Ep 73 – Zeros and Wons

In this week’s episode A.J. and Andy interview David Alicea! While David was exposed to the Cisco Networking Academy at a young age in High School he actually didn’t land in Networking until later on. Since then he has been a career Network Engineer and recently landed himself a position at the mothership, Cisco. Hear how did it all in the week’s episode! 

You can find more of David:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dayvee87
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-alicea-495b5733/
Blog: https://zerosandwon.blog/

This episode has been sponsored by Meter. 

Go to meter.com/aone to book a demo now! 

Transcript

this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray at no blinking blinky how are we doing tonight no that's blinky blinky uh andy at andy laptop all things andy can be found at permitipandyandy.com andy how are you man i'm i'm better that i've been in a really long time and uh not telling anybody why yet when is this andy you're killing you're killing us i know isn't it time is it time to let the cat out of the bag i don't know i feel like the whole team should be together i feel like maybe it's too early there's some timing stuff that you know it's gonna be great and i'm really excited let's build some suspense i have a cool announcement all right yeah there's a cool announcement coming i think there'll be a lot of happiness for me and uh just know that i'm making a big change and i'm very happy about it so overdue but it shows it shows yeah i'm sorry you guys have had to put up with uh a-hole andy for two years but you know i i apologize that's what you know you'll find out who your friends are right people that put up with you it's your toughest times and i'm coming out of some of that and uh yeah you guys are still here so thank you friends i'm good aj how you doing man tell me how you're doing doing well doing very well yeah i have completed week three of the new job i'm settled in pretty acclimated to have a bunch of projects assigned so uh in fact i'm taking my first work trip uh tomorrow i get to go to maine work on site with a customer so looking forward to that your main is beautiful you gonna like get the hang of just in and out um i'll hang for like a night yeah yeah yeah yeah just on site for one day do it do a quick switch install so sweet man that's great that'd be good to get your first one under your belt the new place all right yep yep that's great switch little switch chassis switch little switch actually it's pretty funny so this customer somehow got their hands on no shit one of the last five 2960xs that's cisco and now they're gone wow are they like end of whatever their end of life end of sale no more and you you wanna do the install on this one so we'll well can you get support on end of life i always there's end of life end of support and just like there's so there's there's end of sale yeah which means that's the last time that you can sell it or buy one uh and then they'll be end of support which means you won't be able to renew your support on there and then they'll be like absolute end of life like not gonna touch it anymore so you're going to install switches that cisco no longer will support i'm going to install switches that cisco no longer will sell oh gotcha they will continue to be supported for the next i don't know how many years yeah i'd have to like but awesome yeah i always get those get confused in the different end of whatever terminologies good stuff dude don't break spanning tree all right no i won't i promise i've done it that's all i'm just saying dope expand tree i know i know i've done it too and now it's time for some wins winning our discord channel this week is dalton b they moved into their first network position coming from the service desk in their organization and they're currently working on their cca and a congratulations dalton umutc 24 landed an it supports position congratulations carlos r.m passed the jncia junos ticker bits passed the jncda congratulations ticker bits nambo mang passed the devnet associate who bastank pilgrim passed two exams this week the nrc and the cissp congratulations rfg labs passed to ccna and smile and chris our very own smiling chris was promoted to networking and infosec manager congratulations chris ron and took on a new network engineer position and starts monday congratulations ron and murph 569 past the encore big win there congratulations murpop welcome and thank you to new patreons ryan eddie kavanagh adam smith a new identity and yitzek thank you so much for your support of what we do here on the art of network engineering podcast and thank you to all of our fans for listening and downloading and liking our content following us on all of our social platforms uh that really helps an awful lot uh if you're interested in joining the patreon program you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and i want to personally wish all of our listeners a very happy and safe holiday season thank you so much for listening to the art of network engineering podcast now back to the show i am very excited to introduce our guest today if you have spent any time on twitter or in our discord you are completely familiar and should know the name david alicia david welcome to the show i'm so excited to have you here hello everybody happy to be here oh yeah so uh if if you're not following david if you haven't talked to him uh then you will be happy to know that uh david has recently changed jobs and uh and so david where do you work these days i am currently working at a small organization i am currently at cisco oh oh that's awesome that's awesome so i'm sure like many a network engineer in our field landing at a at a large oem such as cisco is like the dream right it it's it's been a journey i've been trying to get to cisco for a while now um you know so doors just never never opened in the past and then things worked out and you know it was the right time that's one thing i believe that if something's not working out it's just not the right time it's gonna happen it'll happen in the future right i think we were talking about this earlier somebody commented something in the the failure plaques channel right i think you would comment on it too but like uh when you get to know that means new opportunity so sometimes it's just about timing right like if if the world's telling you know it's not the right time like the something better is coming your way don't get defeated uh when you when you get to know it and just like you said you had gotten to know a few times from cisco before but this time they said yes and here you are and it's natural i mean it's natural to you know if you get rejected it's natural like well you know what's wrong with me right you know but it's just not the right time you go back you get better you continue improving and then from there doors continue to open awesome and so what what do you do for cisco so i'm a systems architect in enterprise near chicago i have three customers that i work with i am three weeks in so i am learning as much as i can about them and as well as furiously bookmarking all the links that people are sending me every day there is a lot to learn uh you know coming from an organization where we had you know 3 500 employees to an organization like cisco it's it's a different animal so it's there's a lot to learn there's a lot of people to to figure out who who does what so i do appreciate the people that have reached out to me from twitter though there's a there's people at cisco that that i follow them and they follow me and they've reached out on webex like hey you made it so i i appreciate that it's everybody's been very cool so you said system architect right sorry aj yeah yeah so that's like the essay role right you also hear it like s-e so can you explain to people because i i've recently learned about that role and i'm still not sure i understand what an sa does so i am a partner to the customer right if the customer has any technical concerns if the customer wants more information about different product lines uh if the customer needs some advice uh if the customer needs some assistance assistance road mapping anything that has to do with cisco and technology i'm there to assist them i'm there to be uh you know the hands and feet is needed right um of course there's other partners that they work with but from the cisco side i am the one that's given the advice along with the account manager now are there so it sounds a little bit like sales but it's not a sales role right it