- [Narrator] Welcome to RouterCast,
the podcast for network engineers.
This is Episode number one,
career talk with Dipippo.
This episode is brought to you by INE.
We're gonna kick off this podcast
with interviewing network professionals,
get a feel of their day-to-day life,
and how they got to where they are today.
This episode, we brought
on Youtube tech-star
Eli the Computer Guy, to
interview Stephen Dipippo,
team lead networking consulting
engineer for Cisco Systems.
- Hello again, and as
you may or may not know,
I am Eli the Computer Guy,
and INE has invited me
down to their Durum,
North Carolina office,
in order to do interviews
with many of the networking
and technology professionals
in the area.
I'm here with Stephen Dipippo today,
who is the team lead
network consulting engineer,
a level four at Cisco.
- Hey Eli.
- Hey.
So then, what is
a team lead network consulting
engineer for, at Cisco?
- [Stephen] That's kind
of a loaded question.
- That's a loaded one?
- Yes.
So the way that I like to
explain my job to people is,
everybody's familiar with Cisco tech,
so if something breaks, you can call into
the technical assistance
center and get help.
That's the reactive side of Cisco.
So now, switch gears and
think about the other side
of network engineering at Cisco,
which is the proactive side.
So the job title network
consulting engineer,
that's basically an optional service
that customers can sign up for,
and then it's a way that we can come in
and do consulting work
against the network.
So in other words, how
can we help the customer
optimize the network,
that's kind of the role
of the network consulting engineer.
So think reactive versus proactive.
- So like, cos talking
with a lot of people,
these job descriptions, don't
make sense half the time,
so are you actually doing
physical work on the network,
or are you just doing
high level consulting?
Somebody should put a switch there,
or you get, actually putting a switch in.
- That's a good question,
because I do a lot
of job interviews to hire
people into the team,
and one of the things that I
always make sure to mention,
because it's not abundantly
clear off the bat,
is as the consultant, we
actually don't spend time
in the customer's network.
So we don't actually have
access most of the time
into their devices.
So, we do have ways to gather their data,
running configurations,
hardware information,
and then make recommendations
based on that,
but I don't log in to
customer devices every day
anymore, like I used to at previous jobs.
So, it's very,
we give the recommendations,
we lead the horse to water,
but we don't actually
do the implementation.
And we definitely don't
do, most of the time,
physical rack and stack
or anything like that.
- So, your big claim to fame,
you are our first out
of all these interviews,
is you are an official double-C CCIE.
- Yeah, thanks.
- So, until I come here to Durum,
I had always thought,
CCIE, you get your CCIE,
it's kind of like a PhD.
Like you may continue
studying other stuff,
but you don't normally get a dual PhD.
Now that's how I figured CCIE was,
but apparently down here
you guys are so smart, like,
double CCIE, pshht,
well if you don't have
three, what are you doing?
So, I guess, why?
Why go for a double CCIE?
- Yeah, so,
as I'll tell anybody, I'm
the walking Cisco commercial
for the Cisco certifications,
and the reason is
because of my background.
So I went to school in
Florida at the University
of South Florida in Tampa,
and that's where I got a bachelor's degree
in Environmental Science.
- [Eli] Okay.
- During college I was a bartender,
and so I had this mix of bar-tending
and environmental science,
and then I graduated college
and said, if ever there
was a time to take a chance
in life, pick up and go, it's now.
I've really got nothing to lose,
I've got a fresh bachelor's degree,
I'm just bar-tending, I
could do that anywhere.
So my wife, who was my
girlfriend at the time,
we picked up, and we said,
let's go to North Carolina.
And it was kind of, almost on a whim,
we didn't really know anybody.
And so, we just knew that we could pick up
those types of jobs here.
So we moved up.
And I did, I picked up a bar-tending job,
and I was looking around for
environmental science jobs,
and I just wasn't having any luck.
So, kind of settled into bar-tending,
I did that for about a year and a half,
and just on one chance day,
I had a customer come into the bar,
and it was just a slow
day, and I asked them,
I said, "What do you
do?", "What's your job?"
And he said, I'm a network engineer.
So what do you do?
I don't know what that is,
I've never heard of that,
I don't know what it is.
And he told me about the
job, and then I said,
"Yeah, you know, I think I
might have made a mistake
"in school, I think
maybe I'm gonna go back
"and do something with computers,
"I think that's kind
of where I should be."
And he said, "Dude,
don't go back to school,"
he said, "there's this
thing called the CCNA,
the Cisco Certified Network Associate,"
and he's like, "Buy this book, it's cheap.
"Buy the book, take the
test, if you like it, great,
"if not, you waste a little
bit of money but not much,
"and just see if it's for you."
and I said, "Okay."
I bought the book, slow nights in the bar,
I was literally standing
at the end of the bar
reading my book, and then I took the test,
I got CCNA certified,
and like (snaps fingers),
got a job in IT.
So that really started me off on,
I mean that was a huge
life-changer for me.
I finally figured out,
I have a possibility
for a career here, and
once I got that CCNA, man,
I became a Cisco certification
advocate so fast.
- What was the motivation?
Because we were talking
about this off-camera,
but it's like, if you're a kid nowadays,
you see the next Facebook,
you see app development,
you see systems administration.
Networking, isn't something you see.
Like I can't even imagine,
when I learned networking,
it was after already knowing sysadmin,
so I can't imagine
sitting there not knowing
even sysadmin work, figuring
out TC-PIP addresses,
that doesn't, like what
was the motivation there?
Was it pure money?
Were you actually, was there
something about the numbers
that was really interesting, or?
- Part of it was definitely financial.
I mean one of the things
about being a bartender is,
you never know how much money
you're gonna make that day.
I mean, if it's not a
Saturday or a Friday night,
you might be walking away with
just a little bit of money.
So financial is definitely a driver,
but the other piece of it was,
I wanted to make sure I was in an industry
that was stable, something I
knew that I could do forever.
When you bar-tend you're
standing on your feet all day,
you can't do that forever.
So I needed a job where,
I really wanted the desk
and the computer, and
I looked at corporate
and said, "Oh man, I want a corporate job
"after all this bar-tending."
