I’m 32 years old and looking for some honest advice from people currently working in networking.

I graduated in 2019 with an Associate Degree in Computer Information Systems. Since graduating, I’ve had three IT jobs, roughly two years at each, and I’ve now been with my current employer for about 3 years.

I currently work for a nationwide bank in the U.S. as a Field IT Support technician supporting bank branches. My job involves troubleshooting hardware, software, connectivity, and various
IT issues at branch locations.

My long-term goal has always been networking, and I’d like to transition into a networking position either within my current bank or at another company.

I’d really appreciate honest feedback, especially from people who have recently made the transition into networking.

Hey all, I currently work as an Enterprise Architect for a consulting company. Most of my workload is professional services and post-sales deployments, but I handle some pre-sales here and there. Business has been slow and I'm looking to move on to something bigger.

I recently landed three solid opportunities (written and verbal offers for all) around the same time and honestly could see myself happy in any of them, which is making this a difficult choice, and would love some outside perspective.

All 3 opportunities are fully remote

Option 1: Solutions Architect (network security)
compensation: 195k OTE, 70/30 base/commission split

• Lots of customer calls, discovery, architecture design, scoping, HLAs, and hands off designs to post sales team
• Access to lots of training from major networking/security vendors
• I like the idea of having a commission component and being rewarded for building strong relationships with AEs/customers
• My biggest worry is drifting away from hands-on/technical-work long-term

Option 2: Senior Network Engineer, mid-size enterprise
compensation: 170k base salary+ benefits

• Small team
• Work with SD-WAN, spine/leaf, ZTNA solutions, multiple public cloud workloads, and data centers. I think this would expand my skillset quite a bit
• More traditional engineering role, lots of hands-on

Option 3: Senior Network Engineer, contract (extension or conversion likely)
compensation: 110/hr

• Heavy design work and security hardening, SD-WAN, multiple data centers, campuses, and some OT. I have the most familiarity with the primary firewall vendor this company uses, lots of hands-on
• 1099, so self-employment tax, no benefits, no paid holidays/PTO included
• Higher hourly compensation but more responsibility for benefits, taxes, time off

My biggest dilemma is really option 1 vs option2/3.

If you made the jump from hands-on engineering into presales/SE work, how did that work out for you? Did you love it, regret it, wish you went a different direction?

I personally thrive in high-pressure environments and think I'd enjoy the customer facing/sales side, but I also genuinely enjoy being hands-on with engineering work.

For those who have done both, which path gave you better career growth and earning potential without making you feel like you were leaving the technical side behind?

Hello everyone,

I’m actively looking for opportunities in Data Center Technician / Data Center Operations roles anywhere in the U.S. I’m genuinely interested in building my career in the data center industry and am open to full-time or contractor opportunities.

I’ve been applying and working on improving my technical skills, but I’m still trying to get my foot in the door. If anyone is hiring, knows of upcoming opportunities, or can point me toward the right people or companies to contact, I would really appreciate your help.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

I am a retired AT&T inside technician who worked on test and turn up of various fiber optic devices. Would I be considered for a job in a data center? I did do a lot of troubleshooting and maintenance. Any chance?

My wife asked me the other day, "What's been your favorite job?" And it really made me think about what I actually enjoy doing. I was a network engineer in all sorts of capacities, support type roles, consulting, professional services, standard enterprise, and a medium/large isp. I then got into automation, led me to Python, that led to cloud, kubernetes, then ended up in a DevOps type sales role. Started pre sales, now I’ve moved post sales as a csm at an ai company.

To be fair, I originally took the csm role so I could stop traveling so much from my previous pre sales role. But I think it’s proven to be a bit too far from what I’m mostly interested in doing.

So it’s been about 5 years since I last had a network engineer title but when thinking about the jobs I’ve really enjoyed the most it comes back to those roles. I miss building things, troubleshooting really deep narrow issues, labbing, constant pursuit of learning the next thing, even the occasional pager buzz to fix some random outage someone forgot to set the time to roll their eigrp auth key chain on one side of the link, all that stuff.

I used to spend HOURS watching Brian McGahan, Jeremy Cioara, rob rikers listening to packet pushers, reading Jeff Doyle, I was really into it. And I still do when I have time. I look back and can’t believe I left a job that was also something I really enjoyed doing and learning. I guess I thought I’d like the customer facing roles more, but now I’m certain this ain’t it.

In all my recent roles I’ve constantly thought “ah I wish I knew how this worked back when I worked as an engineer” so I still follow the industry and tinker with networking all the time.

So, I want to get a fresh start and land a network engineer role. Curious what you’d recommend I focus on as someone with experience but out of the discipline for a while. Should I renew expired certs, ccnp, aws or gcp something entirely different? Are boot camps still a thing? What are the top skills these days? Open to any and all advice. Would you apply for senior as before or start back at non senior roles?

I know the whole “how do I become a network engineer” topic is beat to death and there’s tons of resources out there, so maybe you could instead tell your story if you did something similar? I’d be curious to hear how other people have left networking and got back into it some time after a departure.

I’m in Dublin, Ireland for context.

Hi, I just want to ask. I worked as a Technical Support Staff for 6 months and I just realized I wanted to pursue Networking and become a Network Engineer. What should entry level jobs I should pursue to became a Network Engineer?

Hey I am studying to become network and engineer + cloud . Wondering what’s the job like when you know what you doing ? And how much experience you need to make £50k+ annually ?

Time for a change. I’ve been in construction for 20 years, good money, but the travel keeps me away from my family more than I want.

I’ve spent the last while building a serious homelab: 7-VLAN network with default-deny segmentation between zones, a self-hosted DNS resolver, Suricata IDS/IPS, and a mesh VPN setup to get around CGNAT for remote access. Currently studying for CCNA and working through Network+ and Security+.

Trying to figure out if a networking career switch is realistic. Given hands-on experience like this, is it actually possible to skip the help-desk detour and go straight for NOC/network tech roles, or is that wishful thinking? Also aware I’d likely take a real pay cut from where I’m at now in construction — curious how big and for how long people have seen that go.

What would you add to my prep, or what am I missing that’s obvious to people already in the field?

Hey everyone, my name is Charlie and I just launched CoreStack -- a job board built for the data center and infrastructure industry.

Data centers power everything -- AI, streaming, banking, healthcare, and cloud storage -- and the industry is projecting 340,000 open roles this year with not enough people to fill them. These are good paying jobs, a lot of them don't require a degree, and most people have no idea they exist.

That's the gap I'm trying to close. There are jobs listed for everyone whether you're in the trades, electrical, HVAC, construction, or just looking for a career change into a growing industry.

Would love to help you find a job and receive feedback from anyone willing to poke around and create an account. corestackjobs.com

I have experience on Fiber Installations, Mikrotik/router/Modem/OLT Configuration. I can even create small local internet server, I know network design not too good nor bad. I have good future last year but got knocked off into a different life and been wishing for a chance back, this is for my wife and daughter.