it is still under the sales umbrella so that's definitely coming from operations going into sales this is my first sales role it's uh it's a different uh you know it's a different world so there's a lot to learn and i'm i'm diving head first into it pre-sales right is that what they would consider that pretty pretty much i mean even uh you know even after the fact they still support the customer through the entire process right so i'm in an organization and you're assigned to my account and i'm like hey we gotta upgrade some switches and we're not exactly sure what we want to do maybe we go to spine leaf now we got to talk to david and you can direct us through talk about it yeah here's what's going on let's talk about your needs right here's our product how does it fit into your ecosystem is there anything better that we can do you know the goal really is that everything's working together right we don't want something to be siloed we want everything to work together for your benefit awesome what i've been you know under the impression of and based on being a customer myself and now working on the partner side is that that kind of relationship between your uh your sales uh account manager and then the sa it's kind of like almost like cfo cio kind of like advisory role to the business is that kind of uh an accurate ish statement yeah i mean right now i'm i'm trying to meet as many people as i can on the customer side i mean i'm sending notes and like hey you know i'm here i want you to know hey i exist you know i wasn't here before reach out to me i want to have a relationship with you so i just want to be there for you you know that's really what i'm working on now but yeah it's it's really that very cool very cool well you haven't always been at cisco and you haven't always been into it or network engineering so what what kind of you know originally oh so long ago or maybe not so all so long ago uh got your interest got you into it so pretty much it was back in high school uh you know one of the one of the classes that was offered back in high school and you know i'm i'm 35 years old right now i might not look it but it's because i shaved my head but yeah back then in high school uh there was cisco networking academy so that sounded interesting um yeah in your high school you had it you had a cisco networking academy i i don't think we've heard that too much i think we've heard like network academies at like colleges and stuff but i don't think we've heard it too much at high school so that's really cool so quickly we started in high school quick point when i was in high school i don't think we had internet at the high school moving on we had a couple computers we had a computer lab but i'm pretty sure there's no internet i'm just i'm just level setting us you know did you have a whiteboard was it still all chalkboards it was the stone tablets i think the overhead projectors would like the really big light bulbs on i'm sorry ignore my dumb jokes david so you're in high school and you heard about cisco networking academy you're like huh this is maybe a thing that was one of the choices and i believe it was tied to as well as getting college credit so from from there on i think every tuesday and thursday i was able to go to university to take uh to take a class at the university and i would get college credit beforehand so you know my mom pushed me to those programs it's like do as much as you can you know my parents education was really you know almost non-existent i mean my mom for years worked you know housekeeping and my dad i remember when i was young going around picking up scraps of metal and selling them at different places i mean that was really the history so they wanted me to do even better right so any program that opened up go do it go do it it's going to be good for you you know don't do this don't pick up scraps like me that's what my dad would say you know you can do so much more so i was like hey you know what i'll take that advice i'm a big believer in education so cisco academy and in high school was really a door that opened up uh for technology right it wasn't exactly you know networks interested me at the time but it wasn't what i dived into when i actually went to college okay so you didn't leave high school with your ccna then no no no no i know there's some people out there that are that's great for them but i did not my plan actually was to do programming so okay when i went to college i was looking at you know web design i was looking at programming and that that's really what my bachelor's was uh computer information systems was it database administration you know my my goal was to do dba as well as do some web design on the side things like that and it just never materialized so quick question you went through the cisco network academy and you did not get your ccna no what they did in high school actually is instead of instead of the ccna they had us take the a plus which was interesting so they i remember that because i failed okay it didn't pass the a-plus but it kind of makes sense right like that's the hardware cert and that would be a good place to start right in your journey so yeah i mean we would sit we would sit in the classes and you know our professor i remember i remember we would always call him coach coach culbertson somewhere on linkedin i'm sure uh listening right he'll probably listen to this i'm sure but uh yeah we would always call him coach he was a great teacher and that's one of the things that really uh continued to spark that interest in a bunch of the students is because he had such a good personality that he could bring us into the lesson and it's like look at you know look at this is how the internet works you know this is wow this is great this is how i can get to myspace did that did that grab your attention at the time like oh my god this is magical like this is how stuff is i mean this is how communication works you know so that was interesting but it wasn't interesting enough that when i went to college i was like oh i want to do this for the rest of my life i still had that interest in design and creating websites and doing programming and learning that that side of the house so quick question before we you struck a chord when when you talked about your parents and how you know i don't want to say they struggled right but like you said they didn't have much of an education and they they worked hard jobs that that rings true you know for me to a certain extent so do you feel did that have any impact or did that mold kind of what you wanted for your life like you know i i have so i have like memories right of like certain portions of my life where like i wasn't wearing the nice clothes the other kids were like you know you have these experiences sometimes you know as a child that like stick with you and i for me i remember thinking you know like someday i want something different right like i don't want my kids to feel like i feel right now you know and i know that that's kind of like heavy and crazy but you just hit me like how was it growing up right with like parents that weren't educated and really had to work hard like did that have an impact on you and what you wanted it did i mean you hit the nail on the head i mean really it was i mean to me it was what's going to be my legacy right you know my parents you know they dived and did everything that they needed to do uh you know they poured into me as much as they could right so i want to do the same thing for my kids right so what's going to put me in a place where i can pour as much into my kids as i can you know you have to get better so that that's definitely something that i was looking for even when i was young i mean even when i was young i think i had you know the soul of an old man i mean that's just how i was i even i even got married early you know so my wife was 19 and you know i was 22 yeah 22 23 so we got married early we're just all you know we look young we're old people mentally i i i love that man and how did you did you so computer science i'm jealous of people like you right because i failed that at computer science so did you always know that something you wanted was that a natural progression for you did somebody recommend it to you i i think we went through i remember sitting down and then looking at all the programs and that was the program that really spoke the most interest it's like oh wow i can you know learn programming and create something for myself at the time i remember i think i think xbox had xna which was like the microsoft developer