So that was a big driver for me,
and ultimately thankfully
it all worked out,
but, it was the CCNA that proved to me
that there was room to have
some instant reputation
when you get your certifications,
you can walk in a room and prove that
you know something.
And I think, because it's
an industry-respected
certification, I think
that was a big deal for me.
But, you know, how did I get to networking
instead of sysadmin or
programming like you ask?
Pure chance.
I was a blank slate, I
had no prior knowledge
of really any IT sort of technologies,
I didn't know which direction to go,
I didn't even know there
was really options,
I just happened to have
a guy come into a bar
and tell me about computer networking,
and so that's the way I went.
- Well that's interesting,
because a lot of people
get in this whole argument now,
there's like passion
becomes such a buzzword
that I hate,
with a passion.
So, but it's interesting how you say that,
so you, this was not a passion.
You did not wake up at six years old
and decide that you wanted
to route packets or whatever.
- No.
Although, my mother will tell you that
she always told me that I should have
some sort of computer
science major in college,
and I always was on the computer as a kid,
and I was always good with
the computer as a kid,
and she'll tell you that she always
tried to push me that way,
but she's ultimately supported my decision
to go for environmental science.
So, I do think that
there's something there,
like you do have to naturally have,
this motivation and move towards IT,
because reading a Cisco
certification book,
it's not glorious, right.
If you're not interested in it,
you're probably not gonna finish it.
So I do think that there's
some sort of natural thing
there that you either want to do it
and you're interested, or you're not.
- Okay, but going back though,
the cool part, the double CCIE.
So what's the purpose of the double CCIE,
other than, you are cool.
- Well, so really, my
job was the motivation
for my second one.
The first one, I knew that I wanted it,
once I got my CCNA I knew
that was the target goal,
and ultimately I did achieve
my CCIE route switch,
which was my first one.
So that was back in 2013.
And, so once I completed that,
I kind of said, "Alright,
I think maybe I'll take
"a little break for now."
But the way that the industry moved
and the way that my job works is,
when we structure our teams for our job,
we structure in technology buckets.
And what I mean is,
routing and switching team,
collaboration team, security
team, wireless team,
data center team, et cetera,
and the list goes on.
For me, working on the route switch team,
as a routing and switching NCE,
network consulting engineer, I found that
there are a ton of customers who also have
Nexus switches, data center switches, UCS,
and storage, and so there's
a lot of bleed through,
so just because we happen to sell
consulting services in
these technology buckets,
doesn't mean that the customer isn't gonna
purchase a routing and
switching consulting,
but then ask questions about data center.
And, sometimes you're the
customer and you think,
routing and switching, Nexus, switching.
So, you kind of sometimes expect that,
and I was getting frustrated at the job
because I didn't know it.
And so that was my primary driver to say,
"I really have to pursue
certifications in data center."
specifically for Nexus, and so I went and
did my CCNA data center,
and then I just said,
"Well, let's just keep going."
- So, is there a benefit though?
Cos I guess that's the question,
like once you have the CCIE,
what's the benefit of the second CCIE
versus just spending a month and learning.
Cos that's what a lot of people miss,
is there's learning material,
and then learning it well
enough to pass a test,
and those are two different careers.
- I agree, but I think,
as a consulting role,
which is kind of a unique
role in the industry,
almost everybody that's a network engineer
is reactive or implementation engineering.
I'm consulting, and
that's not as prominent
in the industry, and I
feel like as a consultant,
my customers expect me to walk in the room
and be the expert.
And I wanted to be the
expert, I didn't want to
have a CCNA level of
data center knowledge.
Just dangerous enough
where I knew about it
but enough to cause problems.
I wanted to say, "I know
everything about it,
"and I can help you with that."
So that was my real driver,
I figure if I'm gonna
go in, let's go all in.
- So then, are you gonna
go for the third, fourth,
you gonna round it out, do all of 'em?
- The short answer is
no, I'm not going to.
- So why is that?
Why would you go for two and not three?
- Well, I think when you get one CCIE,
everybody is really impressed,
you've got one, you've got
this instant reputation,
wow, that's a hard thing to get.
When you get two, I think people say,
"Man, how did you get two?!
"that's really impressive!"
When you get three, four,
five, six, no offense
Brian Deniser, or anybody, but I know
at least for my job, it's like, okay,
enough's enough, are you
doing your work at your job?
Like, there's just
diminished returns, right?
There's not, I don't see
as much of a driver for it.
I feel like people start to
almost resent you a little bit.
Like, are you doing your work?
Or are you just studying for certs.
And I feel like there's
a happy medium there,
I don't wanna go all
the way to the extreme
and just try to get every single one.
I'm comfortable with
two, I don't know that
there's much of a reward
for me to go get three.
- Okay.
And then having two, because
what, every two years
you have to re-certify.
And apparently that's
not that easy either.
- Well, the good news is,
if you have two CCIEs,
the way that you re-certify them is,
you just only need to take
the CCIE written, and pass,
for one of them.
Or even for another track, so
if I have routing, switching,
and data center, I could
take the CCIE written
for service provider or security,
and as long as I pass those,
it renews my two CCIEs.
Or I could take the written
for routing and switching,
or data center, same story.
- So you're saying why
you went for data center,
but just out of curiosity,
for your first CCIE,
routing and switching, that seems kind of
playing a game, little vanilla,
is that why you went for
it, what was the impetus
for that being your first one?
- It's because most of
the other technologies,
not all, but most of them
build on routing and switching.
Data center is a great example of that.
Having a CCIE in routing
and switching and then
going for a data center CCIE, it made that
data center CCIE so much easier.
At least on the Nexus side,
so the data center track
is split into essentially three pieces.
You've got Nexus, you've got
UCS, and you've got storage,
and then you've got a little
bit of virtualization,
with the Nexus 1000v as another piece.
But, you know, studying
the Nexus piece of it
for the certification, Nexus is basically
advanced switching, so if you understand,
if you know routing and
switching, Nexus isn't a stretch,
you're just looking at
what are the new features
in the data center piece,
with the Nexus platform,
and then, it's so easy to learn it
based on, the foundation
you've already built
in the route switch track.
