Episode 34: Landing That Big Tech Job (FAANG)
This week we sat down with Pat's friend and mentor, Alex Battaglia. Alex is currently the network engineering manager at Disney Streaming. We chat about landing that job with a big tech company, how to tweak your resume for the job you're applying for, and also leveraging recruiters and LinkedIn to land the job. Tune in!
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Pat: 0:30
Hey everybody. Welcome back to this. Week's edition of breaking down the bites as usual every week we are here chatting and bringing you some knowledge or hopefully bringing you some knowledge or at least some entertainment for everybody out there. So, once again, I'm your host, pat. You can find me on Twitter @layer8packet. That's the number eight. You can find Kyle who is with me as always. He's on Twitter too. @Danath256. You can find the show on Twitter @breakinbytespod. We're pretty active on Twitter. So come say hello. We're always doing something on Twitter. Whether that's promoting other people or just some cool tech bits, whatever, and our DMS are always open. So come say hello. And once again, we are here for another. Week another guest, another interview. So Kyle, what's up, man? How you doing?
Kyle: 1:14
Ah, melting again, you know, we're back in the freaking nineties and it's gross. Gross Pennsylvania, nineties.
Pat: 1:22
I agree. Yeah, this weather is no good. It's no way it's not compared this weather is not even close to compared to where our guest is right now where, what his weather is like. Let me tell you we have this week a good friend of mine. Mentor since a billion years ago, the guy that really kicked me into gear as far as getting my networking career off the ground, if you will. And side bit, he was a groomsman in my wedding. So total bonus, Mr. Alex Battaglia. Hey Alex, how you doing man? A long time.
Alex: 1:52
Yeah, certainly has a pandemic and moving across the country. It makes it tough, but glad we had a chance to catch
Pat: 2:00
Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to this one. You and I have been talking about coming on here for a while a few months now, at least. So I'm glad our schedule's kind of aligned and here we are. We're gonna talk some cool nerdy stuff today. I like it.
Alex: 2:13
Yep. You've gotten big enough to
Pat: 2:15
that's right. That's right.
Alex: 2:16
So I'm glad
Pat: 2:16
I Venmo him right before the show, so that's all good.
Alex: 2:21
I know, I didn't even turn on my mic until I saw it.
Pat: 2:24
I love it. I love it now. So, Alex, I guess we'll kind of give people the rundown of sort of how you, and I know each other and some of your, you know, some of the background, some of our background, and then we have some cool topics to talk about as far as where your current place of employer and landing a big, large job in, in that big tech space. Right? So, I guess, why don't you tell people where you work at now and that'll kind of tie that thought together?
Alex: 2:50
Yeah, I work for the mouse right now. So Disney streaming specifically. So for that don't know, that's Hulu, plus, and then Disney plus. So. My job right now is managing the team network engineers, responsible for the infrastructure for that, make that go. So that's been pretty, pretty impressive thing to put on their resume. Certainly get to brag about it to my kids' friends. That's been And. Yeah, right now, I'm kind of over the honeymoon period. A little bit, been there about three months, but still find it amazing that at any given point I can just shut down Disney. Plus if I was in a bad mood.
Pat: 3:34
hear that Disney plus keep this man happy.
Alex: 3:37
Yeah, it's fun. It was pretty much a week after I started at Disney. I heard that there was a global outage in Hulu. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it's interesting to know that hu Hulu was down globally. I mean, everywhere for about an hour. I think it was on the east coast. It was in the wee hours of the morning. So in America we probably didn't notice it as. But even, so the guy that ultimately fixed that issue is the principal network architect that reports to me. So I thought that was kind of neat. It was like, that was making Yahoo, like French page news articles. And I was thinking to myself like, ah, I know the guy
Pat: 4:11
That's pretty cool. Look at that. Yeah. All right. So let me get this outta the way my wife likes Hulu. She watches it a lot and I'm glad that it was not disrupted during, when she was awake. She loves, let me tell you, my wife loves the golden girls and the reruns that are on Hulu. So that's all, you know, that's all she watches. So, I should say when we get a chance to watch, because the other channel that is constantly on my TV now with two young kids is Disney plus that's all we watch in this house is Disney plus. So bluey and Mickey mouse Spider-Man and spy. And, you know, the cartoon version, all that stuff is on my TV, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So yeah. Big Disney plus fans here at the house. And do you know how many subscribers Disney plus has at the moment? I'm sure it's gotta be an astronomical number. I just was curious of
Alex: 4:59
Yeah, Disney likes to play that numbers game, always competing with Netflix. So whenever they announce their numbers, they announce it. Collectively with Hulu ESPN plus. So they'll say Disney streaming numbers they'll as opposed to Disney plus. So that number is at 2 21. So if you happen to catch Disney's earnings, they made a big fuss about Netflix had earnings the week before and announced 220.6 and we're 2
Kyle: 5:27
Oh,
Pat: 5:29
And that's.
Alex: 5:30
Disney streaming has officially surpassed Netflix as the world's biggest streaming
Pat: 5:35
221 million subscribers. Yeah. Yeah. So we're in the millions.
Alex: 5:40
Across three platforms. It's I think Disney plus is on around 140 million. I don't wanna misspeak, but it's around there. Just the
Pat: 5:49
that. The house of mouse is a powerhouse.
Kyle: 5:52
Say that three times
Pat: 5:54
oh, hello.
Alex: 5:56
I can't say it one time. Slow.
Pat: 5:58
that's awesome. Now that's really cool. So you're at Disney now kind of doing your thing managing a team of what did you say? Five, three or five, or how many people you got.