for xbox and stuff like that uh so that that interested me a bit so i was buying x and a books i think i still have one or two behind me um so i'm but it used c sharp so xma utilized c sharp x and agus was just the architecture of the program but uh that that was interesting to me creating something from scratch you know creating a game creating a site creating something that i could call my own that sparked an interest so i went in that direction and uh and somehow i ended up in database administration and i in sequel and oracle and all this i don't know how but that's the track that i went into uh but it still involved me learning c sharp learning java which i now have completely forgotten but it's been so long and i haven't used it you know use it or lose it uh but uh at one point uh i was able to get a job well in the beginning when i first started college i got a job at the help desk which was extremely beneficial i mean if you're starting out and you're starting for a place you know to look and learn a help desk a service desk is definitely a place that i'd recommend you got that in college to help that spot now was that an internship through the program student worker it was a student worker spot so i worked for the help desk i picked up the phone professors and students yelling at me you know complaining tickets all the stuff i'd go around running around imaging computers you know just formatting stuff i mean there was just a ton of stuff that we had to do i remember we had a dba at the campus and for some reason she had me running oracle scripts like to create student accounts or something i remember that that was pretty cool there was a bunch of stuff in the beginning the campus wasn't centralized to all the other universities so uh we had you know their own exchange drawing everything so i remember creating email accounts when i was a student worker i mean there was a ton of stuff i did so it was a little bit of everything and and that kind of that helped me piece together you know all these different areas in i.t and how they work together very cool getting that experience man is it was huge yeah that's amazing my experience so much i i couldn't get arrested when i graduated because i didn't do any internships you know i was i was working full-time you know waiting tables paying my you know rent and stuff and my buddies who did internships they all had you know multiple offers when they got out and you know i'm interviewing like where have you worked what have you done and so anytime i hear you know or somebody's in college or like hey what should i do like get experience if you can like you know there's there's internships there's student work you're getting hands-on you know not that that turned into a job for you at graduation maybe it did but you have experience which is what everybody wants right when you get out what do you know what have you done and i think the biggest part is you know getting to know people you know because in the university i got to know the other teams the help desk managers you know that they had there was a network team on site so i got to know them uh i got to have a relationship with them build that relationship up uh even as a student worker so i mean one of the things that i always tell people is you know work hard you get noticed yeah right we were talking about that you know before the show is like work hard you get noticed you know 99 of the time if you work hard if you put in the work somebody's gonna look at you i'm like wow this this person busts their butt they you know they deserve to move up or they deserve something right 99 of the time there's always that one percent that's like well it doesn't work out but 99 of the time somebody will notice you so that's really what happened and you know there was a desktop a full-time desktop support uh with the university that opened up you know to drive around between the satellite locations and they they asked me if i was interested in it you know it wasn't the greatest pay in the world but it was like you know i'll take it you know because there was some benefits behind it you know they would help pay for for some of the schooling as well so it was like yes this is great so there's some good benefits behind it was that full-time david that was full-time and you were still in school right i was still in school so i was still going for my bachelor's so did you have to scale back on the amount of classes or did you do full-time school and full-time work by the by the time i got the full-time uh desktop support i was pretty much almost done okay um so i did that for about a year by that time i i had graduated um after desktop support with the university another spot with the university of open dev which was a lab manager position which was being a manager a supervisor to the student workers so i started managing the the the student workers you know picking the schedules helping them out with escalations things like that uh and it was like hey you know we were working with this guy now he's the boss so it was pretty cool i got along with everybody i like everybody you know uh so i think i think it was it was pretty good and and it helped me it turned me into a little bit of a teacher because at that point you know i was showing the student workers well this is how you do things this is what's the best way to you know image this pc or you know careful with that professor you know but uh yeah i think it helped out a lot and doors continued to open after that within the university wow very cool so as a student worker was that like a paid position or was it just the work experience that you got there was a paycheck yeah i wouldn't say it was a lie you know the government was paying something i know through the school but there was a paycheck and you know i was able to take my my girlfriend at the time you know on a date to chili's or something somewhere you know it was cool you know i got i got the bills paid but you know my parents i was still living with my parents and they were helping me out as much as they could you know that's one thing that i'll say that you know throughout my uh you know time in high school and the university you know they they did everything they could to make sure i was successful so that's one thing that i i do say and i i want to thank my parents for everything they did because obviously you know if they hadn't pushed me as much as they did if they hadn't helped me out uh you know by talking to me and even monetarily i wouldn't be where i'm at today right right that's awesome that is awesome so you're you're a supervisor at the university how long did you work for the university uh i was well honestly i was there for at the campus at the campus it was the campus in chicago i was there i mean from 2005 through 2009 in various positions eventually i was managing the help desk i was managing some of the other lab managers who managed the student workers and these were full-time you know adults that i was managing at that point so i mean i continued to do my thing i continued to work and learn and teach pretty much as much as i could and eventually uh you know i was in a position where i was able to help at the campus i was able to help the the network team so there was a network team that that took care of all of the campuses around the us uh they would they would install the switches they would do you know all the work they would change vlans they would do everything so they placed a little bit of trust in me and they said hey you know you're at the campus we know you you go install this right you help us out so that is really what opened the door into network engineering right so that sparked the interest i was like this is pretty cool stuff right this is you know the roots of communication this is where we're at in the closet so uh that you know they continue to put some trust in me and to to give me things to do upgrade this or help somebody out with you know taking a taking a blade out of the 6500 and swapping it out so those opportunities continue to pile on uh you know they probably didn't want to do the cable work so i ended up doing all the cables i'm sure there was a little bit of that enjoyed it i mean it was like this is great so there came a time where corporate needed somebody to help out with physical security they had a huge physical security project to switch everybody over to honeywell i believe so they you know i was ballin told i was like they're like hey you're perfect for this this is a great project that you can assist with we're gonna take you