Ep 24 – From the Cab to TAC

In this week’s episode we talk to Mansoor. Mansoor works as Cisco TAC HTTS – (High Touch Technical Support) Technical Consulting Engineer dedicated to Google and AT&T. Mansoor started out working in NYC as a Cab driver and eventually found his way into IT.

Todd Lammle CCNA Book – https://amzn.to/38rksmF

Mansoor’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansoor-alam-90b54545/

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 teams technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering podcast my name is aaron i am one of your co-hosts along with my other three co-hosts starting with aj no blinky blinky murray what's up one and only no blinky blinky uh the no blinky blinky is referring to the light right that means you have a problem that's right snow blinky lack of the lack of wink status light yeah it means you got no blinky blinky sir that makes a lot more sense when you tell the story because i feel like we've been saying you're at for you know like months and then all of a sudden it's like holy crap that's what i mean if you don't ask you won't know there you go that's right lesson of the day um mr andrew laptop that's right you're in trouble what up homie what up dog i remember what it would it be like chilling thank you villain julian daniel um you guys know who we are by now i'll spare you the wherever books are sold routine we do have a very special guest with us today and he comes by way of mr laptop here uh they used to work together that's all i'm gonna say as far as uh spoiling the fun goes but uh man sir how about you just tell us what you do today real quickly what your title is that but just introduce us and tell us what your title is sure sure um how's everybody doing um just uh i work at uh cisco i'm an acts uh engineer at cisco okay so you work with attack yes we're gonna attack and not as any tack right you're like in the you're in the tier 77 attack no no no man not not at all i'm still learning um now i work at uh i'm at out of uh richardson uh texas uh support uh att and google and uh yeah man it's it's a whole lot of fun over there i can imagine but before we go any further to get into how you ended up there because i think that's important um just to be clear you said that you support att and google right yes okay so if someone at google has a networking problem they call who they call a lot of people yeah but they call no no no who's the last person they call actually actually no no that's not how attack works who's the first person they call yeah that'll be me yeah actually no no besides you it's usually me first then you because i it's always the internet's problem uh yeah so somebody at google was like oh man i don't know how to do this on a cisco ios or ios xc device let me just call him answer he's like well uh i know that you guys don't know much over there at google but let me help you out a little bit you guys are pathetic let me help what is it this time i wish are you stuck in active again is that what it is um so yeah you got a super sweet job so now we i'm just gonna get right into it man how did you end up at the tax start us at uh you're graduating high school if you graduated high school oh yeah yeah i did man um well i got a i got a weird what's a weird story man um so i graduated high school in uh 2002 and then uh after uh graduating i had some uh some immigration issues i i could just put at that okay then after that after immigration issues we actually had to uh i had to leave the country for a little bit and i could re-enter again with the correct um immigration status that you know phil put it that way but yeah uh pakistan like you were born in pakistan yup yup i was born in pakistan i moved out here um when i was uh five or six okay yeah oh so somewhere around there or six it could be seven too i don't know gotcha cool but it's been a while but uh yeah after that uh yeah when i came back um it really actually our family wasn't really uh you know real like rich rich so we i had to go right to work man so i tried looking for work i couldn't find anything and uh i did my uh graduation everything in pakistan i came back but uh yeah man the closest job i could find was a gas station so i started working at a gas station uh pumping gas and after that uh you know somebody helped me out with uh they said yo you know what why don't you um i i talk a lot so i uh say i can't talk to anybody so um i actually ran into um a good friend of mine and he said that hey you know what why don't you uh get a trucking license you know it's a lot of money in that so i was like okay cool man you know i'm not getting nothing on my job offer so yeah might as well so i started uh driving trucks i did uh uh that was a funny story too because um i actually had to apply for a hazmat and uh when i applied for a hazmat and because of my uh my full name is mohammad mansour allah oh my god dude i applied i applied for a hazmat usually it takes 30 days mine took 72 days man so but um yeah finally i got cleared and stuff so started delivering uh gas to all the gas stations not all well it was mostly like uh sunoco a lot of sunoco so learned a lot of cool things then after that um uh did a lot of a lot of i drove taxi in new york i drove uh i did uh black cars i don't know if you know like limos yeah so they're a lot yo you know you got to survive baby i wasn't you know you got to pay rent so we did it all together don't look at us like we're judging the hustle over here because we're certainly oh no no no you've met andy at one of your places at work so it couldn't have been that bad right i mean he doesn't have it he doesn't have any room to judge also the fact that you told us you had to tell us that people can't see you right because obviously we're on a podcast but i don't think anyone in this world was questioning whether or not you had ever been to new york let's just put it that way that thought had never crossed anybody's mind they were like oh and we had a new yorker on here i i tried a lot man to get rid of my uh get rid of my accent because uh i had a lot of interviews and people were like first when they see where i you know i graduated in pakistan they started speaking as soon as i start speaking they're like where did you go to school again oh man that's a long story man sweet you graduated high school in pakistan no no graduated high school here i actually went to jersey high school oakbridge high school got it and then you went to pakistan for college yeah i uh well i had to go because yeah the immigration thing right so while you were there you're like you know let me just knock college out i guess yeah yeah because you know what was honestly speaking and um we didn't have uh we didn't have enough funds actually to even for me to attend school over here oh you know i mean we weren't well that's because the main reason we came to the united states was uh my mom actually had cancer oh wow so and my father loved my mom you know so my father was in the uh in the airlines so he um they used to get a lot of like uh like british doctors and stuff coming in and they say hey so they were real cool with my father my father was a big dog in his rank so they just said hey man if you love your wife take her out out of pakistan either go to uh you know uk or united states yeah yeah exactly medical care is that yes yes exactly so my aunt thank god she was a head nurse here in queens so um but she was you know uh she's just so she's my aunt like my grandma she's everything to me man you know so they took us in so we lived with them for a long time and uh yeah man what was after that trucks after oh so you did the after the taxis and stuff you did the trucks yeah i