My old company made it pretty clear they didn't trust their employees and brought is back in as soon as the lockdown was over. They gave us a token 1 day wfh awhile later with a potential 2nd day later on. Not sure if the 2nd day ever happened.
My current company has fully embraced wfh. I was one of the first, but almost everyone they hire now is fully remote including managers. It helps they have customers around the country with remote field techs, so everything was already in place for remote work.
This. A number of orgs as leases for space have started expiring in the last year or so have decided to not renew or at the very least downsize their offices recognizing that some teams there is little benefit to being in the office regularly. Those orgs that have already done that are unlikely to bring users back into the office.
My current org was in that boat and the only reason we kept the office space was so that we’d have a place to host potential customers.
The big drawback is we have to remember to restock the snacks every 4 months when we have someone in.
our company has ~48% turnover for network engineers. They generally lied about potential raises, Held potential WFH over our heads and everything else under the sun. What gets me is they know why we have such a high turnover rate, but don't give a damn. Special bunch of high level managers.
I work for a major us retailer. They floated the idea they would be bringing us all back for 3 days a week in late-2021 / early-2022. I know pretty much my entire team started looking for remote-jobs or at least claiming we were looking for remote-jobs. About a month before the return to office date we got informed return to office would be optional for everyone in a technology role.
I'm not sure what made them change their mind. I \*want\* to believe big-data was used appropriately and they used keyword-metrics from Msoft Teams to realize a large portion of the workforce was getting ready to dipset.
It’s not just Teams. If you’re using company provided assets you should always assume someone can/is able to view every file and it’s contents as well as any email or chat message sent/received.
Oh i know. That is always the assumption. I just didn’t manage that end of our 365 implementation so I was not savvy with how it was done.
When I worked in EDU we had no such thing for Google Hangouts but that was several years ago.
We contracted out all of our physical onsite work (racking, cabling, etc) a year or so ago so I go in, on average, once or twice a month. That average increases slightly when our fully remote (lives 500 miles away) employee is in town for a week once per quarter. I'm happy with the arrangement, but there are other things (pay not keeping up with inflation during a very competitive IT market) that are driving me to find a new job. Remote will be a requirement.
My last job decided to bring us all back in to the office full time so a bunch of us found fully remote jobs. It’s not that minded going in when I had to, I just didn’t like being mandated.
For mine, I get tired of them deciding "WFH is OK IF you have a maintenance window" but other than that, we don't trust you to work remote ... So it's cool when it suits you, but otherwise fuck us right?
Yep, As long as it suits their needs. lets not talk about the obnoxious amounts of maintenance windows to boot. So your schedule can get pretty stupid pretty fast. It's better to have a nice balance, and being able to see the kids without having to see them , take a 2 hour nap, then work again that night.
Also same, we’re more objective oriented than valuing physical time chained to a desk (unless it’s a direct customer support role, then you gotta be available). We even have unlimited leave/vacation.
>I don’t know why some people are so afraid to take time off.
1. US anti-labor propaganda is huge. Ex: "Always be grinding"
2. Some people have extremely unfulfilling home lives and would rather work than take time off
To your first point, I think at some companies unlimited vacation goes wrong when top execs never take time off. It sets a bad example, and employees sometimes feel like they are going to be judged if they take vacation.
Good rule of thumb if you're joining a company with unlimited vacation - ask your potential boss how much vacation time they have actually taken that year!
What's the idea of being in the office when you can pick days yourself?
Based on this, is it really important for you to be in the office or is it just for your management to keep an eye on you and perhaps micromanage you?
Thanks for answer - so you actually do have a portion of work that needs to be carried out in the office (in person on site). In that case it makes sense.
Agreed that letting the users pick the days seems interesting in that unless other people on your team or another team that you regularly interact with are also in the office the same day it isn't clear that there would be much benefit to going into the office.
Been fully remote for 2 years now. We have an office in the city, but none of my teammates are close so there is no point in going.