Alex: 6:08
Yeah, there is officially four that report to me. Now we just hired somebody. We poached somebody from Microsoft, but that's not always something you have to do. So a lot of these people that report to me didn't come from huge companies and we have one additional headcount. Right now. So there will be six as we continue to more but Four for now, five next month and hopefully six before the end of the
Pat: 6:32
No, that's awesome. So, Kind of break off of that kind of roll back. You and I met at our time at the data center. So at the time it was DBSI that it was, then it change hands. It was ex and now it is tier point. So tier point is a national data center, colo private cloud company that obviously data center space, you know, large buildings, racks, and racks of cooling and power and everything you can absolutely imagine. So Alex, you and I started at the, at the time, like I said, it was DBSI and they just opened a brand new data center here in Pennsylvania where we all, you know, where Alex used to live. He is now out in sunny, California and it was a brand new data center and I was an ops guy, right. Basically the front desk guy, checking people into badges and that kind of stuff. And Alex, that was your first, was that your first senior role, a senior network role?
Alex: 7:26
For senior role. I kinda of before that kind of cut my teeth, like most people did just doing tier one support ISP. Company after that was a transit provider, kinda like a Zao where I dealt with, edge devices, PLS networks, MPLS was a huge buzzword then even more so than it is now. But yeah, after those two stints, it was. DBSI were small enough teams. So when you got a senior network engineer role there, you really got to touch a lot of things. And don't know if you've had Romeo on the show yet, or if you ever will. But one of the biggest characters I've ever met there. And one of my first guys, I really consider a mentor to me was there.
Pat: 8:09
that's awesome. Yeah. Romeo's a great guy. Shout out to him if he ever listens to this episode. so he's he's a busy band. He actually lives not too far from me. I see him out at restaurants and stuff every now and then you know, this is before the pandemic, I ran into him a couple times at different restaurants. So he does live around here. So yeah, maybe I'll have to poach him and see if he wants to come on and chat. That'd be interesting chat. He's a great guy.
Alex: 8:29
yeah, we have some catching up to do. I remember soon after I started at D VSI had my twins, so they were, oh, well my third had my twins in my third was on the way. And at the time he didn't have. And he used to just gimme all kinds of a hard time about how many kids I had. And I think he's up to seven
Kyle: 8:48
Wow.
Alex: 8:49
He might be at eight.
Pat: 8:50
he's working on a small football team. Yeah. Right.
Alex: 8:53
Oh yeah. He's been nonstop since I left.
Pat: 8:57
All right now I definitely have to have him on to ask him how many kids he's got that's for sure. no, that's awesome. So, yeah. So Alex, you and I sort of met I was a young fledgling wannabe network guy, and you were the senior guy and I didn't have my CCNA at the time. And you know, like I said, we worked at a brand new building, so they had all this space and nobody really was there. It was this weird flux of. People were waiting to move in, contracts, timing, whatever you wanna call it. There was, you know, there was one data, there was two data centers built. One was for a single client. And then. The other one was a multi-tenant, you know, just data center, space of floors and racks and power and cooling. So we had a bunch of time over our hands cause it wasn't very busy over there. So I remember you and I were, you know, you know, and you used the Shane tactic, which I appreciate of, you know, oh, you can't get your CCNA, you know, how do I get this computer to talk to this computer? Come on dummy. Let's go, you know, this and all this other kind of stuff. Yeah. Tough. Hello. That's right. And then you know,
Alex: 9:56
I think I was softened up, but yeah, you
Pat: 9:59
That's right. I'll proudly wear that role. So, you know, I remember doing just whiteboard all day in and day out, just whiteboard and different scenarios and trying to, you know, get experience and this and that and back and forth and you know, all this other kind of stuff. And, you know, like I said, I've said this before it took you know, realistically it took me two times for the CCNA. I took it three times, but the first time I didn't take it. First time, the first time I was outta college with you and I, Kyle like,
Kyle: 10:25
Oh,
Pat: 10:25
I, like I scheduled it and I sort of forgot about it. I scheduled it like three or four months in advance and then forgot about it. And then by the end of the school year, I was. Oh, man. I had my CCNA in like a week. What am I gonna do? You know? And totally embarrassed me, like out of the building. And then when I was with Alex at, actually in the industry and then it still took me twice, you know, after, you know, with his, you know, coaching and me trying to study and, you know, not not having the hand, the most hands on experience with the, with routing and switching at that time, it's kind of hard to pass that kind of fresh, into the industry. So. But yeah, lot of whiteboard, a lot of different scenarios, a lot of real world scenarios, which really helps, you know, kind of tie things, you know, tie things together. So, yeah, and then I got my CCNA and then I moved on to evolve and we had Alex, we had Nikki Townson on a few weeks ago. And then yeah she was great. So if you haven't checked that episode out, go and do that after this one. I went to evolve. And then Alex, you followed me six months later. If I'm not mistaken or close to six months, maybe closer to a year, maybe.
Alex: 11:30
Yeah. I can't remember who left the D V S I first. So maybe you were only at evolve six months by the time I came on board. So between D VSI and evolve IP, I had. A little over a year stint at another company, but found each other
Pat: 11:46
right. We did. We found each other long lost, you know, buddies finding each other. And then you know, you were in their data engineering department doing all the cool backend did, you know, networking and colo and, you know, core backbone type of deals. And then, so I found that interesting for myself because I was on the front end of that, putting. Voice, you know, edge, you know, Edgewater, voice routers and VoIP stuff. And then I got the backend visibility because of you, because you were kind of, you know, kind, you know, let me peek behind the curtain and seeing how this actually works from a to B. So that really completed the circle of, you know, the circle of life. If you will, in the networking world, trying to figure, you know, figure that out. So I don't know, you wanna kind of touch on your time and evolve it and you just, you know, you just left. You were there what, 7, 7, 8 years, something like that. You just left them not too long ago.
