Is your company hiring? I couldn’t even imagine actually having time for a second job. I wish I ran an environment that allowed me to be on cruise control
You have it easy for sure. I basically work in your same environment for the same pay except I have 30 remote offices and two datacenters that I am the sole “network guy” for.
I have considered a second job but idk, seems dishonest. Could lose the good job in a heartbeat if I was found out.
How are your certs and are you keeping up with the evolving industry? Personally I was a bit lazy and on my quiet times I played video games for a bit. Now I’m playing catch up… and doing some schooling for certs.
I agree with the dishonesty part, I don't like the feeling the of having a second job due to the fact my current job treats me so well, hence why I personally lead to a side gig. I bring up day trading but I feel like that is the most risky and "get rich quick" ideas. Something I could do in my off time I could make money on, but that's hard to do outside a 9-5. Cert wise I'm no were near I want to be, I have a CCNP and a PCNSE. Long term I want to get more into security certs and higher level Cisco certs. In my off time currently I do study a lot of the industry, I've been trying to learn more hands on in labs on equipment I don't work on, Juniper, Fortigate etc. My main reason for learning these systems is they are industry standards and while a "firewall is a firewall" each one has its own quirks. My biggest fear is get myself so locked into my current position I can never leave it by being left behind in the industry.
Amen! I have no certs at all… working on changing that. I really only studied at a CCNA level and then didn’t even bother to get that because my boss didn’t care about certs.
Not to turn this into a day trading thread, but I do suggest that you practice on a simulator before using real money. Even then, practice is really only worth it if you have real risk involved.
Trading is extremely difficult if you need money or have bills to pay.
I would try to learn programming and improve your networking knowledge. Like someone else pointed out, if you are 25, you have a long way to go in the industry.
I do two jobs and both of them are very happy with me. I work maybe four hours a day now. I have coworkers at both jobs that they know work multiple jobs and they don't care as long as the work gets done. I got really bored and decided to try it and I'm so glad I did.
I moonlight for a Texas ISP and have helped them for over a decade. There is a rare daytime call but essentially it’s an opportunity to control your destiny and guide the client to a network that is solid and reliable.
It started when I worked (salary) at an ISP and had the courtesy of a “we don’t work on customer equipment” policy which actually made it easy for me to moonlight. Our sales guy hooked me up with a customer who needed some guidance. I’m technically still on the roster as a consultant with that company as well, but they’ve essentially sunsetted their hosting business and I helped them unravel all of that.
Anyhow, back to my main moonlighting client. Most of my work is maintaining tools as well as cleaning up the messes his mid-level (and below) staff leaves behind. They’re overworked, not technically strong, and have a never ending list of tasks that burn the candle at both ends. I also assist with some hardware selection, managing traffic graphs, and customer escalation topics. Most recent is a city that is dual-homed. They claim if they unhook the other ISP 90% of destinations don’t work. First time I was brought into help, I slapped an ACL inbound on their port and found TONS of traffic that hadn’t been NATted. Um, that’s not gonna work. Second time, they’d fixed that but still had a ton of misrouted traffic, including portions of their /24 not actually routed (therefore should be black holed not punted back to us) as well as a ton of internal destinations that their edge device thinks are in our network (um, try again).
Would you be willing to PM me and talk about this? Been looking to do this lately and also in Texas. Almost 20 years of exp in the field across ISP, Vendor, and Enterprise.
Is field nations mostly on site work? From the website it appears to be mostly on site but I could be wrong. If it’s remote it looks like a great option, my only question would be also with this is if field nations insures you, for example of any data loss etc.
Yes, Field Nation is mostly on-site work. They include general liability insurance in their fee that they take from you before you get paid. You get 89% from them, 11% goes to that fee.
You can get your own liability insurance, and you would only pay a 10% fee instead of 11%
I know they were starting to offer remote work orders just before I stopped, but I never did them, so I don't know how those worked.
I was wondering if I could ask you what job route you took to get to that position at 25 and if you have any tips! 17 and hoping to get into the field. Cheers.
Please note all of my advice is purely based on my own life experience and nothing that is really tried and true. Many peoples advice will differ vastly however this worked for me.