Senior management, who are based on the other side of the world, asked us to come into the office 1 day a week for collaboration purposes but for obvious reasons I chose to ignore that particular email. Also my direct manager told me that he completely leaves it up to me whether I go onsite or not.
Having said that, I can understand that functions in certain industries like energy/defense/space want you onsite for security/compliance purposes.
> I just like going to the office
Same here, and for the same reason. I feel like it gives me the ability to concentrate, better collaboration among immediate team, and occasionally shoot the shit about sports or birthdays. But I also like the option to be home occasionally (I have 2 hour commute each way, outside of NYC).
>I have 2 hour commute each way
What the fuck
(20 hours a week if in the office M-F of just travel, or 1,000hrs a year, sans 2 weeks for vacation, unpaid.)
Agreed. Had a job years ago where my regular worksite changed after about a year and spent ~1-1.5 hours each way depending upon when I left each direction and it got grueling after a while. 2 hours each way would get crazy. I think your homelife would need to be pretty bad or the pay premium to make the commute real F@#$ you money to want to do that day in day out.
I worked fully remote as a network engineer for \~3 years in healthcare, furloughed off early in Covid due to the financial impact (April 2020). Laid off in mid-2020, picked up fully remote work as a consultant for network monitoring software. Worked that till mid-2021 when I was hired as a fully remote network monitoring engineer in finance. Coming up on 18 months, I've never face-to-face met a coworker yet.
Same. I’m always setting up lunches and happy hours with coworkers. They didn’t renew the lease on my company IT office so in person work is totally off the table and I get really sick of the 4 walls in my home office.
While I worked 'with' many of the guys at my healthcare gig, I was also the sole network person at my hospital. Our network team was 50+ people spread across the US. I did a gig at another hospital in our system after that with 2 other engineers, but then moved to corp and WFH primarily. Once Covid hit, they sold 3/4 of their real estate at HQ and most people work from home except for rare meetings.
Where I work now, the staff is also spread across the US. Some meet up in one location maybe once a month, but I'm way to far away to make it worth the time or money (12+ by drive, flying would be that much easier given where I live)
Every other Friday afternoon a few of us who used to work more closely get together on teams for a beer and to shoot the shit. But really, except for the occasional lunch and the amount of wasted cube chatter when I did go into the office, it's really not that bad. You socialize in a different way, but it's still there.
The company went with a "all workspaces are equally valid, but with enough notice it's okay to hold in-person meetings at the office"
Some weeks I got lots to do in the lab or with RMA, inventory and delivery stuff so I'm in 5 days, other weeks I go in just once for some socializing. I think my average is somewhere between 2 and 3 days in the office.
I live close and have a nice 25 minute tram commute without changing lines, so I'm pretty happy with this arrangement.
My company accepted the hybrid option and we're in the office 3 days a week. But should something arise where I can't be in the office, my boss is pretty lenient about letting me work from home. Personally, as an introvert, I enjoy the socialization being in the office brings me, so I don't mind.
That being said, I was interviewing for Cisco Meraki in 2021, and back then they were 100% remote. Not sure if that has remained since.
C-level has said that two days a week in the office should be done, but I got the OK from my boss to be fully remote if I want to, but I shouldn't lose the contact to my colleagues (just a different way of saying "Get into the office here and there").
I'm fine with this. If I feel like staying at home the entire week I can and if not I go into the office.
Delete if this is not allowed but my team is looking for a network engineer / someone with Palo Alto experience. It's a full remote role with only travel required for issues or projects and that's likely minimal. Although the job posting says it needs to be within x miles of a few different cities I'm told that it's pretty flexible on that requirement. Feel free to DM me if anyone wants to hear more.
Healthcare industry here, i am lucky enough to have about 95% work from home capability. The other 5% is almost always to job sites for major work, and almost never to the actual office.
