Network/Telecom Engineer least stressful job?

masraum · 10-29-2009, 10:17 AM

Oh Really!?!?

Least stressful jobs - Telecommunications Network Engineer (6) - Money Magazine

Quote:

6. Telecommunications Network Engineer
Telecommunications Network Engineer
Best Jobs rank: 30
% who say their job is low stress: 55.6%

The task of keeping phone lines and wireless networks clear and operating properly sounds tough, but most of these specialized engineers have the skills and training to make problem-solving a snap. Sure, tricky situations often crop up that require some intense troubleshooting -- but many telecom network engineers say that's the best part of the job.

Apparently, I have a very low stress job.

Tim Walsh · Tim Walsh's Garage

Sure until your data center goes down for some unknown reason and you realize you've got tens of thousands of people who are looking for the services that just went down. or your VoIP project gets bumped up 6 months and suddenly you've got 1000 switches to reconfigure in the next 2 weeks. Not that I've ever exprienced that or anything, Ohh wait that was just this week

VINMAN · 10-29-2009, 10:52 AM

Its extremely stressful! Damn, I just knocked my coffee all over my desk with my foot!

It's mostly long periods of boredom with the rare occasional rip your hair out moments of panic.

masraum · 10-29-2009, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VINMAN

Its extremely stressful! Damn, I just knocked my coffee all over my desk with my foot!

It's mostly long periods of boredom with the rare occasional rip your hair out moments of panic.

I once spent a month at Western Digital's corp HQ at Irvine Center. We'd arrive in the morning and start the countdown for lunch. After lunch we'd start the countdown for quittin' time. It was horrible.

Honestly, if one of the desktop guys came in and said that someone had an IP address conflict and they needed us to track down the other MAC address, we'd fight over it and who ever lost would watch over the winner's shoulder. It was that boring. We'd often take 2 hour lunchs.

Fortunately, most of my jobs have been places that were constantly busy. I started by working at the Cisco TAC, so you never really see exactly the same thing twice. Then I spent a year travelling for Sprint, then after getting laid off in 2001 back to the TAC to learn security, NMS and VoIP. After that I went to a service provider that provided VOIP and Data over satellite (600-800ms ping times) all over the world (mostly the oil industry, but also Halliburton). Now I work for an energy company. We've had non-stop projects since I started. I worked for a year as an hourly contractor working 55-60hrs per week ($$$) and now I've been permanent for about 9 months, so I'm down to 45 or 50 hrs per week.

I actually have enjoyed it. It can be stressful, but not so much that I wonder when the heart attack is coming.

HardDrive · 10-29-2009, 11:32 AM

WTF? I was an network engineer for 12 years (still am I suppose). Yeah, there could be periods of relative calm, but there could also be times (many) of sheer panic. You've got e-mail/telephone/fax server/etc...down, and you turn around, and there is the president of the company and the entire sales staff looking at you through the glass of the sever room looking very unhappy. Yeah, no stress....pffffftttt!

stomachmonkey · 10-29-2009, 12:53 PM

Ohhh, how about having a natural gas fired generator backing up your UPS which is fed by local power company then feeds the entire worldwide HQ and central data centers clean regulated redundant power. You sleep really well until that morning that you get the call at 3 am that the building is dead.

Your just happy you're not the guy who left the UPS's modem line dangling next to the jack unplugged so when a couple of guys are in the room doing work in the ceiling and leave a ceiling tile covering the exhaust fan on the UPS causing it to overheat and frantically try to page someone which fails (see modem line issue) for so long that it shuts itself down before it burns out in turn killing everything in the building in one shot.

mikester · 10-29-2009, 01:39 PM

Yeah, least stressful my butt.

When well staffed, networks jobs can be comfortable but more often than not we're on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's great.

stealthn · 10-29-2009, 05:22 PM

Yeah right, I have yet to meet a network engineer that is not stressed at least one a day. It's always "prove it's not a network problem"....

I've been Consulting for 13 years, and worked in IT for 13 more before that and I have to say I don't get rattle too much (kids make me way more stressed). I was on a job once at a gas plant, and was told "for each hour over your change window it will cost us 1 million dollars per hour you know"; needless to say that was a little stressful.

