Network/Telecom Engineer least stressful job? - Page 2

Danny_Ocean · 10-31-2009, 03:32 PM

My recent hell:

Although not the actual "closet" I was working in, it was located in the only bathroom in a small real estate office. And...every 30 mins., one of the geezer agents decided they had to go and would blow out their morning coffee/donuts/bratwurst.

Took me forever to set everything up as I refused to re-enter until 30 mins. had passed after each bathroom break.

masraum · 10-31-2009, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott R

Sitting on a network outage right now.... Only the network is up.

Hahahah, LMAO. Isn't that always the way.

We have server folks and application folks, and they open tickets with us all of the time. "Can't xxx to server" or "server xxx can't talk to server yyy"

You can ping the servers, and you can remote desktop into the servers and/or telnet to/from the servers. Or, the other half of the time it turns out some service on the servers stopped and they have to restart the server or bounce the box.

Or, my favorite, "the network is down, because we can't get to the 1 server in the network of 300 that are all sitting in the same room", or these days, on the same damn VMWare box. That's the one that I like, 10 servers all on one piece of hardware, 9 of the servers work fine, but the network is down because the one isn't talking.

Funny, they never check that crap before they open the ticket.

masraum · 10-31-2009, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slakjaw

When I decide enough is enough and its time to move on from this line of work I think I will just pull every card out of the front end of whatever switch I happen to be near. Then I will call it in and say "I think we are having an outage"

LOL

OK seriously, if It wouldn't land me in jail... I might.

When I worked on the TAC, we would occasionally get cases where someone had gotten fired and erased a bunch of configs before they left. Of course, in the instances where someone who's been fired has the opportunity to do that, it's also the case where there are no config backups or documentation, so they are usually screwed.

masraum · 10-31-2009, 03:50 PM

One of my other favorites, a T1 to a remote site goes down. Some guy's got a server that gets real time data from the site. He calls up to say he can't get his data.

Me: They've got bad storms and flooding in the area, the circuit is down, I've opened a ticket with the telco to fix the circuit. They are sending a guy out to fix it.

Them: When will it be fixed?

Me: I don't know, whenever they get it fixed. Because of the storms in the area, all of the technicians are working on similar issues throughout the entire region. They may have to wait for flooding to subside. It could be 15 minutes or a day and a half. Unfortunately, I just don't know.

Them: So when do you think it might be fixed?

Me: I really couldn't say

Them: So do you think it'll be working again soon?

Me: It could be, or it could be tomorrow. They can't even tell me.

Them: But they'll probably get it fixed pretty fast, right?

Me:

masraum · 10-31-2009, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danny_Ocean

My recent hell:

Although not the actual "closet" I was working in, it was located in the only bathroom in a small real estate office. And...every 30 mins., one of the geezer agents decided they had to go and would blow out their morning coffee/donuts/bratwurst.

Took me forever to set everything up as I refused to re-enter until 30 mins. had passed after each bathroom break.

My worst wasn't that bad, but it was pretty appalling. I went to a remote unmanned location in Ogden Utah. They had 10-15 Cisco AS5300s, a 5509, and a couple of smaller devices in a room that was about 10'x10'. When I opened the door, I was hit by air that must have been piped in from Arizona in Aug. I left the door open and went inside. There was one of those outdoor thermometers bolted to one of the racks. It was showing 130° in the room. There was an oscillating fan in the room swirling the hot air all around. I noticed that there was a drop ceiling, so I figured I'd pop a couple of the tiles out and let the heat up into the ceiling. I popped a tile out and discovered that there was a cement ceiling 6" above the drop ceiling. The room was completely sealed.

mikester · 11-01-2009, 07:06 AM

I was working for one of the local cable companies for a while and we were having some unusually significant rain (for LA).

One of the hubs was underground and a few days prior to the rain some roadwork had been done.

Apparently they damaged something in the roadwork right above the switch and the water poured down on it.

Needless to say the hub went completely down. It had been flooded by a couple of feet of water. Most of the hardware was mounted higher than that but the water came in right on top of the switch.

When they dried the place out I had to go in there and fix it. I powered on the switch AND IT CAME BACK UP!

I hated that hub.

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by masraum

Hahahah, LMAO. Isn't that always the way.

We have server folks and application folks, and they open tickets with us all of the time. "Can't xxx to server" or "server xxx can't talk to server yyy"

You can ping the servers, and you can remote desktop into the servers and/or telnet to/from the servers. Or, the other half of the time it turns out some service on the servers stopped and they have to restart the server or bounce the box.

Or, my favorite, "the network is down, because we can't get to the 1 server in the network of 300 that are all sitting in the same room", or these days, on the same damn VMWare box. That's the one that I like, 10 servers all on one piece of hardware, 9 of the servers work fine, but the network is down because the one isn't talking.

Funny, they never check that crap before they open the ticket.

Yea, that's a good one, 50 virtual guests on the same vswitch, 49 of them work fine. Oh yea, and this particular traffic isn't leaving the vswitch since it's between two hosts on the same damn vswitch. GENIUS!

Wickd89 · 11-01-2009, 11:40 AM

Very stressful.
Outsourcing is huge in this industry and workload is increasing all the time. Doing more with less, and not sure your job will be eliminated is a constrant stress in telecom and even more in wireless.
You also have to keep up with engineering tools, and technologies so this is a never ending requirement to increase your skills.

Not like being a teacher of one subject in school: latin, english or algregra. This cannot be stressful since you are teaching the same thing year after year after year...
Now if you teach an ever changing subject, that must be demanding....

mikester · 11-01-2009, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wickd89

Very stressful.
Outsourcing is huge in this industry and workload is increasing all the time. Doing more with less, and not sure your job will be eliminated is a constrant stress in telecom and even more in wireless.
You also have to keep up with engineering tools, and technologies so this is a never ending requirement to increase your skills.

No kidding, take a look at my outsourcing thread. My company has been reviewing outsourcing their infrastructure groups over the last year. It was supposed to be either done or not in October but got pushed back for a board vote in November.

In the mean time, they pretty much aren't offering any retention packages to speak of. HR's response to that idea was 'if they think they can find a better job in this economy - maybe they should take it.' Now almost all of our DBAs have quit, a third of our systems engineering team has left and we're down to a couple of network engineers (myself included). The only reason I've stayed is because of some 'plans b' I have in the works. Those however are coming to a head and I'm going to have to make a choice in a couple of weeks I'm sure.