kind of did uh i was i was working a lot man i even did some bouncing work too i uh bounced at this club name abyss so um you might not be able to tell from the camera but monster is a big boy you can't tell something how big a boy are you yeah i was gonna say that that sounds like a job for damn all right let's get to it how big of a boy are you big enough to be a bouncer in new york city anybody too big to be whooped though yeah no man it was uh it was a very uh experience and good well i would say good experience in a way uh good experience uh honestly speaking you know you get to look at a lot of uh uh pretty pretty females you know okay you know and plus you you feel kind of good too you know they come up to you when you have when they have a problem so you feel like you know you're resolving their rescuing folks yeah exactly exactly i had that problem solution in me bro this is good okay let's route you out the door right there yeah so you're a bouncer so it's strange to me that you you didn't go into like a security firewall specialty oh yeah no no no man actually um that's an ipa indiana after that um i actually uh got upset at myself uh you know just uh honestly i'm an emotional dude man i actually called one of my cousins crying because i couldn't do it no more i hated trucking i hated it man you know so were you doing like long haul like over the road or like local stuff um when i was training i did some long hauls because um they want you to go like cross country just to you know get your confidence up and everything up uh like a lot of times it's just it's a very hard life man you know i mean so much respect to all the truck drivers or all the folks that actually drive that make everything happen man because you know it's it's a lot even sometimes when i'm cutting some of the truck off right now i know dude you know it's a very hard thing to actually drive a such a large vehicle dude i think about that i'm so glad you brought this up i think about this stuff all the time and i actually get really mad when people on the highway or driving erratically around trucks and just being like kind of you know just like crappy drivers right like city drivers it drives me nuts because i know that that person is at work you know what i mean and like even if something happens like he's gonna be in trouble and not only is he in trouble like with the law potentially but also at work like that was a that's a work accident right and strange to me that people don't put that in their head like like that guys at work or that girls at work like like you know give them like because i don't bust into the cisco attack and just start like rolling my chair up next to yours and like you know what i mean like bumping you over to the side and then then just being all up in your ear like what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing but that's what we're doing to those people because they're at work right unless you drive for a living like those five years driving that truck for comcast aaron after that i had a different response like you're saying like oh all right man you're you're working i get it like yeah you know let me get out of your way you know there's another thing about that too where people know you're at work you know and so like there's malicious intent into those so normally people are just ignorant to that fact right like no one thinks about that they just don't think that people are at work i guess for whatever reason like it was just a random truck but no that guy's not going on vacation right he's also not driving to walmart but you know the other the other part is like the malicious end of that which is like that's a company i can run my car into theirs and i can get money from that because they're probably going to settle and that's happened to me before it worked too so i've definitely been there and and like no fault of my own it's so crazy dude that people are like this it it's going to get me all heated but anyway so you you you were you were you're a long long haul tracker for a little bit and that was the training but then they got you to do the local stuff but did you get did you get the hat you got the hazmat things were you driving like an oil tanker or something yup yup i was driving an oil tanker um just in uh in jersey a little bit of new york uh just for i did it for about a year and a half but then uh just i was just really tired of it man but um and then uh thankfully man you know you know like uh there was is one of my close friends i call cousin now but um i used to actually his mom used to teach me how to read the quran when i was very young so um you know we we were real good friend family friends and stuff uh so but you know obviously when you're growing up everything it all changes they moved they went to houston i went to other places um so finally we meet up at this mosque uh around this time right behind my house and you know we say hey yo hey how you doing you know it's been such a long time uh since they saw me and i saw them well finally uh i mean long story short he actually calls me up after a day or two he's like hey man um i got this contract position for uh uh exchange uh like microsoft exchange are you looking you know or do you want to do it i was like yeah dude i'm open to anything you know but just a heads up i don't have a lot of experience at microsoft exchange you know i don't actually have any experience there it is there what did you go to college for because you were like as a computer scientist i mean you knew what exchange was right yeah yeah yeah i mean definitely new but yo when you know about something and then you actually see like active directory you're giving permissions totally different yeah right yeah migrating accounts so and getting that first job right exactly man oh man i i had so many people close the door on me just because i don't have experience they're like oh thank you but you don't have the experience i'm like dude give me a job i'll get the experience you know i know it's the chicken and the eggs the conundrum yup yup but um but yeah man um but thank god thankful uh thank god man god bless him um he actually lives two miles away from me now so um so you got that gig that was your first night that was my first gig yup yup that was my first gig uh at pfizer then uh we moved to we did that for well he started at he said yo it's only gonna be for a two month thing are you down four hours like yeah dude i don't care if it's for two weeks you know i just need the experience you know so finally um the two month thing went almost up to two years uh so we so you know it just kept on extending then after that uh after our contract finished there we had a real good solid team so we got another contract for a company called celgene but um yeah man after that um in there uh when i was doing exchange i saw this dude doing some amazing matrix stuff you know what i mean he's doing he's like typing away over there he got that you know secure crt with the traditional monochrome going on i'm like yo what are you doing you know like you know i just would knock on his door say introduce myself and say hey sir uh you know uh you're the only person over here that looks cool love to do all this stuff but he invited me in man he was real nice uh that he was actually messing around it was uh they had a outage that's the first time i saw letters spelled ospf i didn't know what the hell i was looking at you know i was like oh wow but then he's the one who actually really introduced me to uh networking and uh you know from there he guided me to oh you know what you should look into getting your ccna uh it will open a lot of doors for you this and that and it did man i got my