out of your help desk manager role and you're gonna come to corporate and help us out with this so i i did that for six months and eventually it was like um you know my my boss at the time was like well you know we're filling up your position because you're probably going to stay at corporate and i'm like well i don't want to do physical security you know for the rest of my life i want to do something else so at that point i felt sort of homeless like where am i going to go right so that's when i started just looking outside for something else and the network team heard that i was looking and and one of the engineers that i had a good relationship with they're like hey we have a spot open are you interested i'm like yeah i'll i'll go you know that's definitely something i was interested with and and you know i i knew them and honestly the interview was like hey you know do you want to be a network engineer yes you're hired that's really what it was because wait a minute no technical interviews come on no there was nothing they they already you know the network engineer that that uh that was working with me at the campus that was helping me out he was the one teaching me everything so he knew technically you know where i was he knew everything he was the one that taught me everything this is still at university yeah this was still at the university now i was at the corporate side though yeah they knew you they knew your work you had you're like 17 managing people i was young i was 19 20 managing people i mean it was interesting uh but at the same time i was trying to soak up as much as i could and learn i got a resentment that you didn't have a technical interview for your network engineering i i did not only because the pain that i had to endure for mine they mopped the floor with me and made me cry and then gave me a job you're just like yeah give me the job man my second interview my second interview you know with my with the second place was definitely a little bit more technical but yeah it was like hey do you want to be a network engineer yes that's what that that's all it was so networking for universities because is that so yes i'm sorry you believe it was because because i swear you know i spent that time building that relationship right they knew me they were the ones that taught me so you know they knew how i was uh they knew i was responsible i was a hard worker that's why i always say work hard get noticed right work hard get noticed it's gonna happen you know sooner or later it's gonna happen have some patience so i spent you know as a network engineer there for corporate i spent five years five years okay so that so i'm trying to keep track here so this was like 2013 2014 i started as a network engineer in 2011 so 2011 okay 2016. that's right because you did a couple years of the security thing maybe i did it was about six months or so it was the beginning of 2011 when i did the physical security project uh and then at the end of 2011 is when when i was the position opened up for network engineering okay got it got it and so while you were doing the network engineer thing for corporate did you you know work primarily with cisco did you decide to go after your ccna so it was it was a mixed environment it was a mix of cisco and juniper in the data center okay so it's a mix of both so i had to learn both it was definitely at the time i was used to cisco already from the campus you know putting in vlans and different things on switches with cisco it was like when i get to the data center and there's juniper i'm like what is this stuff but it was sort of familiar because juniper had that programming feel to it so it was interesting but i wasn't i wasn't even thinking about certifications at that time that wasn't something that anybody had taught me that wasn't something that anybody had spoken to me about there was a person in the team that was working on their ccie and they were going through their second attempt and pretty much he he spent some time talking to me and about the importance of certifications and and how you can learn a lot of from certifications and that that sparked the interest and i was like oh maybe i should take a look at a certification that i can you know i can jump into or learn so that's when i went for the ccna uh but yeah that was it took somebody to to sit down with me and explain to me like certifications can help you you know the certification even though you might not use it for a particular job you'll learn a lot out of the process now is this the ccie guy is that who you were talking about this is the cc again yep it's one of those things that you're just sitting down getting to know him what's up i'm studying for this thing what is that and then he kind of started to describe the value of certifications yeah yeah and that that was a breath of fresh air because i mean honestly you know a lot of a lot of places that you know in the past that i've seen you know there's people that are there they're working there they bust their butt but they're comfortable right so they don't want to get better they're they're good at where they're at they want to stay there they're happy right and then there's people that want to go that extra step up right they want to do something harder they want to learn something new right so this person was really had that mentality and he kept pushing me and he sparked that interest so that really is is why i started pursuing certifications and and continued to dive deeper into network engineering how did that ccna study go was it easy for you at this point because you had experience and you're a bright guy in computer science or was it a struggle it helped it helped i think you know i still struggled through some of the topics i struggled through today like spanning tree spanning trees sometimes is like oh this is terrible but you know this is something that i need to get better at uh but it helped that you know i went straight to ebay i started purchasing equipment in the beginning you know i i bought you know i bought i think i bought an avicent console server i bought a bunch of stuff and i had a you know it wasn't a rack it was just like a little you know table and i just tossed the equipment on top i was consoling into stuff i mean that's how i learned and this was like in the infancy of gns3 so at as soon as i discovered gns3 though that's when i the equipment started picking up a couple spider webs so that's when i started diving more into you know gns3 but in the beginning it was all especially for my ccna studies it was all hardware let's please pause for a moment so you work on physical hardware in your lab your studies and then you pivoted to emulation virtually virtualization i don't know what the right term is but do you feel you know i'm going to ask aj because i like what was the value in your physical lab as a you know did you learn things in your physical lab that you couldn't have learned in gns and so new person coming to you i'm studying for my ccna should i build a physical lab or should i just go you know the virtual route because you have experience in both what do you think i'm a believer of doing both i mean i still have you know a lab here physical gear you know you have to touch stuff you know that that helps you know plugging in a cable there's a certain satisfaction you get of plugging in a cable that you cannot get out of you know gns3 out of eve on the cml there's something different about it you know if if i could buy a whole rack of equipment and a chassis and stuff like that and put it here and not have to pay for the electricity that would be great but because i'm not going that route you know that's when i have to rely on the virtual a bit more to do some of the bigger stuff i don't know if it's still true but i remember in the ccna and it's definitely been true in my experience and in prod i forgot like 65 or 70 percent of network issues are at the physical layer so for me all that stuff i learned with like bad ports bad cables bad pin outs bad cards you know you name it it was supposed to be a rollover from the avis and it was a crossover like there's so many physical problems that you run into i had t1 dsu csu cards for additional ports and they had a special pin out like just so many things you know you drag a couple pretend routers up you drag a couple of 10 cables in gns or eve and you're done if you're brand new and you've never touched gear you know for me if 75 percent of 70 of the issues are physical i think it's valuable to get you know some like you say get some experience