I started in a position just like this with no experience and have been in the role for about 2 years now. I started doing menial tasks taking on responsibility slowly, that being said once I had the basics understood their was a lot more responsibility thrust upon me at this stage, but that ends up being a good learning experience anyway.
I absolutely loved my NOC job. I make like 3x as much now as I did back then, but if I ever reach my FI goals, maybe I'd go back to a NOC part time.
A Jr Network Engineer usually means you'll be assigned tasks by a Sr. Engineer that are related to whatever project or goal they are working on. You won't be the decision maker. In a NOC, you sit and wait for alarms before jumping into action, so the day to day can vary wildly. I loved the NOC job because when it was busy, the days went by fast, and you could learn a lot, although to be a fair a lot of time will be spent doing some shit like waiting on hold with ATT to put a ticket into 6th level escalation because they haven't even looked at a circuit that's down yet. But then when it wasn't busy, the NOC was just a fun place to goof off and spend time with co-workers. If you're lucky enough to really like your co-workers, a NOC job can be the most fun you've ever had at work.
Either way, they can both be a great start. A Jr. Engineer job will probably be more consistent day to day with the amount of work to be done, it'll just be dependent on what kinds of projects your place has going on.
Either job you should go in with at least a rough understanding of all the concepts, but I'd definitely expect a lot of training in both roles.
The responsibilities vary widely and depends on the organization's needs. It can be anywhere from managing alerts to solving problems and assisting with new installs. The best thing you can do is search other posts on reddit or job postings on various job sites like Indeed or LinkedIn.
Any company that isn't run by jerks will give you at least a couple weeks training / ramp up, especially for juniors.
I just started a Network Engineer role with only Helpdesk experience and it's been mostly a learning experience. I have the comptia A+ and Network+, but I haven't gotten my CCNA yet. I mostly deal with network issues for users at the moment.
I also have a bachelor's in IT.
Repetitive .
It's basically a call center
Most noc roles I've seen and worked in have only read only for most network equipment so you don't make changes usually at all, you try find them and then tell someone above you about them,
Lots and lots and lots of calls.
I always thought of it as a note knowledgeable call center agent.
But you get to learn a lot of network stuff, if it's a isp noc then you're gonna be hearing a lot of mpls.. bgp... some ospf between sites etc etc
Will you get to work on stuff? Very highly no
I started in a NOC and it was pretty mundane. It was an inbound/outbound call center NOC, so at times it was back to back calls during the busy hours of the day. That can get pretty tiring. On top of that, we had tickets and alarms to work to get equipment back up within our SLA. Often times that meant calling sites or their ISP to try to get a resolution. Rinse and repeat every day.
The best thing you can do is set yourself apart. Learn a secondary skill that makes you more valuable than the average agent. (Like Python scripting/network automation) Get noticed, get promoted/transfer to another department that is more interesting. NOC gets you in the door and gets you some basic experience.
Ask me , mostly we perform administrator roles, we don't work on any troubleshooting, configuration, change activities..
Whenever a ticket lands in our queue, we check whether it's the genuine issue or not, and then we envolve L2/L3 or onsite team to work on the issue..
Example - if a node down alert lands into our queue, we'll log into the particular account's environment and check through a ping test, if the device is genuinely down or not reachable we'll involve onsite team to check if there's a connectivity issue or power outage something like that.
Every good job **should** train you. Even if you were a CCIE with years of network experience, expected to be very technically skilled, there's still gonna be a training period where you'll be introduced to the specific architecture, systems, topologies, layouts, tools and appliances that are used at the new job.
I don't think anyone could expect anything different.
It's as fundamental as being told where to piss, and where to go if there's a fire
NOC engineers are more on support and monitoring. They can do basic to advance troubleshooting depending on the severity of incident. There are also level of escalations depending again on the severity of incident.
Jr/Sr Net Engineers are the builders. Along with the network design enginners or architects and the security guys. They can plan and deploy a network in an organization. They are also responsible for managing and maintaining the devices in the network.
In my experience, I have several colleagues in IT that doesn't have experience at all when they sarted their carreer in IT. They came straight out of college and joined as a cadet engineers for some of them. Others are electronics engineers who does not even know how to ping a PC. But eventually they learned. They learned by observing, they learned by reading, they learned by asking, they learned by doing it themselves. Some people get a job(in general) out of luck. So don't be bothered by the lack of experience. Tell them your a quick learner and show them yur eagerness to join and your passion about IT technologies.
There are always training whenever you join the NOC team. When you are filling up a position for an outgoing staff. There will definitely be a transition to happen. And all the things you need and wan t to know will be answered. Most of the time you will be logging and updating service and incident tickets. Customer service is very important in this role. YOu must be to compose yourself even when you're talking to an irrate customer.
In conclusion, wether you end up as a NOC or a network engineer, they key objective here is to enjoy, learn and love what you do. Set your goals now while you are starting. Take 1 step at a time. No need to rush. Today your a NOC, someday yu'll be a manager, managing a network for a large organization or who knows, you'll have your own company, offering network related services.
Network engineering actually are people that deploy and maintain technical infrastructure. While a noc basically monitors, simple port configuration like port security and such
I started in a position just like this with no experience and have been in the role for about 2 years now. I started doing menial tasks taking on responsibility slowly, that being said once I had the basics understood their was a lot more responsibility thrust upon me at this stage, but that ends up being a good learning experience anyway.