ccna and um i started applying like crazy and then finally i land up i actually had a contracting job at verizon and then as soon as i got that job a week later i got an offer from comcast so verizon was not that far yeah exactly that verizon was not that far from my house and comcast was almost like 90 miles away so i'm like yo i don't know which one to take you know but i spoke to my brother everybody and uh when i was working at verizon i couldn't do anything meaning like they're very tiered uh i mean it's really nice you know definitely beautiful knock but they're very tiered based uh knock meaning like if somebody's new or they could only open up tickets just fill in the fields okay what's wrong then you got to send it to the next tier they do the fiber stuff okay what's going on where it is you know you couldn't really yeah too much exactly and we weren't allowed to lock in any routers or switches that was uh that was actually uh they called it a switch uh i'm pretty sure andy you remember we you know we used to call into the switch to do maintenances and stuff you know but um so hold on a sec because that i i just want to make sure that i heard you right so when you applied for the jobs the ones like at verizon and at comcast like were those both knock positions on purpose or that just happened to be who was hiring oh no there were uh well not positions it was actually an entry-level position i um yeah no well uh i after i got my ccna i uh that gentleman at celgene david uh david was his name so he um he helped me out he just said hey man you know try to look for any basic networking job uh he's then he introduced me he said that you know what it'll be a better uh better option for you if you go into a knock right you know what i mean and uh one of the one of the brothers i used to pray with he also said he used to work at a data center uh doing like uh mostly you know how we do um like uh racking and stacking that's what he did so he said yeah man you know try it not then uh that's what i did uh tried it but uh verizon because you know it's a verizon man so yeah so monsoor when you studied for your ccna you didn't have any networking experience right no how long it take you you know probably um it took me a while well um ccna thank god i actually studied where i was working at um so self-study took me you bought it yeah well uh big big things cbt nuggets god bless jeremy char man he he really helped me out you know i mean yeah uh so uh that helped me out um then uh stealth study a little bit of with rfcs but it was too much to read man rfcs forget about it i bought it i bought a cisco fresh book uh but cisco press i hated it so who told me about cbt nuggets was it that guy who was in the matrix showing you what was no no oh uh the brother from uh the mosque did uh he told me about cbt nuggets yeah yeah and then i bought another book the gentleman david uh he actually recommended this guy named todd lambley uh so from cybex so his book really made sense man it didn't really help me out it was a good one yes yes his book with jeremy and dude i must have watched the ccna series like good 100 times man because i'm a very slow learner man and it really uh i really got to take notes to understand and then i watched the video again to take notes then i started practicing i didn't have nothing to practice so i started looking for a lab then uh i hit i ran across this dude why did you look for a lab did somebody tell you to you need a lab no just to practice i because i didn't have uh the you know i needed their hands on you you knew you needed to practice jeremy was probably telling you in the videos oh yes yes because i was i wanted to try to follow him you know i'm saying i want to follow jeremy um so i started looking for a lab and then you know a lot of things made sense like as soon as i finished ccna i dove right into ccnp not for the certification just so i could actually interview because honestly man when you go for an interview for ccna everybody's asking me bgp questions ospf lsas i'm like yo i don't i don't know what bgp is you know i mean back in ccna you know they don't teach you that then they're talking about fiber i i was like i don't know man you know i don't know nothing about fiverr you know so it was uh so i've then uh finally uh they said that i mean one of the gentlemen just said that hey man just uh keep on going keep studying uh go into your ccmp and once i did the ccnp adjust the study uh when i did route and switch then i finally understood i was like oh okay okay now i could actually confidently go into an interview and answer these questions isn't that weird i mean like it's strange to me how like it almost like in a way gets easier like the further you go right like ccna is like it's difficult stuff but then you get to see ccnp and like it was almost like they were withholding the coolest part of the information and yeah like i know we all did it like we opened up root and we were like a route or however you want to say it and we were like okay oh that that's what they're doing there okay right or for a lot of people it was probably like okay that's how the internet works you know stuff like yeah i always find that weird but i i think i would agree with you that learning something that like even ccie level stuff just to be able to speak to it better not necessarily to get the cert is you know another reason to study that material not just to say i have the cert right yup yup definitely man and then uh i finally um landed a job it was through a company called a deco it wasn't directly verizon but they're a staffing company yup yup yup so when i got that after a week i mean i kind of did it dirty i consulted with my father my brothers everybody and then uh they said dude you know you're gonna have a lot of hands on the comcast and you're not gonna have hands on the verizon so you know it's kind of like an easy pick who cares if it's far away don't worry about it you're investing your time so i was alright i just walked out of horizon i said peace i went in i was like how y'all doing i handed my uh badge in and just walked right out and that was a long commute for you right it was like an hour and a half each way yeah yeah yeah yeah but thank god for uh new jersey turnpike man you know in the night time you just fly baby take the third shift on purpose hey monster i want to point something out real quick before you get to the comcast knock because other guests have said it too when you knocked on that dude's door in the matrix and said hey what is that and can you show me i just think that's huge because if you hadn't done that you know you have to be your own advocate you gotta ask questions you gotta yeah you know if you hadn't just walked by you might still be dealing with exchange so well oh yeah no you're right man the other thing that that i want to hit home is the fact that you had about 30 seconds worth of self-deprecation there where you were just like i'm a really slow learner you know i watched the cvt nuggets thing like 600 times in a row and all this other stuff but i just want to clarify though that when google has a networking problem who do they call again but like but like that's such a cool thing to say though because like you know yourself better than anybody's ever going to know you anyway so you know no one's going to put words in your mouth but the fact that you're saying like i am such a slow learner like you have no idea but you're the dude that google and a t atg is the freaking internet at 18t stands for american telephone and telegraph and that company's been around for like 200 something years at this point okay and they're calling you like half the things that we do on this