you know with physical if you've got a spanning tree loop up and everything's down it's nice to see oh that's what all the amber lights mean to my switches you know what i mean that's true jesus won't teach you that so anyway i'm off my soapbox but you said physical and i guess it's true i mean there's stuff i mean i remember a big portion of tickets i've ran into especially manufacturing a lot of times those issues were resolved by just swapping out a cable right i mean you know we've always had the ticket it was like well this phone is showing some sort of network error on the phone this access point no longer connects and i was like did you try swapping out the cable no as soon as the cable swapped out it works like perfect you know that cable's probably been sitting there for you know 10 years you know some rats are chewing on it or something uh you know swap it out so and it ends up fixing the problem so a lot a lot of what happens out there you know for somebody coming in fresh is physical you know so that is important that's key learn the physical so you build your lab absolutely go ahead sorry yeah yeah yeah i mean i think if you're just starting out like get a physical lab when you have like a certain foundation you can get a virtual lab like i don't think a lot of people realize this but you can actually make the two talk to each other like it is possible uh and there's certain economies of scale that you can get out of a virtual lab that you know you just can't really do affordably on a physical lab right like if you want to do larger topologies and really do some fun stuff especially if you're going for the np level it's a lot easier to do with a virtual environment than it is with a physical environment you know like i've got four routers and four switches but there's only so much i can do with four routers and four switches but there's a lot i can do with 20 virtual routers that you know i definitely can't do in that in a physical level you learn so much you know you're building that virtual environment on a server usually so like for me i had to learn csxi i had to learn vmware i had to learn about virtualization and you know do i want a hyper threat or not and how do you allocate the resources and power management and even just that building your emulated environment you know in esxi as an example just so much to learn there i mean you could spin it up in the cloud and be done with it and that's cool too you know but i learned a lot by having a physical server even even though the the networking was emulated and and the important part is do do something right grab some gear do something virtual but that's a huge way to learn i mean if you want to get better if you want to learn you have to practice right i mean if you didn't jump on that bike you you wouldn't know how to ride that bike right you can't just look at a bike and be like i know how to ride that bike you've never been on a bike before like you have to you have to hold things you have to touch things yeah that's the way you get better yeah i like that you got to do something hey a1 fans aj here for an ally you ever heard of net ally sure you have they came from the same group of engineers that brought us network tools from fluke networks netscout and now their net ally they know networking i'm a network engineer for a partner and when i go to customers and see they use netaly i know it's going to be so much easier to troubleshoot issues we might run into the name may have changed in an ally but the way they build tools hasn't changed a bit they ask what would a network engineer want to help make their job faster and easier and then they go build it just like this etherscope nxg netally is here to help net ally simplicity visibility collaboration visit netaly.com today now back to the show all right so i think you you said manufacturing in there so at some point then you you left the college uh the corporate side of the university and you landed in manufacturing it sounds like was that the next step yep yeah so towards towards the end of 2016 uh you know i i wanted a bit more right so uh you know the opportunities weren't happening locally so i decided to look out and pretty much i found a place in manufacturing that you know i was doing everything right we we had another engineer uh myself and my manager and the three of us would handle the worldwide networks i was about 40 sites you know between sales offices and full plants and warehouses so that gave me a huge opportunity to learn even more i learned a lot from the team and pretty much you know we did a little bit of everything back at the university it was very siloed where all i would do is route switch and a couple firewalls that was that you know they had there was a voice team there was a security team there was a team for that a t for this so that's all i did was route switch and a little bit of firewall so you know that was my mentality so when i got to manufacturing it wasn't just route switch a little bit of firewalls route switch collab security uh everything right so we did everything and it was nice because that was i mean that was definitely drinking from the fire hose because i had to learn all these things that i had no idea about right i had to learn about ice i had to learn about stealthwatch you know i i had to learn everything collab i mean at the campus all i would do is you know deploy a phone and that's all that was my experience within call manager but i had to learn i was taught you know what a pri is you know how does this connect to the router what does it do how do you configure call manager so all these different things i had to learn you know because i had to support these sites i had to troubleshoot these sites uh you know there wasn't anybody else besides three of us so uh that was that was huge and i learned a lot and i learned a lot because i saw from the ground up especially when we had to open up a new site how things come together right how all these networks come together building the phones and building the voice environment for a site putting in the security route switch a little bit of everything wireless so i i learned a lot it was you know from 2016 and onward it was just information information information and during that time you know i pursued my my ccmp uh ccmp as well back then route switch and t-shoot um so you know that was something that continued to push me forward i you know when i look at a certification you know certifications are great but that to me is a big vehicle in learning right i have the book i have all the material this is knowledge that i'm gaining you know so it's great that i pass a certification test but let's say i don't i still learned a lot of information that i can use in my environment the knowledge yep i think it's the best part of certification it's just a learning plan oh yeah right here's all the stuff that you need to learn for this thing i wanted to ask you so where did you look for your job where do you look i mean you're a linkedin guy like you're at the university is you want to look around you find the manufacturing where does one look yes i mean so up to that point i mean once i went to college you know i was a student worker i mean and and doors continue to open from there i wasn't actively looking right except when i was you know at that weird period where i needed a job when i was in physical security so i was just you know looking at you know different opportunities online anything that opened up but uh it was still within the university right even the network engineering portion there it was still within the university so going to manufacturing that was really the second i would say this the second company that i've worked for at that time so i i went for to a recruiter and i was like hey help me out you know the this is my skill set uh what can you do for me you know what what can we what can we do right where can i go so the recruiter helped me out and that's uh that's when you know there was a couple different places you know and i was like well i don't want to go to downtown you know all the time and it was the middle of winter i'm like this is too cold i'm not going out there right now but so you know i interviewed in manufacturing and it was a good opportunity you know so that that opened up through a recruiter where did you find the recruiter no i'm trying to think but it was it was linked in though it started off in linkedin yes linkedin recruiter and then from there awesome good very cool very cool so but if you could kind of like summarize the value