Alex: 12:33
Yeah, little over seven years and only been gone a year or so now a little bit more, but yeah, I think I've been pretty fortunate in my career where every job that I've kind of gone to, I felt really did serve a purpose. I think some people aren't quite as fortunate, but at evolve IP, I went in as a senior network engineer. I was brought into a situation where the company had been around, I think maybe six or seven years. At that point, they had people that were now in VP positions that were still doing the engineering work. So didn't scale anymore at the size they were. And they weren't a huge company, but. A 200 person company is different than a 30 person company. And they were kind of still operating like a 30 person company. And the other thing, because they'd been around for six or seven years, all the original network equipment was kind of at that age now where things are getting outta support, what are we gonna do? So they brought me on to really just rearchitect everything. So that was a lot of responsibility. And at the time. Even though at DBSI I was kind of senior ish. Didn't have the senior title on me, but the, that was a good next steps. And the other thing that kind of, you know, moved me towards evolve IP is that after that initial refresh across the board, They said that I would've an opportunity to manage the team. And that actually did get me formally in the management kind of knew early on, especially at D VSI kind of mentoring, a couple people and teaching that I kind of felt like, all right, management makes sense. I liked the idea of having some people under my wing. So it was a natural progression. So had a lot of fun those first two years a lot of new technologies back then, things that are pretty commonplace now, but. The whole idea that we're moving away from spanning tree spanning. Tree's no fun, a lot of new technologies like VPCs and spine and leaf ACI. like that. And really, I was teaching myself through YouTube and Google videos and reading the newest books and some of the technology I was looking at, they didn't have textbooks out on it. So I had to talk a lot with the solutions engineers from Cisco, but either way, it was really neat to build that from scratch. And they actually. Yeah, I could throw ideas with the powers that be there, but it really did come back to me a lot. And at the end of it, some of the guys that I still talked to today, Nate, I'm sure you know him. It
Pat: 15:08
sure. Shout out. Yeah.
Alex: 15:09
he was a guy that worked there by the time that I'd left evolve by pizza. That was seven years later we had. And even if he wasn't a small company, any stretch I. And by the time we left, there was not a single device in those two flagship data centers that either Nate or myself didn't configure. And I was thought because we had just finally decommissioned one of the last remaining devices. And I was thinking, wow, this whole business rides on the infrastructure that either me or one other person touched. So that was
Pat: 15:39
Yeah, That's awesome.
Alex: 15:40
so,
Pat: 15:41
yeah, no, that's
Alex: 15:41
it was neat.
Pat: 15:43
Yeah, no, that's cool. And then during evolve time, you and I were both there. Did a little something special that very few people have actually done. so, you passed your CCI on the first time. If I'm not mistaken
Alex: 15:55
Yeah. As much as I like to brag about that, I will say I failed the written four times. maybe I'm better at hands on practical stuff than I am. What I deem to be unnecessary memorization, but either way. Yeah, I did pass the lab the first time, which if you have to pick between the two, I'm sure that's the one you wanna pass first.
Pat: 16:13
yep. For sure. I still remember when you were going for it and, you know, evolve, you know, really gave you that time to study and kind of just focus your energies and getting that. And obviously that worked out for evolve as well, to have a IE on staff, right. That's not lost on me or anybody, but you know, they kind, they, you know, you came in, they gave you time to really focus and you really hammered it out and, all that stuff. And then I remember you passing, or I should say you went down there, did your thing and. You texted me at like some ungodly hour in the morning because you got your confirmation email saying you, congratulations, you passed with your number and all this stuff. It was, it had to be like three in the morning. I get a text and you're like, I just passed. Oh my God.
Alex: 16:52
surprised You remember that? I forgot who
Pat: 16:53
Oh
Alex: 16:54
but yes, I had my notifications on for my email and for whatever reason, I got it at 3:37 AM. I remember the exact time I saw the ding on my phone and I quick read it. And I did one of those things that I think people were trying to get accepted into the college do, or I'm like slowly scrolling down. See if there's my number there. Yeah. So I think there's like four or five people that got text messages at the wee hours of the morning.
Pat: 17:19
Yep. I was one of them, for sure. Thank you.
Alex: 17:22
yeah.
Pat: 17:23
awesome though. So then, now you have to test what every three years is just the written, correct? is? that
Alex: 17:28
So every two,
Pat: 17:29
They've too. Okay. Cause I know they've changed it the last couple years with their their search structure and things like that. I didn't know if that got all the way to the IE level.
Alex: 17:37
they had during that transition between. What I call like the classic route switch and security invoice to it's probably do a couple podcasts on the cert structure. Now they actually gave me an extra year. So I managed to get like two year certification, two year re-certify and three year re-certified based on how that all worked out. But normally it's two. And right now Cisco is really pushing that continued education thing. So even though I haven't taken advantage of that, For my next recertification. I'm hoping to go down that continued education path, which, I mean, if you really do utilize it the way you should, then I agree with the concept and you know, I think it's a good thing. I've heard some interesting stories that might kinda dwindle the value of the C I E for instance. These online courses you can take for the continued education. There's really not a whole lot stopping you from having someone else just do the education track for you. And then you get credit for having completed it
Pat: 18:44
Yeah.
Alex: 18:45
because it's not a formal task. It's just like you go through videos, you go through some lab samples and at the end you're like, okay, you passed a 40 hour training and now you got X amount of credit towards that. By the way, I am doing that right now. I gotta re-certify again, by
Kyle: 18:59
Oh,
Alex: 18:59
Yeah. And then the nice thing about that is, is when I do recertify, that'll bring me up to the 10 year mark, which I'm pretty sure that once you get to 10 years as a C E, you never have to take the lab again. If you ever let it lapse, it goes into a suspended state, but there's nothing stopping you from doing continued education or passing the written again, after this, it's a big one. So I really wanna get this one.
Pat: 19:23
Sure.
