- If you get to an interview
and you say I have CCNA or I have CCNP everyone's like, okay. That brought you to this table, now what? - So we did this before but I'd
like to get an updated list. Are there any top five, top 10 technologies that you
think are really important? And are there any, is there
any path to get there? - Well, you see it depends on whether you're looking
short term or long term. Short term today I would go
with automation or cloud. These are the things that will be probably in greatest demand in the
next three to five years. Long-term, learn the fundamentals. - Is networking still relevant? Is it still a good career? So if someone's thinking about
becoming a network engineer you know, should they rather
just become a developer or do something else? - You know, in the end it's all about selling yourself, right? - [David] Yeah. - You know, the best jobs are the ones that you don't apply to. The best jobs are the
jobs that are created for you because they want you. (upbeat music) - Hey everyone, it's David Bombal back
with another interview. But in this case, I've got Ivan. I've had Ivan on my channel before. Ivan is one of the guys in networking that I respect most. And I really respect his opinion. Ivan welcome. - Thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure. - Ivan you've been in this
industry for many, many years. So I'm going to--
- Too long. - (laughs) Too long, no not at all. I'm gonna try and extract your
wisdom and your experience to help people who are sort
of starting in this industry. Ivan let's start with this question 'cause I think this is
a question that a lot of people are asking. We see a lot of new technologies. We see things changing, clouds
becoming more important. Cisco DevNet has become this big thing. Automation has become this big thing. Is networking still relevant? Is it still a good career? So if someone's thinking about
becoming a network engineer you know, should they rather
just become a developer or do something else? - Well, how do you think
we'll move bits around, with pigeons, which have got an apathy? - It's a good point, yep. - So networking will always be around. It's just that for the
last 40 years we thought that we were demigods and
special and we are not. So networking is becoming a discipline like everything else in the world. Plumbing, power
transmission, construction, building roads, building
highways, building airports, mechanical engineering, you know? Usual discipline where
experts, technicians, road workers, in our
case configuring vlans. - You're not selling this
because you know, to tell me if you had told me like 20
years ago when I started or longer than that, I'm
gonna be like a plumber, I might've looked at a different career. And it's not an offense to become-- - No. No, no, no, no. You are designing power transmission. - I think you've used that analogy before. Can you explain what you mean by that? Because we consider will I get a job and will it pay me enough so
that I can feed my family? That type of thing. - Yes and yes. - So explain your power transmission, sorry I don't mean to
interrupt you, go on. - In every discipline
you need some experts. And those experts are by definition rare. Unless of course we're talking about archeology where in Slovenia we need one archeologist
per year, but we train 20. - [David] (laughs) That is a problem. And the other 19 are
probably selling fries. I don't know what they're doing, but in every sufficiently
complex technical discipline you don't have too many experts because people are just not
willing to invest the amount of time and effort to become
experts in that discipline. - Networking it's CCIEs, what you would call an expert. Is that right or you know how far-- - I don't let's say the... Okay. So what we should
really do is we should start with the definition of
what an engineer is. Not the networking engineer which is really a glorified
CRI jockey, sorry about that. But it's someone who
understands the fundamentals, who understands the scientific principles now that we would have any. And then uses those to build stuff out of well-defined components. And if you are working
in mechanical engineering you have your components and you build bridges for example, or you build rockets or you build cars. If you are in networking, you have your access points. You have your routers you have your switches,
you build networks. Hopefully there will be some science behind building networks
but we are not getting there because the vendors are
strongly opposing that. Just take a look at the debate how much buffering we
need in the switches. Anyone with any scientific
background is telling you with properly implemented stuff we would need channel buffers. And every vendor is
selling you the buffers because that's more expensive,
but that's a different story. - Yeah. I mean it's good
that you mentioned that. I just wanna tell the audience what I really like about
you is that you don't, you're not beholden to a vendor. You give it as it is. So it's great to get your opinion on this stuff so, sorry continue. - Yeah, well as I heard from
one of the vendors once, as long as I'm practising equal
opportunity snack is okay. - (laughs) I like that. - Yeah. So anyway, you need people at various levels of expertise. And obviously if we go to I