of you know having a recruiter right like if you didn't have the recruiter you'd have to go try to find a job on your own uh and and the recruiter inherently has a number of job listings available to you that they can come through and kind of see if you match up so that they're doing a lot of the leg work on your behalf and helping you weed out like good opportunities versus maybe not so good or bad opportunities i say you know it's an extra set of eyes right i mean you're looking you're doing your thing but you have somebody who's fighting for you right uh you know somebody who who's you know you can give a list of requirements hey this is what i'm looking for if you can find something like that that that's my goal so you know you have somebody in your corner who's fighting for you as well sure the other nice thing too in my experience was that the recruiter who placed me in fintech you know he had a working relationship with the company already they had placed a couple other people over the years and so you know they don't know me from anybody right but because the recruiter has a relationship with that company and they've placed them and they've developed trust then when the recruiter brings me in it it you know hey we talked to this guy we pre-interviewed him you know we think he's a good fit so it's i don't know that might be stating the obvious but i feel like if i had just cold applied you know to a company as opposed to a recruiter that they trusted already because they found good talent for them and brings me in for an interview you know i i feel like you just put you on another plateau you know yeah there could have been a history there you know and that helps you out you know anything to help you out in your pursuit uh that why not you know yeah yeah yeah that's a good point anyway the reputation that the recruiter has with that company that they're working with right like if they've brought them talent before like there's no reason to not believe that they wouldn't do it again i think it really helped me you know in my particular situation because of the relationship they had probably not the same everywhere right but i'm a big fan of linkedin i mean i've never worked in an industry where i'm being reached out to on a constant basis you know my phone my email linkedin before i got into network engineering i was always the one looking for a job and now it's just it's so weird to me still it's just inbound okay yeah you want to work over here and do this thing i feel like the hot girl at the party you know it's kind of nice it wasn't like that before i.t so it's a good somebody loves me yeah they really like them that's great that's great so we're in manufacturing aj yeah we're in manufacturing you you sounds like you got your ccmp route switch and i i think last year you or or maybe it was earlier this year it all blends together now with this whole cover thing right yeah i i i really do remember that you got your ccmp security so you're a dual np yes uh so so let's let's dive into that journey how was the ccmp security i've heard the score is just a monster it is definitely you know there's a there's some marketing behind it you know it's all the cisco products and the cisco security portfolio but there's the technical below that as well right so uh it reminded me a little bit of the the palo alto with the pcs nsnsc but a lot bigger it was it was way bigger the palo alto serve was definitely you know you know some marketing a tiny bit of technical and that was it it's a good cert but the ccmp security the score is definitely deep goes over the portfolio uh there's a lot of technical behind it you know it goes it doesn't dive into everything fully either right so uh it leaves the door open like you know the score talks about email security uh so i decided to go as as my smaller exam as my concentration i went to the email security side uh it was something that i was doing at work as well right we had uh esa's we went to ces so i had some experience with that uh but there was stuff that i i found on the exam for for the csa it was like what are we talking about what is this i mean it dives deeper and i had some experience on the product and i'm like i don't remember clicking on this or reading about this so it's uh you know it keeps you on your toes it was definitely a an interesting exam it was a good exam i i think i had an easier time with the score than the csa i i thought i would i thought i'd have a harder time with with the score exam you know when as i was taking it i don't know if maybe because it was it wasn't that deep into the portfolio and deep technically uh i i passed that one and it was a better score than i had at the cesa the csa was like one more wrong answer i would not have passed i mean that was that was it i was on the edge uh so there was a couple questions i'm like man i have no idea and i'm working i'm looking at this thing every other day you know uh but i passed you know it was it was good it was a good example uh but that you know a lot of what i've been doing in manufacturing and a lot of what the whole team was doing in manufacturing that you know the the last couple years has been security related you know we had a security team they did a lot of policy and a lot of you know procedures we were the hands and feet for the security team so we did everything we did ice we did stealth watch we did dual implementing and architecting and designing everything that was really us so uh that you know i've been doing security for a bit and that's why i was interested in the score and then the ccmp security very cool very cool so i i think it's important to kind of talk about that that marketing thing the marketing aspect of these exams and it's it's 100 true it's there on the encore yeah and you know like you said that it's there in the score and i think it's it's important to note that like as as of somebody that's up and coming when you when you have to study all of these things you're getting more exposure to the cisco portfolio and that that only benefits cisco right but i think that there's there's people that kind of take a couple of different approaches when they're putting together their enterprise environment either they they go all in on one vendor or they do best of breed right like i want the best firewall and i don't care if it's cisco or palo alto or whatever i just want the best firewall and then i want the best switches and then i want the best routers and it doesn't have to be all the same vendor i just want the best of the best and then there's people that go all in on a single vendor story and there's i think there's benefits to doing both right like if you if you go all in on cisco then you get the full cisco story right and and that's where you tend to get like and not just cisco right like if you go all in on juniper all in on whatever if you go all in on a single vendor you're going to get the bigger picture more analytics typically right like that's usually the benefit that you're going to see because they all connect to each other they all talk to each other there's probably some additional benefits of security when you do best of breed like you got the best of the best but they don't all talk to each other in some form or fashion unless you're using like you know some agnostic form of automation or something like that like rolling your own kind of solution that that you would get from the vendor so taking these exams gets you that exposure and then later on in your career like well i need some email security i remember reading about the cisco email security appliance i had no idea cisco had an email security appliance personally but that's that's that's where you're like well i got to start somewhere i remember reading about this thing so let me go check that out so that's that's why that's there and it's it's it's beneficial in my opinion oh yeah yeah i think everybody does it i mean it's just it's just part of the part of certification right exactly aj you just sparked something so each ecosystem has their own i guess analytics engine or platform or whatever sure and they don't talk to each other right cisco has theirs juniper has theirs orisa has theirs there's no like you said you have to either go with third party you know open source or like build your own i mean that's that's not ideal right like is it just because they're in competition with each other like there can't be an o i mean this might sound silly but there can't be like this open standard platform that that pulls all the competing vendors because we don't care