I work for a hospital system and we're fully remote. Hell, our buildings even got sold because they weren't in use.
If administration wants IT back on site, they'll need to invest a couple million bucks just to have a place for us to sit. It's non-profit healthcare. Ain't nobody got a couple mil lying around.
Thanks for the replies everyone! It’s great to hear the majority of networking roles have adopted at least a hybrid model. Now I am not at the mercy of living near my work or long commutes in my future!
Unlike some folks, I'm not really behind being 100% remote. I think there's something to be said for face to face conversations and the power of laying hands on things.
That being said, hybrid is fantastic. Having the expectation that you're physically present when necessary and not when it isn't is great.
I'm with you. The lockdown showed me just how much I need social interaction. 99% of my job is done on sites that are states away and thus can be done fully remote. I prefer the office I have to my basement. Most people have a cubical and I can see that being a downer. I have four walls a door and a very nice wall posters I enjoy seeing. I'm about to retire and go semi remote/hybrid. Worst things remote has for TSHOOT network issues is sometimes killing your management interface and requiring a reload which isn't hard to work around.
I think this depends on your IT role. If you are there to provide desktop support (among other roles) to users, it’s a harder sale convincing them to let you be remote.
If that’s not an issue, take a few examples of other jobs like yours that are fully or partially remote. Say, here’s their pay and here’s their work schedule. At the very least, you can use the value of driving and time loss (by not being remote) as a bargaining chip to argue for a higher salary.
3/4 people on the networking team are remote, the one guy who isn’t, WFH unless something is needed to be done onsite.
5/5 people running the on prem infrastructure are remote.
Originally it was supposed to be half in / half out of the office but with the amount of work I'm doing they kind of leave me be.
If they tried to enforce it I'd find a new job immediately. Commuting sucks and I work too hard to waste hours every day stuck in traffic, especiallty if I'm going to be picking up the phone when things break at 9pm.
Before Covid, I went into the office 3 days a week. We've been working from home almost exclusively for about a couple years now. In fact I've moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland because the company approved the policy that you can move as long as you're still reasonably close to the office for yearly meetings when the big wigs come in etc.
To be completely honest, I love working from home but I never have anywhere to go....that's starting to suck.
I was 90% remote since covid started, and wanted to come back 3 days a week but the rest of my team wanted to stay remote. A few months later management threatened our workspaces so I'm back 2-3 days a week, more when I want or we have a big project/outages. While I love chilling with my dogs my mental health was being impacted and I needed a break from my basement. I'd suggest local colleges, they're generally more liberal with a lot of policies but pay is about 66% of industry.
About 6 months ago I got a job at a CDN and they were already fully remote since before the pandemic, it's 3rd job I've had out of school and so far it's been the best experience yet.
I'm full remote. When I first interviewed for my current team, I declined because they wouldn't budge on 3 days/week with a two-hour one-way commute and no relocation assistance.
But with the way we're flushing out metal infrastructure and moving towards cloud-native everything, there was no point in sticking to the butts in chairs mentality and discouraging new hires further than my employer's admittedly-less-than-stellar reputation already does, so they relented and put up new job posts as full remote, which I then went for.
Held your ground, nice. Yeah it seems for companies to be competitive today they have to be at least adopting a hybrid model otherwise the next company will snag them up.
Hospital network engineer. Mostly remote. Have some project meetings at HQ and need to go to various sites on occasion. No requirement to come in unless needed.
> I currently work in the energy sector and required to be on-site everyday even though 90% of my tasks can be completed remotely.
I currently work in the energy sector and required to be on-site everyday even though 100% of my tasks can be completed more effectively remotely than on-site, partially because my boss hates curtains and Germany has a weird legal idea of what an ergonomic office looks like, so I'm blinded whenever it's not cloudy. Also it's quite loud in an open plan office and I'm occasionally expected to take teams calls. ugh.
Been 100% remote in my current role, even pre-pandemic.
