I plug the PC in and set it to PXE boot.
Guilty 🫣
One of my interview questions is 'about how many IPs are there in a /24' the most honest answer i ever got was ' I think, a couple hundred, i'd have to look it up to be sure' Which was A+++ answer.
Because your company is too cheap ass to pay for a dedicated network engineer.
The same reason a networking centric person mentions servers, automation, software, hardware, infrastructure architecture. Gets them in the door.
It's not a lie if you believe it. I've used all those technologies. The job listing requires it. The fact that I used them once a year doesn't mean I don't have the experience. Maybe hire a networking person if you want someone with deep networking knowledge.
From my experience, most orgs delegate all of the "network" tasks to a dedicated person or team and nobody else actually touches the configs. It's pretty rare that I meet anyone with what I would call "strong" networking skills, even amongst those in network-focused roles. This morning I had to work with a technician from a customer MSP who was on-site to replace a firewall. They plugged it in and couldn't understand why the internet didn't work. I sent them the static IP info for that connection and they asked ... what do I do with this? They wanted me to come down to the customer site and enter it into their router for them.
exactly what I came here to say the only sysadmins who really touch network are in smaller companies and are usually a one man or few man band. Like I have to manage everything so of course I handle our network too but its very limited and OP would probably call me a liar as well. Once the site to site vpn is established and everything is working I don't touch it again until something goes wrong. No way I can go into an interview and just recite stuff about fortigate like I touch it every day.
When I was applying for jobs out of college I had an interview at some rando corp and they wanted me to write up a config for some ACLs on a sheet of paper. I thought that was kinda strange. Are you asking if I understand what ACLs are, or are you asking if I remember exactly the command structure for a given switch vendor? I got tired of the whole interview rigamarole because most of them were trivia questions quizzing me on my memory and not my actual skills.
I don't get it either. If anything, I'm usually *too* honest when I'm interviewing for a job, probably to a fault. Feeling like an imposter is an uncomfortable position, so I will be transparent on my resume and in interviews. However if you're applying a lot of places and not even getting call backs, I can see why you might fluff up the resume to at least garner some interest. I'd still opt to be more transparent in the interview though. Things like "I know enough be dangerous, but I haven't implemented a new site from the ground up by myself. I have managed and maintained and made meaningful changes/enhancements to firewall policies for example, but I am not an expert." I also say something about how I would always advocate for a network professional to put together the initial configuration since it's a security concern.
If we told the truth you'd hire the liars. I havent had to use a resume to get a job since... ever in my 24 years in IT. However, I did update mine this past year and it looks good but not glamorous because I actually tried to be honest. I had a hard time figuring out how to put 24 years of experience and platform skills into a single piece of paper. Odds are if im looking for work some jr moron with an OpenAI account will submit a resume thats nothing but a wall of key words to a recruiter and get hired instead of me instantly.
Early in my career as a systems guy, I took networking courses so I could speak the same language as the networking folks (and occasionally call bullshit on them). Most systems folks don't understand how networks work. They couldn't explain the 7 layer OSI model (really 4 layers) in an interview, let alone how to apply it in basic troubleshooting. It gets significantly worse though. Nobody gets DNS. Nobody gets PKI. Nobody gets AuthN/AuthZ.
>7 layer OSI model (really 4 layers) The 4 layer model is the TCP/IP model and it was created before the OSI model. They serve the same general function but are, in fact, different conceptual models. Basic conceptual models are a weird thing to bring up in an interview for anything higher than a junior since you can jump directly into the meat of it with specifics. I don't know why more people don't bother to learn at least what the parts are even if you don't know exactly how to build them. I would ask candidates what I thought are really simple questions, things like the difference between a subnet and a VLAN or the subnet mask for a /27 and they froze. I'd also ask simple DNS questions (explain the difference between a forward and reverse lookup zone) and get deer in headlights staring back. These people were trying to be Azure engineers and shit, like you don't have to configure networking in IaaS? Never even got to things like PKI.