like you and i sitting at the chair you know the company went with cisco over some stuff juniper or some stuff aristo for some stuff but why do i have to suffer as the operator that i can't have you know uh analytics that pulls it all into one dashboard like that seems like a i don't know it's an inherent flaw to maybe the competitive model maybe that doesn't make sense but you kind of sparked it as you were talking right i think it's just you know they they want you to buy into it right like if dna center could control other vendors devices where would be the kind of drive to continue to just buy cisco if they could you know because other switches might be a little bit cheaper than a 9k i think companies are getting better at third-party integrations a bit uh yeah especially with apis yeah i think it helps but they're not going to be fully open right i mean sure but they'll there's some compatibility and there's some you know a couple things they do but for the most part there's that competitive nature behind it it is yeah and i mean i get the competition but i'm also like i'm thinking like wow if one of these big name vendors came out with the solution that really did you know vendor b says you know what i know vendor a's the enemy but i'm gonna build a platform and pull all their stuff in too and maybe that'll push us over the top you know if you could go with vendor b and they're happy to let you see all of your vendor a appliances and analytics and data i don't know from a high level if i was sitting up on the throne somewhere i'm like you know what these these guys are you know they're because you're not going to buy less of one ven i don't know i don't know how all that money stuff works but it's probably another topic for another show but the right solution to rule them all well yeah if a vendor if somebody actually made a single pane of glass something that actually talked to everyone right so as an example right like i'm thinking cisco juniper the number one number two right like if cisco came out and said you know what we're gonna pull all junipers into because for multi-vendor shops or vice versa i'm surprised they haven't because they got you know automation yes like they could i think right like these are it's a lot more effort on the vendor's part right like you have people at cisco that know cisco now they're going to have to go and really learn juniper or they're going to have to partner and work on it together yeah i just i probably oversimplify but like a router's a router is a switch to switch yeah the cli is going to be a little different but like ospf doesn't change from you know vendor to vendor like there are there are standard routing protocols that can talk to each other i don't know why something like you can't have that for analytics but maybe it's pie in the sky stuff i mean we can't just create a protocol that talks to everything and pull it in but i guess that screws up the competition so somebody's got it created come on andy you can do it i could barely write python man i'm not the guy i gotta i gotta find a guy i'll i'll pull another chew or something he'll do it for us i got a guy yeah we gotta go just grabbing here sorry for the tangent it just you got me thinking good good conversation good conversation so um how long were you in manufacturing before you decided to go to cisco and what what in the end cost you you know if you want to get into it why did you decide to start looking around did opportunity come knocking at your door did you go looking for opportunity i i let's say a mix of both uh you know let's say that you know that during during my time manufacturing you know opportunity came knocking and it didn't work out right um what's the school in the beginning um and that's one of the things that i've you know said on the discord you know then we've talked about you know things happen at the right time you know if it's not meant to be right now um it's going to something will happen in the future there'll be a better opportunity for you in the future you know don't let that completely get you down right rejection sucks but there's always something better there's there's something coming down the road for you so don't squander that opportunity that you have now to learn and soak up as much as you can where you are so i mean i learned that a lot of manufacturing it was a great experience but you know opportunity came knocking and it was it was it was something i couldn't say no to you know it it finally happened and the doors opened and i i'm appreciated out of everybody you know i appreciate everybody i've worked with i never have anything bad to say that's one thing i always tell people is you know work hard uh don't burn bridges either that's that's more advice that i have it's like the tech world is small and you know i'm talking to i'm talking to people at cisco now and and they know people that i've you know that i've worked with in the past or you know somebody actually somebody on my team now on my team now i worked with back at at the university they were a network engineer as well oh wow it's crazy you know it's like they paint me and they're like hey you're joining my team i'm like oh wow okay so never burn bridges i mean we're gonna run into each other at some point treat everybody with respect you know help everybody out you know we're all in this together you know that's a great point like if if when you had left the university if you had burned that bridge and then you're applying to this job at cisco and that guy could have been like oh man no way when he left here like 10 it's very true like if you if you had taken a different route out of there uh no pun intended like it could have ended up differently for you trying to get into cisco this time around so i agree with you 100 percent like as as big as the world is like for some reason it just feels that much smaller and that has nothing to do with a small town like you're in chicago like you could have left there and be like i ain't ever gonna see him again but here you are like exactly so i mean it's and that's just the way i was raised too is like you know treat people with respect you know in the course of your career you're going to run into a bunch of different type of people right i mean you're going to run into people that are very supportive about you know for you you know they're there to help you they're there to push you along and and help you out but you know you're going to run into other people that that are just negative all the time and that's just the way the person is they might be negative with you they might be negative across the board uh you know to me you know i've ran into both types of people throughout my career and i don't say anything bad about anybody it's like hey you know thank you for teaching me thank you for you know showing me what what you could uh you know i'm here in the end of the day i'm here to learn i'm here to get better right um i'm not here to spend my time and waste my brain cells on people who are negative there's better things that i could be doing with my time you know so things you know things that are negative people that are negative i just ignore it it's like they're that's always going to come towards you ignore it you know stick to the people who are there and are supportive of you haters gonna hate me but there's so much good secret sauce in here you've said so many things that i wrote down a couple like work hard you know my wife has a great saying like he can't teach hustle right it's it's intrinsic if you have a lazy player out on the court or in the field you can't coach it out of them you can't motivate them like so you know it's such a simple thing to me because i've always been a hard worker my wife's a hard worker you know you guys are like how just put in the effort you know wake up grind it's easy i would venture to say that you know i'm not the smartest guy in the room but i try to make up for it in blood sweat and tears right like i'm going to get in there and work hard and i'll work harder than the other guy that's smarter than me if i have to like it you can control what you can right to to be to be successful and then you and that will get you noticed like you said work hard get noticed like i love that like because you know the guy that's passionate or the girl that's like working really hard they do stand out because you have schlubs that just want to hide or not do anything or yeah you know learn the new thing and then attitude too like reputation attitude i mean you're just work hard get noticed