So, the other reason for
CCIE route switch first is,
again, I had no prior
experience in the industry,
so why not learn the foundational stuff,
as best as I can learn it,
if I want to expand out
to the other CCIE branches
or other technologies.
- And then, so, you've had
your CCIEs a little while now,
so you got your first
one in 2013, and you got
into tech in 2010, so this
is like two and a half years,
two, two and a half years at your CCIE?
- Yeah, that's right.
So, actually though, I did have my CCNA
before I got into the industry,
so you can kind of add that
on to the timetable there
if you want, so I got
my CCNA, then I started
in the industry.
And then after that, I was pursuing a CCMP
just on my own.
So I didn't have any
financial support for those,
I wasn't a Cisco employee at the time,
so I didn't have any
incentive or paid thing,
so I was kind of taking
those three tests on my own,
on my own dollar, so
that took a little while,
probably about a year.
And then after that, I
got my CCMP and that's
when I switched to being a
network consulting engineer
at Cisco, and became a
full-time Cisco employee.
Cisco offers good,
help getting certifications,
depending on your job role
and things like that, they may or may not
financially help you pay for the tests,
and things like that, so
once I moved to this team,
the very first thing they
said to me on the team is,
go be the first person on
the team to get your CCIE.
So I had a lot of resources behind me,
a lot of time that was given
to me by my management,
my team, to be able to achieve that goal.
That's huge, I mean you don't get,
it's hard to get a paycheck and study
for your CCIE at the same time.
And I had that opportunity
for a little while,
while our team was still growing,
we were still kind of looking for work,
and so they said, "well in the
meantime, go get your CCIE."
And that's what did it for me,
that's why my time frame,
cos a lot of people say,
"You got your CCIE pretty quick."
and I said, "well, I had a lot of help."
I had a lot of on the job time.
But, don't get me wrong,
I spent a lot of nights
and weekends too.
- But so, if you work
at a company like Cisco,
then that can greatly
accelerate the speed.
Cos that's what I'd
always heard, five years.
But talking with people here, they say,
"Yeah, well, unless you have literally
"a complete Cisco lab right above you."
- Yeah, so even back then,
a couple of years ago,
it was a lot harder to
get your CCIE because,
everybody needed the physical equipment,
or you needed to do an INE rack rental.
And still, you can do those rack rentals,
and that's fine, but
everything's virtual now,
so it's a lot, for the route switch track,
everything is virtualized,
so it's a lot easier
to get those rack rentals,
it's a lot easier to
create your own topology
or lab, virtually, now,
if you've got a server.
So finding resources is a whole lot easier
to get your CCIE now, whereas back then
it was a little bit of a struggle.
- That's I didn't think about it,
so you can actually virtualize all the way
to the CCIE level.
You can virtualize all
your entire lab now.
- You can, for route switch you can.
And actually, so the
difference between the CCIE
version four, and CCIE version five,
when Cisco released version five,
is that CCIE moved to,
I mean Cisco moved to
a virtual platform.
So they basically removed
the physical hardware
and said, "okay, we're gonna
use a virtualized platform,"
and that's what you're testing on
when you walk into the CCIE
routing and switching lab today.
- Now here's one of the arguments,
we had a meetup last
night, we were all arguing
about virtual versus physical.
How do you feel about that,
from a trainee perspective?
Cos a lot of us were
arguing, we don't know why,
I know it sounds stupid as hell,
but simply having a switch in your hand,
there's something that
kind of makes it real,
at least for some of us.
So how do you, like if
somebody just studied
completely virtually, do
you think that's as good
as touching things?
- Well, I'm almost
embarrassed to say, but,
my entire CCIE journey,
I don't think I ever
touched a router or switch, ever.
- Really.
- I don't think so.
I mean I've toured the Cisco labs,
I've seen all the equipment,
you can look it up online
and see what it looks like.
I never racked and stacked a single thing.
It was all rack rentals,
everything from my standpoint,
whether it was physical
or virtual equipment,
for me it was all virtual.
For me it was, connect into the rack
that's already built for
me, and then do the labs.
So, do I feel like there's
a disadvantage there?
Yeah, definitely.
I couldn't walk into a lab
today and rack and stack
something and I have two CCIEs.
So I'm embarrassed to say that,
but my job role doesn't
require me to do that,
my job role requires me
to do the virtual aspects
of looking at configurations, looking
at the information of
what hardware's installed
in the network and deciding where it is
in the hardware lifecycle and
does it need to be replaced,
or, you know so,
I think the answer is
dependent on your job role.
It is a disadvantage to me, but not today
in my current job role it's not.
For other people, who might be technicians
that go on site and install things, sure.
It's absolutely a disadvantage.
But it was not required
for me to get my CCIE.
I'll put it that way.
- Then how do you find, going
from a routing switching
CCIE to the data center CCIE.
Was it relatively easy, 90% the same?
Or was it an entirely new test?
- The storage piece, and the UCS piece,
and the Nexus 100v piece,
were totally foreign to me.
So most of the criteria on the exam
were brand new to me.
I had not worked with
MBS switches for storage,
I had not worked with UCS at all
other than hearing the acronym,
so for me that was totally new.
Nexus I knew about, because
it bled over into my job
a little bit, and that
was the easiest piece
for me to learn.
The hardest piece for
me was the UCS piece,
because all of the
virtualization that you need
to wrap your head around,
it was hard for me.
And I would admit, that's
still my weakest area
out of the technologies that I know,
I know UCS is probably my weakest area.
- And then, so with the two CCIEs,
and you're doing the
consulting with Cisco,
and then the question comes up,
is how much do you know or
are you required to know
about the other vendors?
Like with Juniper, or like
AHP, is it kind of like,
oops, that's not my thing.
Or I know enough to make sure
I don't break anything, or?
- So you're referring to on the job role,
or on the exam?
- Well, for you, just
in general, do you know
anything about the other ones?
- So the way I phrase it to people is,
I'm a Cisco purebred.
- Really.
- I have all of the Cisco certifications,
and I have not worked for anybody, really,
for any length of time, outside of Cisco.
So I tell people I'm Cisco purebred.
I've seen configurations
of the other vendors,
but, I've never worked with it,
so I wouldn't call
myself even, I would say,
definitely beginner level,
if not, no experience
on some vendors.