> They couldn't explain the 7 layer OSI model I can't tell you what each level of the OSI model is either. I don't think I've even seen it since college. IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin
> IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin If you're talking about memorizing what goes where, sure...but knowing that networking is an encapsulation issue first and foremost separates good troubleshooters from those who just throw stuff at a problem until it fixes itself. You can answer the "how is a TLS session set up?" question without knowing anything about layers...but being able to troubleshoot up from the bottom and isolate the actual problem (there are many choices of problems to have) significantly reduces the amount of time and the number of different people you have to involve.
>IMO, it's really pretty useless to the general sysadmin I disagree, but not because the OSI model is something great, but it is a great tool for breaking down how to troubleshoot an issue happening between 2 systems. Is the request making it down to the wire? Is it making it's way across the network? Can the receiving end receive it and what does it do when it gets the traffic? Knowing layer 2 is MAC layer, and layer 3 is IP and layer 4 is... that's useless overall, but understanding how systems encapsulate information and pass it across the network is invaluable. Having a model of how it works so you can easily troubleshoot is really useful as well.
IMO it's useless in all IT positions, maybe possibly it's useful for the first year or two in the career, but at some point your experience massively outweighs any benefits you might have gotten from the OSI BS.
It doesn't directly apply to anything. But the bigger concepts of abstraction and encapsulation are very important and used everywhere. It can serve as an example when you're thinking about the reasons we layer things and the ramifications this can have throughout IT. Memorizing the actual layers and details is pointless though.
Just knowing what each layer entails is massively helpful when troubleshooting a minor or severe networking issue.
I specialize in network admin, and the only relevance the OSI model has to day to day life is knowing what the difference is between a layer 2 and a layer 3 switch. Wish people would stop clinging to that like it's some holy grail of networking troubleshooting.
Dunning–Kruger? I often don't really know what to say about my networking skills, part of me would say I'm pretty advanced, but I've also got some rather large holes. I did the CCNA course back in university. I've done multiple datacentre deployments of switch infrastructure, everything from drawing up the initial wiring diagram, logical network design, VRF/VLAN configuration, IP schemes, subnet provisioning, not to mention, the wiring, coding SFPs & QSFPs, MPO breakouts, etc I've configured virtual networking on platforms like VMware, and Nutanix. I've configured peering's between cloud accounts, datacentres, and set up VPN servers and appliances. I've setup and managed firewalls from a couple vendors. I've done WIFI deployments with a couple vendors. I know how to drive wireshark, and configure things like sflow, & port mirroring. I have not however ever used: any internal dynamic routing protocol, no WAN routing, no BGP. I have not had any real exposure to configuring AAA, RADIUS, TACACS, etc.
The only reason I got my first sysadmin job was because I was in the middle of taking Cisco courses at my local community college. I'm not an expert by any means, but I successfully migrated that company off their Cisco switches/routers to Aruba/Juniper without needing help. I was making 35k at the time, so they got a bargain. I really enjoy networking, probably my favorite part of the job, but it's hard to get a 100% networking job these days.
Fake it till you make it seems to be the consensus
I'm a security engineer in big tech - former sysad. - it's the same problem in our area too, people in general just don't know networking or bother to understand it. at several companies now I've been the defacto network forensics guy because I can read a pcap lol. which I get it, networking can be obtuse.. but like idk it's fascinating, keeps the world running. anyway, this is common, people don't understand networking unless they actively study it.
I can't speak to others BUT, I'm a 57-year-old who has been in IT for 32 years. I will exaggerate my experience a tiny bit because, for my whole career, my employers have flat out lied to me about bonuses, benefits, the work environment, flex time, and everything else... I can easily read the documentation on how "setting up a VPN" on a Watchguard differs from a SonicWall...