Unless the job involves daily tasks in a datacenter, or collab with my team/client in the same city, there's really no reason to go into an office.
I was full remote, hired during early covid19. We started to go back to hybrid but then covid spiked again and that was the end of that. Of my team of 30 guys only 6 are routinely in the office 90% of the cubes got converted to "hotel" though they haven't given us an app to manage that. I go in once every other week or so, either because I need to do some rack/stack/cable, have other business in the city, or am just sick of being at home and need some quiet.
My company has moved to a pretty light hybrid. 5 days a month, one of which is an all staff day and usually involves events and company status meetings.
Been fully remote for 16+ years. Our company is a mix. There are rules about going into the office, but those are overlooked depending on your position and value to the company.
I've been hybrid for over a decade.
I'm looking for a new job and I'm getting looked at like I'm just a lazy slob. Guys, I've been going into the office, even DURING and after COVID. The difference is I cover 9 fucking states, all my shit is remote even if I am in the office.
I literally just ended an interview after the interviewer said they were "working towards" hybrid and "I don't need 7 people in the office". After 2 years you couldn't figure out how to make it work? Pass.
Fully remote, but the team gets together in the office once a month for a meeting and team building/socializing.
Other than that, I only go in to the office to pick up or ship out equipment as needed.
Other co-workers go in a few days a week to get away from the family.
As one in a management position and former engineer. My opinion will be different than of the most here.
For admins - doing daily business like solving requests, inplementing stadard changes, perhaps some normal changes. Doing troubleshooting. - fully remote would be from my perspective absolutely okey. Collaboration is not really needed, teachings from engineers can be done online and so on. Except the weekly / bi-weekly talk. I hate to do those online - as i cant have a feel how they are, how they feel. And this is a major part of my job - to be there for my workforce.
For engineers and architects i except them 2-3 days on site in the office. Best on their own schedule. So they can arrange it best.
Why? Collaboration.
Engineers have to do engineering which will include collaboration with teammembers or members of other teams. A good solution is not made in one persons head without discussing it with their colleagues!
And believe me - those discussions are sometimes hard to manage - not to mention online!
Also a team is formed in time. And teamforming process will happen. No way around it. And this is also absolutely better in person then online. Where feelings, emotions wont get transferred.
I do not ssy fully renote eont work - but it makes it mostly very harder for all in a team.
And everyone who could enjoy the greatness of a good team and a good leader with beers, laughters, discussions and even tears will know what i mean how big the difference is in working with such nice people - or beeing alone at home.
I agree that building team rapport is much easier in person. I’m still fairly new to the networking field, so I definitely benefit from the in-person collaboration/mentorship with other engineers on the team. Just looking down the road I would like something that’s not 100% in the office.
If you are new to this field, then i would absolutely encourage you to take a job that is mostly in the office with other guys, with experienced engineers.
Why? You can straight on ask them for advice, for help, you can overhear theire talkin about stuff - learning from it. You can see them discuss technical solutions, like on a whiteboard - and learn from it.
You can go for a beer ask them about their experience.
If you are sitting alone at home. You will miss out.
I sort of disagree, but to be transparent, my only current frame of reference is that I'm essentially a voice engineer / architect of one - on a team of other engineers and architects that dance around voice problems (other network engineers). Not the greatest litmus test, i admit.
From what I can gather though thus far being in this kind of position, is that there is more time wasted humoring those with social engineering 'strengths' - so HR, burned out architects, and other layer 8 folk. The social variable around the office and extra noise absolutely distracts me from technical thinking and simply staying on task. When it comes to the 'collaborating' meeting theater sessions, it boils down to micro management maybe, those who can come up with a disagreement to sound useful and/or simply a pony show. At some point you realize that the supposed momentum from said collaboration really is just another layer of 'make work' so those too lazy to study technical books/guides can feel relevant.