- [Eli] Does that cause you any problems?
Especially doing a consulting role
for outside companies.
- It doesn't.
I don't feel like customers feel that
they're gonna hold me
responsible for not knowing that.
I mean, they bring us in
as a Cisco consultant,
and they know that I'm a Cisco employee,
so I don't think, I've
never run into a situation
where I've been questioned
about why don't you know this
cross-vendor information.
- Does Cisco support or
help anybody learn, like,
the cross-vendor stuff?
Again, just to be
well-rounded, or is it like,
we're Cisco.
- I think that the labs,
so Cisco has the capability
to do lab recreates, for
example if you open up
a tac case for support,
sometimes the tac engineers
will recreate issues for you.
I do believe there is some
cross-vendor equipment
in the labs that, it's kind of a sandbox,
so you could say, put
it in my lab recreate.
But I feel like it's on
a case by case basis,
so maybe you know it,
maybe you don't know it,
and so therefore you either try your best
to support that particular
recreate scenario,
or you don't.
But, I don't think
there's official policy,
necessarily, around it.
- And then with all the training
and certifications then,
is there financial support for that?
I had heard with CCIE,
I was surprised that,
they reimburse you for the
past, when you pass the test.
So if you fail it 10 times,
here's $1500, not $15,000.
- Yeah, so the official
policy is, as of today,
Cisco will, they'll basically cover three
of your CCIE lab exams for each track.
So what I mean is, if I was taking the
routing and switching
exam, my first two attempts
are paid for, as a Cisco employee.
And then they pay for
your passing attempt.
So if I take a third attempt and I fail,
they don't pay, but if
I take my fourth attempt
and I pass it, then I would get that $1500
that you're referring to.
So, they ultimately will pay for three,
as long as you pass it.
And then, I can switch tracks,
like data center track,
same exact thing, so
they're kept separately.
It's not three attempts across tracks,
it's three attempts ultimately per track.
So that's a pretty good
incentive to take it,
because I do think that
one of the barriers
to people passing the CCIE
lab is the financial aspect,
whereas if I do interviews for our job,
I see on the resumes a lot,
CCIE written, CCIE written,
and some people have multiple
CCIE written route and switch,
CCIE written security, and I do feel like
it's a financial barrier.
People don't wanna pay
$1500 and go fail the exam.
In the words of the
proctor of the CCIE lab,
he'll say, you had a $1500 lunch.
- Well I guess that's one thing,
somebody brought up last night was,
the, I never thought about
it with the CCIE level,
but that you can bring up it,
that they were literally
saying for the written tests,
I guess you can just study really hard
what the questions are supposed to be.
When you see somebody
that just has the written,
how much do you trust that
as actually being worth very much?
- So, I approach my
interviews in the same way,
if I do interviews.
So I basically follow a similar questions,
that each time I do the interviews,
and the questions,
so one thing I don't like
about the CCIE written exam
for example, is, what port
number does blah blah blah,
or what packet level detail about.
It's the things that you can
Google in less than 30 seconds
that I don't think should be on the exam.
We've got Google as a resource today,
if my customer were to ask
me a question about that
and I can Google it in 30 seconds or less,
I don't need to keep
that in the memory bank,
I can look it up.
So the questions that
I ask in my interview
are conceptual.
I try to keep it as fair as possible,
because if you know the concepts,
you should be able to
answer every question
in my interviews.
It's not, I'm not asking about
what port does BGP run on.
I'm not expecting you
to sit there and say,
"I don't know, 179."
I'm asking you questions
about why would I need
the next hop self command in BGP.
What is that, what
problem does that solve,
what conceptual problem?
So I think, it's easy
to spot the cheaters,
because, and we do that
even with our new hires,
so we bring in new hires, we
put them through boot camps
and things, and we help
them get certified.
And we expect that they
come out at a CCMP level,
ready to be consultants, at a minimum.
And what we do, when they
come out of that training
program, which is anywhere
form three to six months,
is, we put them in this,
what we call the tech panel.
And it's a couple of
engineers and a manager,
and we sit in there and
we ask the same round
of questions to each of
the engineers that came out
of the training, and we
stack rank everybody,
how did you do.
And it's easy to pick out
the people who cheated,
because if you dumped an exam,
then you might know the port numbers,
but you don't know the concepts, right.
It's the concepts that
you can test people on
to prove they didn't cheat.
- So do you figure you're kind of normal,
with how people get interviewed
in the networking world?
Or is this your style of doing it?
- Honestly I don't know, I haven't done,
I haven't been on the other end of a lot
of the interviews for the tech industry.
It's the way that I feel is most fair,
in order to assess your skill level
and decide whether or not you
actually know the material.
So the other approach that
I take in the interviews,
is, I will ask questions
all the way up until you say
three words, "I don't know."
Because, we're hiring
for a consulting role,
so if you never have the
ability to tell your customer
that you don't know but
you'll get back to them,
what are you gonna do, lie?
You know?
So it's a tough situation, right,
as a consultant, the customer
has never said to me,
"Oh, you don't know off
the top of your head?!"
I mean, my answer to them is,
"I don't know but I'll find out for you."
I need to hear somebody
say, "I'm just not sure,"
instead of trying to work around it,
or not giving me the answer
that I'm looking for,
because as the customer
I want the answer, right.
So I think that's the
other tactic that I use
in my interviews.
- So then you're talking about,
so they have the internal boot camps.
Does Cisco really take a complete novice
that doesn't know
anything about networking,
and accelerate them through,
or do you have to CCNA,
how does that work?
- Over the years, so
our team's been around
for about three and a half years.
Over the years, we have
changed a little bit,
so, originally we were more lenient.
We would take people
that did not necessarily
have any background.
Even people without a CCNA
or certification at all,
and that's pretty rare, I'll say,
that was a good opportunity
for people to get in
that didn't have that experience.
So we used to take people that don't,
it's not to say that we wouldn't today,
we still do, occasionally,
but now that we've more
refined and we've got
a higher workload and we
need to fill these types
of positions more quickly and bring people
up to speed more quickly,
we usually will shoot for
CCNA at least, and then get to CCMP level.