Alex: 19:23
Is if I let it lapse at this point, I'd have to take the lab. And I don't know if I could do that to my wife anymore. when I passed it the first time you, she told me you're never doing this one again or doing this again. So I
Pat: 19:37
So there you catch your promise. Yeah. So it's all good. no, I think that's important. We've had we've had Ethan from pack of pushers on this show. I was on his show a few weeks ago. For heavy networking and we kind of got off camera and we talked about, you know, cause he's, he is a CCI as well. I'm not sure if his is active, I'd have to double check. I don't wanna misspeak, but, really good friend of the show and we kind of talked off camera, like, you know, like the actual trials and tribulations and what it takes. For, not just the person taking the exam, but the whole, it's a family thing. Like you're missing major milestones, your birthdays, or any sort of family get together, celebrations things that to, to literally study and literally make a timeline and, you know, get to that golden number, right. As guys in the industry call it. Right. So it's definitely a, you know, it's a family affair. It's not just, you know, it's not just and you know, taking the test and Alex, You know, Taking the C and the dedication that takes right. You have at the time you had young kids. Right. And I have young kids now. So, you know, you miss that time, you never quite, you know, get it back or, you know, or, you know, you go to work, you study, you come home, you say, how do your kids eat dinner? And you study for, you know, the rest of the night. And that just, never ends. It just goes on and on until you take the actual test. So there's a lot of time there. That you kind of miss and whatnot. And then it's not just like you can go to the next town over and a testing lab and test like, there's, I think I'd have to look this up, but at the time there was two places you could take the lab in the entire country, one in North Carolina at Raleigh. I believe it is. And then. And then the other one was in, I think Texas, it used to be in San Jose where Cisco that, but I think they moved it to Texas or something of that nature, I think. But there's really only two places you can actually go. So you had, you. You know, take the wife in the car and drive down to North Carolina and then go actually take it. yeah, so it's not a, it's not an easy thing it's but you know, obviously the payout is, you know, you're part of an exclusive club that, you know, not everyone gets to be a part of. And if you're looking at it this way, right. I think what do you know what the number is up to now, Alex? As far as how many people it's over 60,000, I would imagine
Alex: 21:43
Right. It's in the mid sixties. So yeah, each number just
Pat: 21:47
So you gotta.
Alex: 21:47
up.
Pat: 21:48
You gotta think 60,000 people, you only get a number if you pass it. Right. And it's only at 60,000 or mid sixties. And the test has been around since the early nineties or mid nineties, somewhere in there. So imagine all of the people that have taken that test and only 60, some odd thousand have passed it. And you gotta think maybe like, okay, 60,000 or numbers, how many of those are active? Do you think about half is active?
Alex: 22:16
Yeah, that's probably fair. Yeah. I've certainly spoken to a lot of CCIS let it lapse. I kind of figured that no one would ever let that happen, but yeah, it seems pretty commonplace.
Pat: 22:27
So technically you're only, you know, roughly one of 30,000 people to ever pass a test that's been around for, you know, almost three decades now, which is just wild to kind of think about in my, you know, in my brain. It's like, oh my God, look at that.
Alex: 22:41
Yeah. And there's lots of different tracks too. So that's all the tracks. So in my case, it did route switching, which is what a lot of people do. But if you happen to have one of those more specialized ones like security or voice you're in a even smaller pool of people,
Pat: 22:55
Right. Yeah. No, I I agree. Yeah. Big time. So do you, I'm assuming you use some of that IE knowledge now, you said you're a manager, so you're probably not as in the weeds, as you know, you once were at evolve, but you know, I'm assuming you still rely on some of that knowledge even at Disney plus in your current.
Alex: 23:12
Yeah, what I've noticed, at least in my last two roles. All right. Really? I should say my last three roles because. Three roles ago was evolve. I P where I could transition from a senior network engineer to a manager, but anyone at evolve I P would know, even towards the end that, really, I was just a senior network engineer that managed people. So, but at PlayStation and at Disney streaming, they made it very clear that I think even PlayStation specifically said under. You know, experience or hoping for a CCI, something like, you know, CCI preferred, something like that. And I was very technical at Disney and even more so at Disney or I was. A technical manager over at PlayStation, even more so at Disney. So at Disney, I would even say at this point, a third of my job is being hands on. And I'm part of the architecture teams. So, and that's actually something that's just really cool to think of is just it's really me and four other people right now at Disney streaming that are really kind of architecting Disney. Streaming's. Network for the next five years. And yeah, I get to be a big part of that. So that's something that I appreciate. I don't know if that's everywhere, but I've seen that at least in the, some of the bigger companies that I've looked at, I don't know if that's just a trend or if that's just what we plan on seeing going forward. And my manager's actually a C, C I And you know, he's he reports to the VP and he is by far the most technical person in the company. Like he's still the go-to guy. he actually started off as a networker architect for Disney streaming, and now has worked his way up at, he manages other engineering teams, but yeah, everyone goes down.
Pat: 24:57
Nice. Nice. Yeah, I feel that way too, especially now with my role customers I'm part of the architecture team as well. And we're obviously we're much smaller than Disney is so it's. Coworker Pete, and then our boss, Dave. So there's literally three people responsible for the architecture of an entire, you know, an entire bank. Right. So that's kind of, that has a cool, you know, tone to it or, you know, it's like, oh, it's kind of cool to think about, you know, so I get to touch a lot of things, but I, you know, my manager, Dave is a lot like yours, Alex, as far as everybody goes to him, because he's the one that originally. Said, you know, said infrastructure. So we have a lot of Cisco. Although we are taking a flyer on Palo Alto stuff, but everything infrastructure wise is Cisco, even down to the hype, to the storage. Right. You know, you know, HyperFlex and all that. kind of stuff. We, we do all that. So, yeah, not that I manage it, but you know, it, it is Cisco UCS hardware. So, you know, but it's really cool, you know, trying to, you know, touch some SDWAN stuff and, you know, getting into the cloud now and trying to. The cloud and trying to replicate what you have on Preem and. Work, you know, in the cloud or, you know, just an extension of your on-prem, right. That's the idea of the cloud is make it an extension of your on-prem if you have an on-prem to, to, you know, just to be an extension of that. So yeah. To architect all of that and to really kind of make it all work and mesh and understand how it really works from a nuts and bolts perspective really something to, you know, to be to be proud of. sort of some really cool some really cool things. So, now I totally get it. Alex to back up. You, what originally drew you to California was PlayStation, correct? That's kind of the big, this is, I remember you talking to me, right. You called me a couple years ago and you said, Hey, you know, you kind of saw your time and evolve IP ending, you know, for better, for worse, whatever. We won't get into that. But like say, okay. And then you're like, Screw it, let me just apply to the big boys and see what falls out of the tree. Right? So you applied where you said like AWS and Twitter and Facebook and like all these big tech companies
Alex: 26:50
It Just like you said, writing was on the wall evolve IP. I mean, to go into a little bit more detail, we had a couple layoffs recently. I wasn't part of those, but once you survive, one of those, you know, you're always kinda looking over your shoulder now. So I took that as a time. I talked to the wife and I asked her if I found the perfect job, would you be willing to move? Just outta curiosity at that time, I didn't have anything in line. I just asked her and. She was all for it. Maybe the pandemic was starting away on everybody and they just wanted to change, but by the way, she agreed to it. And it was the first time my career. And I'm sure a lot of people are guilty of this. But prior to that, anytime I was looking for a position. You go to monster or indeed you type in whatever field you're in. So my case network engineering, and you figure out what commute am I willing to tolerate? So 50 miles or something like that. And you just see what pops up. So this was the first time where I just started going to the companies that I thought were interesting.
