HN843: From Network Engineer to Network Architect with Kevin Nanns

0:00On today's heavy networking we chat with Kevin Nance about his experience transitioning from network engineer to network architect. I'm Ethan Banks with Drew Conry Murray and we'd like it if you'd follow us on LinkedIn. That would help boost our fragile egos and remind us that you do indeed care about networking. You might also like our community slack group where thousands of other folks who care about networking from around the world hang out, talk shop, share memes and solve problems together. Not many of you guys that are out there. Nance is a familiar face and voice that you see in here on your social media and your content feeds. He is a busy human both on and off the mic and we appreciate him joining us on short notice and bringing an excellent topic along with him. So Kevin, welcome to heavy networking. This is your first time on this podcast, right? Yeah, 100%. I was saying the pre-production thing. This is the big show. I finally made it. You can tell I know I've made it in my career when I'm on heavy networking. This is the show to be on. Thank you for having me. Well, that said, you are no stranger to the world of packet purchases.

1:01Of course, you are a co-host on life and uptime and so on. But it's back up for a second for people who maybe don't know you. Tell us who you are and what you do. Yep. So my day job, my how the majority of people I guess in my personal life know me is a network architect, recent network architect. We're going to dive into that for Hillsborough County government, which is the eighth largest county in the United States, second largest in Florida. And it is an enterprise network. And that is my day job and my side job is content creation, which I've been doing for about three and a half years now. And I started on TikTok and it has just blown up to being probably more hours sometimes in my day job, which is scary to think about how much time content actually takes in researching and scripting and recording and editing and all that fun stuff. But yeah, so I'm burning the candle of both ends right now. We got a pause and talk about TikTok from it because there's a lot of people listening

2:03to this that have never been on TikTok. I'm one of them because to me, TikTok is kids who are doing weird things and taking absurd challenges and it's short form content, it's doom scrolling, it's brain rot. And that's not what Kevin's doing on TikTok. So tell us what's up. To be fair, sometimes I do do that. Sometimes you have to play the game a little bit. One of my most popular videos is about IT fashion. And I'm literally going from T-shirt and then my normal clothes to an IT uniform where I'm putting on a two tight polo khakis that are too tight, my butt crack, saying my butt crack showing, you know that kind of stuff. Making fun of the IT professional a little bit. So there is a little bit of funny meming going on, but I do try to stay to the educational like actually helping people. And I would say TikTok is a lot of the kids dancing and doing challenges and doing stupid stuff. But there is a STEM feed, just like all science-based engineering-based feed.

3:06So you can even not see that kind of stuff. And you don't have to make that feed. TikTok actually gives you a STEM feed. Yeah. Because you have to enable it. So it's not on my default, but in the general settings there is a STEM feed that you can enable. And you can stick to that feed if you want. And it's all bite-sized learning. And I quit to like CBT nuggets where they have those small but like saw, you know, 10-minute video on what spanning tree is. And then they go into little more depth. It's, I tell I kind of approach it where it's maxed like three minute videos on a certain topic. And it's to wet your appetite. I don't say that I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about spanning tree. But I give you enough information where for the average person who's maybe interested in technology, interested in possibly networking and they stumble upon my video, it gets them enough information and then they go, oh, that sounds pretty cool. That's how that works. And if they want to learn more about it, then they can go to YouTube or, you know, something else to get more in-depth knowledge.

4:08So I just think of myself as an appetizer for networking. What kind of views are you getting on a spanning tree video on TikTok? I'm really curious. Surprisingly pretty well. One will pop off and get like 90,000, 100,000 views on a pretty niche topic. It just happens to hit that tech-curious demographic. But the average around 30 to 40,000 views per like technical topic. Okay. And is that the TikTok algorithm that is getting that many views once it pops off, as you say, or do you have followers on TikTok? You must. Oh, yeah, yeah. 250,000 followers are so in TikTok. But the way that TikTok algorithm works, it's weird that your followers don't watch your videos. It's counterintuitive. It's counter how you would think. But TikTok algorithm feeds your video to non-followers mostly. So if you actually look at my breakdown, it's like 70% non-followers and 30% followers. It's really weird how they do that.

5:11But yeah, so it's a lot of playing the game of the hook and making it applicable to the average person. So you can't just say, spanning tree is how two links, how you're able to have redundant links available. You can't just start it that way. You have to find a way to apply it to an average person. Be like, this technology is what, make sure that if your internet goes down, here it stays up here. Have to relate it so that people can grasp what you're saying. Yeah. So that's actually the biggest challenge that I face in creating content is how can I simplify this technology into the most basic form and then apply that to everyday life and the videos that really pop off are the ones that do that really well. Okay. To the people you work with follow you on TikTok and watch your videos. They do. It's a little weird. Actually, my job that I have now, my boss, I didn't know at the time, but he had been looking when he, I guess when you get an application, you Google that person a little bit.

6:11You kind of do some research into that person, at least on LinkedIn and that kind of stuff. And so he Googled me and my name popped up, my social media popped up. And of course, the video that he saw was, I stitched it with a college girl and she was talking about a night out they had at the club or whatever. She's like, we were so drunk and I flash my boobs. But behind her on her dorm room is like a Cisco 3702 IP. So I stitched the video of her saying that and then me drinking coffee and spitting my coffee out and go, oh my God, is that a Cisco 3275 and a fighter? And that's the, that's the, of course, that's the video he saw. But he still saw that it was like, this guy, this guy's a normal person. He's like a cool guy. So he still gave you a shot, even though I could have gotten an entirely other way. 100%. 100%. I ended up pretty well. And now they're very supportive of me making content. They know if I like going to the data center disappear for 20 minutes, it's probably filming something and they're completely fine with that.

