Sr. Network Engineer Reviews - Page 7

There will be many hrs company related you will be spending both working and away from family on most 24/7 Enterprise careers. Make sure IT is part of your package when starting negotiations.

The advice I would give to a person wanting to become a Sr. Network Engineer is to find someone who will be willing to mentor you in your endeavor because Network Engineering is a big field and needs that mentor ship to ensure you are successful in this field. Nothing is more important than experience and relationships with other networking people. Gain as much knowledge and practice that knowledge.

Vendors like Cisco love to see devotees sacrifice dollars and time to their business because people who are locked in to the way Cisco does things will only add incentive for companies to buy Cisco products. Advice to network engineers, don't get locked into the way a single company does things. I witnessed the demise of Novell, and all its "contagions," people who bet their careers on Novell. In one year, 1994, with the advent of TCP/IP, it was all gone. This scenario is replayed over and over again in the data systems industry, DEC, Sun Microsystems, and now Microsoft. If you're going to learn networking, learn it all e.g. Firewalls, Cisco IOS, NX-OS, Juniper/Netscreen ScreenOS, Juniper JunOS, and Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS.

Learn to communicate well with your team members.

Be willing to do the simple and mundane as you survey, install monitor and as it can prevent major problems down the road.

Understand the risks, the process and who the real decision makers are.

Get as much experience as you can. Volunteer, internship or otherwise.