dunno, power transmission. If you are designing electricity inside an apartment
building, it's not trivial. But it's not nearly as hard as designing a new power transmission line across the country. - [David] Yeah. - So you need expertise at various levels and just try finding someone
who will design electricity in your apartment building. They are rare and unavailable
and bloody expensive. So every sufficiently complex
discipline eventually gets to that point where because it's not sexy, there aren't that many
people interested in it and people who are in it
are rare and unavailable and therefore a little
bit on the expensive side. - Okay. So it doesn't apply to lawyers because there are too many of them but they're still expensive,
but that's a different story. (Ivan laughs) That's a good point. So I'm starting out. So assume I'm young and I'm starting out, I'm looking at becoming a CCNA. So that's where I'm starting. I mean, what you're talking
about is perhaps years down the line and I want
to have a discussion with you about like
certifications, but just to try and peg it so that we have
kind of an idea of skills. If I'm thinking about becoming a CCNA, would you recommend it today? How many years before I get
to like kind of that level. I mean, you're talking
high level, are you saying that there aren't many
jobs for new beginners? Are you saying that like
it's gonna take me many years to make a success of my career. I'm just putting you on the spot. Having a gesture, you know tried it. - It depends on how you define success. - [David] Yep. - So if you take a look at the mechanical engineering, there are people making tools. And these are highly qualified people but some of them only have an
equivalent of a high school, but they know what they're doing. They've been doing that for ages. They're good at their job and they are respected
and reasonably well paid. But that's already four
years of education. You want to get a mechanical engineer, there's another three to five years of university or college. And then if you want to become an expert in I dunno, tool design, you need another three to
five years of experience. So add that together. You are at 10 to 15 years. So what do you expect in networking? - Yeah. I mean I think
it's a lot of people especially with certs. And I wanna let's talk... I don't know if it bears
on what you're saying but let's talk about cert, because you know are
certifications valuable in today's world? Would you recommend certifications? I mean, I keep pointing to
specific certifications-- - Yeah I would. - Sorry go on. - You know for two reasons. Number one, decent certifications have some reason behind the
things you have to learn. So there is a reason you have
to learn switching and routing and how bridging works,
yada, yada, yada, with CCNA. Obviously like 20% of that
is probably marketing crap. And another 30% is Cisco
CLI who cares about that? But like 1/2 of it is fundamentals and you have to learn
fundamentals eventually or you will never become an engineer. I mean, you can get engineer in the title and still don't
understand how things work but that's a different story. That's the peculiarity of our industry. And instead of giving you a raise they give you an engineer
title and now you feel great. That's a different story. So yeah, certifications are relevant because you know they're structured. It's like going to university and study for three to five years. Why do you go to university? I mean, 80% of the things you learn there will probably never be
useful in your life. But you have a structured curriculum and you go through that
and you learn a little bit or a lot depending, about many things that you
would never touch otherwise because you wouldn't be forced to do it. And you know that we are all lazy. - [David] Oh yeah. - So yeah, certifications
are good for the same reason. They force you to learn things that you wouldn't learn otherwise. And also they are like
the baseline enabler, let's call it that way. Because eventually you
will have to get a job. And somehow you have to prove
to whoever is hiring you that you are capable of doing that job and having
a certification doesn't hurt. Obviously people are going around and finding a job totally
wrong way, because you know, you put together your CV
and they all look alike because everyone is using
the same CV polishing service and everyone has the same service. And then everyone is sending their CVs to every job opening
posted on the internet. So I'm getting 100
identical CVS, what do I do? - [David] Yep. - I throw them all away
and I hire a friend. - (David laughs) 'Cause
at least I know him. - Honestly, it's a problem. I mean, a lot of young
people are really struggling because how did they, I hear these stories
over and over and over. They might get a whole bunch of suits. They still struggling to get a job. And then one of the
problems is experience, do they have experience. - You know certs don't help you if you can't prove to the company
that you are adding value. - So how do I do that? I mean, I wanna put you on the spot. You know, let's say you're hiring someone. So I'm a young person. I've perhaps got a CCNA. How do I, they always want experience. So how do I get experience
without having a job and how do I get a job without experience? You know, it's that whole-- - Volunteer, come on. - So volunteer.