7:12So I'm actually very blessed that my coworkers are cool with it. That's great. Yeah. Now, more content that you create is on the Packup Pushers Network. You do the life and uptime podcast with Alexis Berthof. What do you do? I do. Talk to folks about on that on life and uptime. Mostly their career and how they got to where they are. But ideally, depending on the guests and how open they are, the challenges in their personal life that allowed them to overcome some of their workplace challenges. Because we all know, like, we're not, our life is not 100% work. As much as we love technology, as much as we love doing what we do, our jobs affect our personal life and our personal life effects our jobs. So it's a lot of talking about, you know, going for that promotion and how they got that promotion, but also about the anxiety they had applying for that job and the emotions surrounding it and maybe having to pick that they spent more time at work than with their family and how did that affect them and, you know, that kind of stuff.

8:12So we try to make it so that while, yes, we're talking about technology, but we're talking about universal things that pretty much everyone has to deal with in a career. And I'm a big proponent of that. I think technology is for everyone and everyone can relate to what we're doing. What we're talking about. So I try to make it palatable for everyone. Well, let's get into Kevin's career then. That's the point of this exercise today. You were in an engineering role for a long time and now you're in an architect role. So I don't know what the right place is to start, but maybe start by comparing the two. How do you find those roles the same and how do you find them different? Man, it's, I feel like it's completely different because the scope is different. Like I'm no longer, most days, today I was consuling into a router, but most days I'm not consuling into devices anymore. I'm not actively configuring anything anymore. I'm not looking at configurations and trying to troubleshoot as much stuff anymore.

9:14I'm more, I'm less technical. It feels like I'm less hands on technical and the stuff, that's the stuff that I love. So it's been a big change going from something that I'm super used to doing and super in love with to doing a bunch of meetings and talking about projecting spreadsheets, financial spreadsheets for the next fiscal year and doing research and white pages on devices that we're going to look at purchasing and it's completely different. But it's not unrelated to anything. I went through this transition too and I identify with what you're saying, but also I realized at some point, hey, as an architect, I have to keep in mind what's it going to be like to implement this design as an engineer? So I had, it's not like you could let go of the engineering chapter, you had to hang on to that because you were handing off as an architecture as a design to an engineering group, had to be realistic to implement and or you had to communicate with them to get the feedback go.

10:15I think we want to go this. What do you, what do you folks think and then have them give feedback so that they felt involved in the process rather than being dictated to? Yeah, for sure. I think one of the bigger things is that I'm not the one going to be maintaining my decisions. The day maintaining is on the engineers, right? So the decisions I make, how complicated the design is going to be or the direction we want to move, I have to always think about those guys who may not be CC and P level and that be a CC and A level guy who doesn't have super nodural stuff has to maintain this and has to troubleshoot and so it has to be simple enough so anyone on our team can still operate the network. So that's the biggest challenge that I've found because especially we're doing a Nexus dashboard conversion right now, our data center going into the next dashboard and I don't know it very well. I'm still learning it. I'm like putting the plane together as I'm doing this stuff and I can't imagine some of the guys, especially some of the newer guys troubleshooting this and designing this. So it's a battle right now trying to keep it as simple as possible while still getting

11:18the goals accomplished that we need. Did you set out to achieve a network architect title? Was that on your career plan? I didn't even know that existed. I didn't know that was a like this position. You know, I just thought, especially when I first got into networking, I knew that network engineers were like the people who designed the internet, you know, that was pretty much all I knew. That was my goal. I was like, I want to become a network engineer and I was pretty steadfast and singly focused there. But network architect just seemed like it's kind of popped out of nowhere the last few years. I used to just be like the senior network engineer was kind of in charge of designing and I don't know if this is if the public sector, I'm in the public sector. So we're always like 20 years behind everybody anyway. And I don't know if this has been a trend that's just now catching up, but it feels like architect is kind of a newer position in general. I don't know that it's a newer position necessarily, but I do think it depends on the size of the organization. In a smaller shop, my experience was what you did, you just described the senior engineer, the one that's been around the longest tends to do the design work.

12:20And that was my role. I worked earlier my career for a lot of smaller shops. And then I went to a much larger organization and there was an architecture team. There's an engineering team. There was an operations team. And then there was the knock team, those four different tiers. And they weren't, they weren't stacked one on top of each other. There was, there was a lot of parallels and crossovers and so on the way it functioned. But that was the first place where there was a distinct architecture team. Although the way we happen to be organized, we still had to do engineering work. We maintained the core equipment, for example. The engineering did not do change control work on a core route. If that was us, so they never let us step away from the console entirely. Like you seem to be doing more or less the way you're describing it. So I don't, I don't think it's new as such. But maybe, maybe in 2026, smaller shops are willing to make that division of duties. Could be. I mean, it's, I think it's good to have that have at least one person who's really focused on the future

13:24and looking at the choices being made to make sure that they're on the same path and that everything's going to work together. And because otherwise you get a bunch of engineers kind of making their own decisions. And they may not always play well together and end up two years down the line that you have two designs that are not really compatible together and that kind of thing. So having at least, I don't know, a single-minded way to design something that might be a network architect or it just might be, you know, a better communication style, I guess, in a team that I haven't been lucky enough to have a great engineering team that communicates well. And I don't know if that's just my luck or IT in general has kind of a problem with the way people communicate. But yeah, it's always difficult to get everyone on the same page and have everyone agree. So having someone be like, no, I'm the final decision maker, we're going to do this way might be easier. There's the problem of being able to translate business-speaking technical speak and vice versa.