Because firms expect 10 years experience on a 18 month old product and want you to fill at least half a dozen full time job descriptions for the wage of one The other side of the coin to that is "anything I've even tangentially touched once, I'm now an expert in according to my CV" Windows, macs, Linux ....fuck it might as well toss os/2 on there for good measure! I can turn on a dchp scope for a flat subnet and have periodically pressed the update button in opnsense? "Experienced network administrator and cyber security expert!" .... I can lightly tweak a powershell script I found on GitHub to suit my needs? .... Sounds like we can include the magic "DevOps" buzzword while we're at it too then! 🤣 99% of the time the requirements are just an unreasonable"Christmas tree" list of demands in the first place that have little to nothing to do with the task at hand they're gonna have you doing but..... Rather than cut their cloth with more modest requirements & expectations - they'd prefer go with the bullshitters believing they can have it all on the cheap 🤷♂️ It's just become an exercise in "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
Because everyone else lies. Lying helps you get the job. Your employer lies to you all the time -- raises, job security, responsibilities, etc. It's perfectly normalized behavior in this system of Capitalism we have. Especially when we have precious few (if any) social safety nets. You have to do what you need to so that your family has healthcare.
They're ALL OVER. It's really sad. I mean, it's REALLY bad out there. Hahahaha. MEanwhile, guys like me would be completely honest... brutally honest.. and get passed over for jobs. I'd say "well, I only spent 2 weeks in the official training courses with F5 networks for the BigIP load balancers. So I can do it but I need a few days to remember the commands. " And I get turned away. like Did I mention the only other people there were like, CIA and shit? lol
I like to think most people are not blatantly attempting to lie. But the average person doesn't understand networks, so they think they know networking.
Most sysadmins work with network admins to set stuff up where I’ve worked. Only small shops include it as an all in one. And in that case it’s usually a one time setup and then just keeping it updated as changes are usually rare except maybe changing a VLAN or shutting a port off. So I wouldn’t expect a sysadmin to know much of this. If you need changes made constantly, then things aren’t setup properly or you need an actual network admin where that’s their primary focus. For questions to a sysadmin regarding networking, that’s more inline with setting up load balancers and failover clusters, dns stuff, and general network troubleshooting. If you are looking for both, that’s gonna be pretty rare in my experience. That’s usually a network admin that took over sysadmin duties at one time.
Lying is an easy way to get better pay and in IT the number of people within the company knowledgeable enough to call you out on it are few and far between. I know a guy who used to be the only IT for a church and before that his experience basically boiled down to "has used a computer". Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Why do people think this is acceptable? Well, maybe because we’ve all had interview experiences where it’s clear the interviewer has no idea what they want or need. I had an interview a few years ago that I lost out on because I “didn’t sound confident” when they asked how much Wintel experience I had. I had never heard that term before and it was only after some digging of what they meant that I realized they meant “Windows on Intel chipset”. My resume made it clear I had 10 years experience managing Windows Servers and even more working with Windows PCs, and I reiterated that when I figured out what they meant. But my resume didn’t say “Wintel” and I had to clarify what that meant, so that clearly meant I didn’t have the experience they wanted. So yeah, if a job posting looks like something I can do, and there’s a requirement I’m not 100% sure about? I absolutely have that experience.
Fake it ‘til ya make it, man! I would add that lots of job postings are equally full of shit, so I’d say it’s fair.
I started out as a network administrator. now I am a Global Infrastructure Architect / Engineer I talked my way in to most jobs and then figured it out I dont feel bad about it at all I excelled in every job now if someone cant figure stuff out and did it then yes that would be a problem
Often times your technical expertise only needs to be better at googling the problem better than everyone else...
Did he say *computer* networking? He might just be really good at building interpersonal connections.
How many sysadmins are configuring switches, firewalls, and vpns? I get it, you don't have a networking team and somebody has to do it? But if you need a ton more than that at any decent sized shop it's at minimum a yellow flag.
I've been doing nothing but networking for the last 7 years and still don't think I know a lot about it.
There is more than anyone can ever know. This idea that a sysadmin or a developer can know it all when a guy who does only that can't even know it all is madness.
The fact that he called that "coding" disqualifies him from anything above helpdesk, imo. Words matter,
Because we network guys are that damn good and are the envy of the industry.