planet or because att is a company but they're calling you and they have a network they don't have one so here's a question why don't these i'm you're getting into the comcast knock and that's near and dear to my heart but i i did something i'll just talk off the top of my head while i'm thinking about it like all these places are like calling you you're a direct support person like at what point are they just going to be like we want him to work for us directly oh no i wish they could uh they i think they have that uh uh what you're gonna call it or something yeah yeah yeah they have that uh i forgot what it was called man yeah it was something it's something like that where they can't like push people but i mean it's an interesting thought right like like if if if those people are calling you i mean yeah that literally puts you at the top of the food chain as far as i'm concerned and it's like you you you are the major you're the guy with the keys in the matrix do you ever mess with them when they call you like what you can't google this like no no no because they're not about to say nothing you're like you'll be surprised does that make up if if the guy from google calls cisco attack and then the cisco attack guy googles the answer does that create a black hole right wait and he's using a t uh internet internet fiber internet into the village anyway yeah but uh yeah man um it's definitely humbling man and uh you know i got rejected a lot from fiscal but uh really uh but yeah yeah uh i'll i'll get into that after i do the comcast thing now but um yeah once i got into comcast man it was like it was a whole game-changer my life changed everything changed god bless yeah exactly exactly uh um it was it was great man um i i've met some really cool people i was so nervous i was shaking even in the interview uh one of the gentlemen's that interviewed me he was a senior dude uh but cool super cool man he asked me about at the end of the interview he asked me about hey let me just uh ask you a question do you know mpls do you know what that is i was like sir uh you know what i just know the acronym and i know like you already know where you're going but with labels that's pretty much it that's all i know i mean that's that is pretty much it so he but he was so cool man this this guy like i didn't know who he was until i got into comcast but this guy was so cool and he just let it go i'm like then when i walked out of there i was like i didn't get the job man damn yeah i mean i just sat down in the car i just said took a big breath and just just left and my father said yo how'd the interview go i was like pops it was i you know i didn't know a lot of stuff but at the end the guy asked me a question i couldn't answer him but uh he said oh don't worry about it you know if it's good for you you'll get it and then yo a couple weeks later man uh you know recruit a call we did our negotiation and then god was in and then um they had real good people man a lot of seniors and uh that was one of my thing i asked a lot of questions and i oh man i'll question you to death if i don't understand you know what i mean because yo i don't want to make a mistake you know so um it was real cool uh i did my training over there met great people and then uh they threw me in the night shift uh they actually told me up ahead they're like yo most likely you're gonna be working night shift do you have a problem after nah man i function better in the night time anyways you know but uh lo and behold but it was it takes a toll on you man but um but uh but the good thing was man nighttime is where all the fun happened you know i mean that's where all the maintenance is all the network outages all the all when everybody's sleeping what goes on to the box is that's what happens you know i mean so it was fun man and then i met a great gentleman over there andy and the caveman taught me a lot of stuff you know i mean about what's going on how to hook things up and stuff you know i mean it was fun man and i would i would have mentioned something because i sat right next to mansoor in the knock on on midnight shift and we were edge guys we were supposed to work you know the last mile and and that's what our responsibility was but every time i look over at him he's in these boxes i never seen jumping around you know he was in the core in the crayon you know all night every night because i guess you wanted to learn right you were hungry you wanted to get more and more into the network and yeah and you were always grabbing me like yo look at this isn't this cool check this out but yeah you were always chasing you know you were trying to get deeper and deeper into the network even yeah man like when i first got in man it was real real like uh we were we had access to boxes but we couldn't go into config mode or nothing right and i would imagine at the time tanya uh she really fought for us finally we got in and when andy came in it was fun man me and andy just clicked yeah i mean and uh thank god he sat next to me because but i just felt bad because i talked so much and he's like one time he's just turned around he's like yo okay just shut up dude i did not no i thought i was fucking with you in my defense i could not sleep that whole year on mid so i was all screwed up like you said it takes a toll i would go home and sleep an hour and get up it was awful so yeah yeah that was the only i hadn't slept in six months when when i went to snap that yeah i apologize shotgun beers and nah man it's really humbling man like you know like when andy told me his story and i'm like dude it's so amazing that you're putting two and two both of the worlds together you know you actually did what we're actually supporting on site and now you're actually doing it on the rider side it's it's freaking amazing it was me i don't understand what the hell is going on he's talking about optics i'm like yeah all right sir uh so what's going on with the links but i was able to help you with the physical and you were able to help me exactly exactly but um yeah man um and uh logging into the boxes uh it's just that was my goal man just to move forward you know i mean i didn't want to sit because it was a comfortable job but i didn't want you know you got to step out of your comfort zone and i really wanted to move out yeah uh into a different did you have your mp there or were you still working on no no i was still studying for my mp uh did you get it while you're at the knock i actually got it uh when i was my last uh my last couple of months at uh comcast okay but your movie after the knock was your big move right i mean yeah it was a big move yo i want to learn yeah i mean i want to be be that guy you know so you're always working past your shift you were always there hours after your shift ended i mean monsieur's yeah he's the one you want to hire yeah yeah that's the theme right it's like you know he's hungry and the hungry you are the more you're going to eat nah man it was it was fun man a lot of people just told me like dude it's freaking 12 30 in the afternoon why aren't you going home i was like yo man it's my outage and i want to finish i want to know what what's going on you know like you know it's i i kept it this far a couple more minutes or a couple like an hour or two it's not gonna kill me and you were not hourly just to clarify you weren't milking the fuck no you weren't getting a cent we got that sweet knock salary oh yeah so so then you know you're calling an attack at that point right for certain things yup yup i um so we'll make uh cases we'll do cases we had like a a dedicated comcast team yeah just for comcast kind of like how you have a t now exactly exactly yep yep so uh real cool