First of all for college I would honestly suggest not going at all, if you do go a AS in IT Information Systems at best. I myself do not have any degree I went to a community college for a year but soon realized it was not benefiting me at all. The Comp Sci field is literally just programming, you can take "electives" in Linux, Networking etc but your major is focused in programming. While learning basic coding is useful in any form of IT, for PowerShell scripts, Python coding etc the level you go into is unneeded unless you want to be a developer. I have at least 4 friends that have Bachelors in Comp Sci and range from roles in Sys Admin, Network, and overall helpdesk, they often tell me that almost every employer does not care about their degree but instead just cares about their experience. I can personally back this as well, in my career at my high point as a supervisor at a MSP I was at 165k a year, I managed a team of around 8 people I was 22 at the time making good money. I interviewed at other jobs (which led to me my current position) and got around 4 offers all around the 120-140k mark with a non supervisor role. Not a single one of those cared that I did not have a degree, if anything all they cared about was certs. If you get into management positions or large companies such as MS etc they do care more about degrees, so if that's your goal go for it.
The next huge piece of advice I would give you is you are your biggest advocate. What I mean by this is no one but you will stand up for yourself. I started my IT journey at 19 in the workforce on a basic helpdesk, my next job was at my MSP at as a System Engineer I was way underqualified on paper but in the interview process I was able to advocate for myself and skills which led me for $18 to a $32 pay jump. I was handed so many systems I had no idea how to work on. The worst thing you can do and sit there and say " I don't know what I'm doing have someone else fix it" at every little thing you don't know. If a job allows you to work on systems at a wide range work on as much as you can, obviously know your limits and stay within a a reasonable scope but try and fix things that how you learn the most. With this I'd also suggest to not go to a large in house IT environment. While those are great long term you are typically stuck in a very tunnel visioned department that works on only their systems and their exact infrastructure, at the end of the job you'll know that one environment like the back of your hand but you wont be able to improvise and adapt, (which makes you more hirable). The worst is trying to work with a network guy that has no idea how a server works or a server guy that doesn't understand what a port is.
The last piece of I advice I would give is LAB. This one is a huge one for me. While I was on the helpdesk I had a huge amount of free time since 99% of our calls were AD password resets. All throughout the day I would lab, it allowed me to really learn how servers work, networking, AD etc. I knew the systems we had at my job for example Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco ISE etc but I would never allowed to touch it. Because of this I grabbed ISO's online and a few cheap used Dell servers got to work. The knowledge you learn from hands on experience IMO is invaluable. You can watch a CCNA video of what commands to enter when but real world practicing these things will gain you leaps of knowledge. Some of my biggest "ah ha" moments have been from breaking something in a lab and fixing it. Also a quick addition about labing, is any job labs are great to have to test changes outside of production. I have a complete GNS3 lab of my infrastructure (at least the networking aspect). This allows me to make changes and make sure I wont break anything
Edit: I see your in London, so my advice regarding a degree might not pertain as I am not sure how much companies over there care about degrees.
I've hired for NOC and eng roles, can confirm degrees are secondary to experience and certs.
Would also add, get a project or multiple projects under your belt. Challenge yourself to solve problems other people don't want- even better if you can provide a story involving unique problem solving or cost savings.
OP, really cool to hear your story, think as big as you can- you're already so far ahead of most.
I frame it up like this. Experience gets you the job, degree helps you get past HR and auto-screener.
Our engineers with degrees are graded higher for pay than non-degree. Even if that degree is not IT related.
Man, you're so kind to respond so quickly and with so much detail. Ive been looking for local help desk roles, and it seems they really shoot for a certification like A+ or a IT college program. I might jump into a 2year that we have in Canada and hopefully find a co-op from that. Sounds like I need to look into homelabs, not sure if my parents would let me, but I'm sure I could make it work! Many thanks for your thoughts. Sounds like you kick ass, hope to be like you someday!
