r/networking • u/wake_the_dragan • 1d ago
Career Advice Network Engineer Work Load
What’s the average workload like for network engineers in the enterprise side ? I worked at a telco for 11 years and I’m used to being busy and always having work to do. But move to a smaller enterprise last year, pace of work is slow a lot of the times. Literally don’t have anything to do sometimes. So interviewing at an energy company with more money and hopefully faster pace of work. Just wondering what everyone else’s experience like
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u/Tiny-Tradition6873 1d ago
I read through all your replies and you def give off the vibes of "I do more than anyone else and I want to complain about it on reddit". If you like being busy and want to implement cool shit go work for an ISP or Telco. Enterprise, Government, and the likes will always keep their network on the back burner until something forces them to upgrade it. Just my two cents from 15 years of working for a Telco and working with a lot of these Enterprise and Government agencies.
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u/RealZolyS 1d ago
Actually my 2 years working for an ISP have been the most boring and least busy days of my career. ISPs move so slowly and you have so little agency that you are often unable to do interesting things. That's just my experience though.
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u/jobpunter 1d ago
God it sucks when there is a legacy standard that is fucked and you just have to keep deploying it because they haven’t changed it yet lol.
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u/Tiny-Tradition6873 18h ago
I feel you on that one, our MnC network has uptimes from when I was in middle school lmao I don't ask questions anymore, just replace like for like and move on.
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u/Tiny-Tradition6873 18h ago
Yeah, our experiences are for sure different! There is never a boring day around here, but I also work for the largest Telco in my state and we operate as an ISP as well so theres always lots to do across a wide range of networks: Broadband, Wireless, Wireline, MnC, Microwave, Fiber Systems (including under sea fiber systems), LEO sites, I mean the list goes on and on!
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u/JollyGiant573 1d ago
Plan for upgrades and patching.
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u/wake_the_dragan 1d ago
I did, and executed. Some of the switches were running unsupported iOS versions so upgraded all of them to Cisco recommend release. Did same with firewalls, ISE, and APs
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u/Jabberwock-00 1d ago
I worked for an enterprise wherein we were acquired by a bigger (20k headcount globally) company. I was always busy doing projects since we did a lot of migrations from traditional infra to sdwan, and dealing with issues, that sometimes I forgot to eat the whole shift. I jumped to a bigger F500 company/enterprise (300k headcount globally) and I got really bored, some projects took months to be completed, sometimes its not even complex, like switch replacement, I am doing very less and most of the people there were just pretending to be busy.
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u/wake_the_dragan 1d ago
We have 3 sr network engineers currently including me. And the other 2 guys are just good at talking about what they did the day before, when I know what they did took or should have taken under an hour
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u/Linklights 23h ago
You may be overstaffed. How many employees is your company and how many devices do you manage?
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u/DULUXR1R2L1L2 1d ago
Are you taking initiative and starting projects? Research? Learning new stuff? Monitoring? Automation? My current gig is a shitshow, so I have stuff planned that will take years to get to. But I haven't worked at a place where I didn't actually have anything to do...
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u/wake_the_dragan 1d ago
I was, then the lead was like we have to talk about all this stuff because I integrated nxdc with ad auth so we don’t use local creds, and VMware integration for a single pane pane of glass after no one had done it in a year. Now I bring up stuff that needs to get done and it’s always like next sprint
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u/Relevant-Energy-5886 1d ago
Sounds like these other dudes were enjoying an ez mode gig until you showed up and started making them look bad.
Ive been that guy before too. You keep doing your thing and making improvements. Youll either become the lead or a great candidate for a more demanding role.
Dont get complacent like your coworkers.
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u/Nice-Awareness1330 1d ago
Pro sports I want to die. Its like hospitality a tech incubator and a small office all in one.
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u/theoneandonlymd 21h ago
I was watching a clip of two baseball players interacting in the dugout, and they were right in front of an Extreme Networks AP. All I could think was how cool it would be to do stadium infrastructure. I'm sure the pressure is enormous but it also seems like there should be plenty of access to the latest and greatest tech and very interesting problems to solve.
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u/xpxp2002 1d ago
When I worked for an F500, I was the busiest of any job I ever had. A team of 25 doing the work of 40+. Frequent 60 hour weeks while getting paid for 40, grueling on call. Even since leaving, it’s always busy at my more recent, smaller/mid-size shops.
I’d love to have a job with literally nothing to do. I say learn to enjoy it and quit complaining about getting paid to have a reasonable workload.
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u/Intelligent-Bet4111 1d ago
Damn an F500 and they still didn't pay for overtime?
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u/Linklights 23h ago
Larger the company the less likely they are to offer special perks. Small enterprises has the most perks and incentives but the jobs are vanishing
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u/xpxp2002 23h ago
I’ve never had a job in this field that paid overtime. One of them paid a flat stipend if you were on call on specific recognized holidays and got called. The treatment of labor in IT is terrible.
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u/Intelligent-Bet4111 23h ago
Damn I see, my job makes sure to pay for overtime work so yeah it's not like that everywhere and yeah we are nowhere close to a fortune 500 company
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u/radioactivecat 23h ago
Do you work for a law firm? The only time in my 30 year career where I wasn’t salaried was at a labor law firm (on the side of management).
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u/fire__foxx 1d ago
Large finance, network ops (NO design or engineering). 250k+ employees. I dream of the day I have 5 mins of my own time. I dont even get time to train new people. Its a hard job but I've literally never been happier.