Pat: 27:48
Yeah.
Alex: 27:49
so I looked at Google and I found a job that wasn't quite perfect, but Hey, it's Google it's networking ish. same kind of deals, probably a little bit more software engineering that they wanted. But either way it was somewhat network focused, applied for that. And then that kind of led me down. I saw that Twitter had an opening. I looked at AWS, found a perfect role with AWS that really kind of fit my skillset. And then I just, I'm a huge PlayStation nerd. I kind of joke with the wife. I don't have any tattoos, but if I ever got one, it would probably be the PlayStation logo. And I found a manager of network engineering position for Southern California for PlayStation needed to be on site. But you know, being a manager of network engineering, that's not a position you see all the time. So that really stuck out that I just on a whim, I decided to check PlayStation Yeah. So long story short, I applied to all those that I just man, or, you know, just mention. And I think like a lot of people, because I hadn't written an RFC, I didn't publish a book. I don't have a master's degree. I really wasn't expecting to hear back from 'em from any of 'em really. But outside of Google and meta at the time, which I kind of from the get go realized that I wasn't a good fit. I mean, forget the company name just by description. I wasn't, but the three jobs that the job description matched my skillset pretty well, which were Twitter, AWS and PlayStation. I got to the point where I had, I think, four interviews with Twitter. I had an entire panel interview with AWS and then I ultimately got the job. PlayStation. So that completely changed how I view things and that's kind of how Disney streaming worked. And I can go into that a little bit, but I kind of realized at that point that maybe it's not, I don't wanna say is that it's not difficult to get in these jobs. So I think some people, you have two extremes. I think you have the people that come right outta school and they're naive and think they can land these jobs. And then you get the 5, 10, 15 year vets who think they're not good enough because they've only worked at like 200. People companies and think like there's no way these guys are giving the time of day and it's really not the case. And when I got the job at PlayStation and I got acclimated and you know, I got to talk with the engineers that were there. I realized that. That's still the case. I mean, you have junior network engineers who obviously haven't been in the field forever. It's not like these guys have published books. You have mid-level engineers, you have senior network engineers. And I was convinced that the people in different jobs that I've had that I've found exceptional would be exceptional at PlayStation. They weren't any different. The best employees at my previous jobs would be the best employees at this job. And. When I did interviews, I realized that you may have 300 applicants, but of those applicants, 200 of 'em are spam. People have nothing to do with the job posting. Other ones are straight out of university and they're just, all right, it's a little too junior. You could weed those down to. Resume you can, of those 300 people. And this is a true story. Just trying to hire a mid and senior level position at PlayStation of those 300, some candidates just looking at resumes alone, you could get it down to 20 resumes that even make sense. And those resumes don't look much more impressive than yeah. Your resume certainly. And other people at evolve IP, like if those resumes. To PlayStation. They would've made it to me. They would've got an interview and I don't think people realize that.
Pat: 31:38
Yeah. It's an interesting concept cuz I, you know, Kyle and I think Kyle, you and I kind of talk about this, not like you kind of see these big companies as like this pie in the sky, like, oh, I could never work there. I could never, because you know, X Y and Z or, you know, like Alex just said, like, you know, I'm not good enough. Or, you know, I've only been a part of a company that has, you know, 200 people and they have hundreds of thousands. Right. You know, that sort of thing. So, you know, but it's an interesting take of like, look, when you look at resumes, right. People are just people, it just depends on, you know, people just land at different places, but there's still people with skill sets that fill a need. Right. So, you know, is you know, like Alex said, I guess, So you get through all the noise, right. And the people that, you know, just apply just because it's meta or Twitter or whatever, and have no recollection of the job or no real business applying for the job. You know, then it's just, okay, well now the pool's gotten a lot smaller. So that's an interesting take on, Hey, you know, shoot your shot. I don't care where you're at. Shoot it like the worst they can say is no. And truth be told when not before I landed this job at customers bank, I was, it was right after I talked to you, Alex, and you applied for all those places. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna apply for these places I played at like Salesforce, Facebook, or meta, whatever they are now. There was one or two others, a crowd strike. I applied at those, you know, and of course I got all, some, I didn't even hear from like, whatever, but and we had Nikki Towson on, which is a former colleague Alex and I that evolve a few years back. We had her on a few weeks ago and she's now at Microsoft. She's a customer account advocate at Microsoft. But she told us in the podcast that, you know, it was four or five times for her to apply. Now that's not, you know, like you said, Alex, like, yeah, the pool is smaller once you get through the noise, but, and it may take you a few times, right? Who says you can't apply more than once. Right? Things change, people move around and all that kind of stuff. So it happens. But shoot your shot. The worst I can say is no right.