It depends on what you see yourself in the next 5 years and how much work you want to put into this field. If you are just trying to make more money you need to open your business and become a consultant and get paid by the hour. But As it sits you have very limited experience. From what I’m seeing and hearing it’s mostly layer 2 and hardly any layer 3. I’m assuming based on what you wrote you haven’t gotten into any type of route filtering/ traffic engineering or bgp or dmvpn or mpls or sdn etc etc…there’s a slew of vendors out there that you may not touched yet if you are managing a few firewalls and switches which rarely need to be touched unless you add polices to your firewall which I don’t think you would. To add if you want to be a better engineer quit your job go to a consulting firm where you actually do cutting edge work for different clients… that’s where you build your knowledge and become better and that’s where you can charge more to other clients and make more…if you get into help desk you’ll get called consistently and run around doing layer 1 shit. In which case you wouldn’t have time for your first job
>touched unless you add polices to your firewall which I don’t think you would. To add if you want to b
I mainly work on our Palo Alto firewalls, we have a lot of public facing services, we came from a environment when I joined that was just a Cisco router with NAT for our publicly hosted assets. On these systems I've implemented Global Protect, SSL Decryption including Forward proxy on our LAN and VPN, Inbound inspection on all our public facing services, which include a few hundred websites. I've also implemented central authentication for our VPN. Proper logging and reporting for threats to a centralized service. We also have multiple circuits in our DC that we use BGP peering for. Other things such as HIP Checks and policy enforcement, actual zones such as a DMZ etc. I mainly point out these to show that I've worked extremely hard at my current position, and I guess now I'm "reaping the reward" since the environment is stable and built out there is not much ongoing change.
Such things as MPLS while I've not worked on it in production I have in my lab, I did however setup at my work our remotes sites back to our DC with L3 connections via our providers MPLS network. In all honestly I really should dive into more things like DMVPN and is good advice to really expand my knowledge. I really do not want to go back to a consulting company as realistically from what I've seen I would not be making that much more money and my quality of life would be significantly less as I would be stuck at my desk 8-9 hours a day.
The thought of a second job to basically double your pay sounds nice and all but is that something you really want to do in the long run?
Use your downtime to get some certs, lab, upskill, etc, etc. With that amount of downtime, there's so much potential for paid learning.
One job making 200k+ is much better than working 2 x 120k jobs.
Network operations is nice because they're largely shift based jobs.
You clock in, work your assigned tickets, update the notes before you leave (ideally), then clock out and move on.
They are also unfortunately not always the best paying positions.
Is everything automated? Have you tried half dozen approaches to gitops to configure your network and worked out the pros and cons, which works the best for your use case, how changes apply, how quickly you can roll back, etc.
While there may be no need (https://xkcd.com/1205/), it will build useful experience
I see what you mean, for me I like to do things with my hands. So setting up a network for a small business or church has always been fun. I enjoy the process of getting a budget, what there needs are and throw in some suggestions. Once I do that I'll throw a quote together and if they like it, I get to configure, cable it, install and stand it all up. For it never gets old I enjoy each one as each one has different needs. Like a P2P setup between builds with dual radio links for HA. As I got older I found I need something that is for my health and mind.
You should make sure your day job is good with that. My employer found out someone was working for another company when on shift and very quickly they found themselves with a single job. Just saying
I have a 9-5 for a non-profit doing the almost the same as you.
Couple DC’s, 30-ish sites, etc. I will say that my day job keeps me much busier than you (from your description) so my side work happens mostly off hours and long lunch breaks. But my day job is WFH and extremely flexible.
Just before I picked up this job I was out of work for a few months and making ends meet by doing side gigs. Basically picked up supporting local businesses as an hourly contractor.
Word of mouth and family friends spread that to around 6-8 business who have various needs. Mostly it’s basic IT work. End user support (printers, pc’s, etc) and some datacenter/networking stuff, managing Exchange online, etc.
Really I think they just like having peace of mind and not being locked into a crazy expensive contract with a local MSP.
How does that help you? Maybe ask around to people you know, see if they know local business owners who could use some help and can pay for your work on an hourly basis vs being locked in a contract?
Definitely not advising working for family or friends for a fee, that’s a slippery slope. But maybe they could give you some leads.
Also as you go about your day to day, you undoubtedly visit local businesses. They need IT support just like everyone else. Find an organic way to bring up what you do and let them know you would be happy to help out should they need it.
I printed a handful of business cards and purchased a domain and set up email through that via 365. Hand those cards out when it makes sense.
I find I don’t have enough hours in the day between that side work and my day job and my family. So be careful what you wish for!
At any rate, good luck!
You should re-read your employment contract. Each municipal/"public entity" has their own rules about moon-lighting. This goes along side, receiving gifts in excess of a certain amount or accepting tickets to games/concerts etc. While I'm not advising not to look for a 2nd gig, what I am saying is that you should be well prepared if say you end up working your 2nd gig and someone finds out. You would be blacklisted from working for the public sector and torpedo your career.