people man i got you know i asked them a lot of questions and sometimes they say yo they don't know they'll try to find out you know like real cool people but they also just told me like you know they didn't say all right man just run these commands and that's it they actually told me ah man this is what you're gonna be doing when you're checking out uh bgp summary or something you wanna be checking out how many prefixes coming in this is that you know they were actually helping me learn they were teaching and i was taking notes exactly and uh same thing with juniper folks uh me i was a big i loved juniper you know as well and i worked on that a lot and that's how i learned and folks and actually um in cfts in india a gentleman i actually got into it with uh like my first or second outage but after that man we became really good friends and then um he was my go-to guy man every time i had an issue i'll just hit him up uh and out of respect i'll make a case because yo you know everybody doesn't just work you know i mean like oh let me let me reply back to my sword you know so you were developing relationships with the vendors and you can call them directly that's exactly exactly so is there where did you go after comcast so after comcast man um uh i had a really good opportunity in comcast uh i mean in comcast i got married i had a kid um and i was really upset because uh before that i andy was a very close person to me you know i mean he was a he was just like my brother man you know when he was and when he was leaving i was really upset you know so um but then i was like you know what i gotta make some moves too man because uh you know you lose somebody and you you i don't know it's a weird thing with me uh so anyways i had a kid and um i wasn't moving up man um that was the only downfall of where i was at uh will we like when you're a nice shift man um you don't get acknowledged you know i mean um you you gotta you gotta kudo say yo good job but you know your acknowledgement of or what you could have uh what you saved or you know how much uh how big of an outage you just you know you just helped out with right right right because everybody's asleep right like exactly yeah and you're saving the world all night and but you've somebody go you go to like interview for the next position and all those people in there are like who is this dude we've never even seen him before yeah right exactly man yeah exactly yup yup and then um you know what it was a big transition everybody was moving the charter it was a big thing uh when i went out i had to move to denver everything was done by charter so it was real nice i had a uh i had to sign something for like you know like i got to stay there for a year where i got to pay the money back and stuff you know i mean big big bump in pay yeah yeah real big bump oh cause they moved you to denver yeah yeah that's the only place uh i had to i had to go to denver which wasn't bad you know when you um i always thought to myself that i would never leave new york or jersey or the tri-state area well tri-state not tri-state new york or jersey uh i don't like connecticut i mean no offense to anybody you got eu connecticut they forget about connecticut yeah i don't know how do you feel about vermont all right it's a cool place man yeah aj did that's why yeah that's why but um yeah doing the charter what were we doing out there i tried to i actually went as so uh when i was in comcast i was a i got just promoted to network engineer too but i actually wanted to get a senior position because i know i was a senior level yeah no they didn't want to give it to me charter gave me a senior position and when i went to charter it was really cool stuff because um when i went in uh i remember i did my you know i did my interviews and everything was good then when on my first day a guy comes up to me he was like yo you know uh have you ever worked on juniper you you know what that is i was like yeah yeah i kind of know what judith is you know and then he's like oh you know there's a thing called xr ios xr have you ever worked on that i just look at him i'm like yo is he being funny or i don't know what's going on you know well like he's like like he's right like he's being sarcastic because it's like yeah yeah of course like you idiot like wow exactly here and he didn't know i was his team lead so i was like oh yeah no problem man you know but when i i kind of felt bad too i was like hey man i hope i didn't like you know past like you know stop on his toes or something but you know i didn't say nothing i was like yeah yeah i worked on it before but you know charlie actually really gave me the opportunity of um like uh i won't say managing man because our manager was cool he wasn't that technical so a lot of like the escalations and everything came to me from uh just to like from our within the team and from people i work with i i um like i said man i talk a lot i talk with everybody so i uh i built a lot of relationships in charter to with everybody so i helped out people on site people doing optical stuff so that really helped me out too you know just to just to be at i won't say a manager level man but at least be a a true team lead you know so that helped me out a lot but um i started hating denver uh not hating denver just the environment man because it was too slow for me it was it was beautiful i love the mountains connecticut is out and denver is out which one's worse though connecticut yeah oh no man i'll i'll pick them over connecticut yeah what happened like what happened in connecticut we gotta know oh no no it's just oh it's our connecticut's nice what was her name no no it's your name no it's just uh it's just yeah yeah no but um yeah not in denver it was uh it was beautiful place but it was just uh you know it was nothing to really do over there you know i mean i'm not a hiki type of person man you know i'm over here like nothing to do in denver yeah no no i'm meaning like yo i'm not you know hiking or doing hunting or people talking about like you know going out in the mountains and drinking i'm like what are you talking about bro i don't know about that stuff sounds like a good time oh yeah no no no i like the mountains i like going there but you know that's pretty much it you know i like sitting at it he takes the pictures and that's pretty much it you know you like being in the oh yeah you go downtown existence right oh yeah yeah no man it was really that's the best part of them where i like i got in my car as soon as i walked out of my apartment boom you see a beautiful scenery man yeah that was highlight of my day you want to see the scenery you just don't want to be in the scenery exactly it's gotta be in the scene yeah yeah yeah yeah so here's a question though so cause you're you're a city guy right like i'm not leaving the bi-state area i guess we narrowed the city in pakistan that you lived in was that like new york like or was that like denver like because there's a lot of mountain in pakistan right yeah yeah a lot of mountains um it was more of a new york like it was like a new york slash villagey type you could say because you could actually go to the downtown and see all the all the craziness happening but when you go out to the burbs like it's like new york city and then you're living in long island you know or you're living in queens you know you go to the burbs and stuff so you're okay yeah so it was like that but um yeah man um that was pretty much it denver was uh our go-to spot was walmart you know there was only one freaking dunkin donuts in the whole denver area and which closes which closed at seven o'clock i can't believe that 7 p.m you you you're closing done condolence at 7 pm i