- So if people are so new,
and then you're accelerating
them, what are the personalities,
what are the traits then, cos obviously,
if you're barely a
CCNA, who the hell knows
what you can do technically.
So then what non-technical
traits are you looking for?
- The key word that we use on the team is
what we call technical aptitude.
And what that means is,
we need to know that,
maybe you don't know the
technology information today,
but the feeling that we need to walk away
from the interview, is
that you have the ability
to learn technical information,
and then convey it to others.
So sometimes if we're doing an interview
for somebody that doesn't
even have any certifications
or no networking experience,
our question is, describe
something, anything technical
to me, and tell me
everything you know about it.
We're looking for people
to clearly enunciate
and depict some sort of technical thing.
I don't care if it's
changing the oil on your car,
I just need to know that
you've got the ability
to learn that, and then
relay it back to a customer,
or another person.
You need to understand
what you're talking about,
and then help somebody else understand
what you're talking about.
And we basically define
that as technical aptitude.
- And then how do you find people then,
especially, is there a
Craigslist ad that goes out,
or like, how do you?
- So that's actually really good,
that's a point I meant
to bring up earlier.
We do a lot of what we
call university hires,
so we have something called
the university connection
at Cisco, Cisco is big on
hiring and giving people
that just came out of college a chance
to get in the industry and not be beat out
by other people who may have experience
or are not in school.
So we actually hire in two separate ways.
We have what we call the
university hire track,
and then we've got the
professional hire track,
and they're totally separate.
So what that means is,
if we get an opening
in the university hire track,
we can only hire people qualified
from the university hires.
So only people that either
are just about to graduate
college, or graduate I think in the next,
I think have graduated
already in the last two years.
And then anything after that,
we consider a professional rank.
So on our team, we split the
way the positions are hired.
We actually do even
mostly university hires
with some professional hires.
So what that means is, for the
people coming out of school,
Cisco is giving opportunities
for you to get a job
because those job spots
are reserved for you
as a new graduate, or about to graduate.
- So what about, what if
you're just a 19 year old kid
that didn't go to college,
who's trying to get in?
Is that a possibility?
is it much of a possibility?
- Well, um,
it's gonna be hard.
That's where the certifications would help
somebody like that out.
The other thing is, the one other thing
that I didn't mention about
the different hiring tracks is,
we also do veteran hires.
So if that 19 year old person
happens to be a veteran,
maybe one year, right,
veteran, however that works,
we do also have specific
veteran roles as well.
So something to keep in mind.
- So even though you have,
was it, environmental science
degree, do you feel that bachelor's degree
has helped you, even though
it's something different?
- I know that a lot of
the positions specifically
at Cisco require a bachelor's degree.
They don't necessarily
specific what it's in.
So, obviously for me,
that worked out, right,
but that's almost my
opinion about it anyway.
Which is like, I feel
like nowadays everybody's
getting a bachelor's degree.
A lot of people are.
And what is the bachelor's
degree prove at this point?
Does it prove that you're an
expect in environment science?
Uh, maybe, probably not.
What it proves is that
you were willing to do
a four year track, sacrifice
that period of time,
be dedicated, do some hard work,
and achieve a bachelor's degree.
Unless you're a lawyer or a doctor,
I'm not sure that it's super important
what exactly that bachelor's
degree is in, nowadays.
That's my retrospective view of college.
I have an environment science degree,
and I have a bachelor's degree,
that's the quote that I'm using in there.
- So if we go back, so you're a bartender,
you come to this area.
I don't think of this
as a spontaneous area.
Maybe like Berkeley, California,
New York is a spontaneous area.
But you spontaneously come here,
you do the bartender thing,
and so how do you get
the job at the help desk
with Esman Kodak?
- Yeah, so that was my first industry job.
So, after I got my CCNA as a bartender,
I really just started
putting my resume out there.
I did go to a couple of recruiting firms,
and pretty much what I was told is,
if you only have a CCNA, and
you don't have any experience
in the industry, you're not
gonna get a networking job.
And, so I didn't believe them necessarily,
I did try to get networking jobs.
And, I put my feeler
out, almost everywhere,
but their advice to me
was, get a help desk job,
get an IT help desk job.
And I said, "Yeah, I
don't really want that,
"but I'll put some feelers out there,
"and then I'll also put feelers out there
"for network jobs and see
if I get a network job."
I did not get a network job.
I got a help desk job,
and so they were right.
And so I ended up working at Kodak,
so I was doing, I was
working in a call center,
basically, and we were troubleshooting
the Kodak Picturemaker,
so when you walk into CVS
or one of the stores, and you
see the Kodak Picturemakers,
when those broke, the
store employees called me.
And so, it was very
very little networking.
Couple of static IPs here and there.
It really wasn't a lot
of networking at all.
It was mostly troubleshooting.
Essentially those Kodak
boxes are Windows machines,
so essentially you're
troubleshooting Windows machines.
And I only really did that
for four or five months,
and I got very lucky, because,
I happened to be on break at the job,
my cell phone rang, I
didn't know the number,
I picked it up anyway,
and it happened to be
a recruiter, and the recruiter said,
"Hey, Steve and I saw your resume,
"and I saw that you have a CCNA,
"how would you like to work at Cisco?"
And I hadn't even applied at Cisco
because in mind I'm saying,
"I don't have any experience,
"they're never gonna hire me."
So, I had about four or
five months of experience
at Kodak when I got this call, and I said,
"I will sweep the floors at
Cisco if you can get me in."
And so she did, she got me in,
and I worked for about a year and a half
as a contractor for Cisco,
and then I ultimately converted
into a Cisco employee.
So with that though, did you
just have your resume out
on Monster, or Careerbuilder, or,
like how did they come across it?
- It was definitely on Monster, yeah,
I know it was.
I don't think I used Careerbuilder but
it was out on Monster, I
think, LinkedIn profile
is a big one, I get a lot of
hits on my LinkedIn profile
all the time.
- Here's the thing.
I see that now, I completely
understand that now.
I have no idea why anybody
would care for CCNA
with five months help desk experience,
that's what I don't understand.
- I think the recruiters look,
I do think the recruiters look.
Because every position that
we hire for on our team
is not, we need a double
CCIE, or we need a CCIE.
