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Get Another Network Cert Or Learn More About DevOps?

3/22/2014

6 Comments

 
You can’t listen to an interview or podcast, an industry panel, or read a Q&A about the future of networking that doesn't involve skill sets.  The biggest question of them all – what skills should network engineers focus on so they don’t become irrelevant? If you really want to know what skills make sense, why ask, when you can do an easy search to see what skills companies are looking for these days in a variety of roles.  Combine SDN with DevOps into your search criteria and the results may surprise you.  They sure surprised me.  
I don’t usually peruse the job boards, but I’m on LinkedIn daily, so I figured I’d put their job site to the test and see what skills are in demand by searching for specific products and tools.  This is the best way to search, right?  I did numerous searches using the following keywords: SDN, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Python, Cisco, network, and CCIE.

Here are the results:
  • There were only five (5) jobs available when searching for SDN, CCIE, and Python.  Reminder, I only searched LinkedIn.
  • The first was for a vendor as a “SDN Cloud Architect.”  Not only are they looking for an expert level network engineer who can program and is up to speed on SDN concepts, but this person should also be familiar with public and private cloud designs.  Then, there is one for a Site Reliability Engineer working at Apple and then two more for Service Engineers working at Microsoft.
  • The last one was the only one relevant to the Enterprise space.  It was for a Senior Data Center Network Engineer position for Wells Fargo.  The position and description largely resembles that of a traditional network engineer.  But, when you dig in and view some of the tools and knowledge areas they are looking for, you see things like:  lead the development of SDN, familiarity with OpenFlow, Python experience preferred, experience with VMware, experience with OpenStack Neutron and virtual networking, Knowledge of NSX, Experience deploying VXLAN, Experience with Puppet to program network APIs.  Whoever they hire for this is going to be a stud! This person better demand some real cash.

Okay, that search was a failure.  Maybe companies are putting less value on the CCIE when advertising for jobs or not using “SDN” in job descriptions.  The next search includes Python, network, and Puppet.  Okay, wow – 211 results back. 
  • A good portion of these were for jobs that had “DevOps” in the title.  That was an eye opener for me by itself- all I keep reading is that DevOps is more about culture and process, not a title; there have even been blogs about not having DevOps specific jobs and teams because you just create one more silo!  That is beyond me at this point, but the point is, even in these DevOps jobs, you see things like “Architect, implement, scale server and network infrastructure to support high growth rates.”  Same position calls for the person be an expert in configuration management frameworks (Salt, Puppet, Chef), and be an expert with the *nix command line.
  • There are also positions that are titled Systems Network Engineers (as an example) that are a little more geared toward traditional network engineers, but with a slight systems twist.   In these roles, primary duty is still network, but they are looking for at least knowledge of tools that include Puppet, Chef, CFE, Ansible, etc.

Realizing the term ‘network’ as a keyword may be too broad, I decided to do other searches with the keywords from above in a variety of ways.  More results and general thoughts:
  • DevOps skills and knowledge of config mgmt. tools is in huge demand – no matter how you cut it.  
  • Linux skills – huge demand.
  • There are more DevOps roles that are asking for knowledge of networking than there are NetEng roles that are asking for knowledge of DevOps tools, etc.
  • There are ops teams calling themselves “TechOps” in that there aren’t silo’d ops teams anymore.  Some of these are looking for network engineers on the TechOps teams. If you want to grow your skills, this seems like a good place to hone them.
  • I performed 3 searches as such: Cisco+Ansible, Cisco+Chef, and Cisco+Puppet. I was trying to determine two things.  What is the most common config mgmt. tool being used in the network space and what job roles were there for these (devops vs. neteng)?  The results for each search, respectively, had 3, 49, and 78 results.  Puppet is the sheer winner right now, but the bottom line is, “most” of these results were not necessarily for network engineers, they were largely for sys admin / Devops types.
  • There are still plenty of jobs available that don’t require any new skills.  These aren't going anywhere.
  • Since this article will likely get read by mostly network engineers, here is just one example where the traditional network engineer is demanded, but knowledge of new skills are desirable too:  “Seeking an experienced and highly innovative Enterprise Network Architect to join our team.  The candidate should be well versed in Cisco based routing, switching and wireless technologies.  The candidate should have experience in progressive technologies supporting SDN, OpenStack and Open Networking.  Experience with automated configuration management leveraging Puppet or Chef is desirable to enable our Private and Hybrid Cloud implementations.
  • Generally speaking, if you add virtualization, Cloud, OpenStack, OpenFlow, programming, Linux, Python, Puppet, Ansible, Chef, etc. to your repertoire of networking skills, you'll become more valuable. Is this really telling anyone something they didn't already know though?