Alex: 33:36
Yeah. And you get more confident, even if you can get to the point where you get an interview, you're inevitably going to be nervous at some of these. You're probably not gonna, you're gonna get a question that just throws you for a loop and it just sets the tone for the rest of the meeting.
Pat: 33:48
Sure.
Alex: 33:49
But, and even in my case, even though I made it pretty far, I was ultimately ejected, but all but one. And when I left. PlayStation. I did the same kind of thing I applied for. Then it was officially meta, riot games, EA sports EA the video game company and Disney. And I got interview and Netflix and I got interviews with all five of 'em. So I had a couple interviews with Netflix, that ended up not working out again. It was kind of more software engineering. I made it through a panel interview with Facebook. And had to have one more interview with, I guess it would, may have been my boss or at least that level, but either way, I was just at the same time having that interview with Disney and Disney was kind of aggressive in saying, don't go to that next interview.
Pat: 34:40
Right, right.
Alex: 34:42
so that's
Pat: 34:42
makes you feel good,
Alex: 34:43
yeah, it's another example where, if I hadn't had that experience with PlayStation, I probably wouldn't even have bothered. Applying for these places. And then, you know, kind of feel like, oh, well I am in demand. So, I, like I said, the people that I've worked with at smaller companies, I think if they could just land an interview, be shocked at the offers that you may receive. And one thing that I kind of helped, cuz I did talk about there. There's so many people that apply for these jobs. I mean just working at PlayStation at Disney, I can see the numbers. So I can't imagine what Google and AWS and meta have. It's probably five times higher. In all those positions. I'm not a big advocate of social media. I don't have a Twitter. Shouldn't say that since I was applying for Twitter, but don't have a Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account. I shouldn't say that about me, but I utilize LinkedIn. And, any, anytime you can kind of put your name up front and I, what I did was I kind of just reached out to the. The recruiters. So sometimes in those jobs postings, they'll actually have the name of the recruiter that's trying to fill that position. Or if you don't see that, sometimes you can just reach out to any recruiter in the company and just ask about the position and just talking to the recruiters at PlayStation Disney and just. No, I, when I got the jobs, they said that was a big reason. I got an interview was just because they had the weeds through so many. So if you immediately reach out, kind of give your spiel and they can tell that it's not a cookie cutter response, you know, I've read the resume, I've highlighted one or two things that makes me a good fit. And, you know, I'm not just spamming for the sake of spamming it. At the very least. I got the interviews in, I think, especially with Disney, it just speed up the process from the time that I reached out to the recruiter and he actually responded and said, yeah, on the one trying to fill the position I think I was talking to the VP of Disney, which is my fourth and final interview a week after the first day I reached out to him. So it was just back to back to. And the position had been open for like seven months. And they just,
Pat: 36:47
Wow.
Alex: 36:49
for the same reason, they're just not getting candidates quality candidates or they're just not getting any. And yeah, I was just surprised to hear it and I keep seeing it now, even at Disney, it's tough to fill the position.
Pat: 37:02
No, I think that's a good point with the resume and trying to get your connections in, you know, to, to wherever, you know, however long you can get your tentacles to reach. I think that definitely definitely helps. And, you know, and the recruiters that I've worked with, and I've made a couple friends over the last couple of couple years, cause I have job hops so often, but I've made a couple recruiter, friends, and, you know, they love, you know, talking to people and seeing where they can. You know, help and kind of shimmy you in somewhere, or, you know, maybe you're looking for one thing and they know of another thing or another position that's open that maybe is a better skill set, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, they're a wealth of, you know, kind of get your, your, like I said, your tentacles, you know, in there And and get them to really kind of advocate. Cause they're technically on the inside, right? You've technically breached the wall of whatever company you're trying to apply for, but reaching out to them and they ha they really do hold a lot of keys that people just think, oh, well recruiters. And they they just spam people on LinkedIn and hope or like head hunters and they just don't blind carbon copy thousands of people and going, Hey, can you start next week? And you know, no, there's. There's recruits after that, that do some really good things. So shout out to those those fine folks that really, do make the hiring process a lot easier, cuz you know, and we've all been through the hiring process that is just slow and broken and really some backwards stuff. So, yeah, shout out to them. But I did you have a thought on that Alex, you kind of were ready to perk up there.
Alex: 38:20
I was just nodding. Yeah, I agree. Generally, you're gonna be your biggest advocate, but if you can get a good recruiter, they will advocate for you. And that makes it that much easier. And I mentioned that when I was applying for PlayStation, that I applied for AWS once I started applying again after the PlayStation issue. And for those that don't know, it was unfortunate. Had a lot of tech closings recently in layoff. So I happened to be part of a PlayStation layoff in Southern California, which is what prompted me to. Start looking again. But, what I was getting at was the recruiter that I worked with a lot with AWS when I was first applying, I don't know, back in June of 2020, when that situation at PlayStation happened, I didn't even have a, there wasn't even a job posting that I looked at. I just reached out to that same recruiter and said, Explain the situation at PlayStation. And I think I had a panel interview scheduled like three days later, I kind of already skipped three steps and I was just like, Hey yeah, you did this before. We were happy with it. Yeah. And you want to do a panel interview with the guys that would, you know, be on this team and yeah. And here's hoping that I never have to utilize that again, but that might be. That's a resource that I have that comes to it. And that's also something that I can maybe kick back to a friend or two, who's looking for a new job, just reach out to their crew. Hey, I know a guy and they like that. They really do. You know, they spend a there's a lot of time with recruiting and going through interview processes. So I think if you get to the point where you've gone, pretty deep in. There's job openings. Like in your case, if you had a recruiter that actually, you know, landed you a job, that's probably some, you're probably someone that the recruiter wants to hear from. So your word means something at that point. Cause you know, if they can land you a job, I'm sure they can land your friend a job. So.