- So volunteer how. So give me examples - Find someone who
needs his network fixed, do it for free in the evening. - So you're like small
medium business, school, church, something like that. - School, church, charity, someone that you love helping. Don't do it for a
business because you know they're making money off of that. But the charity, set up
a website for a charity. Install a wifi for a charity, connect the charity or a church
or your local football club what do I care, to the internet. Do something useful. Document that, write about it. When you get to the interview, when you get to through all
the showstoppers and everything and you get to the
interview, you want to say I did this in my life and I
solved this problem this way and I was successful because whatever. If you get to an interview
and you say I have CCNA or I have CCNP everyone's like, okay. That brought you to this table, now what? - I liked that it brought me. I liked what you just said now, it brought you to this table, now what? - Yeah. I mean, I started working when I was in second grade of high school. - Can you give us an age because that might not
be the same for everyone. - 15. - 15, okay. - Yeah. Something like that. And you know, I was working for peanuts. - [David] Yep. But they did pay me because there was some
value in what I was doing and they felt charitable
and paid me a little bit. But I got the experience. I actually developed something. I got something up and running and I could
say well, I did that. You can't find anything, join an open source project. Every open source project could benefit from someone who could
write documentation. Write the bloody documentation
for an open source project, write unit tests, do
whatever, just do something. Don't DM on how it's
hard to get experience. - (laughs) So in other words you saying you've got to make it happen. So try and volunteer,
do something but help. - Don't count on the
environment, the society, the government, whatever
to solve your problems. Move around, do stuff. - So that gets me to
you mentioned a keyword and I wanna ask you about that. You said document. So what's your feeling about using social media
blogs, doing something like where you put it out
there, like videos, whatever. What do you think about that? - Oh, I mean you know in the end it's all about selling yourself, right? - [David] Yeah. - You know the best jobs are the ones that you don't apply to. The best jobs are the
jobs that are created for you because they want you. So how do you persuade
someone that they want. And by the way this works. I know a guy straight out of university. He was working on an interesting field and he got some other
interesting experience. And in the end it took a
year or so, but in the end he bumped into someone
who was so delighted with what this guy
could bring to the table that they went ahead and just created a job opening for him. Scrapped together the budget,
wrote the job description. He was the only one applying,
he's working there now. But it was him bumping into someone and telling him what he
did during his studies. And that guy was like yeah,
we need someone like you. So yeah, you could do that. Or you could document what you're doing. You have to build your brand. But you don't build your brand with 140 character long opinions. - (laughs) Unlike you Ivan. - Don't build your brands with likes on Facebook or posting
pictures of cat videos. That's crap. - So how do I do it? How do I do it? - Do something, document
what you've done, publish it. - So you're talking about a blog video that type of thing or? - Well, it depends on what kind
of brand you want to build. You want to build a
professional serious brand. Well yeah, you're aiming
for an expert, right? - [David] Yep. - So yeah, written word
probably still works better than you being an actor in a video. In part there's another problem honestly. Some kids are natural talents and they could just appear in
a video and they would ace it. - [David] Yeah. - It's took me, I don't know about you but it took me ages to get
proficient in presenting stuff. - Yeah. I mean, I think
we're a different generation that's why. - No.
- Partly. - No. No, no, no. You're seeing the top zero 1% of the kids. For every kid acing it in the video they're like 1,000 kids
who can't open their mouth when the camera is running. - That's a good point. That's a very good point. Very good point. - So, and also if you're writing something you can edit it, publish
it eventually, you know. Perfect is the enemy
of good and published. - [David] Yep. I like that, yep. - But you can fix stuff which
is harder to do with video. - I do a lot of videos. Videos can be very tough. But I prefer video than
writing, but I think it's-- - Well, so do I. I Honestly prefer writing but getting stuff out as video is faster. - [David] Yeah. I also find it easier. - Yeah, and based on
the size of my audience because your audience is your
potential audience is huge. - [David] Yeah. - There are gazillions of
CCNA aspirants in the world. How many people really want to know how a new technology works? Maybe 1,000 worldwide, maybe 2,000. - Yeah. Yours is much more niche. - Yeah, exactly. - The written is perhaps better
for what you're going for is that what you're saying or? - Well, you know it's all about what brand you want to present. - [David] Yeah. - You want to be someone
serious, write something. You want to be employed in Hollywood, act. - But basically, I mean you mentioned build your brand. So this is all part of brand building. So what's your opinion about
like posting on LinkedIn? I've seen you put on
Twitter you know like, oh it's a pretty everyone's
putting stuff on LinkedIn. Stuff like that. - No, no, no, no, no. Not LinkedIn. LinkedIn is reasonable. - [David] Okay. - So first, figure out
how ephemeral the stuff is that you're using. Twitter, I'm really upset about people writing
long threads on Twitter. - [David] Yep. - Because that's gone in a week. No one will find it after two
weeks, unless you are looking for that quote by Cloud Borat. You know to err is human, to reply the error on