We hire for positions
and say, minimum CCNA.
So,
those recruiters are
not gonna go find CCIEs
to fill that position because
the money's not there,
the CCIE's not interested.
So they're gonna go
find the target audience
for that job role, and I do think that
if you go on LinkedIn,
you can search and find
who's CCNAs looking for jobs.
And I think that's a great
pool for the recruiters.
So I do think that they go
find that stuff, I really do.
- So I guess that's one thing too,
with resumes and all that.
Obviously we'll talk
about it, but you seem
pretty happy with Cisco.
But you think resumes should
be out there all the time?
Cos there's that whole argument, you know,
when do you put your
resume back out again.
Everybody has an opinion,
so what do you think?
- I agree.
I don't keep my resume out there.
It's, if you happen to find me on Monster,
you'll see my CCNA resume.
But, I do keep my LinkedIn up to date,
so I think you have a copy of
my LinkedIn profile, right,
it's totally up to date
with my current job,
my previous jobs, my skillset,
my active certifications.
Any extra-curricular stuff, like my CCIE
route switch boot camp
from INE is on there.
So, yeah, I definitely
keep that up to date,
and I think a lot of people look at it.
I don't ever close the
door on opportunities,
but it's gonna be awful
hard to pull me away from
my current role.
- So then, you get hired as a contractor,
which is a normal thing,
but then the thing
that can get wonky is
going from the contractor
to the full-time position.
Was there anything, like how
did that work out for you?
Did they just come to you with the job?
Did you bug 'em?
- Sadly, I had to switch
job roles at Cisco,
so I didn't leave Cisco,
I was contracting at Cisco
and then I converted at Cisco,
but I did change teams to do it.
I'm not sure that there's
a lot of incentive
for my recruiter to try
to get me converted.
And at the same time, it is
a little bit of an advantage
for Cisco to have a contractor employee,
because if anything goes
south with the industry
or we need to make cuts
and things like that,
it's easier, unfortunately,
just to remove a contractor,
than it is to remove a full-time employee,
or a regular employee I should say.
So I do, I don't think
there's really an incentive
from either my management or my recruiter
to get me converted, so I
really pursued that on my own.
I did ask on my current team,
I did push for conversion.
It was taking longer than I
was hoping that it would take,
so I contracted for a year and a half.
I expected it to take about a year,
so I was getting
impatient, and that's when
I started looking around
specifically for direct hire
positions at Cisco and
then that's when I found
the current role I'm in today.
- So what's the, like
what's the difference,
or why were you pushing so hard?
Because I hear that a lot
of companies like Cisco,
that contractor, employee, it's almost,
basically it's just the
name you put on your resume.
Was there a lot, is there a
lot of functional difference
between being an employee
and a contractor?
- I feel like from a culture standpoint,
you're correct, so contract,
we call blue badge,
regular employees.
From a culture perspective,
everybody's on the same team.
On our team, I forget a lot of times,
"oh, wait a minute, you're
a contractor, I forgot."
and the reason that that would
come up in the first place
is because if there's
conversations on benefits.
Or the CCIE thing that we
were talking about earlier.
As far as paying for the
labs and things like that,
that's a Cisco employee benefit.
A contracting benefit is different,
it's whatever benefits are
offered by that contractor.
So that includes health
insurance, and vision, dental,
all of those things as well as time off,
and other things.
So as a full, regular Cisco employee,
it is a world of difference
once you've converted
to being a regular employee.
- Is it all cotton candy
and like amazing stuff?
- Pretty much.
(Eli laughing)
I don't have a bad thing to
say about Cisco benefits,
they're amazing.
- So then, okay, so you
start there as a consultant,
then you go, you swap over,
and then so, you have here,
network consulting engineer,
consulting engineer two,
consulting engineer three,
consulting engineer four.
So how did these moves work?
Were you just simply promoted, again?
Or was this something that you went after?
I wanna be a two.
Like, what was the...
- It was largely based on certifications,
so I came in as an NCE
one, when I had my CCMP.
I changed to an NCE two,
when I got my CCIE written,
I changed to an NCE three after my CCIE,
and I changed to an NCE
four after my second CCIE.
- Okay, so it's not actually
like a different job position,
it's more just an identifier,
to say, you're cool.
- It is, my job role is ultimately,
I'm still a routing and switching NCE,
that hasn't changed.
What has changed is, I do a lot more,
I call them extra-curricular activities,
like helping out with making
sure our process documentation
is okay, doing global technical
training for our own team.
So, we needed training,
our team needs training
on a routing protocol,
I'll give the training,
I'll create the content and
I'll deliver that training
as well, so, there's a
lot more extra-curriculars
the more your position goes up.
As far as, the other
thing besides just getting
the certifications as far
as getting the job move,
squeaky wheel gets the oil.
I do think a lot of people
don't market themselves
appropriately, and I also
believe I made that same mistake.
When I was a contractor at
Cisco, I did not go a good job
of making sure that my
manager knew what I was doing.
I knew that there were some
above and beyond things
that I was doing every day,
and I know my boss didn't know about it.
We worked in a hectic environment,
it was very reactive,
we were firefighting,
and I didn't market myself appropriately
in order to help them push
me to get that conversion
to regular employee or pay
raises and things like that.
And that's one of the things I tell people
on our team all the
time, is market yourself.
When you do, doing the day to day job,
that's expected, you come
in and you do your work.
It's the things that
you do outside of that,
that's what's gonna get you
the promotion or the raise,
and some people do it, but nobody knows.
So what's the point, right?
So actually, we do have a
tool that we use at Cisco,
and it's a way that we
can document all of our
accomplishments for the fiscal year.
We document everything that we did,
inside or outside the
box, and then at the end
of the year, that's your thing,
that's your bulletin
that you go to your boss
and you say, look at
these things that I did,
I think I'm ready to
move to the next level.
I made a big point to do
that when I moved over
to the shop, because I
think it's so important
and I don't think a lot
of people do it well.
- So, I guess that's the quiet, well,
how do you do well without
kind of being an ass?
- Yeah, so,
I just think that you're choosy
about what you put in there.
And of course language
is appropriate as well.