14:24That's a gift that I don't think a lot of IT people have that it would be better if they did. And then I think there's a stereotype of the IT engineer who's an introvert who doesn't want to communicate. They just want to be left alone to nerd out and do the cool stuff and get paid and think of home at the end of the day. I think I don't think you're wrong about the stereotype of bad communication is coming out of IT. Yeah, I think that's the reason that stereotype exists. I think it ties back to the fact that we call it a soft skill, but communication is a skill and it's hard to do well. And it doesn't get the kind of attention in professional training that maybe it should. Yeah, which is weird. I feel like we train all the technical stuff. We'll pay for you to go to training, we'll pay for you to take your CCNA, we'll pay for you all that stuff. But I am now in a manager role and no one's trained me on how to be a manager. No one's trained me how to communicate. No one's trained like all the soft skill stuff that I really need. There's no training for that. Yeah. It's very curious the way we prioritize technology over

15:28people, which I guess makes sense in our industry, but still people are a huge part of our job. We are a service industry in the day. We provide a service to people. So you would think customer service will be pretty high on the training list. So how was this role described to you? Like do you have what's your role? What's your responsibilities? What does day look like? Kind of fell into this role in that I seriously don't think that I was given this role because I am the best person ever for this role. I think that I was already on the team and hiring right now is a crap shoot. You never know what you're going to get when you hire. So it's kind of like we know this person. He does good work. He's knowledgeable and we don't know what we could get if we go out. And even if someone who's a CCIE who's 30 years of experience, a genius, we don't know if he comes in and just falls asleep at his desk. You never know what you're going to get. So I think I kind of fell

16:32into the role in that I was the best option on the team and it was described to me as just like a I've already I was kind of already doing the job. They I told my boss when our other architect left, I was like, Hey, we have a spot open. I'd like to get experience being an artwork architect. So can I until we fill this position, kind of take over the role and fill in when we need to? And so it was able to like slide in there pretty easily. And I knew the kind of the job was going to be mine unless I royally screwed up the interview somehow, which thankfully I didn't. But it was I don't know, it wasn't never it was never described to me. It was never like, Hey, this is our duties that we want you to do. It was more like, Hey, we want you to go into this role and attend these meetings and you represent us now. And so whatever you say, we're going to do. It was very weird. It's a liaison role. You need to be an arbiter between the business side of the house. There, there's an acquisition. I, well, you work for state government or county government. So I suppose it's not

17:35acquisitions. But this was a role I found myself in a lot. We're acquiring another company. We need you to sit and hear the what's happening with the acquisition and the timing and understand the budget and and I need you to talk to this person who's the representative over at the company being acquired and talk to them about their tech stack and then figure out a transition strategy. All of that kind of stuff. So you had to understand the business needs and timing and know what and sometimes I couldn't share what was happening with other people on the team because it wasn't officially out and it wasn't a signed deal. So you got to be, you know, play it close to the vest and not I can't tell you, but something exciting is happening. You can't do that. You got to, you know, you got to cool and wake wake or go out for beers later and let it slip. But the key skill there was that translating business needs and technical needs and vice versa and not getting too technical with the business folks but helping them understand we are going to need to buy some equipment. We're going to need to make these investments going to cost this much and the lead

18:36time is this. So the senior you guys make a decision and sign off on this budget. The better we can get the order placed, you know, have those kinds of thoughts in your mind on behalf of the business was that was a big piece of it for me. Yeah, for sure. And so the way the county government's run when it's weird to me, but I guess it's normal for you guys in enterprise or private sector is that we run it like a private business where we have the core who's row county government network and then we have third party entities that come in and we treat them like a like a customer where we have like fire rescue and the library system and all these like public sector if they come in and they end up on a on a B2B firewall business to business firewall and then we treat them as a customer and we then provide service to those customers. So it's very similar where I'll be on a meeting with a library and they want, you know, a new library is being built and they have upgrades and all that stuff being built and I'm representing basically the network for them and the company that they're they're contracting through to do all this work for. So it's very similar. I worked for state government in a Hampshire early in my

19:38career and it was a very similar kind of a setup. The one caution was how is this project being funded? So there was some number of departments that would come to us that if they didn't meet the criteria of the grant that was funding the project couldn't serve them. So you had to keep all the things like that in mind because a lot of money came from federal government and you had to track all that stuff. Yeah, different rules and money, different rules. It's very similar mindset by and large. There's a central network. These are services that we're providing to a variety of different state government agencies and then we worked together in providing services to that to that customer. It was and kind of a consultant vibe to it. Do you get that feeling? Oh, yeah, for sure. Especially because we're telling them what they should do for their network and telling them like, you know, this is the best practice way of doing it. And so you are, you're consulting and they have to trust that they don't always trust us, but they have to trust that we're telling them the truth and that, you know, that it's cheaper and better for them to use us than them hire their own MSP and have to go with the third party route. So for the most part,

20:42they definitely trust me. So when the opportunity came up, they approached you, Kevin, we want you to think about this and you decided, no, I don't going to give this a shot and then you went through the interview process. What was that decision-making process like in your head? I felt like this was, I had to do it. And I don't know if you guys had the same thing when you guys were, you guys are full-time packet pushers now. So you guys aren't in the nine to five slave work like William, but when you're in a position, I've been in the networking engineer now for like seven years, some like that. And I just felt like this is the next step. You know, it's like the network engineer, unless you go to like a different team or different IT part, like there's not much anywhere to go in leadership, like other than leadership, then being an architect. That's like the only next step. So I felt like if I wanted to progress my career, if I wanted to keep gaining knowledge in different types of knowledge, because that's a part of the house I haven't done