was about to throw a rocket at dunkin donuts this is the most new york conversation i've ever had in my life but um so how long have you been before i was in denver for a year man um i joined july 22nd uh charter and my last day was july 23rd gotcha is that when you went to jack yeah yup yup uh so after charter uh how do you attack first of all i mean did you was that a career goal of yours did they approach yeah yeah um so it was two two things i really actually three things i really wanted to do either get into cisco juniper or google that was my three dream companies i really wanted to work for juniper was very close to me because i i did a lot of work on juniper so i was very good with juniper you know and um cisco i always wanted to be in because all the folks that really taught me a lot of great knowledge and plus you know you're like we studied cisco you know when you when you're going into networking you study cisco stuff you know so and to me and i applied man i applied a lot a lot a lot to cisco i got shot down a lot of times and even this time i told my wife i was like oh it's another interview you know i don't know you know but i'm not just gonna say no or i'm not just you know not gonna oversleep because i know i'm not going to get it i'm still going to try so were you just applying for anything network related there is that yeah yeah i was uh yeah i was just yeah i was just trying to i was just trying to move out of denver and uh i was either trying to go back to new york or go to jersey or somewhere east coast when you looked at those cisco job postings you were applying did you have everything on that list no no not at all not at all no matter of fact you are about that because there's so many people that are like that you know you see one little thing like must lift 75 pounds at the bottom no that's not me i'm out yeah in your case it's like you read the whole thing you're like no no no no no must live 75 pounds that's me exactly man for the attack roll you applied and got for what you have like 50 75 percent of the qualifications i mean there are things on there you didn't know right or have yeah yeah i um so one thing really uh stood out was um i had a lot of xr experience um they were looking for somebody that did work on crss that did work on asrs and heavy so that was the two biggest benefits i had uh of me working you know at comcast at charter so uh my first interview i had seven interviews in cisco wow yes seven attack position yeah six technical one non-technical oh whoa yeah six technical interviews to get this job yes yes but um the first interview dude i was i was so scared but i was just i was just me man because i did so many interviews and then god bless the dude i i uh he was one of my teammates victor senior guy beautiful person man and dude he just talked he got on the phone uh it was a video uh video interview so how you doing man um so how's everything i was i was all prepared to like oh you know he's going to ask me about tcp and going crazy packing header stuff not man he was real cool um he was just talking he's like yo so what do you think about switching can you define a little switching for me and he was actually reading me out as a character type and then um then actually later on the interview he asked couple of uh technical questions and which was a little hard but um it was real nice man and he really set like he made me feel good you know that was that interview you know that he made me feel comfortable and i've really really appreciated how he handled the whole interview process just him and himself what do you do you don't know an answer oh i just say i don't know you know i just say hey i don't know or uh i don't try to you know say oh yeah i worked on this before that nah man i don't know i don't know he asked me about configuring routing policies on bgp can you give me an example i was like dude i never configured a writing policy honestly speaking you know everything that i just told them i was like hey uh troubleshooting a live config and setting something up from scratch is a totally different beast right i mean you're setting up from scratch you know what you're doing right you know what you're doing and troubleshooting because you know what to look for you know all right man i gotta go into the lives i gotta check this out what interface is going in what the member is you know you're that's how you troubleshoot it and once you're testing or setting something up is you know you're going step by step and sometimes you forget man you know so uh but from there you know it was really nice then i had another gentleman real cool dude uh he asked me a lot of crs questions um did they get harder and harder like he would yeah it got a little harder and harder uh but when i got to my last uh my sixth interview um it was the senior guy he was there over 20 years and um cool ass dude man or he asked me nothing technical he said this is what he said he said dude you just you made it this far i'm sure you know what you're talking about you know so what's your favorite movie i'm like what what yeah so uh but and then yo it was so nice man what's your favorite movie what'd you do yeah what is it come on man oh i thought bad boys man i mean just that team itself made me feel so good man it was it was like dude like i wanted to get it are these all like it was all my team your team now yeah it was all my team but uh so the senior most person is pat sir he's there um uh yeah yeah a lot of ccies man uh almost half the team is ccie oh well more than half uh honestly speaking man i'm very i'm very humbled that work over there it's a great company and um i don't know a lot of stuff dude you know just off the bat you know like when people open up cases i'm looking at black ops shit i was like oh i don't know this man i mean but uh what do you do you reach out to your teammates you guys have like a knowledge so exactly so what it is um cisco has his own database uh which is really great and they had the database all the way they have cases from like 1980s yeah that's how oh yeah they have it's beautiful man and it really helps you out um it's great documentation and then honestly speaking because you know you can't go through documentation every single person it doesn't matter what team they're in they'll always help you out nobody ever said no to me you know they're just saying hey man i'm a little busy give me 10 minutes i'll i'll cut i'll hit you up yeah you know nobody ever said no that all right man you know you got to do this but i try to do my due diligence you know try to get all the all the information or try to look at it and once i can't get no nothing or i can't go forward then i reach out you know then hey i kind of need help man you know can you help me out so yeah man it's it's uh that's how you know and uh i ended up in uh dallas well frisco fresco so how long have you worked for attack in cisco um it's actually i just had a year in august uh august was my year and um cisco is very very generous uh they don't throw you right on the bus right right away like you're not taking cases so when you join you actually have a really nice uh really good time of studying and uh getting trained you assigned a mentor your mentor helps you out well you got a couple of mentors they give you a timeline or they give you like a uh like a program each team has his own program so like service provider they'll give you a program that hey man you want to study one week just study mpls or all vpns you know try to know what's going on try to do the configuration that's what they want to do uh one one one week is on crs's go in and out crs know about multi-chassis you know about the fabric links you know but