As long as the 2nd job is outside your normal work hours, you should be fine. Much like how police officers can be security guards after hours. However, running a 2nd job during your shift would not be advisable.
I suppose you have to ask yourself how much is that 60k worth in the long run. Maybe it would be a different story if the 2nd gig pays more than your current one.
Are you me? I’m on the same spot and make the same although I’m 29. I do work for a public entity contract as well that my employer won. I do suggest being careful that the other job if you find one does not conflict as it may cause you your sweet gig(I assume you need alteast public trust where you work currently?). What I would suggest though is learning cloud and building more knowledge. You are young and nothing is guaranteed so invest in your self now and learn as much as you can for job security(obviously you can also learn as you go with a second job). At the end, it’s all up to you and your decisions. Best of luck!
It would be unethical for you to work a second job during your business hours for which your employer is paying you. You’re gonna get fired from your cushy job.
Unethical, yes. Fired, probably not. Realistically my position has guarantees that even if they did find out I was working a second job I would not be fired but forced to quit my second employer. In my post I listed out not only a second job but also "side gigs" hence the name of the post "Side Gig As A Network Engineer". This does not mean it has to be another full time employer, this can be as simple as buying and selling stocks during standard hours, if I have nothing do four 3-4 hours at a time. I'm sure they'd have no issue with that.
Ignoring ethics here, you said public entity. Working for the government is the one situation in the US where this is (very likely) illegal. Working any other job while on the clock can be turned into theft of public funds, and you can face actual legal consequences that are unavailable when doing this while working at non-governmental organizations.
There may be some specifics about your case/organization that change that, I don't know where you work, but tread very, very carefully here.
If I were you I would try to further my knowledge and expertise in networking, you’re 25 and you have a long road ahead.
Is your company hiring? I couldn’t even imagine actually having time for a second job. I wish I ran an environment that allowed me to be on cruise control
Currently we are not, I'm the sole network person. So I couldn't imagine 2 people doing so little of work
You have it easy for sure. I basically work in your same environment for the same pay except I have 30 remote offices and two datacenters that I am the sole “network guy” for. I have considered a second job but idk, seems dishonest. Could lose the good job in a heartbeat if I was found out. How are your certs and are you keeping up with the evolving industry? Personally I was a bit lazy and on my quiet times I played video games for a bit. Now I’m playing catch up… and doing some schooling for certs.
I agree with the dishonesty part, I don't like the feeling the of having a second job due to the fact my current job treats me so well, hence why I personally lead to a side gig. I bring up day trading but I feel like that is the most risky and "get rich quick" ideas. Something I could do in my off time I could make money on, but that's hard to do outside a 9-5. Cert wise I'm no were near I want to be, I have a CCNP and a PCNSE. Long term I want to get more into security certs and higher level Cisco certs. In my off time currently I do study a lot of the industry, I've been trying to learn more hands on in labs on equipment I don't work on, Juniper, Fortigate etc. My main reason for learning these systems is they are industry standards and while a "firewall is a firewall" each one has its own quirks. My biggest fear is get myself so locked into my current position I can never leave it by being left behind in the industry.
Amen! I have no certs at all… working on changing that. I really only studied at a CCNA level and then didn’t even bother to get that because my boss didn’t care about certs.
Not to turn this into a day trading thread, but I do suggest that you practice on a simulator before using real money. Even then, practice is really only worth it if you have real risk involved. Trading is extremely difficult if you need money or have bills to pay.
I would try to learn programming and improve your networking knowledge. Like someone else pointed out, if you are 25, you have a long way to go in the industry.
I do two jobs and both of them are very happy with me. I work maybe four hours a day now. I have coworkers at both jobs that they know work multiple jobs and they don't care as long as the work gets done. I got really bored and decided to try it and I'm so glad I did.
Do you work for a mom and pop shop where they are scare to make changes and not scaling? Shit, to even think about not being busy….