21:43before, the design part, the you know, the long-term design, the doing budgets and stuff. And as much as it seems horrible, like I don't have any experience doing it. And if I ever want to do contracting, or if I ever want to like break out on my own, or like that, I feel like I should have that experience that be well-rounded in that. So it was more of like a, less if I want to do, I have this craving to be a network architect. And more just like, I guess I should do it. The good thing is the benefit I have that a lot of people don't have is I do have this content side of me. So worst case scenario, if I make a terrible decision, I hate this. I don't need the job. I'm doing well enough on social media where I could survive and be fun just doing social media. So I'm in a unique position where I could any day be like, you know what? Sorry, I'm done. Oh, bye. So it was less risk, I guess, than a lot of people do. But yeah, it was more just

22:47falling into it. I've talked to some folks that are younger and they have long-term goals. Like, they want to be a CTO. And so they're in their mind, the transitions they make in their career in these early days are taking them down that path of being a CTO, let's say, if that's what they want to be. Do you have aspirations like that where you're on a long-term journey? Or was this just like, well, no, I didn't have a plan as such. This is just the next thing. Yeah, I don't, I don't, what if I was doing, I don't have these young kids can say they want to be a CTO. I don't know what a CTO does. Like, still, I would in my career now for so long. And I've been, I have no idea what, like my boss's boss's boss does. I think he goes to like some meetings and he just like plays golf. I don't, I have no idea. So like, I don't understand how he's like 20-year-old kids can come out of college and be like, I want to be a CTO, I want to be a CIO. Like, the C-suite people, I don't know, they're different level. I like playing with the technology. I like logging into stuff and breaking stuff and figuring out how stuff works. That's always been my, it my thing that

23:51I actually had a passion for. So my aspirations always stopped in network engineer. Like, that's, that's what I knew what they do. They mess around with the cool stuff. They get to play with the big, big buttons and the lights and all that stuff. And that's what I want to do. So, yeah, I never got into the whole leadership. I wanted to be a manager. I wanted to have power or control. I just want to play with stuff. Well, now you get to play with budgets, I guess. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not as fun, I'd just say. Especially in public sector. Like, maybe private sector would be easier dealing with budgets, I don't know. But it feels like different piles of money and got a broad Peter Paye Paul to get things that you want. And maybe it's the same, I don't know. But I assume, as, you know, as you moved up the ladder in your career, you did get more and more exposed to budgets and trade-offs and restrictions. So you're not coming into this cold, on a smaller scale, though, it was less, I less cared about what the budget was and more about, you know, I, we had standards. So if a new site's coming up, and I'm, you know, if I'm in charge

24:53of creating a new library, we have a set standard switches that we buy for remote sites. We have a set standard router. We have a set, you know, layout. And we even have template for configuration. So the copy and paste, you know, change some VLANs, change some IP addresses, you copy and paste, and you're pretty much done. So I was dealing with those kind of budgets where I was procuring switches and routed and stuff on a set piece, but it was never like the million dollars that I'm buying now. Now it's huge projects. So the scale is just quadrupled. And it's scary, you know, it's, you're buying this stuff and you're in charge, you're, you're putting your name on this PO order of a million dollars to revamp our out of band network or something like that. And if it goes wrong or if we buy the wrong equipment, now it's on me. I'm not pulling from a standard that has been working for us for years. It's something new. So there's a lot more pressure and a lot more scrutiny on what you're doing. And you could fail. And that's terrifying. Sure. Someone likes to fail. Right. Yeah.

25:58I'm curious. You also mentioned design as one of your responsibilities. How does that manifest? Like what does it mean to be in charge of design? Well, it's interesting because what I, before I got into like the actual not but bolts and nuts of networking and knowing how it works, I would think that each, I don't know, each design or thing is unique. And there was unique challenges. And there are a little bit of that where you have these sites that are kind of one off and stuff. But a lot of design is more of overall picture, not necessarily like, I don't know. This link should connect to this link and this thing is to do this. It's not that granular. It's all bigger design stuff of like, do we move our data center to ACI or not? And what are the pros and cons? And like, they're bigger picture designs. And that's where it's more research and understanding how that affects their teams and best practices and that kind of stuff. And it's not so much, you know, what's the best way to get this cable routed through here or this switch to

27:03connect to this switch? It's much bigger scale. And yeah, so it's not what I expected when I was first getting into technology at all when I was first getting the networking. But it's different and fun in a way of the scale. And it makes me want to go for my CCDE design expert. Now that I'm seeing like all this cool stuff that all these designs you can do. So I wanted to ask you if you felt there was a certification that would, would help with the architecture world. So you think CCDE? I think so. And if I had to choose now whether I go CCIE or CCDE, I would go DE. I think the value, especially with for the career progression, if you want to become an architect or consulting or like that, I think DE is the way to go. It provides more value in that sphere. And so I don't know. I think the way the progression of networking is happening. I think DE is going to be more valuable in the future as well. How much of you dug into the DE blueprint? We're talking about Cisco certified design expert. If you listen to this, like what are they talking about?