the thing is you start and you you finish the whole thing you know but you forget what the hell just happened you know you're like right oh man yo yeah exactly it's so much information man and i i'm guarantee dude i sat there i started at nine i went all the way till six just studying crs just one day just on freaking how the packet flows and at the end of the day man i'm like damn i still don't understand so that's how it is man like you know but i tried i tried man you get your own lab and everything like that yeah man that's that's the beauty that yeah hold up his lab is probably a little bit different because you got ios xc and xr i bet right yes yes we got we we have live boxes we have crs's to break asl 9ks to break ncs's yeah we got we we and uh cisco's coming out with new boxes called spitfire uh cisco 8k so which is going to be really nice um and uh yeah man it's really cool man they give you so we got that then atnt is very generous they att gives you a lab too so uh yeah man god bless those people like you're if you're thinking about yo you know you're gonna work at cisco you're gonna get a lab you short themself gonna get last you have the energy you have yes you have do you have your own bgpas over there it's a transit ass too yeah yeah wow man it's it's fun man it's definitely fun um uh you know it's it's a blessing uh uh i like and the culture is cool man i got a cool ass manager my manager is just like andy that's how cool my manage is oh i don't know i don't know that doesn't sound all that cool i don't know what happened from the time you and i worked till now but none of these dudes appear to like me much i never haven't met andy in person yet yeah yeah yeah that's just every compliment you give me all their faces go sour like wait not this dude we're like we're actually like just kind of not dad yeah all we hear is like all these stories about how andy how cool he was and then he then he like shows us pictures about like him jumping out of airplanes and partying and we're like well why do you keep doing that to us like where is this guy like he's like kids bro well i yelled at two kids for being on my lawn today monster i got in an argument one day with aaron and they haven't let me down since they're still torturing me about it i was beating them up about being a telco guy and ever since i'm the grumpy old man so thank you for reminding them i'm a human with feelings and most of the time yes cool dude so now man all of our listeners open tack cases right i mean yeah i've opened way too many in my career because i don't know what the hell i'm doing right so i've learned so much from tech oh absolutely i mean can you give us any tips on you know what makes a good tax submitter like how can we help ourselves or how can we help you help us my my go-to is have a drawing and send them a show tech beyond that you know is there anything better we can do to help you help us yo that's that's an excellent uh that's the excellent way man having a topology view and show text like uh having something that you're actually calling for because uh we get a lot of cases that have like routed down right are you serious all right uh so what else is going on you know yeah i mean you need details right the more specific stuff you can get the better come on exactly is it unplugged gives you a lot of information your logs what um you want to know what actually when the trigger happened you know that's one of the biggest things that we asked that hey when did it happen time correlation was huge right yeah what kind of trouble shooting did you did if you did any or something of that nature but uh you know just be a little just be clear man just be clear on what the problem scenario is because a lot of times it'll happen and then you're you're on the bridge and then you're talking about oh yeah you know um like andy was doing the maintenance yesterday he reloaded the whole router i mean that's a good if you know that's good information yeah might as well you know you got to let us know that somebody actually reloaded a router do you run do you i mean maybe not with google and at t but you run into like cases where you know a guy's scared that somebody's gonna find out what he did so he's just like i don't know it's not working and then you find out dude that opened the cage yeah yeah yeah exactly we did that a lot man well i mean att is really strong uh very strong uh engineers in a t uh google itself is very strong you gotta own your mistakes i i've broken a couple big things in my relatively short career so far and i mean it's terrifying and it sucks and you wonder if you're gonna get walked out but oh you gotta go right to him like yeah i messed up because i found that so far management will protect you if you know yeah if you speak the truth because everybody makes mistakes i know that's what my leadership console cable and they're like something happened nope nope nope nothing here uh i was actually trying to get something out of the vending machine with this anyway so yeah man so like is there ever a time where you guys can't figure something out yes yes and is that is that when you say it must be a bug yes so what it is so check this out a lot of times um yeah a lot of times what happened is when you're open when somebody opens up a case uh usually at t and google is really thorough with how they upload uh how they upload you know their information all the show texts and stuff so you got to go through everything and plus when you're going through you want to you the good thing is they actually like they have an automated tool in cisco they actually text every single thing that hey um yeah yeah this it's like this many cases has been open on this box this particular problem this x amount of time they're tracking all those analytics so it's amazing man how people do and automation dude it's it's just a monster man it's just people that are doing automation big ups to them man it's just they have super super super powers yeah that's how it is you know so um am i telling you dan just reminded me am i wasting so the the weird cases that like it's not obvious tax not getting back to me i don't know what's going on i spend a lot of time looking for a bug online because to me it looks like a bug am i wasting my time should i just leave it to the experts and if there's one because i i might be under the false assumption that like cisco doesn't want to tell me it's a bug yeah well right so i'm trying to find a bug for them like well listen this is exactly what's happening and it says it's a bug and you haven't answered my question yet like should i not do that you know what i mean is that insulting that i'm telling you like hey no no not at all not at all not at all man you actually helping the guy out because the thing is man they gotta understand when people open tag cases you're not the only person that's opening the attack case that we're actually looking at you know we got multiple attack and we it goes by priority right so if it's a p1 obviously that's priority p2 is priority p3 i man i'll get to it you know p4 is just yeah i'll get to it you know what i mean p4 is to ask a question right yup yup yup p4 is actually question i've done that yeah man me too man but the thing i want to get at andy i did that too i did that a lot when i was in uh on the um customer end i learned a lot just by checking out of like yo if this is a bug like yo they'll have commands that i never used you know you guys have secret commands right yeah yeah they do have secrets commands yeah can you tell us like look not secret like secret commands like crazy but they have like shell commands you got to go into shell you run them uh in order to grab some stuff