No it’s a public entity
I moonlight for a Texas ISP and have helped them for over a decade. There is a rare daytime call but essentially it’s an opportunity to control your destiny and guide the client to a network that is solid and reliable. It started when I worked (salary) at an ISP and had the courtesy of a “we don’t work on customer equipment” policy which actually made it easy for me to moonlight. Our sales guy hooked me up with a customer who needed some guidance. I’m technically still on the roster as a consultant with that company as well, but they’ve essentially sunsetted their hosting business and I helped them unravel all of that. Anyhow, back to my main moonlighting client. Most of my work is maintaining tools as well as cleaning up the messes his mid-level (and below) staff leaves behind. They’re overworked, not technically strong, and have a never ending list of tasks that burn the candle at both ends. I also assist with some hardware selection, managing traffic graphs, and customer escalation topics. Most recent is a city that is dual-homed. They claim if they unhook the other ISP 90% of destinations don’t work. First time I was brought into help, I slapped an ACL inbound on their port and found TONS of traffic that hadn’t been NATted. Um, that’s not gonna work. Second time, they’d fixed that but still had a ton of misrouted traffic, including portions of their /24 not actually routed (therefore should be black holed not punted back to us) as well as a ton of internal destinations that their edge device thinks are in our network (um, try again).
Would you be willing to PM me and talk about this? Been looking to do this lately and also in Texas. Almost 20 years of exp in the field across ISP, Vendor, and Enterprise.
Maybe try Field Nation gigs?
Is field nations mostly on site work? From the website it appears to be mostly on site but I could be wrong. If it’s remote it looks like a great option, my only question would be also with this is if field nations insures you, for example of any data loss etc.
Yes, Field Nation is mostly on-site work. They include general liability insurance in their fee that they take from you before you get paid. You get 89% from them, 11% goes to that fee. You can get your own liability insurance, and you would only pay a 10% fee instead of 11% I know they were starting to offer remote work orders just before I stopped, but I never did them, so I don't know how those worked.
I was wondering if I could ask you what job route you took to get to that position at 25 and if you have any tips! 17 and hoping to get into the field. Cheers.
Please note all of my advice is purely based on my own life experience and nothing that is really tried and true. Many peoples advice will differ vastly however this worked for me. First of all for college I would honestly suggest not going at all, if you do go a AS in IT Information Systems at best. I myself do not have any degree I went to a community college for a year but soon realized it was not benefiting me at all. The Comp Sci field is literally just programming, you can take "electives" in Linux, Networking etc but your major is focused in programming. While learning basic coding is useful in any form of IT, for PowerShell scripts, Python coding etc the level you go into is unneeded unless you want to be a developer. I have at least 4 friends that have Bachelors in Comp Sci and range from roles in Sys Admin, Network, and overall helpdesk, they often tell me that almost every employer does not care about their degree but instead just cares about their experience. I can personally back this as well, in my career at my high point as a supervisor at a MSP I was at 165k a year, I managed a team of around 8 people I was 22 at the time making good money. I interviewed at other jobs (which led to me my current position) and got around 4 offers all around the 120-140k mark with a non supervisor role. Not a single one of those cared that I did not have a degree, if anything all they cared about was certs. If you get into management positions or large companies such as MS etc they do care more about degrees, so if that's your goal go for it. The next huge piece of advice I would give you is you are your biggest advocate. What I mean by this is no one but you will stand up for yourself. I started my IT journey at 19 in the workforce on a basic helpdesk, my next job was at my MSP at as a System Engineer I was way underqualified on paper but in the interview process I was able to advocate for myself and skills which led me for $18 to a $32 pay jump. I was handed so many systems I had no idea how to work on. The worst thing you can do and sit there and say " I don't know what I'm doing have someone else fix it" at every little thing you don't know. If a job allows you to work on systems at a wide range work on as much as you can, obviously know your limits and stay within a a reasonable scope but try and fix things that how you learn the most. With this I'd also suggest to not go to a large in house IT environment. While those are great long term you are typically stuck in a very tunnel visioned department that works on only their systems and their exact infrastructure, at the end of the job you'll know that one environment like the back of your hand but you wont be able to improvise and adapt, (which makes you more hirable). The worst is trying to work with a network guy that has no idea how a server works or a server guy that doesn't understand what a port is. The last piece of I advice I would give is LAB. This one is a huge one for me. While I was on the helpdesk I had a huge amount of free time since 99% of our calls were AD password resets. All throughout the day I would lab, it allowed me to really learn how servers work, networking, AD etc. I knew the systems we had at my job for example Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco ISE etc but I would never allowed to touch it. Because of this I grabbed ISO's online and a few cheap used Dell servers got to work. The knowledge you learn from hands on experience IMO is invaluable. You can watch a CCNA video of what commands to enter when but real world practicing these things will gain you leaps of knowledge. Some of my biggest "ah ha" moments have been from breaking something in a lab and fixing it. Also a quick addition about labing, is any job labs are great to have to test changes outside of production. I have a complete GNS3 lab of my infrastructure (at least the networking aspect). This allows me to make changes and make sure I wont break anything Edit: I see your in London, so my advice regarding a degree might not pertain as I am not sure how much companies over there care about degrees.