28:05Cisco certified design expert rather than nuts and bolts and command line. It's more about understanding technologies at high level, the use cases that it applies to. And then how you would apply designs to a variety of different scenarios covering enterprise and service provider and data center, it's broad. It's intimidating to me. It's huge. But it's a different kind than IE. You know, it's, yeah. IE is intimidating itself. All these expert level certifications are intimidating or huge. It's just, I feel like it's more attainable because it's less granular. Almost, you know, it, I think it's easier, at least for me to go broad and not be caring about certain like values. I don't know. I don't have to describe it. But IE feels very granular in technologies, whereas the DE is broad and there's a lot of stuff you're doing. But it's not as, it's not as technical. It's a different type of technical, I guess. I worked on DE for a bit. I spent maybe six months on it before deciding. My life was going

29:11in a different direction. I didn't have the mental energy to spend on it because of other things that were going on at the time. I did do the written exam not because I was ready for it, because I wanted to see what that exam was like. And I'd been through the IE program at that point, whereas CCIE, they give you all these arcane scenarios. Like you need to connect these two end points and you can't use these six technologies and you should use, you know, one of these two, and they don't give you too many more details because you're supposed to know this super granular solution that they're making you solve with one hand tied behind your back. DE, the one written exam that I took in this course back some years and it's morphed since then. But it was much more, here's the scenario. Here's the business requirements. Here's, you know, is this big, you know, discussion of putting a scenario together and then which of these technologies would apply to this? And it was, and it's, I didn't happen to be familiar with some of them because they was service provider oriented stuff with some acronyms that I'd never studied. So I didn't happen

30:12to know the answer, but I was like, man, if I understood that, I could knock this out of the park if I'd spent the time studying this stuff. So it was encouraging to me in that way. I didn't have to remember once the offset in the header to get the value for that. I don't know. Stuff that no one wasn't that even IE's I feel like you learn it for the test and then you don't remember it. Like that stuff, all the individual stuff like that, I just Google it if you run into the issue, you know, like it, I don't, I don't need to memorize all those numbers. So that's where I feel like the DE, the DE is a little more applicable to real life compared to the IE. At least, and from what I'm doing in my life at least, what about going the other way like an MBA or something, did you consider any kind of like business? I should. I feel like if honestly, if I hadn't, if content creation and doing that stuff didn't take up so much my time and I wanted to progress my career, I'd be going into leadership. And I think that's where you the business really comes in handy.

31:13There's like, there's like specialized certifications for leadership and project management and all that kind of stuff. So I think I was, I would start tilting my career more that way and less technical as I, as I kept going. But it's hard because I'm not really passionate about that stuff. It's you get into networking because you like networking. And it's funny how your career progresses, the, the more your career progresses, the less of the stuff you do that you actually got into the career to do in the first place. So it has to be a balance, but I do see myself as I'm getting older and like lifting a 9200 chassis today, my back's hurting. My God, one of my co-workers has like a bloody knee now where the chassis corner hit his knee. Like we're getting old and we're, it's getting harder and harder to do the physical stuff. And you know, I can definitely see sitting at my, my table or my desk and just being on a computer all day and doing sheets and talking to people would be a safer for sure job. But do you manage people? Do you have, I do

32:18an answer to you? I have four people underneath me. So it's a small team. I'm a supervisor. So we have my manager, myself, and then we split the engineers and admins to be underneath the supervisors. That way we have, I'm basically middle management now. What was that, was that new with the architecture role? It was. Yeah. Before my, my boss had, even the architects, the ones who were here before me, they were under him and then the employees were under my boss. So it was all, there was no mental, middle management, middle supervisor. And I think it just, the team got too large for my manager to give the time he needed to everybody so that we split it off and have supervisors now. So I'm in charge of the random like, time off requests and managing on, like making sure on calls covered for my team and performance evaluations and all that kind of stuff and all that is new, all that like, I don't know, being a mentor and trying to coach up my team and all that stuff is brand new. And I have no training like the, they just drew like, hey,

33:19you're good at technology. So now you're, you should be in charge of people, which doesn't make any sense. But I feel like that's how things kind of typically go is they just throw you into management and go, good luck. And how are you dealing with that? It's hit or miss. I'm kind of figuring out as I go. And I hate to say, I'm trying, I love Ted Lasso. I guess I watched the TV show Ted Lasso. Yeah. I want to be Ted Lasso in my management style, like make the people the best they can be individually so that we're the best we can be as a team. And you know, except people for who they are and make that who they are work, find a way for that to work in a team. That sounds really good. But Ted Lasso is a sitcom and not everybody wants to work and not everybody loves football. You know, like they have a passion for football. Football is life. No one says, networking is life when they come in. They're all thinking, let me do my eight hours and get the heck out of here so I can go do what I want to do. Kind of thing. So I'm I'm realizing that it may not always

34:21work out the classic come, but I'm at least trying to be on the side of my team where they feel like it's not the company versus them. And I'm representing the company telling them what they need to do. But I'm on their team and it's I have their best interest at heart. And we're trying to, you know, get what we need to get done by the same time do it in a way that's supporting each other. And so that's my focus right now. I'd hope since you came from the trenches and you've been where they are that that helps. It's a little harder coming from the same team though. Like I was one of them and now I'm telling them what to do. So there's a little bit of like they don't respect me as much as if I had come from outside because I was one of them. I'm the same guy that had beers with them talking about, you know, that works suck that day, whatever. Like I'm the same guy. So now all of a sudden I'm telling them, Hey, go do this ticket or go do this. And they're resisting a little bit, you know, it's it's a little hard for them to swallow that pill. So it's there's pluses

35:24of minuses. I know the team very well because I have been working with them. So I know what makes them tick and how I can manipulate. It's not a bad word, but like talk to them in a way that makes them have more buy in because I do know them very well. But it's their friend or their coworker that they knew for so long telling them what to do. So there's plus and minuses. That does sound awkward. Yeah. Yeah. I just sit around and complain about management at this point now too. Yeah, I'm no longer in those in those conversations. I've noticed. That's right. It's like that's really quiet. Yeah. Yeah. Like there were there was some back general talking. And all of a sudden I found myself as an other. I am now I'm now one of them instead of one of us. So it that's been a bit of a change because I at the other day, I still feel like I'm one of them. You know, like I'm still a network engineer. I still like the technology and I still like doing the stuff. But I have to at the same time, I know, no, I'm not one of them anymore. I can't go out and just have beers and shit talk management anymore. I am management. So it is it is a big difference.

