Google and Twitter are hiring network engineers! Google recently announced that they would be hiring 6,000 new employees for 2011. Twitter raised $200 million in funding.
Both Google and Twitter emphasize on growth and scale. That’s a no brainer. They are acquiring mass amounts of data so the infranstructure needs to keep up.
What kind of skills, for a network engineer, are required to keep up with large scale and growth at these two companies? Knowing these skills will prove useful in any organization that wants to grow and scale.
What kind of Network Engineer do you have to be?
Well to summarize:
You must be a team player with excellent communication skills.
College degree will help but they really want you to have the certifications, at least a CCNP.
Have at least 5 years experience in a networking role with extensive knowledge in routing and switching:
- tcp/ip
- gre
- ipsec
- pos
- ppp
- vrrp
- hsrp
- snmp
- bgp
- ospf
- isis
Other hardware vendor experience such as Force10, F5 and NetApp.
Am I saying we should apply at Google or Twitter? NO.
I’m just simply taking note of what kind of skills are trending. What is being used out there. Other companies strive to have a successful model such as Google and Twitter. To actually grow an infrastructure to that scale in a matter of years takes a lot of work and the above list can be an example of what we need to learn.
Check it out for yourself: Google and Twitter.
I came across an article about the median salaries for those with CCNP or CCIE certifications. Along with the salaries it posted it for the job titles.
I don’t like relying on job titles alone to justify how much one should be compensated. I believe that a lot of it relies on your actual experience. I’m talking about the amount of networks you get to touch. How many you actually design, implement, troubleshoot, etc.
The more the better? Yes I do believe that.
Of course, you still have to factor in some situations but in a good scenario lets say you use all this as a learning experience.
So I compared the average salaries of Job Titles vs Years of Experience for those that have a CCIE. Using this data you can see the correlation between the two.
If you get your CCIE but have no work experience at all working with networks you better be prepared to accept jobs well below the average of a network engineer ($79k vs <1 yr exp, $48k).
OSPF is a link-state protocol based on RFC 2328 and these are my summary notes on understanding how OSPF operates.
Characteristics of link-state routing protocols:
- Fast response to network changes
- Triggered updates when network changes occur
- Periodic updates sent ever 30 minutes
Link-state protocols send updates only when changes occur on network or every 30 minutes. When there is a change, router creates an LSA about the changed link. The LSA is sent to all neighbor routers using 224.0.0.5 or 224.0.0.6. The routers take the LSA and updates the LSDB and sends the LSA to it’s neighbor routers. The router then runs SPF on the LSDB to find the best paths to each destination and puts those in the ip routing table.
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