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u/Defiant_Shower_8088 1d ago
Centennial midsized (or small to some of you ~2500 employees) multinational enterprise with a decade plus of tech debt and kinda difficult, not network literate upper management. I am tired boss.
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u/wake_the_dragan 1d ago
Yeah we don’t have middle management. Just a director. I had to make a case on why we needed to upgrade switches, routers, firewalls, ise etc
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u/Regular_Archer_3145 1d ago
Never worked at an energy company but most places I have worked we have way more work to do than will ever be completed. Shifting priorities everyday sometimes more than once a day it's drop everything for this instead.
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u/Silly-Mix-4341 1d ago
It really depends on the company and team. Some enterprise roles can be nonstop, while others have plenty of downtime. If the new role offers better pay and more learning, it could be worth the move.
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u/Linklights 23h ago
There’s always something to do on a network. If you can’t make work for yourself you’re not trying. Do you have end to end QoS configured? Time to do a business analysis and engineer a solution. Have you drafted business continuity plans for the network? Are all diagrams up to date and totally accurate? Have you drafted quarterly reviews? What about preventative maintenance inspections of IDFs? Do any of your racks need cabling cleanup? You can literally make work for yourself. This work will make life easier once big projects hit and pick up the pace.
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u/Adorable-Entrance-33 1d ago
Would you be handling OT stuff as well or will it be strictly IT?
Based on what I’ve read in this subreddit, OT is way different than regular enterprise networks. The networking part is very similar but the ITSM part is wildly different.
Like imagine asking for a maintenance window for a substation, how much approval would you think that will require?
I imagine you’ll be doing less networking stuff and probably waiting for months to get a window to do stuff.
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u/wake_the_dragan 1d ago
It’s more IT, data center specially. They are trying to modernize they’re network infrastructure
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u/RobotBaseball 1d ago
Like all things it depends on so many factors.
If you work for an established company that has been around forever and isn’t doing anything new or exciting, or the business isn’t growing, you’re probably bored out of your mind. If you work at AI frontier lab you’re probably working nonstop
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u/Phuzzle90 1d ago
It depends on the company and what you’re doing.
These last three months I don’t know that I’ve done more than 15 to 20 minutes of engineering work. I guess we did have one outage so I did do something then. I swear to God it’s every day either a meeting or buying you equipment, which is a sales call or doing something that isn’t what I consider Work.
Truthfully, I think this is just the reality of the higher you get the more responsibility you have and the less things you do with that you probably consider work.
I’m not saying I dislike it. I work my eight and I fuck off my company knows I’m there if something happens, but they also know that tomorrow is another day so whatever it will get done when it gets done and nobody complains.
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u/mjrr_au 1d ago
I moved from a MSP to a law firm and I have been unusually busy.
Update network diagrams
Uplift architecture
Office moves requiring new network
Keep network upgraded and patched
Provide evidence for auditors
Document network processes, standards and operations.
Keeps going on and on. And because the team is risk adverse, unless something is strictly necessary, it can wait for better times.
The best part is I know the environment inside out and I can manage my work load and balance internal users requests and incidents.
Pay is decent. Work life balance acceptable, and most of the pressure comes from myself.
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u/kwiltse123 CCNA, CCNP 21h ago
MSP here. Cannot fucking keep up with the work. New customers every month, but somehow only able to add resources every 1-2 years. I'm not looking for 10 people, just 1, and maybe 6 months earlier than you think. The whole MSP model is built on predictable growth, so how come we have to wait until shit's hitting the floor to add somebody? It's challenging.
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u/Qwerty6789X 20h ago
It's busier than Telco side. Got lay of from an ISP and moved to Enterprise MSP (now working multiple hats Network, Security, Systems, Cloud and my title is still Network guy
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u/SevaraB CCNA 17h ago
Financial-adjacent. I’m involved in:
- Public to private cloud repatriation
- Eliminating our dedicated hubs and directly meshing/peering between our availability zones
- Colo design to include both traditional compute and private AI hardware
- Supporting conversion of multiple MPLS networks into one SD-WAN fabric
Send help.
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u/UpperAd5715 15h ago
Work at an MSP since a few month and i love it, always something to do that's interesting, keeps the brain going and the boredom out.
Branch of enterprise +- 150ppl before and i got so fucking bored all the time
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u/russell_westbrick_0 12h ago
consulting 👌🏼. working for a enterprise company, they always just stack more work on u. mid size with enough staff is good. Telco life is one of the worst. nonstop work. no compensation.
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u/ArcherSCA 11h ago
I worked as lead network engineer in an HVAC company. Most weeks were 45-50 hours. Intense projects were 60+ easily. About once every two months you were on call 24x7 for the week. Those 2am calls because an application wasn’t working weren’t a lot of fun.
There were some perks though. Work enough overtime and they’d give you time off. Sometimes project bonuses and annual bonuses for senior staff.
Did it for 42 years and retired. Had enough.
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u/BustedCondoms 11h ago
I'm at a MSP and I like it. I wish I was able to focus on more specific vendors though. I have a lot of experience but not a lot of hyper focused experience. We did a huge project at a university for years and I wish I was campus IT tbh.
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u/noMiddleName75 10h ago
Enterprise networking can be busy with lots of slack time. One of the best parts of it is a good Enterprise management team understands the nature of the work and allows plenty of flexibility in the hours kept. I definitely put in 2000 hours of work just not all of if is M-F 8-5.
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u/GaiaFisher 1d ago
Higher education, send help.