36:26Are there other things about this transition that surprised you or caught you off corn? Just the amount of meetings. Like, yeah, man, I thought I already had a lot of meetings. And my day my day before was half meetings. And now my day is all meetings. And I just thought like you would have more time to actually work during work. And instead, we have meetings about meetings about meetings. And I'm now having to do work outside of work to catch up on the time that I should have been working instead. I was doing meetings. So that's probably the biggest thing that I was like, okay, it's what they're asking me to do now is more than 40 hours a week. It's because of the time things that I have during the day. Yeah. Oh, I the meeting thing for I remember that we would have pre-meeting meetings to plan the meeting. That was that was a thing. We got to strategize what we're going to say we get into the meeting with these other people and make sure we don't do this and make sure that you got to know about this person and their perspective on this is this. And then last year this other thing happened and you should know about that. Really? Really? All the time every week. You know, you have meetings after the meeting to talk about the meeting. Are you just in?

37:30Yes. Yeah. We had some of those too. Yeah. We did. Yeah. And say that also happened. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like a post-mortem how it went. You should have said that. And yeah. And so little like we have three meetings for like an hour long meeting. It's like come on. It's killing me. I just want to play with stuff. I just want to play stuff. So what's your stress level as an architect versus an engineer then? Oh, it's so much more. It's so much more pressure, so much more eyes on you. I'm talking to like my bosses, bosses, bosses now that they know who I am. I mean, that's never a good thing. Like I'm always, you know, try to hide and just be like, let me let me go to the data center, put my headphones on and like get what I need to get done and not talk to anyone. And now I'm in the spotlight and like I walk in the hallway and my bosses boss will say, I had to me and I'm like, why do you know who I am? That's terrifying. Like you shouldn't. I just want to like wave to you and walk away. But yeah, it's it's a lot more stress, a lot more pressure. And it's definitely not for the week. Like I can definitely see where

38:30people find enjoyment of just doing doing the basic job and going home and not having to deal with any of this. And so I had a few different leadership management architecture roles and then I had it I moved on to a different company. And that was a team that was rebuilding. And one of the positions was going to be network manager. There hadn't been one before but there it had been decided there was going to be one. And and my boss at the time was like, you can apply for it if you want. But if you don't want it, don't do it. We'll bring someone in. You can just be an engineer. And I had done enough of it over the years that because of the stress and because I just want to play with stuff and so on. I really identified with what you're describing. I decided that point. It's like, all right, I won't I will let someone else be the manager play that role. And I'm just going to be the super nerd. You know, sit here in my cubicle and my fabric covered box with my whiteboard and design things and work with the other nerds and and do that. And hope that because I've given up some amount of control by letting someone else be the manager

39:34that I'm not sorry I did that. And I did a work in front. Absolutely incredible human that I loved working with and for. And so that was it was not a mistake in that case. You didn't feel the pressure to like to you didn't feel the pressure to like I don't know advance like have some movement a ladder like a upward movement at all. Well, it was different for me because I done it. I've been doing that. So source of roles for several years at that point. And I was actually okay to just to take a step back from from that from being in all the meetings. I still ended up being pulled into a lot of meetings because of just the technical nature of what I did. I had to get pulled into a lot of things. But I wasn't I wasn't the person. I still doing some architecture work to be fair. But it was a smaller company with a line between architecture and engineering was was very blurry. And a lot of that all happened at my desk. But taking a step back after having done it for several years was was okay. That was the right step for me, which makes me wonder how long have you been

40:38doing this thing Kevin? This is kind of a new role for you, right? Yeah, it's literally been I think three months officially. Yeah. And I think one of my problems is that I get a lot of my self not confidence, but it's it's self identity on my job title. Yeah. And so if I could take a promotion with a bigger title and a better and better salary and all that stuff like my own ego is like, yeah, you should do that because that that validates you. That means you're you're more of a networking person. You're more successful. You're more all this stuff because you have a better title and better salary. And so even though I don't necessarily might not want a job or want love the duties, I always have that like drive like I think I like I should take it just just to take it. And you feel like that is internal to you as opposed to external like family situation or friends or my wife said yeah, my wife said not to take the job. She was like

41:38is you got you're already really busy. You got the social media stuff going on. That's going to add even more time to you. And you know, I would rather you hear like be able to take the kids up from school and to go to you know, band practice on a random day if you have to in the middle of the day. I kind of think so you don't have meetings all day that you're you're trapped to. But I just couldn't say no. Like I just there's it's that the allure of a title and the money. I just like yeah, I need to get it. So my own words sometimes. I don't know. The desert decision I was making I did step away from a title. I did step away from some amount of money. I don't know how much my boss at the time as he was helping me decide whether I should apply for this newly created network manager role or not. I said well, is there a big money difference? He's like there is a difference but it's not huge. He said don't but don't make the decision based on that. Make the decision based on what you really want to do. And I had been I was a bit burnt out you know in that you know coming

42:40into this new role from the previous burden of responsibilities that I had at my previous role. And so I like okay, I won't. But again, I'm on the other end of it. I was on the other end of it from you at this point Kevin. Because I had I'd also been in that position like nope, I want the more. Give me all the more. I'd title the money. The responsibility. Let's go. Yeah. And I did it for several years. Do you communicate with other IT architects that are at Hillsborough County? If it's any well, there's so there's me and one other guy and we are very very close. We we like we were to those confidants. We're like trauma bonding at this point. We're working constant communication all day. We go to lunch together for the office together. Like we're we're very very tight. He and I were on the same page of how we want to handle everything. I'm very lucky and I have the best coworker in that aspect. Like he's absolutely fantastic. If honestly if he leaves, I'm probably gone to like I I don't I can't imagine surviving this job without someone