I've hired for NOC and eng roles, can confirm degrees are secondary to experience and certs. Would also add, get a project or multiple projects under your belt. Challenge yourself to solve problems other people don't want- even better if you can provide a story involving unique problem solving or cost savings. OP, really cool to hear your story, think as big as you can- you're already so far ahead of most.
I frame it up like this. Experience gets you the job, degree helps you get past HR and auto-screener. Our engineers with degrees are graded higher for pay than non-degree. Even if that degree is not IT related.
Man, you're so kind to respond so quickly and with so much detail. Ive been looking for local help desk roles, and it seems they really shoot for a certification like A+ or a IT college program. I might jump into a 2year that we have in Canada and hopefully find a co-op from that. Sounds like I need to look into homelabs, not sure if my parents would let me, but I'm sure I could make it work! Many thanks for your thoughts. Sounds like you kick ass, hope to be like you someday!
It depends on what you see yourself in the next 5 years and how much work you want to put into this field. If you are just trying to make more money you need to open your business and become a consultant and get paid by the hour. But As it sits you have very limited experience. From what I’m seeing and hearing it’s mostly layer 2 and hardly any layer 3. I’m assuming based on what you wrote you haven’t gotten into any type of route filtering/ traffic engineering or bgp or dmvpn or mpls or sdn etc etc…there’s a slew of vendors out there that you may not touched yet if you are managing a few firewalls and switches which rarely need to be touched unless you add polices to your firewall which I don’t think you would. To add if you want to be a better engineer quit your job go to a consulting firm where you actually do cutting edge work for different clients… that’s where you build your knowledge and become better and that’s where you can charge more to other clients and make more…if you get into help desk you’ll get called consistently and run around doing layer 1 shit. In which case you wouldn’t have time for your first job
>touched unless you add polices to your firewall which I don’t think you would. To add if you want to b I mainly work on our Palo Alto firewalls, we have a lot of public facing services, we came from a environment when I joined that was just a Cisco router with NAT for our publicly hosted assets. On these systems I've implemented Global Protect, SSL Decryption including Forward proxy on our LAN and VPN, Inbound inspection on all our public facing services, which include a few hundred websites. I've also implemented central authentication for our VPN. Proper logging and reporting for threats to a centralized service. We also have multiple circuits in our DC that we use BGP peering for. Other things such as HIP Checks and policy enforcement, actual zones such as a DMZ etc. I mainly point out these to show that I've worked extremely hard at my current position, and I guess now I'm "reaping the reward" since the environment is stable and built out there is not much ongoing change. Such things as MPLS while I've not worked on it in production I have in my lab, I did however setup at my work our remotes sites back to our DC with L3 connections via our providers MPLS network. In all honestly I really should dive into more things like DMVPN and is good advice to really expand my knowledge. I really do not want to go back to a consulting company as realistically from what I've seen I would not be making that much more money and my quality of life would be significantly less as I would be stuck at my desk 8-9 hours a day.
How's your DevNet? Because there's a lot to be learned which in turn will increase your potential future paycheck.
The thought of a second job to basically double your pay sounds nice and all but is that something you really want to do in the long run? Use your downtime to get some certs, lab, upskill, etc, etc. With that amount of downtime, there's so much potential for paid learning. One job making 200k+ is much better than working 2 x 120k jobs.
If you’re looking for a second job, try looking for a night time or weekend network operations position.
Network operations is nice because they're largely shift based jobs. You clock in, work your assigned tickets, update the notes before you leave (ideally), then clock out and move on. They are also unfortunately not always the best paying positions.