Geez where does a Porn director rate.....?

Cisco TAC...hey you were the English speaking guy I spoke to

masraum · 10-29-2009, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stealthn

Yeah right, I have yet to meet a network engineer that is not stressed at least one a day. It's always "prove it's not a network problem"....

Hahah, yeah, that's it. And even after you've proven it and they fixed it, they often still try to bring the network into it.

Quote:

Cisco TAC...hey you were the English speaking guy I spoke to

The first time I was on the TAC was before they opened Mexico, India and the Philippines. Still, in Houston, RTP and San Jose, there were lots of Asians and Pakistanis.

The second time I was on the TAC was when they opened Mexico, etc.... I was working one weekend. The initial phone people called us. Apparently a guy had gotten sent to Mexico and just couldn't understand them because of the accent so he called back asking for a native English speaker with no accent. They'd initially called San Jose, but the Paki guy that answered the phone said that they didn't have any native English speakers there, so they called us in Houston. The guy that we put him on the phone with had the last name Nguyen. His first name was just as Vietnamese as his last. I thought that was hilarious that the "native English speaker" that we had for the guy seemed far from it based on name and appearance. He didn't have an accent though so it worked out well. I was discussing it with him afterward and he said "it's no big deal, I'm a banana, yellow on the outside and white on the inside."

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

No way, I have three TAC's open right now, and I have to work 8-5 and 10-2 am most days. Stupid 3120's I own are being blamed for every outage that happens these days. I can't wait until we start the Nexus retrofit, and the UCS deployment next month, I'm guessing everything will be a "network related issue."

masraum · 10-29-2009, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott R

No way, I have three TAC's open right now, and I have to work 8-5 and 10-2 am most days. Stupid 3120's I own are being blamed for every outage that happens these days. I can't wait until we start the Nexus retrofit, and the UCS deployment next month, I'm guessing everything will be a "network related issue."

We just recently replaced a bunch of OLD 3500XL series switches at remote sites with new switches. We had one of the remote sites call in after about a week:

"the phones and PCs in location X and Y haven't worked since the guys came out and did some work!"

The funny thing is, we not only had photos of the equipment working before the guys left, but we had the equipment monitored, and we were able to show the guys at the remote that the equipment had worked fine for almost a week after our guys left the site, and it had gone down one morning. "So, what did you guys do?" was my question. I never got an answer to that, but they'd apparently screwed with the fiber connections. They'd somehow managed to plug the LC connectors in backwards. Funny how quiet they get when it's something that they did.

mikester · 10-29-2009, 07:11 PM

AH, fiber plugged in wrong - that means someone had to unplug it. Did you have UDLD and loopguard turned on? =-)

It's always the network and if there is a firewall in there within 1000 miles of the installation - it's probably the firewall's fault.

I've gotten so good at reading packet captures that I can make them say anything I want them to say.

VINMAN · 10-29-2009, 07:32 PM

Im on the electrical engineering side of telecom. I supply the power distribution to all the network stuff. When my stuff fails, EVERYTHING fails!

slakjaw · 10-29-2009, 07:38 PM

I'm not an engineer. Just an installer.

Tim Walsh · Tim Walsh's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by VINMAN

Im on the electrical engineering side of telecom. I supply the power distribution to all the network stuff. When my stuff fails, EVERYTHING fails!

We had that on Wednesday. There really should be a large sign on the PDU breaker. "IF YOU THROW THIS SWITCH YOU WILL GET FIRED!!"

masraum · 10-30-2009, 03:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikester

and if there is a firewall in there within 1000 miles of the installation - it's probably the firewall's fault.

Hah! So true, sadly, from time to time, they're right, and that 5% of the time reinforces it.

mikester · 10-30-2009, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by masraum

Hah! So true, sadly, from time to time, they're right, and that 5% of the time reinforces it.

It only takes once ever for it to be any network component ever and from that moment on - forever - it is always that.

'Well, last time we had this problem (10 years ago) it was the whosawhatzit so it must be that again.'

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

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

slakjaw · 10-30-2009, 11:04 PM

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.

azasadny · azasadny's Garage

When I did this work, I thought it was very stressful...