43:46who I can lean on very heavily to help support me. So I'm very very lucky. I'm glad you found that person. I had that person one of my jobs too with the best cybersecurity engineer I have a worked with. He was the cybersecurity architect and I was the network architect and we were hand in glove that two of us worked together and communicated constantly leaned heavily on each other, supported each other's big changes and testing and training each other and each other's teams and so on. Great guy. And and having him in that role was again for me it was just it was pivotal to surviving day to day if I didn't have him. And I think if he didn't have me it would have our jobs would have been harder for sure. But because we were able to work together there was a synergy there that made it easier and it was someone you could trust. You know that we weren't playing politics. We weren't worried about any of that kind of stuff. It was about a tech finding compatible technology solutions between the two things. It's like well I got we got we got

44:51we got to put the the design together for for PII and you know the new the new stuff is coming and so let's get ready. And you know we just we we'd worked together on that stuff and you'll me from the network transport side and him from the cyber security side and we we'd figure out solutions together. And that really mattered that was important to be able to talk to another person with a different technical specialty at that same level and get your thinking lined up and have them bring something to me that I didn't know was a thing and me bring something to them that they didn't know was a thing and both go I'm glad I knew that before we stepped in the meeting next week that's important that's good stuff. And oh you know to have those kind of that kind of communication just made the the job of architect go a lot better. Especially in cybersecurity. I feel like networking and cybersecurity often but heads a lot and just best practice and networking necessarily might not what what cybersecurity wants and vice versa. And so having that confidant and cybersecurity especially I feel like would be a huge benefit because it is kind of

45:53can be contentious. Well we would build solutions that wouldn't overlap. We wouldn't be solving each other's problems. We we had a good way to to link to delineate like oh I don't need to put I don't know an access list on this interface because that is actually handled by this firewall and this position and so it's going to be simpler to troubleshoot if we have a problem if we don't put an access list there. I don't know that that's an actual thing but just things things like that where you know we we and knew and respected each other and understood what the other one did and could create a solution together effectively rather than that budding heads thing. Not that we didn't bud heads. That also happened. Don't get me wrong. Too big eagles in the room at times that's the thing that's going to happen. What is the profile of networking and maybe IT more broadly in the county like do people recognize the value that you provide or is it more like oh it's those nerds who just make sure the Wi-Fi works. Does anyone and anywhere value the network team? I feel like that's a

46:58universal like a better work or else like it just it's like the light I call it utility all the time like videos and stuff because people no longer expect the network to be a luxury it's it better be working utility it's utility yeah and so like no I don't think the network gets respect anywhere as much as it should and now I'm biased because I'm in networking but it is very much like magic and it just it better work if it doesn't work they only I the only time they ever care about us is when it doesn't work and then we're in trouble you know there's never any accolades there's never like oh man my my emails coming in fast today thanks network team you know they don't they don't ever think about us until their stuff's not working so yeah no I've never been in a single place where the network team is or really any IT team gets the the praise and respect as it should maybe you the other IT person just start showing up to meetings and like wizard droves and just lean in and be like don't don't make us curse you with the power of

48:04me yeah probably get some kind of filter exactly I could probably do it giant white beard and that is how people view viewed networking is is the world wizards we're all doing magic stuff behind the thing or we're all not doing anything that the network doesn't have to have any upkeep it just once you said it you said it and forget it that's like it's one of the two and it doesn't make any sense to me how can we be wizards at the same time that also have doing nothing have no idea what we're doing but you can't put everybody well you're new to the roll cabin but for other people who are thinking about being an architect don't do it to that role perhaps yeah well that's the question what's your advice don't tell it right away I would say if you really love operations don't do it I I really love operations and there's every day I wish I could be doing something different that sounds terrible if my boss is listening I promise I like the job sometimes

49:07but if if you're getting burned out with operations getting burned out with the on call stuff and like going having to go on site and remote sites and all that kind of stuff then it is a good way of expanding your skills and thinking of a big picture and I don't know getting a different mindset on how things should all work together but day to day if you if you're still enjoying and still learning and still really I don't know having fun then I say stay where you are like I do the day your job is 80% of your life right so if you're in a good spot if you're really enjoying what you're doing why change something only change if it's broke in my opinion but given that you mentioned that internal pressure if somebody feels that internal pressure do you see a pathway for advancement that can allow you to still have mostly hands-on in ops but still rise through an organization or are you going to hit natural ceiling at some point I feel like no I'm all you work in the public sector so my my experience is you know I don't know it's kind of siloed there but I feel like

50:09eventually you get a point no matter where you are no matter what company where you're getting more and more hands off and every promotion is like a you're more and more hands off until you get to a point where all of a sudden you look back and go crap I'm not doing really anything in technology anymore I'm doing spreadsheets and meetings and dealing with people and I think that kind of happens gradually as you go up like I as a network admin I was doing all physical that's all I did rack and stack and check you know OTBR fiber and going all these remote sites and taking out APs and that kind of stuff it was all everything was was physical and then I went to network engineer and it's doing you know configurations at my desk doing troubleshooting, promoting into switches and stuff like that so I'm not doing physical but I'm still technology and then you get to like management or architect and you're doing even less so it happens as a gradual thing where you kind of don't even notice it as it's happening but when you look back you go crap I'm I'm not doing anything anymore like I'm not productive at all but you do obviously have value to the org because they have the position and you are making decisions and hoping thinking

