full image - Repost: Mid/Late career path for Network Engineers (from Reddit.com, Mid/Late career path for Network Engineers)
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Once a network engineer reaches the middle of their career, usually in their 40s, some different paths might be taken. For some, the tedium of daily ops, late night cutovers, and on-call work might take its toll and they find they don't want to do that type of work anymore. I've been nearing this point for a while now, and have been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out "what's next." As far as I know these are the general paths I see most often taken by those in our field. Let me know if you can chime in on some you have personally taken and share your experiences. Also let me know if I've missed anyJust stay at the same company in the same position forever, and hope you reach retirement without being let go at some point. Probably the least inspired option here, but I'm sure there are some who do this. Although there is probably a lot of disadvantages here like complacency, stagnation, fulfillment, etc, there is probably also some advantages if the position is right, pays well, has good work life balance: stability, comfort, predictability, etc.Stay as a Neteng but change your industry. So you have hit your midlife, and instead of walking away from daily ops, oncall, and the late night cutovers, you decided you just want a change of scenery. Maybe you try to jump from ISP/MSP to Enterprise, or vice versa. Maybe you have worked in Health Care most of your career, and decide you want to try your hand at Fintech. A fresh change of scenery is a good chance to feel refreshed, learn a new environment, and get your motivation back.Just continue job hopping every 3-4 years, don't ever stay in the same place too long. This is similar to the above option, only you are changing the scenery at a regular cadence. This keeps you fresh, and it keeps your skills sharp. You're learning a whole new environment pretty often, you're also building a solid social network of folks who you've worked with before, which will be helpful in finding that next job position once you feel it's time to move. This could also potentially build your salary up, assuming each time you hop jobs, you are moving on to something bigger, better, and more challenging along the way. The possible disadvantages: lack of stability, unpredictability, varying work/life balance, never gain "tribal knowledge" of your environment, etc.Leave being a neteng, and move into management. So you've been here a while, and now you think you can run things. Time to put away the SSH Client and start managing people instead of networks. Maybe now is the chance to be for others the manager you always wish you'd had when you were coming up. You'll no longer be doing the actual work, but you'll be managing the people who do. No more late night cutovers or on-call for you! Also moving into management usually comes with significant pay increase. Possible disadvantages: this is a totally different line of work, potentially a different career trajectory period. This isn't for everyone, some do not have the personality for it. Potentially diferent risk exposures for things like layoffs, etc. This is probably one of my least favorite options here.Leave being a neteng, and go Cybersecurity. Everyone else is doing it! Cyber security is where all the demand is in the market, and where all of the pay is too. And with increasingly more sophisticated attacks, this demand is only going to go up. Plus, cyber security is more "fun" and can be more rewarding and fulfilling. And you're no longer involved in break/fix troubleshooting and no longer care when stuffs broken. Not your problem, you're just the security guy! Advantages, higher pay, emerging market, cool tech: disadvantages you may leave behind technical skills, you may find yourself in a role that is more like policy and governance than actually "doing." Leave being a neteng and go Devops. Automation is the future. It's time to stop managing the network the old fashioned way, and automate the network instead. When you're done, they won't even need netengs anymore! You'll automate all the things and learn about CI/CD, Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, and you'll basically become a programmer in the end. But you'll be a programmer who knows how to set up BGP and OSPF and Spanning-Tree, you know the mistakes other automation people have made and you won't make them because you're a core networker at heart. I don't really know enough about this path to name advantages and disadvantages. But I do wonder generally where the demand is and how involved you are in things in these types of positions. Curious to hear more.Leave being a neteng and become an SE at a vendor. Here you're walking away from break/fix, walking away from late night cutovers and on-call, but you're still staying involved with the technology you love and have a passion for. You are now helping customers pick the solutions they want, helping design those solutions, to some extent helping them set everything up and get off the ground running. You're also coordinating between the customer and support when they need it, putting together the resources your customers need to achieve their goals. Advantages: you get to stay current with the technology you love, and gain access to a vast pool of resources. Disadvantages: you are focused on only one specific product or vendor, you might get siloed. You may also have to meet things like sales quotas which is not for everyone.Become a consultant. This one is similar to being the SE at a vendor, but you are your own boss. You work for you. You've been around a while and feel that you really know your stuff. In fact, you think you know your stuff so well that you're confident you can literally make a living telling other people how to do it right, and finding and solving other peoples networking problems. Advantages: could be extremely fulfilling and enjoyable if you are successful. Disadvantages: if you have trouble networking with people, finding gigs, etc, you'll be lacking income.Leave being a neteng and become an instructor instead. So you've been doing this a while and you feel like you really know your stuff. So, make money teaching it to others. Go and start a networking or certification class, teach at a local college, write books about how to do networking. Start a blog. I feel this option probably peaked out in the mid 2010s and it's much less viable now. The whole Certifications thing has kind of slowed down a lot, as has a lot of the demand for courses and lessons and books, so I don't really see independent instructors who aren't already part of a big company doing this being very successful.. but maybe I'm wrong.Leave being a neteng and also completely leave Technology/IT altogether. Take midlife crisis to the extreme and completely leave not only networking but IT and technology, period. Go off and be a business owner or something wild like that. Maybe literally become a farmer or something instead. Time to hang up the keyboard for good!OK, that's all I've got for now.
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