1,000 servers is DevOps or something like that (David laughs). That's when you can find
with a Google otherwise you know finding anything on
Twitter is ridiculously hard. - [David] It's tough yeah. - So you want to have a longer form text if you decide that you want to write. And then the question is where
do you want to publish it? LinkedIn is not bad because you know, it's
professional audience. So if you publish something on LinkedIn you will probably reach
people who might be interested in what you have to say. I prefer you know this is
another one of those things. If you want to get
experience do something. Why don't you set up the file
structure on your file system and then figure out how
to use Hugo or Jack Hill or whichever of this
static site generators. And then you put all this into Git and you push it to GitHub or GitLab and you set up a GitHub
actions or GitLab actions, bam. Everything is published automatically and you have your own website. - It's much easier to click on LinkedIn. But I know exactly what you're saying. You know, there's a lot of experience in just doing that. - Yeah. - And you can turn that into
a blog post or into something. - And the really interesting
part of that experience is that A, you build something, B you got experience with certain tools that not everyone in your industry is familiar with, that engineer I mentioned, you know. As part of he's not being in his industry experience he learned Git. Now he's preaching Git to
that company because you know they have nothing in
place or so I will still. So you get experience,
you build something, whereas you know, typing into a web form on LinkedIn and pressing publish,
what does that teach you? Nothing. But the same thing with
WordPress, don't use WordPress. WordPress is for people who use IT. It's not for people who work in IT. If you work in IT, learn something. - It's interesting. I mean, I have a different perspective to you because I think LinkedIn and those kinds of
platforms are really good because your reach can be much
bigger than just putting it on your website. But I like what you do-- - You know you can always-- - Sorry go on. - You can always put it on your website. - [David] Yeah. - And then write a summary on LinkedIn. - Exactly. I was going to say,
that's what you do very well. You'll write something on your website and then you'll talk about it
on Twitter or in other places. - Yeah. Well, I publish it on Twitter and LinkedIn because I seriously
don't consider Facebook or any of the variants like WhatsApp, Instagram, you know all of that crap. - (laughs) I have a
different perspective to you but I know what you mean. - No, no you have different audience. - [David] Yes. Yeah. - But honestly we are talking about building a professional brand. - [David] Yes. - Would you hire someone to
pull a power transmission line across your country based
on his Facebook posts? - (laughs) Depends but I
know what you're saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying, yeah. - So anyway, the other important thing is that you own the content. - [David] Yes. - Because you know what I just described I can push it to GitLab. I can push it to GitHub. I can push it to Bitbuckets
if it still exists, all of those are free. I could push it to S3 on Amazon if I wish, so I can publish it anywhere. I just find my domain to
that particular location. And I can move from a GitHub to GitLab because I hate GitHub this week because it was bought by Microsoft. I can move back from GitLab to GitHub because I hate GitLab
because it's down this week, and I can do it immediately
because I own this stuff. If I publish on LinkedIn, and they decided to change their terms
of service, good luck. - I just understand what you're saying. I like the idea of putting the
main article on your website and then putting a summary or something short to
that on social media. You kind of do that. So it's good to see that. Did you wanna say anything else about that or I'm gonna ask you the next question. - Oh yeah, oh yeah. I have a particular axe to grind. - Okay. Sorry, it's called what? - Medium, don't ever use Medium. (David laughs) - It's funny. You know it's I find that
LinkedIn worked really well just for reach, but understand what you're saying. It's a different audience. - You see, LinkedIn is
sort of fair relatively. As much as a social media
platform can be fair. And it's a value proposition. - [David] Yeah. - It's yeah, you have to be registered because you know, this
is for professionals but once you're registered
you're on there and that's it. Whereas Medium is like the
Columbia pharmaceutical model. You get the three stories per month three, and then you have to register and then we'll start tracking you. - I haven't used Medium to be honest, I've always used LinkedIn or my own website or something like that. - I get links to interesting
stuff that is on Medium. And then I immediately notice how they try to track
who I am and pull me in. And some stories are like, oh no this is only for
subscribers, which is okay. But some stories are like, oh this is like your
third story this month and now you really have to register. - Yeah, it's those
paywalls or those things where they force you
to register a real pay. I agree. - Yeah. I mean let's be honest. If you want to have subscribers
then ask me to register. - [David] Yeah. Don't dangle something in front of me and then bait and switch oh now you have to register. - Oh, I understand the frustration. - Yeah. - So, sorry go on. Whenever you're ready I'm gonna throw the next question at you. - Okay. Do it. - So Ivan you've mentioned Git already. So it's interesting. What's your opinion of Cisco DevNet and that those kinds of certifications? - They can't hurt. - [David] Yep. - So you see, it's always the question of where you're coming from and
why you need certain things. - [David] Yep. - So if you are an existing
networking engineer and you think that you
have to become a programmer which is a wrong idea but we can go there some other time, then yes something like DevNet