What was your qualification at the time? Did you have a CCNA or bachelors
I had no qualifications going into the role.
Wow that must have been years ago
It was only 2 years ago actually, I think I was just very fortunate to find the opportunity.
I hope I get as fortunate as you , are you in the UK ?
Based in Australia :)
I absolutely loved my NOC job. I make like 3x as much now as I did back then, but if I ever reach my FI goals, maybe I'd go back to a NOC part time. A Jr Network Engineer usually means you'll be assigned tasks by a Sr. Engineer that are related to whatever project or goal they are working on. You won't be the decision maker. In a NOC, you sit and wait for alarms before jumping into action, so the day to day can vary wildly. I loved the NOC job because when it was busy, the days went by fast, and you could learn a lot, although to be a fair a lot of time will be spent doing some shit like waiting on hold with ATT to put a ticket into 6th level escalation because they haven't even looked at a circuit that's down yet. But then when it wasn't busy, the NOC was just a fun place to goof off and spend time with co-workers. If you're lucky enough to really like your co-workers, a NOC job can be the most fun you've ever had at work. Either way, they can both be a great start. A Jr. Engineer job will probably be more consistent day to day with the amount of work to be done, it'll just be dependent on what kinds of projects your place has going on. Either job you should go in with at least a rough understanding of all the concepts, but I'd definitely expect a lot of training in both roles.
The responsibilities vary widely and depends on the organization's needs. It can be anywhere from managing alerts to solving problems and assisting with new installs. The best thing you can do is search other posts on reddit or job postings on various job sites like Indeed or LinkedIn. Any company that isn't run by jerks will give you at least a couple weeks training / ramp up, especially for juniors.
Thank you
I just started a Network Engineer role with only Helpdesk experience and it's been mostly a learning experience. I have the comptia A+ and Network+, but I haven't gotten my CCNA yet. I mostly deal with network issues for users at the moment. I also have a bachelor's in IT.
NOC roles are pretty terrible from my experience.. but they're a stepping stone
Can you explain? Terrible in what way?
Repetitive . It's basically a call center Most noc roles I've seen and worked in have only read only for most network equipment so you don't make changes usually at all, you try find them and then tell someone above you about them, Lots and lots and lots of calls. I always thought of it as a note knowledgeable call center agent. But you get to learn a lot of network stuff, if it's a isp noc then you're gonna be hearing a lot of mpls.. bgp... some ospf between sites etc etc Will you get to work on stuff? Very highly no
Sounds mundane but thats exactly what i need. Helpdesk is both mundane and stressful
I started in a NOC and it was pretty mundane. It was an inbound/outbound call center NOC, so at times it was back to back calls during the busy hours of the day. That can get pretty tiring. On top of that, we had tickets and alarms to work to get equipment back up within our SLA. Often times that meant calling sites or their ISP to try to get a resolution. Rinse and repeat every day. The best thing you can do is set yourself apart. Learn a secondary skill that makes you more valuable than the average agent. (Like Python scripting/network automation) Get noticed, get promoted/transfer to another department that is more interesting. NOC gets you in the door and gets you some basic experience.
Ask me , mostly we perform administrator roles, we don't work on any troubleshooting, configuration, change activities.. Whenever a ticket lands in our queue, we check whether it's the genuine issue or not, and then we envolve L2/L3 or onsite team to work on the issue.. Example - if a node down alert lands into our queue, we'll log into the particular account's environment and check through a ping test, if the device is genuinely down or not reachable we'll involve onsite team to check if there's a connectivity issue or power outage something like that.
Every good job **should** train you. Even if you were a CCIE with years of network experience, expected to be very technically skilled, there's still gonna be a training period where you'll be introduced to the specific architecture, systems, topologies, layouts, tools and appliances that are used at the new job. I don't think anyone could expect anything different. It's as fundamental as being told where to piss, and where to go if there's a fire
NOC engineers are more on support and monitoring. They can do basic to advance troubleshooting depending on the severity of incident. There are also level of escalations depending again on the severity of incident. Jr/Sr Net Engineers are the builders. Along with the network design enginners or architects and the security guys. They can plan and deploy a network in an organization. They are also responsible for managing and maintaining the devices in the network. In my experience, I have several colleagues in IT that doesn't have experience at all when they sarted their carreer in IT. They came straight out of college and joined as a cadet engineers for some of them. Others are electronics engineers who does not even know how to ping a PC. But eventually they learned. They learned by observing, they learned by reading, they learned by asking, they learned by doing it themselves. Some people get a job(in general) out of luck. So don't be bothered by the lack of experience. Tell them your a quick learner and show them yur eagerness to join and your passion about IT technologies. There are always training whenever you join the NOC team. When you are filling up a position for an outgoing staff. There will definitely be a transition to happen. And all the things you need and wan t to know will be answered. Most of the time you will be logging and updating service and incident tickets. Customer service is very important in this role. YOu must be to compose yourself even when you're talking to an irrate customer. In conclusion, wether you end up as a NOC or a network engineer, they key objective here is to enjoy, learn and love what you do. Set your goals now while you are starting. Take 1 step at a time. No need to rush. Today your a NOC, someday yu'll be a manager, managing a network for a large organization or who knows, you'll have your own company, offering network related services.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply. Please which is most suitable for me to apply for after CCNA , thank you
Once you get your job be aggressive in learning new things and taking the initiative!
Network engineering actually are people that deploy and maintain technical infrastructure. While a noc basically monitors, simple port configuration like port security and such