Pat: 40:11
For sure. Yeah. It's all about connections at that level. You know, the more people, you know, the better chance you have it fit in a role that you're looking for. So, yeah, I totally agree with that. I kind want to touch on the resume things, you know, obviously you and most, you know, I shouldn't say most people want, you know, I do this and I'm sure other people do it too, but you know, they tailor. Resumes to individual jobs that they're actually applying for. So it's not just one resume and here you go, where it lands sort of thing. So in, in today's world, and we all know tech is hot and it's kind of cooled off the last, I don't know. Whatever six months, whatever it is. But for a while there, it was white, hot. Like you just couldn't keep people in tech roles cuz they were just jumping like crazy. So I guess my question is the resume tweaking or this. You know, specifically for an actual job is there like specific buzzwords that, that maybe you as a manager, do you like look for on a resume? Like, you know, Hey, like, well, obviously right, if you have an NPLS network or you're a big, if you're a big Cisco shop, you're not looking at somebody that. Has Juniper or, you know Aruba or anything like that, you know yeah. They're nice, but you know, they're not really in your wheelhouse, but so does like resume buzzwords or keywords kind of perk your interest when you're looking for a particular role?
Alex: 41:23
Yeah. I'm not sure if I call 'em buzzwords, but you absolutely should tailor your interview or tailor your resume. I think at this point, Especially, if you have 10, 15 years experience, anyone could write a 15 page resume if they really wanted to, they wanted to go over everything that they've ever done. But especially at bigger companies where you're going through hundreds of resumes, I wouldn't ever make it more than two pages. And if it's two pages, it's probably because it's formatted in a way that makes it easier to read. You can probably fit most of it in one page. And if you're gonna. Limit yourself to that much space. You gotta make that real estate worthwhile and you gotta tailor your resume for it. So when I'm looking at resumes, I feel like when I help with job descriptions, that I'm realistic in what I'm looking for. I don't know if that's always the case with companies. But I am realistic at what I'm looking for. And if anyone does any research, cuz. There's not every job description is going to highlight everything about our network, but in the case with Disney streaming, if you. Understand what we're trying to accomplish. You might realize that, you know, multicast is important and because that's so a RTY to see, I might not put that on my list of things that I absolutely need, but if someone can make that connection that, Hey, since they're in streaming, they probably are looking for someone that does multicast and Hey, I did that project. You don't have to put on your resume that you're expert, but I am interested in some of the projects you've worked on. So if you say that you've worked on a multi-cast project before, that would. Resonate with me. But the other thing is just, I think they can just remove a lot of things. And sometimes if you have things that aren't relevant to the posting that I have, and I see this a lot is especially people coming from the enterprise or have had enter enterprise networking. Experience, that's not what we do. You, if your first three keywords or your first three bullet points are that you've set up a wireless corporate network or you've dealt with. Small business layer switches. Even if that's the case, you probably don't wanna use up your real estate for that. Don't highlight that. Cuz if I see that as your first three bullet points, I'm immediately gonna start to think that's where your comfort level is. And maybe you won't have the opportunity to really express your comfort level at other things. So, that's probably the best tip I can get is review the job description, review what the company does. If you're not already aware of it. Tailor the resume don't lie about it, but because especially if you have five, 10, you know, 15 years of experience, you're likely to find specific projects you work on that really resonate with the job description. You know, like for the senior position that I have BGP comes up two or three times in the job description. So if you've done several BGP related projects, by all means, put that on the top of the list, get that immediately. Like, all right, this person has that experience and so on. Yeah, just things that aren't quite as relevant, just condense it, remove it, that sort of thing.
Pat: 44:30
Yeah, no, I agree. I think you definitely have to tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. Like you said, cuz there's only so much real estate on a piece of paper and if you had eight, nine jobs in the last, you know, 15 years, it gets lengthy, right. So you need to kind of cut the fat and you know, kind of get to the point. Cuz I, you know, I would imagine that, you know, Especially the recruiters, they see all kinds of resumes. So you have to sort of stand out in that instance of yours has to float to the top in some instance, or to even get, have like a prayer of a shot in, in getting past the, you know,
Alex: 45:03
Yeah. And that's the truth of it too. Yeah. The bigger the company, the more the resumes, the more, I guess you using that term buzz buzzwords. the recruiter, who's not gonna be the most technical guy, they're not gonna be a senior engineer or anything. They're gonna be looking for those keywords. And they're just gonna go off of pretty much the job description, because even here, like job description will be a page long for the senior network role. And I'll pretty much tell my recruiter. I know what this, what I need for this role. I need someone that knows BGP. Well, I know a guy that's dealt with spine and leaf technologies, or it's a huge plus, and it's a real bonus. If a person has done some scripting, that's all in the job description, but I've telling the recruiter like these are the things you really gonna look for. So.
Pat: 45:52
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. You said something there that I kind of wanna. Kind of touch on because I know you were kind of looking at that before. Are you kind of looking into the DevNet scripting Python stuff? Cause that's gonna be that's here now. I think in the network space, right. It's just, it's still new, but it is sort of here and it's got some real power to it and a lot of folks are really on that bandwagon. And I know you, you kind of were for the DevNet track. So are you still on that? Has your priorities changed on that?
Alex: 46:21
No. Well, my priorities have changed, but they've shifted more so even more so to the DevNet side of things at this point, I kind of think of DevNet as a analogous with just scalability. And so if you're looking to land a job at the big company, scalability is huge. And the fact is, you know, at Disney streaming, we might have the simplest of tasks to do, which might be. I'm just trying to think, add a VLAN to a switch and you know, or that's probably a bad example, but something to that effect. But when you have 6,000 switches, you can't do that. And so things just like a simple script or Ansible, any of those frameworks they're just essential and. With any type of scripting, it's just really limitless in what you can do with it. And you find some really interesting problems that you can solve and you don't have to be an expert at it. We don't expect people, especially people on my team. We have a team dedicated to automation, but even on my team, I kind of expect everyone to be comfortable enough with it, to at least see what the automation team has written and What's what it's accomplishing. And I'd love to get to the point where they even feel comfortable enough to change some things. So, you know, you don't have to write everything from scratch, but you can kind of understand what the logic is and maybe make some changes. And ideally, that's where I would like my whole team to get to. And at this point, I just don't see a future five years from now in networking. If you don't wanna do some type of scripting, you're really going to limit the type of job you can get, because you're gonna limit the scale that you can accomplish. And if you limit the scale, then you limit the size of the business that you can be in.