Foregoing features to foregoing networking skills?  We'll have to wait and see.

Over the past few years, I’ve talked about how a vendor who offers more agile infrastructure could end up being more valuable (to a customer) than a vendor with a product that has a billion features.  Embrane comes to mind for me.  So what does that have to do with skill sets?  Well, it is also possible in some of these newer roles, an employer may be foregoing expert level network skills for someone who gets networking (and will continue to learn it), but who also is deeply intimate with how a DevOps mindset (think agile, automation, etc.) can be applied to networking.

And of course, on the large teams, I’m sure there will be super specialists and experts.  I know if I didn’t say that, some of you would get upset at me!  And as stated above, there is no shortage of traditional network engineering jobs out there.

So what is the question to ponder?

Are companies looking for network engineers that can fit into an existing DevOps culture and subsequently learn to script, program, and use tools such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, etc. or are they looking for DevOps Engineers who can learn a thing or two about networking?

Maybe the real question is – does it have to be one or the other?

What do you think?


Thanks,
Jason

Twitter: @jedelman8

6 Comments
Pete Welcher
3/23/2014 11:21:44 am

Experience and anecdotal evidence from other sources is that real CCIEs and CCNPs are darn thin on the ground, have been for 1.5 years plus. I use "real" as there are also bogus ones, and many with weak skills. While I like the idea of python skills, in the present market it seems superfluous. I see automation as one way to ease the skills shortage, eventually.

Reply
Jason Edelman link
3/23/2014 10:50:29 pm

Overtime, I think we'll focus less on the tools and more on the idea and what it enables. It's easy to point out Python because it's something tangible and gets the brain flowing in a new direction. So will Python be used by admins? Maybe not, but they will likely have some commercial solution that may or may not require customization.

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Pete Welcher
3/23/2014 10:57:41 pm

Good point.

I've been joking for years that some version of the "man card" must say "Real men don't use network management tools". Because I see them not getting used much in so many organizations. And then the organization's brain trust spending time on troubleshooting something the helpdesk could have detected the cause of, and gotten it fixed or passed it up the reporting chain. Going forward, will there be an automation variation on that theme, i.e. "Real men don't use automation". (Substitute "network engineers" for "men" if you feel it is a gender neutral mindset.) I hope not!

We need a mindset of "there isn't enough time and there aren't enough of us so we have to be highly productive".

Reply
Jason Edelman link
3/24/2014 12:50:58 am

I'm sure we can all attest to exactly what you are saying. I think you are saying the new motto will be "real men don't use on box CLI." :)

It's interesting as I think more about this. I provided results searching for tools like python, ansible, and puppet. Imagine doing a search for a job that looked for someone who was an expert in SolarWinds or another existing NMS? In the past, these have been secondary. I believe this will change as I wrote about foregoing networking skills for automation/devops skills (larger shops to start with of course).

Reply
Bob McCouch link
4/16/2014 12:26:24 am

Great post, Jason, and very clever analysis of job postings. I think what you're seeing aligns with my expectation of where the mainstream of the enterprise networking industry will move toward in the next couple years -- that is, there will be no shortage of need for traditional networking skills, but probably a growing emphasis on automation skill-sets and broader integration of the traditional silos into a more blended team.

Surely there will be outliers to each side; some very progressive organization will attempt to abandon traditional networking skill-sets and vendors in favor of heavy in-house tool development, and also there will be many (probably to the smaller end of the scale) that will lag behind with no strong motivator to move away from the well-understood technologies that do most of what they need most of the time. Still, though, skill-sets one can develop as they explore the new wave of automation and management tools (Puppet, Python, etc.) can be helpful even in the less progressive environments by improving consistency, first-pass-yield of changes, etc.

Some of the change toward network automation and virtualization, in particular, can be ground-up as well as top-down. Others, like major cloud migrations or full-blown SDN deployment will clearly require significant buy-in from the entire organization.

Reply
Brju
5/17/2014 07:01:08 pm

Hi
What is a first steps to learn SDN?
Many Thanks

Reply



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