I don't think, at first
when I started doing it
I did feel like, okay,
how do I not sound like
I'm just bragging about myself?
At a certain point I do
think that you move past it,
because your boss wants to see that stuff.
They don't know what you're doing,
they really truly want
you to say these things,
so we have a program at
Cisco where you can do
peer recognition, meaning like,
hey you really helped me out,
I'll give you a $50 gift
card, or $100 gift card.
And so it's a peer-to-peer
recognition award.
So in our tracking tool for
our performance achievements,
that's something that's
outside of my daily job,
I received this reward
for doing something well.
My boss doesn't inherently
know about that,
or at the end of the
year he doesn't remember
that I had, that I got
five of these in the year,
so I document that in the tool.
I think that that's a good example,
like I'm not bragging about myself,
I'm documenting an
achievement that somebody else
recognized, and telling my boss about it.
- And then, so, doing the
Cisco, working at Cisco,
just out of curiosity, like
what is the work life balance?
Are you working 80 hours a week?
- It depends on your team.
Our team, in a proactive consulting role,
it's very flexible.
So, work-life balance is
very important on our team.
It's very prominent, it's
not something that's just,
it's not just said, and
then nobody does it,
it's done.
I feel like I work an
average 40 hour week,
so I'm salaried, but I
feel like I'm usually,
give or take, 40 hours.
And maybe some weeks are
less and some weeks are more,
at the end of the day,
there's an understanding
that everybody has a life.
So hey, if you've got
a doctor's appointment,
on Friday afternoon, just go.
You don't file a time off
request or anything like that,
it's just an understanding that, look,
if the business needs
you a little bit extra,
you'll be there, and on the easier weeks,
maybe you taper off a
little bit early that week.
So they know that at the end of the day,
everything's gonna wash out
and it's all gonna work out
in the end.
- So we're pretty relaxed,
just talking with a few people,
I guess one of the
complaints is over the years,
Cisco has become much more corporate
than it apparently was in the past.
But you're just happy.
- As a person who's been
at Cisco for five years,
I truly feel like a newbie,
because everybody else
you talk to's been there 15, 20, you know.
So I don't really have that perspective.
I came in when it was corporate,
it still is corporate,
I wanted corporate.
So I'm happy, you know, I can't speak to
the people who've been there longer and
that might have that particular complaint.
Just because I don't have that experience.
- And then, so where do you
see your future going then?
So you're like 28 now,
and you're level four.
So the question like, in
10 years, what's your news,
you got two CCIEs, so
what's your new target,
what do you think you're gonna be doing?
- So I think there's two options for me.
Cisco definitely has two tracks in place
that I could take, at least two.
Track number one is what we
call the distinguished service
engineer, or the DSE.
The DSE and the Cisco
Fellow, is the top technical
network consulting position
that you can get at Cisco,
and it takes a long time to get there
and the guys who are there
are really really brilliant
and smart.
That's definitely a track
for me, I could do that.
That's dependent on if
I decide whether or not
to stay in a technical role.
So the other track, that
I was talking about,
is manager.
So there's a lot of managers at Cisco
who are technical in nature,
and I think it improves
their strength as a manager
to have a little bit
of technical knowledge.
So I do think that, if I
happen to get burned out
on the technical side,
staying current on certs,
and you know, constantly pushing forward
on the technical side, which by the way,
I'm not tired of that yet, obviously.
But I just got my second
CCIE, I wanna use it.
But what I do think that,
if I start to burn out
a little bit on that down the road,
there's managerial positions
there for me as well,
and Cisco takes good
care of the managers too.
- Now, going to the future,
would you go for any more
education, like an MBA,
or any of that, or?
- I don't know.
I really haven't crossed that bridge.
I'm still in the pushing
forward on technical training,
so I don't think we've
talking about it yet,
but after my second CCIE, one of the gaps
I realized is, which they're
fixing in July, by the way,
but the CCIE data center
track did not include
anything about automation or programming,
network automation and programming.
Like for example, using Python in order
to change the network, or
do something to the network.
I have, as you guys know,
I have no prior programming
experience, I'm totally
new to programming.
So one of the things I
decided after the CCIE
data center track, I said,
"Man, if we're gonna
start talking about ACI,
"SDN, and programmability, I really need
"to start learning that stuff."
and so one of the technical
things I'm working on now
is I'm taking some online
classes for Python programming,
and so, while I'm not working
on a Cisco certification
right now, I'm still pushing forward
in the technical aspects.
So I don't know about maybe MBA yet.
Maybe down the road a little bit for me,
but I've got a six month old boy, so,
it's gonna be a little bit
harder for me for right now.
- And now, you're not exactly a kid,
but you are still
relatively young, only 28,
and especially you got your CCIE before,
have you had any issues with that?
Like Cisco, just being a
young, I mean you're dealing
with 50, cos we've talked to
some 50 year olds in here,
so literally, especially
with some of your work,
you're half the age of some of the people
you're working with.
- It's so funny that you bring that up,
because, a lot of times
I am the youngest person
in the room.
So, from my perspective
I try to put myself
in the customer's shoes,
and the customer sees
somebody that's 28 years
old, walks in the room,
youngest guy in the room,
and this guy's supposed to be the expert.
How is this guy gonna be the expert?
So, I struggle that I
have probably that vision
from a customer side, sometimes.
And I was actually on
customer site last week,
or this week, and we talked about it,
we openly talked about it.
They said something like, "Oh, man,
"young guy," whatever the comment was,
and I said, "yeah, I'm
typically the youngest guy
"in the room,"
and what he said to me,
that's perfectly okay.
We're talking about technology here.
You either know the
technology or you don't
know the technology.
And at the end of the day we proved that
I knew the technology.
And they were happy.
And so, I think initial impressions of me,
I do think people say, "Wow, young guy,
"how much is he gonna know?"
which I do believe was
another driver for me
to get certified, because
when you walk in a room,
and you can say what
certification level you're at,
I do think it buys you instant reputation.
So I do think people say,
"Okay, I have an idea
"of how much information this guy knows
"about a particular technology."
And I do think that
always helps me as well,
when people find out.
- Do you do anything like,
have you modified how you dress,
or like even communication.