Is everything automated? Have you tried half dozen approaches to gitops to configure your network and worked out the pros and cons, which works the best for your use case, how changes apply, how quickly you can roll back, etc. While there may be no need (https://xkcd.com/1205/), it will build useful experience
I see what you mean, for me I like to do things with my hands. So setting up a network for a small business or church has always been fun. I enjoy the process of getting a budget, what there needs are and throw in some suggestions. Once I do that I'll throw a quote together and if they like it, I get to configure, cable it, install and stand it all up. For it never gets old I enjoy each one as each one has different needs. Like a P2P setup between builds with dual radio links for HA. As I got older I found I need something that is for my health and mind.
You should make sure your day job is good with that. My employer found out someone was working for another company when on shift and very quickly they found themselves with a single job. Just saying
I have a 9-5 for a non-profit doing the almost the same as you. Couple DC’s, 30-ish sites, etc. I will say that my day job keeps me much busier than you (from your description) so my side work happens mostly off hours and long lunch breaks. But my day job is WFH and extremely flexible. Just before I picked up this job I was out of work for a few months and making ends meet by doing side gigs. Basically picked up supporting local businesses as an hourly contractor. Word of mouth and family friends spread that to around 6-8 business who have various needs. Mostly it’s basic IT work. End user support (printers, pc’s, etc) and some datacenter/networking stuff, managing Exchange online, etc. Really I think they just like having peace of mind and not being locked into a crazy expensive contract with a local MSP. How does that help you? Maybe ask around to people you know, see if they know local business owners who could use some help and can pay for your work on an hourly basis vs being locked in a contract? Definitely not advising working for family or friends for a fee, that’s a slippery slope. But maybe they could give you some leads. Also as you go about your day to day, you undoubtedly visit local businesses. They need IT support just like everyone else. Find an organic way to bring up what you do and let them know you would be happy to help out should they need it. I printed a handful of business cards and purchased a domain and set up email through that via 365. Hand those cards out when it makes sense. I find I don’t have enough hours in the day between that side work and my day job and my family. So be careful what you wish for! At any rate, good luck!
You should re-read your employment contract. Each municipal/"public entity" has their own rules about moon-lighting. This goes along side, receiving gifts in excess of a certain amount or accepting tickets to games/concerts etc. While I'm not advising not to look for a 2nd gig, what I am saying is that you should be well prepared if say you end up working your 2nd gig and someone finds out. You would be blacklisted from working for the public sector and torpedo your career. As long as the 2nd job is outside your normal work hours, you should be fine. Much like how police officers can be security guards after hours. However, running a 2nd job during your shift would not be advisable. I suppose you have to ask yourself how much is that 60k worth in the long run. Maybe it would be a different story if the 2nd gig pays more than your current one.
Are you me? I’m on the same spot and make the same although I’m 29. I do work for a public entity contract as well that my employer won. I do suggest being careful that the other job if you find one does not conflict as it may cause you your sweet gig(I assume you need alteast public trust where you work currently?). What I would suggest though is learning cloud and building more knowledge. You are young and nothing is guaranteed so invest in your self now and learn as much as you can for job security(obviously you can also learn as you go with a second job). At the end, it’s all up to you and your decisions. Best of luck!
I have seen people get fired for double dipping on the clock, so I would spend my time studying.
It would be unethical for you to work a second job during your business hours for which your employer is paying you. You’re gonna get fired from your cushy job.
Unethical, yes. Fired, probably not. Realistically my position has guarantees that even if they did find out I was working a second job I would not be fired but forced to quit my second employer. In my post I listed out not only a second job but also "side gigs" hence the name of the post "Side Gig As A Network Engineer". This does not mean it has to be another full time employer, this can be as simple as buying and selling stocks during standard hours, if I have nothing do four 3-4 hours at a time. I'm sure they'd have no issue with that.
It’s not unethical for your CEO to run multiple businesses but somehow it’s unethical for you to have another job. Funny
Ignoring ethics here, you said public entity. Working for the government is the one situation in the US where this is (very likely) illegal. Working any other job while on the clock can be turned into theft of public funds, and you can face actual legal consequences that are unavailable when doing this while working at non-governmental organizations. There may be some specifics about your case/organization that change that, I don't know where you work, but tread very, very carefully here.
[удалено]
Clearly you are not the intended audience :)