develop a reputation have a good attitude like these are some of them are soft skills some of them are hard skills but it's it's kind of like the secret to success almost like and and they're all you don't need a 190 iq right you don't need a triple cci like these are things i think anybody can do work hard get noticed develop a reputation have a good attitude like wow it's i don't know you're blowing me away here i mean that's that's the way i mean it brings me back all the way to when i was managing student workers i was a student worker and then i was managing student workers and i would always tell them the same thing and you know student worker positions you know there's some people that came in i was like i'm just here for my seven bucks an hour to get out of here right yeah they don't care about you know the help desk they don't care about they don't even care about i.t right they're just there you know i'm done i i got to go to class you know so i mean i still took the opportunity and talked to people it's like do as much as you can learn work hard i mean even if you don't even if this is not going to be your career right you're not going to be at the help desk forever you want to go do something else you're seeking a degree in accounting and this is all we have right now uh just work you know just try to learn something do your best you know that's it i mean it really comes down to that um and then doors open up right i mean just be patient you know because some people you know oh man i spent you know two hours working hard and nothing happened yeah it's not a two-hour thing it's a whole journey right it's days and weeks and years um be patient things will happen you've you've mentioned patients a couple times too and i think that's so key you know we want what we want when we want it and then you know like this might not been the first time you interviewed at cisco i don't know but i know that when you get that opportunity like for me when that happens for me i'm like oh my god this is my one shot if i don't get this i'm gonna blow it and then it doesn't work out for some reason and then it's like wow that was it i'm just destined for you know mediocrity because i couldn't get that thing i wanted but like you said you just got to be patient put in the work like anything right like we were shopping for our house years ago and like we really wanted this one and it didn't work out we were so upset but then the next one was twice as good as the last one we're like oh there you go like you can't see around that next corner you know you just got to have faith and kind of be patient and if you put in the work it will work out right but maybe not on on our timeline and patience is hard right exactly i think it takes discipline like okay like accepting a failure accepting it didn't work out like that's it's a mental game right some discipline it's something oh yeah yeah yeah and it's been even harder these days in the instant gratification world we live in right like click a button get an instant happiness you know like i gotta wait a month for this next house to come on the market sure we've always owned the house now yeah i mean i can go on a half a dozen different social media platforms and get a dopamine hit immediately and now i gotta wait you know six months because this one interview didn't work out like no way dude like that's forever you know but like perspective patience like it's sure put in the work that perspective there you got some you got some good stuff here yeah we have so many people come to us i think starting out like what what can i do what should i do you know it's always like well ccna is a good start build a home lab but these are just things that anybody can do i think that's what everybody's looking for like how do i do this you know because you don't know where to start and how hard it's going to be and it's expensive and blah blah blah but there's just certain traits i think that are transferable in any industry it's not just networking or i.t you know everything you're talking about these are like be a good person create value have a good reputation it's simple but i guess it's not yeah like common knowledge isn't that common they say right like it's true i mean a lot of times we concentrate on the technical ability right you know i've i've ran into people in my past it's like wow this person knows everything i mean you can ask them any question they know everything but they have a terrible attitude you know they they treat you like trash and it's like i don't want to work with this person you know it's horrible right you know so you want to be somebody that that can get along can teach somebody you know people look up to and and you have a personality you know that's the type of person you want to be so yeah you can go around and pursue every cert that's out there right but if if you're still you know treat people like trash i mean people are not going to like you you know people are not going to want to work with you that doesn't open up opportunities for you you know so i mean treat people well it comes down to that i mean it's just being human that's really what we're talking about today is just do some of these basic things that you know basic human skills you know be human treat people good treat people with respect work hard i mean things will happen right be a good human have compassion have compassion you know there's people out there that you know are struggling there's people out there that are learning you know they might not learn at the same pace you are learning you know have some compassion have some empathy you know all these words that i'm just saying are just they're they have nothing to do with cisco they have nothing to do with juniper with f5 with whatever this is things that apply across the board yeah kind of soft skills e right like that exactly but kind of you know and anybody could learn them you know anybody can learn them like you can i think the episode is going to be david alicia a good human who i like to be a good human being he's a good human you know it's true i mean that's really that's you know if i can teach somebody one thing this just you know work hard but yeah essentially be a good human you know things will open up you know have patience yeah the the inverse of being the keywords david alicia don't be an asshole there you go you could go either way with your title i don't know i'll probably get overruled on that one but i think we'll go with a good human i like that that's much better all right well our guest today is david alicia solutions architect with cisco in the chicago area david where can people go to find more about you oh wow uh you know i'm on the interwebs i am on i am on the twitters uh davey87 d-a-y-v-e-e 87 on twitter i also have a blog which i know i need to get back to i need to start blogging again i need to start writing uh it's zeros and one w-o-n so play on words zeros and one dot blog i love it it's a great title i like that thank you excellent and we can also find you in our discord it's all about the journey the the same as your twitter handle i believe yep that is correct so if you want to join our discord and chat with davey you can do so you can go to art of neteng forward sir otter.edge.com i gotta think about that all the time it's for it's all about the journey because it is all about the journey join learn with people share your knowledge uh you know and just a lot of that good human stuff david was talking about right like if you find somebody that's struggling with a topic that you have had success with spend the time teach them share your knowledge don't don't look down on them like oh you you don't know every single ospf timer how dare you be a network engineer exactly exactly awesome david thank you so much for joining us today this has been an absolute pleasure any any last words of wisdom before we close out here uh yeah now i think i think we've said every single type of motivational work all good stuff though good stuff excellent all right well thanks again for joining us uh thank you to all of our patreons once again we appreciate all your support we appreciate everybody's support if you want to join our patreon program you can do so at patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and we appreciate the support from our patrons as well as everybody you know whether you download follow us on twitter whatever you do we love it we thank you so much all that mojo really really helps we'll see you next week on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you