Like sometimes, if you're
younger, you start to think
a little more about the
words that you're saying.
Do you bother with any of that, or?
- I was a technical and
professional writing minor,
in college, so,
most of my communication is remote
with the customer, so it's
either phone or email.
I don't go on site a whole lot.
But, email I think it's huge.
Even things like use of white space,
use of certain words, things like that.
I learned a lot about that in college,
about how important it
is that when you are
giving an opinion or a recommendation
or any piece of information through email,
it's really really important
that your formatting is correct,
your grammar is correct,
the use of words is correct.
It needs to be
well-thought, well-laid out,
I mean, my wife makes fun of me because
I proofread my emails
over and over and over
before I send them.
And she just clicks Send.
It's huge to me, and at a verbal level,
communication, same thing.
You need to, I think,
showing your intelligence,
part of that is in the
way that you communicate.
Can you communicate
effectively and make sure
that the other person
knows what you're saying,
not that you just sound smart because
you're saying big words.
- That works.
And then going forward with
your educations at Cisco,
and with the education,
you talk about boot camps,
but then you said that you
went to an INE boot camp.
So does Cisco do internal training,
do they reimburse you
for outside training?
How does training work?
- Both, so Cisco has a
program called Cisco 360.
That's the Cisco certification program.
I had no, I wasn't
really leaning either way
with either training boot camp,
so my real contenders
was either gonna be INE,
or it was gonna be the Cisco training.
I ultimately, I kind of just went online,
looked up some feedback and I found out
INE had really really good reputation.
And I just didn't really
think twice about it.
If I decided to do Cisco 360,
there's also an internal charge for that.
So it wasn't like there
wasn't gonna be a charge
for me to go do 360.
It was a charge either way, and I said,
"Man, INE industry known, well known,
"good reputation, why not?"
And, no regrets there, so I used INE
for my second CCIE as well.
It's amazing.
- And, I was looking here,
so you got an award
though, so a Cisco advanced
services Horizon award winner.
Is that, now we start
talking about awards,
especially in the corporate world again,
they question becomes,
is that impressive or is that a gold star
to keep you around?
- Yeah.
So that's one of the things
that when I put it on
my LinkedIn profile, I said,
"I know nobody outside of
Cisco's gonna know what it is,"
cos it's a Cisco internal award.
The Horizon award is
specific to advanced services
at Cisco, so think about
when I was talking about
reactive versus proactive at Cisco.
The proactive network
consulting side of Cisco,
the umbrella term is advanced services.
So this award is given out
globally to advanced services
employees, and I think
it's only four people
each time they give it out.
It doesn't have to be
people, it can be groups.
And in my case I was
actually part of a big group
that received the award.
The award is pretty prestigious, at least
within advanced services,
because it's all about
customers, it's all
about what we call CSAT,
or customer satisfaction.
So the customers get
these periodic surveys,
they rate us on how well
they think that we did.
It's out of 5.0 and really
Cisco doesn't settle
for less than a 5.0, and
I think Cisco's known
for the good customer
service that we give.
Everything's about the customers.
And, ultimately we really, as a team,
delivered very well to one
of our major customers,
and they were just
trying to recognize that,
and whether or not it's
actually a good award
or just to keep you there or whatever,
it comes with a monetary value attached.
So I would say it's a good award.
- There we go, okay.
This is the final question
that I have for you.
So, you have in here,
that you do volunteer.
You're a food salvager.
Then you're a builder
for Habitat for Humanity.
Now, with that kind of
thing, is that one of those,
it's just good for the soul,
or do you feel that helps
you with your career?
- Both, because all of
those volunteer events
are voluntary for us to go to,
but they are corporate-organized.
So they're all organized by our team
and by Cisco, so we partner
with a lot of nonprofits
and charities, more than I could name.
But those are two good
examples of the food bank
and also Habitat for Humanity.
So what we do, is, we try
to do it once per quarter,
sometimes it's a little
bit longer than that,
but it might be maybe two quarters,
but we will set up an event as a team,
we'll go out, and we'll do
whatever they need us to do.
And the better thing about that is,
all of the hours that we
work on that particular
volunteer event, like building the houses
or salvaging the food,
Cisco matches all of our
hours and pays an hourly rate
for every hour that we work,
and does a monetary match.
So, you'll see, when you walk into the
North Carolina food bank,
there is a huge check up
on the wall from Cisco for the amount
that we donated last year.
And a lot of it is matched
hours that we went out
and we worked, and then Cisco
matched the hours with pay,
and paid the company as well.
It's good for the soul,
good for the career,
good for the company,
good for everyone I think.
- That works.
So, for the final thing,
if you had a piece of
advice, 22 year old bartender
out there, in 2016,
so you did this in 2010, what
would be your advice for them?
- Well,
I'll tell you, even if
you're younger than 22,
one of the things that I wished
I knew about in high school
was Cisco certifications
or IT certifications,
or you see all these schools sprouting out
for the vocational training.
Go to our school, we'll
train you for the job,
and then you go out and do the job.
Man, that was small back
when I was in high school,
it's big now.
That's awesome, I wished I had
known about certifications.
The younger you can start 'em, the better.
And, you can take most of the Cisco certs
before you're 18, I think CCIE is 18.
But the sooner you can
get those certifications,
even if they're not Cisco certifications,
even if you can just get certified,
or vocational training,
it's priceless nowadays,
it really really is, I wish
I could go back in time
and know about that.
That would be the biggest thing for me.
Don't wait, and everybody
always has an excuse
for why they can't get their CCIE,
or why they can't get their CCNA,
or they're working on it,
and I hear it all the time
in interviews, "I'm working
on it, working on it."
Well you've been working
on it for three years.
So my advice is, go for it,
because I'm living proof
that having certifications
can really change your life.
And it changed mine, there's no reason
that it can't change yours,
because I had no background
in this stuff coming in, and here I am
five or six years in, and
I've got a great career.
- Cool, cool.
Well, thank you for being here today.
- Thanks for having me.
- Yeah.
So this was Stephen Dipippo, team lead,
network consulting engineer four.
Next time it will be five.
At Cisco Systems.
As always, I enjoyed doing this interview,
and look forward to seeing
you guys in the next one.