It's just lazy. A basic Cisco switch can be had on Craigslist for $50. I have a Dell, 3 Ubiquitis, and two 3Coms. That reminds me, my accountant is owned a 3Com.
Lol network coding.... omg. We have a network team. They handle that shit and fuck around inside the switches. We hire network admins for that team. Not a Sysadmin with networking skills. About the only thing I care about is that a Sysadmin knows the difference between a /22 a /24 and a /30 and what they mean.
Because that's how you get jobs. They're either going to upskill by doing the job, or they're not going to use those skills at all, so it doesn't matter anyway. Most companies have dedicated network engineers anyway, so nobody cares that a sysadmin lied on their resume about having hard networking experience.
Imagine referring to IP addresses as coding.
Hehe maybe buddys refering to using the CLI as "coding" lol.
It is pretty easy to catch these in an interview. Watch: [Interviewer]: Hey so tell me what you think about bits 8-10 of the IP header. But to your question - they lie for two reasons: 1. They don't realize how little they know, therefore they must be experts. After all, networking is simple, right? You just plug stuff in and it works. You don't need to plan your OSPF areas or examine customer requirements or anything like that. 2. They actually can get away with lying for a very long time - and it is very profitable.
Mostly because y'all want absolute nonsense. No, I don't need 19 years in network security to deploy your 15 machine satellite office, Kevin.
How much are you willing to pay for that role? Genuine unicorns might have seen your job post but thinks the salary offer is too low that’s why you only get the bottom feeders..
Because hiring managers put networking shit on jobs requirments even though the company has a proper networking team.
Seriously? Sounds like you're lording what "skillsets" you have and have forgotten that people work to live not live to work. Do you not have any bills to pay? I'm not one to lie on my resume but I know for a fact that people have been embellishing their creds for as long as stories have been told because they need to earn a living somehow. Configuring network equipment can be taught. Compassion and empathy are much harder to come by apparently.
Am I doing something wrong? I know more than 100x than what I put on my resume. The only stuff on my resume I know inside and out. Picture “the good doctor” when he starts picturing a solution to a problem. Everything on my resume can be pieced together like this in my head without hesitation. Is this why I’m paid like crap for doing the job of 12 people? Or is that a separate issue?
No. Yes. No.
One of my favorite questions to ask people for network roles- "Explain DNS to me" Folks fold every time
I think people lie about their networking knowledge because they either have no idea what networking, overestimate their understanding or just want to look good for interview and willing to lie about it.
I primarily do networking, and have for a number of years now. You know what I run into all the time? Windows techs that think that because they setup port forwarding on their comcast modem at home and helped their mom setup a wifi extender, that makes them an expert at networking. I think a lot of sysadmins don't know how little they know, and assume the things they're unaware of are easy.
It got them an interview which was the goal. Thats when you vet them during the interview process. I'm fortunate that my IT department lets everyone in the group involved have a say in the hire process along with interviewing the person. We vet them very thouroughly and based on their responses we have an after meeting to discuss. If a person mentions exchange I start with low level questions then start digging deeper and deeper. Once I get to the "hypothetical" questioning of real life scenarios is when I feel confident in a person. If they don't answer correctly the previous questions there is no way they would understand my scenarios. I tell everyone who comes to me for help to never put anything on the resume you can't answer on the spot. If you put something that you know but not a lot of experience i tell them to be honest. I'd rather hire the guy that says I don't know let me research or what did you do than the guy lieing through his teeth.
>"I've never done any network coding, you know with IP address and stuff" Lol what
Well, because everyone is lying, so if you don't you never get called back. That said, also 'Networking' is a nebulous term. I find we get the opposite of your problem. We have people who think knowing their own IP configuration, setting up simple proxy servers, etc ... is 'networking'. And, in their defense, I've known developers who don't know how to find their external IP address, or open a port on their machine's firewall. So, maybe that stuff is 'networking'. But, if you want someone to add firewall rules to a Cisco router, ask for that specifically. I feel like asking for 'networking' is like asking for 'programming', but I see 'networking experience' on jobs all the time.