is the right thing to do because you already have
networking expertise, you know nothing about Python and rest API and the Git and all that stuff. You have to learn those things. If you're a developer, then you already know all those things. And if you want to be a
network automation developer then maybe you should focus more on understanding how networks really work. 'Cause you know you have the developers that can develop anything
and are not good at anything. And then you have people
who have actually worked in some industry for ages. So for example you might have a mediocre
developer who has been working in chemical industry
for the last 20 years. He will beat any whiskey because he knows all the dirty details, all the requirements, all the regulations, all the audits you have to go through. Whereas, you know someone who might be a brilliant
programmer has no idea about the industry. And the same thing if you want to be a good developer in network automation space, then maybe it's more than Python. Maybe you should know
how networks really work. - Do you think there's gonna be a trend where network engineers, the traditional network
engineers are replaced with guys who do automation? Is it, are we kind of all
forced to do automation now? - Well, you see the way
we've been doing things in the past is crazy. - [David] Yeah. - I mean just configuring the same crap on 1,000 remote office routers
manually and using Excel to replace the IP prefixes
in your configuration. - [David] Is the future. - What stone age are we living in? - [David] Exactly. - So yeah, we need to clean
up the crap that we're in. And one way of cleaning it up
is through network automation. But you know like an accountant probably won't write Excel macros, maybe a networking engineer
doesn't need to write by those scripts. Maybe you should outsource this to someone who actually
understands Python. - Yeah. It's interesting
what you said there. I mean, it's Cisco seemed
to be pushing a lot of people to network
engineers to become developers or automation guys if you
like, automation people. What's your opinion. - Everyone is doing that. - [David] Yeah. - That it makes sense I don't think so. - So do you, I remember
you've mentioned this before. Do you, are you still of the
opinion that it should be like a network person working together with a developer and creating something? - If you want to get good results yes. - Okay. That's interesting. But do you think-- - Honestly, you remember what
we were discussing previously? You need like 10 plus
years to become an expert in any industry. - [David] Yep. - So you invested 10 years into becoming a networking expert and someone invested 10 years into becoming a really
good software engineer. And now you want to waste
the next three years of your life learning Python? Why exactly. - So my counter to you would be years ago, and I mean, this is just
me trying to put myself in the shoes of the audience. Years ago we had telephony people and then we had network engineers. And then the market changed, and network engineers had
to learn about telephony. And that whole industry got
revolutionized where people like metric guys do both now. So is it not same kind of thing
gonna happen perhaps here. - Well honestly how
much Telephony is left? - Yeah. I mean it's all Voice over IP. Is that what you mean or it's like cell phones. - Well, first a lot of organizations are going to mobile only. - Yeah. - So who is, how many Voice over IP phones have you seen lately? (laughs) - No, it's a very good point. I mean, that industry has
moved even further now. So I mean, I did a lot
of Voice over IP stuff but I mean, now I wouldn't worry too much but this just seems to
be like a new trend. - You know even in the
traditional Voice over IP world, I was working for a system integrator and we had a few people that
would be Voice over IP experts. For the rest of us it was just a stupid application running on top of our networks. - [David] Yep. - Yeah. It was a bit more demanding. It was running on UDP. It didn't tolerate the jitter. It requires certain bandwidth. So yeah, you had to provision all that. But honestly, Voice over
IP, that's an application. I mean, do networking
engineers care about my SQL? - I know where you're going with this. I mean, for me or what you're
saying, but for me it's like and we're running out of time so I'm gonna push you on this now. What do you think are the top
skills in the next few years? Because we've kind of
mentioned automation. You've mentioned Git that are guided, but like if I'm starting today,
is there any kind of path that you would recommend someone take based on what you've seen? Like do I become a CCNA? Do I go and do DevNet? What are the sort of the technologies? We did this before but I'd like to get an updated list. Are there any top five,
top 10 technologies that you think are really
important and are there any, is there any path to get there? - Well, you see it depends on whether you're looking
short term or long term. Short term today I would go
with automation or cloud. These are the things that will be probably in greatest demand in the
next three to five years. Long-term, learn the fundamentals. IP routing hasn't changed in 40 years. Ethernet hasn't changed in 40 years. Everything we did was up to speeds. 400 gig ethernet is still ethernet. - [David] Yeah. Yeah. - It's still running IPv4
and IPv6 on top of that. And it's still transporting
more IPv4 than IPv6. DCP is slowly changing with
quake and things like that but always PF is there,
BGP will not go anywhere. App would be there
forever because you know if you have layer two and layer three you have to map them somehow. So regardless of what pays the bills, learn the fundamentals because eventually you will need them. - [David] Yeah. - And eventually every environment will get to a point where
the network will be down. And who will troubleshoot that? The Python guys, the Cloud guys or someone who took time and
learned the fundamentals? (upbeat music)