and that and mind you that's not for us to interpret we have a different we have a uh uh escalation in our own it's called bu you guys probably heard bu business unit so bu that's our escalation that unix guys or something because you're talking about like ios like xe right where it's basically on unix anyway yeah uh well yeah uh xr if you do like if you're going xr you do run you'll go into a shell just like how in juniper you go start shell use a root you know so um you'll go into that and you'll try to grab commands so basically we're grabbing information for them to decode and once they decode and they can't get uh an answer they actually go to the code developers the people who wrote five uh like xr533 you know people who wrote the code they actually go to oh people and it's so cool man when you talk to these people it's like you're talking to a robot what if it is they have and when you talk to them it's not like they're not talking about bgp they're talking about like the interconnects of how bgp was born and how everything happens how bgp is talking i'm like whoa whoa you know i don't understand the word they say bgp yeah the cbg ebgp but not man they talk about like uh they have you guys probably seen it like 0x something you know that kind of code so it's like all code name and they could actually just see the numbers on the screen and they know the problem they know okay you know what oh you know what this is this is getting punted because of it didn't actually make it to the asic level you know i was like dude how'd you know that but and they answer oh we've been doing it for a long time yeah so so wait you guys are blowing my mind there's secret commands that you can run on these things well they're no no not secret commands no other secret commands don't lie my tech guys in with webex and they're doing stuff that i've never even seen or heard yeah yeah yeah you guys know they don't teach you that in the ccnp no oh no no they're not some commands or can't even question mark it yeah it's not even there i know some commands you you you're not uh you guys are cheating it's not opening publicly no because that's only commands because some of those commands could actually bring the router down you know so you got to know when to execute them you know but i don't do that you know i first we we actually get to the problem what the problem is you know then we find a solution because main thing the customer wants is the root cause that's the main thing we got to figure out you know but uh then we have our escalations that's the beauty of uh just working in this team that is so hierarchical that it's easier just to go to somebody you can't just go to somebody to the bu directly because they're gonna say hey did you do this this this this you know you can't just do that you have to go through our escalation then today escalation but the only thing is the customer doesn't understand customers like yo it's down bring it up right now you know so um are they pushing you are they pushing to get your ie do they want everybody to have an ie there no no man they actually really chill um they actually want everybody to get a grasp of automation and cloud computing because um that's where you know that's where a lot of heavy duty is i.e just in itself is a perk because you get you get a lot of money your first ie is free for employees you know uh just to go there and take it and then on top of that once you get it you get ten thousand dollars yeah i mean wow you get a good you get money for you to attend ie are you studying cloud or automation because there are two things i've just been handed at work like yo you need to learn this yeah so automation man um i really want to i i tried a little bit uh well i got a code i've been using one code i used it in comcast using the charter i'm using in here that's the only code i know you know and um one code you said no no no code uh i'll wrote a code it's just this it's it's only a couple of lines but it does like a python script or something yup yup python script yep yeah and it does uh everything i needed for it to do you know so i don't need nothing else but um yeah man cloud is where you want it to be at man because cloud is taking over like crazy you know and um uh a really good a really good platform of cloud is a cloud guru i don't know if you guys ever heard a cloud guru linux academy they're very good man very very good nice oh aaron shaking his head you never heard uh oh yeah man um if you if so a cloud guru would actu they give you labs to do and you don't have to do it on your computer it's on their servers so you're not using your resources so it's like a cbt nuggets for cloud basically they'll teach you and then you can lab and like it's a subscription service kind of thing yup yup it's a subscription service but it's actually a little more like they help you do the lab they give you the workbook they have it's their it's on their own server so it's it's nothing and you can practice anytime you like it's not like rented you know here here man sir we i one final question yes sir are you ready for this yep yep ospf or isis um but to me it's isis man oh yeah yeah i'm very seriously google's now they take it out of everything but i think it's rad yeah yeah nah um isis is very uh cuz you know it's very extensible it's very easy to use uh and it's rocking and rolling right away man you know yeah it's it's plug and play you don't have to do anything crazy yeah i love it yeah sweet oh spf just making lsas make me go crazy that's the point that's the point they just throw more acronyms at you um yeah well dude yeah thanks for joining us man we appreciate you telling your story and sharing all that with us and you know stepping up thank you don't worry um i know you said my story story's a little weird but sleep easy my friend because everybody's has been weird thus far including our own so and you share a song with a couple of us anyway so i mean what's that tell you so definitely yeah so no no we'll uh we'll uh put all your information if you want it public as far as your social media and stuff like that like uh if you if you want a public in the show notes and where people can find you if they just want to pick your brain because yeah yeah you're the type of your director your direct cisco tech email address yes phone at the tab you work at google it'll work though because if you send them an email from a gmail account you know you can just pretend like yeah you work at google no dude you've been around and and super smart guy and we appreciate all your all your uh your insights too so no no thank you thank you for everything no you guys rock man the art engineering uh i've been hearing it uh since uh you know and it's fun man it's uh really fun and it's just like yo it's like you have extensive you're extending your friends you know i mean it's like i don't know it might sound a little geeky but in is the the way they tweaked it they put tlvs so i feel like i got tlvs around the world now just because of you guys you know like art and engineering because it's fun man you know it's like uh we hear people and we co-relate like it's just like watching a friend's episode you relate to the friends episode it's just like this man you know we could all relate to each other exactly exactly nice it's fun man no thank you can i be joey yeah yeah we're gonna have to get into that at some point but um yeah so yeah i speak for everybody here man thanks thanks for showing up thanks for uh being a good sport um and uh if you're listening and this is the first time hearing it do us all a favor and smash that subscribe button thank you and good evening 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