51:14ahead about what the county is going to need technology wise yeah it's just different it's a different mindset and I haven't because I'm still new I haven't changed my my brain all the way it's a different like thing so before I could walk past a building and I still get this like this little bit of a good feeling or whatever when I walk past a building I go like that network that building over there I installed a network for that and I I'll even go to like like tell my kids like hey see that building over there like I'm the network and it's a little bit of pride even like 10 years later I worked at University of South Florida and there are buildings in there that are completely me I did all the switching you know all all the design for it I still with my kids in the car like hey look at that and they go we know dad you didn't know work for that building because every single time I pass it I have to say it and so that's where my like I I did something I produced this thing that I can see and feel and touch and I this is the thing and I'm no longer necessarily doing that work anymore so I have to change my mindset of what success looks

52:14like what you know what the good feeling they get from the job I'm doing from what I'm producing and I'm just still new at it so I'm still in the process of of changing my brain there and I'm sure it'll happen and I I say I don't like the job and I'm saying all this negative stuff about but it is a fun job and it is fun to get a bigger picture and design things instead of just troubleshoot or you know put up fires all day so it is a good job I'm probably talking more crap than how I actually feel about it it's just I literally just came back on the middle of the work week right now so it's not a happy rainbow Sunday talk to me on a Friday afternoon and I might feel better about it you brain will change I went through a process of defining my value to myself what is it I feel is valuable and that I take pride and I went through the same thing yeah cruise by the building or the campus yeah I built that network that was that was my thing I did that if there's a product there you designed it you you put it together you did the engineering you

53:18plugged in fiber you labeled cables you made this thing and now people plug into it and use it you made that thing now you're not making the thing you're describing how the thing should be made perhaps you're you're maybe leading and guiding people you're figuring out how the thing's going to get paid for somehow you're figuring out what the thing even needs to be but there's something about that that's different from actually I fell asleep at my keyboard Friday night because there's a change coming in Saturday morning early and you're you're dot knives and cross-enties and double check in that spreadsheet and looking at your config paragraphs and thinking about your procedures and I don't have time to go home I'm just gonna sleep here then you do the thing on Saturday and it goes pretty well and everyone's happy and Monday morning there's not that many help desk tickets and it's all good and that's a whole different way to get value from what a management or architecture role is and I went through the same thing you're going through Kevin I got to redefine in my brain what value was that I started respected myself and the job that I was doing is this

54:22that makes sense yeah and how did you do that like was it a slow process or would we have like wake up slow-prone night and be like I am now in architect I get it no I was just it was a slow process it definitely it definitely took time especially when I was having the most fun or felt the most productive when I was in the lab with someone from the engineering team banging around on this new version of iOS to figure out this new feature that Cisco just gave us with I don't know stateful that or something and testing it to see if it actually worked and decided we were going to implement this and roll this into the production design for our win edge and versus I'm in a meeting again that I'm not entirely sure I need to be here what am I doing for the next hour and a half and then you walk out of there well I ate three donuts that's production yeah that's production yeah but seeing it seeing my role in a whole different light seeing you coming to respect management because I was now a manager of and when I when I earlier had not really respected that

55:24layer and didn't understand that function and figuring out oh actually that this case matter a lot I have to really and and I'm not good at it I have to get good at this now and and that just took time and it for me it took quite a while but I did settle into it and redefine myself so that I was comfortable and I understood the value that I was providing it's just different from the I make the blinky thing blink this is the whole different thing for sure yeah and I still have my home lab and I still like I get to play with round stuff so like I'm it's kind of like the training wheels like I'm still still finding ways to get that high of messing around with technology until until my brain fully catches up to what I'm doing now well Kevin dance why don't we why don't we close off this conversation by but you tell them folks where they can find you in the internet I know it's it's it's it's tick-tock and it's talk about your handles your blog site linked in anything you want to share I'm a jacess at node pretty much everywhere a d a dj's I can't pronounce it I can't spell it I have the worst

56:28username of all time I think no one knows what unless you're actually in networking you don't understand what my username means you were like I your math something now okay anyway a jacess at node everywhere take talk Instagram lead then YouTube that kind of stuff I can also find me Kevin nans you just Google my name I pop up in the first like you know three sheets of Google and a jacess node dot com for my blog I have some free resources or resources out there if you're studying for your CCNA and just some explainers and stuff so yeah okay a jacess in node the life and uptime podcasts which you can find on the packet pushers network if you want to hear more about Kevin's career he recorded with Scott Raban on total network operations it was episode 35 where he he and Scott chatted and Kevin thanks for joining us this is last minute for Bill the Dome the backstory we had a whole other recording though it's supposed to come in this week and people canceled at the last minute like um well I'm thankful they care for him I slide right in well we got to get you on a show in the future to talk to deep nerd and scratch your itch whether

57:33that's about labbing whether that's about the wonderful world of nexus or whatever we got it figure out a deep nerd topic if you want some point to yeah sounds good Laura everybody thank you for listening to heavy networking today if you were thinking about taking on network architecture maybe you got more questions you could ping Kevin you could ping on me and banks um linked in good place to do that the packet person community slack and of course Kevin gave you all kinds of different ways to contact him Kevin I both went through that engineered architect to transition and it's not honestly it is not a role for everybody and it could be hard to tell you until you're in the role what you actually think so if you want again you want to just chat someone about it Kevin and I are around I have an Ethan Banks with co-host Drew Conray Murray if you have a podcast episode inside of you would you let one of us know you again message us on Slack or LinkedIn how much would you want to talk about uh Drew and I like topics like emerging protocols and hands-on networking experiences and certification stories and home lab builds and and really anything related to packet nerd recently hit us up and if you don't know exactly how to reach us you can visit packetbushers.net

58:37you can figure out the rest from there all the links are are there just click around last but not least remember that too much networking would never be enough