Pat: 48:09
Sure. No, that makes sense. Anybody out there that is looking in the network field scripting is where it's going Python specifically. Right? So that's the most popular language nowadays. And, but I think YAML is creeping in there and yang and JS and all that kind of stuff is really creeping there.
Alex: 48:26
Yeah, there's a lot of frameworks. Like Ansible is huge. That, and, any kind of framework that allows you to scale is what you need to really kind of focus your time and effort on if you want to get a job in networking, especially at a larger company.
Pat: 48:42
Yeah. I think scalability is huge. Like you said, trying to, you know, if you have 6,000 switches and you're trying to, you know, you're changing NTP servers or I, you know, IP
Alex: 48:52
just thinking that's the example I just thought of. Yeah, just like an nTP server.
Pat: 48:57
Right.
Alex: 48:57
yeah, that's just a massive task.
Pat: 48:59
And at shout out to myself, I'm gonna plug myself here for a minute. don't hate to play or hate the game. When I was at Renco, we had autonomous Cisco access points in some of our legacy places. And Renco has, when I left, they had 400 sites across the nation. Right. So, it's probably larger now cause they've they're in agreement. With Turex. So I think they were changing. They were going from T act to radius, something of that nature. So you had to basically do all that config on almost 400. You know, APS right throughout their enterprise. And, mr. Python novice over here wrote an actual Python script. And it took me a couple took me a couple days to get through the minutia of it and really like a lot of testing and making sure it worked and blah, blah, blah, and some of the stuff really wasn't you know, the config wasn't it wasn't the same, right. There was no formality to the config. So that kind of buggered me up as far as some login prompts and things. Sure. But I wrote the Python script that, you know, that, you know, And there was only three of us in the entire network team. So three of us there to try to get through 400 APS, even copy and pasting individual APS was just a mind boggling task. So, you know, I wrote it and it took me a couple days to get the script right. And whatnot. But once I got it right, that was it. And it was a matter of, you know, It was, you know, half hour, maybe 45 minutes and that all of that was changed. And I was like, wow, this is some crazy stuff. And you know, that's the last time I used the Python script. So I probably should get back to that at at some point But but yeah, that's kind of the power of it. And I think that's where the network world is going. And we've said that before on the show, that's where the network world's going and you need some sort of automation. Thing in your tool belt, and it's just it's just another tool in your tool belt. Nobody's saying you have to be a software dev or, you know, any kind of developer. You just need to add it and, you know, kind of massage Python to where you need to be to what you touch on a day to day basis.
Alex: 50:59
Yeah. And I think there's like an old saying too, with programming in general, like a good programmer can write good code, but a great programmer steals code. And that's even more the case now with Cisco DevNet communities and other DevNet communities, pretty much everything you can think of that you want to accomplish. Someone has done something awfully similar and you can just take their open source code and change it, you know? And that, I mean, even at the big companies, you know, They're doing that too. I mean, realistically you have like the hardcore automation guys at these companies that are writing the really unique things, but for the things that can really benefit companies, someone's done it. If it's straight, if it's something you can straightforward, tell people what you're looking to accomplish. Someone's. If you have to take an hour to tell somebody what you're trying to do, maybe then you need a team of automators or automation gurus, but yeah, something is, you know, send one CLI command to X amount of devices is probably is like the simplest example you can do. That is something that gets done over and over again. And
Pat: 52:06
yep. Automate the boring. That's what it's about.
Alex: 52:10
yeah, that's just, everyone's gotta learn it. Sorry
Pat: 52:13
That's it eventually. Yeah. Sorry to break that bubble, but yeah. We're right around an hour mark. So we're gonna, we're gonna wrap it up here if that's all right with everybody. Get outta your hair for this this week's episode. Again Alex, this has been awesome, man. I really appreciate you joining and hanging out and really, you know, kind of giving us your piece of the pie and your in your world. So in sunny, California, where it never, you know, never gets above 75 or, you know, so it's all good. So,
Alex: 52:38
I think I have an 81 day here in the future coming up, but yeah,
Pat: 52:42
Excuse, excuse me, young man. So no, thanks everybody again for joining this week. Breaking down the bites. This has been awesome. Again. Thanks to Alex for joining us. It's been a blast, obviously talking shop you're welcome back anytime. On the show I'm we could talk about. Stuff forever. So we gotta cut it somewhere. So, make sure you visit us website breakingbytespod.io. You can get every episode there, with show notes, transcriptions are all there. You can subscribe to the show, right from iTunes or right from. The website as well, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcast, pretty much anywhere. There's a podcast we're there. Or if you just need an RSS feed you can get that there as well. So you don't miss a show. If you're already on iTunes listening, which most of you are, that's where we get our. Statistics from you're already listening there, throw us a rating. That would be awesome that fools the algorithm and we move up the chain, which is always good. Or you can simply tell a friend right. In the tech driven times, we live in telling a friend a word of mouth is just as good. Sometimes even better. That's great. Follow us on Twitter or Instagram. @breakinbytespod, facebook.com, breaking down the bites discord server for you folks to join us, to get a little closer to us. The invite is in the show notes. Also, we have the survey out there. The survey is actually tied to our website now. So just go to our website and there's a survey link up in the header. So just go there. And 10 question survey, something like that. We don't know who you are. It's completely anonymous. We're just kind of look for some feedback on the. Just some general practices and just some general questions on there. So go take that. It really helps us out again. Alex man has been awesome. Thanks a lot for joining us. You're welcome back anytime and we'll see everybody
Kyle: 54:19
so long.
Pat: 54:19
Bye everybody.
Alex: 54:20
Thanks again. See you.