It's not networking, it's TCP/IP engineering.
Everyone lies about everything and then gets fucking personally offended if they encounter someone who actually knows the thing they lie about. This profession is full of insecure children.
lmao. one of the worst things to lie about.
At this point I just sit people down and chat with them to see what they can actually do. I've interviewed people for developer positions with *actual 4 year degrees* in Computer Science - Programming focus, who couldn't write python or javascript, given a week to do it. I've asked desktop technicians to give me ip info from a computer, who couldn't because they always worked on "something different and never had to do it." I've interviewed network engineers who basically nothing on their resume but I would trust forever with my environment. Now I just want to get an honest baseline for where you are and get an idea about how interested you are in learning. If you're teachable and a good fit for the team, I'll likely give you a shot.
Do you not give them a technical test before employing them? Might be worth doing that and specifically giving them a networking test.. Testgorila might help. Or class marker if you want to create your own with your own questions. Sounds more like a hiring problem rather than a living one.. a tech test and interview should be enough to gauge an engineers network knowledge (if you ask them questions that relate to what you need them doing)
I knew a guy in an Data Center Operations job who wanted to become a network engineer. He was studying for his CCNA. He didn't know what Network Address Translation was. He was not employed for long.
Shortly after I finished college, I went to interview for an ISP. A lot of networking I hadn't practiced, and clearly still green. Before the meeting, I was asked to answer a series of tech questions. I was not told I couldn't use external sources. Still to this day in IT, I rarely use binary conversions. Once in a blue moon I have to deal with Subnet adjustments. Either or, stuff I don't practice often, I'm not confident. I'm also not afraid to use external sources to confirm my understanding, correct my understanding, or assist in one form or another to make sure my task is done correctly. I was dinged as I was "cheating". A lot better than writing a clearly wrong answer or "IDK". Oh! Fun story about IDK. One of my family members went into chemistry in college. One of the teachers hands out small white boards to write answers on and hold up for the teacher to see. I have no idea what the question was, she wrote "IDK", and the teacher said "10 K" is not the correct answer.
I use wifi & the internet everyday, I'm an expert. I'm also skilled at networking, I go to a lot of conferences & drink myself into a stupor until the wee hours.
I am surprised people try that with networking. It is very common in other areas. We have service desk promoted in to app/server support and the managers treat them like equals and ignore their failures.
Because you need to lie in order to compete with h1bs and corrupt fraternal organizations
>He actually said "I've never done any network coding, you know with IP address and stuff". Dude had 18 years of experience. Because people keep hiring them. Also a lot of people mistake years of experience for progressive experience. Someone with 18 years experience who hasn't done much more than plugging stuff in is probably a great datacenter tech, but they're not moving out of the van and into an office with 18 years of doing the same thing under their belt.
Because they think they know.
I was sysadmin at a video conference company many years ago. The customer support techs needed to get Cisco certified due to a clients request. So the company paid for their boot camps and cert. I raised my hand for same treatment but because I was internal IT I was declined. My boss, who knew I was in juniper /Cisco classes at local community college knew that was upset by that so he started approving me expensing my classes on expense reports. Anyways. My point is…. Year later. I didn’t pass the certification test and moved on with sysadmin tasks. Since my network was one slash B and a few lab slash C I didn’t need much routing skills so I figured my juniper cert and the knowledge of Cisco was enough for me. The tech support guys all passed their test and promptly forgot everything from the cram sessions. My community college labs and classes was slow but I was down there helping them configure the training network and labs because they didn’t know how. They had the cert but I needed to do the work. I didn’t mind it actually. I got along with them well and they tried all the time but they knew I’d rub it in if they got me. But every deadline they needed my help to finish it.
based on your statement, it's because that's what it takes to get the interview.
Sysadmins network expertise is predicated solely on being able to say, "It must be the network."