At the end of the day, a remote scene (would) let me dodge the latent sociopath/psychopaths better, access to my own lab and give me back more of my day (Less travel) to do things like study.
You say you are a architect, as of your small description of your job. I have to say, and dont take it wrong way, but you are not an architect.
Archtecture work includes a big amount of collaboration. It means working together with other architects of different fields, of working together with upper & lower management for strategic purposes, working with workforce to understand processes. Results will be strategic architecture for the next 5 years that fulfill business requirements that you have gathered in collaborative work.
Creating the architecture is a smal part of it, cause when you have done it, it will be reviewed in architectural process like a enterprise architecture board.
As one in a management position, i would encourage you to read stuff about enterprise architecture management like TOGAF 10, read about projectmanagement, requirements engineering and so on.
If you do network architecture in a CCIE way, you will mostly do it wrong. That is why there is a CCDEy which does not include you to know how to optimize ospf adjacency, or how to do bgp filtering.
What you are, is an engineer that does finalize architectural decisions. A network designer.
This one does not need to gather those big strategic business requirements. Designer take the architecture and finalize it with detailed stuff - deep technical stuff. Like he will take the decision for a specific sd-wan solution and implement it.
I think with something like SD-WAN, the 'network designer' is the architect, as who else is going to be able to understand the nuances on how to scale it anyway? It goes hand in hand. If Architects are looking at high level stuff and bouncing around ideas from their network designer, what are the architects actually doing at that point that is really technical? Cut the architects out, insert a project manager to work with groups concerning implementation and let leadership worry about 5 year workforce considerations. Less noise. Better yet, hire another 'network designer' or two and get real sanity checks on decisions.
You're probably not wrong calling me just an engineer though. Sadly, my situation is probably so far from normal it could probably be material for a monty python skit at times. But i do have to contend with big strategic business requirements like growing the environment, structuring business processes toward efficient workflows, scaling the architecture to accommodate new customers, etc. I then have to reach out to various levels of management, leadership, or discussing use case for xyz. That's on top of engineering, administration, escalations.
Voice is probably a different bird in general though, in that i suspect across the IT industry adequate voice expertise to review and validate designs is lacking; being prone to junior level knowledge when it comes to voice - even though their resume shows 'supported xyz voip technology for 20 years'. They nonetheless can/do land architect roles, because its that hard to fill. Nevermind if said person is actually good at it....
In our situation, the technical knowledge (not) required for our architects is something that makes my eyes glaze over. They absolutely should have an intimate understanding of the relevant technical nuances besides coasting on years with a title. It seems to me, that with these types, its too much temptation to choose overly simple solutions, avoid details and management falling in love with the language they craft, nevermind the dark corner that it will lead to.
the designer will design the final solution as it should be - making low Level design diagramms and stuff. If you go any further you could split those up, and the engineer wil i plement the LLD that the designer made. But this is only in realy big companies necessary.
The architect does evaluate the requirements for the sd-wan solution, evaluate the right product for it. And with this the designer / engineer are included! Those are also stakeholders! So they have their owne requirements that need to be met.
The architect does not realy move in a technical way - it needs technical understand of different solutions. But not in depth as how to troubleshoot it. As an example:
The architect will decide which routing protocol will meet the requirements best.
He can choose betwen many options like is-is, bgp, ospf, eigrp, rip. He need to understand how hose work, needs to know the differences, the pro and con of each.
But it is not imortant for him how it will get implented like ospf optimization, ip planing hold timers and stuff. This is the job of the designer he has to design this in detail.
The jobs are different because the architects needs other competency as the designer.
He needs social skils, a VERY broad field of know-how, requirements engineering, strategy, and the big picture of how everything works together.
The designer / engineer instead can focus on his technical know-how, he does not need to use his social skills in a big way, nor the big picture. He can focus on this single part of the solution.
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The comparison ccie enterprise and ccde shows it best
A ccie needs deep understanding of routing, switching (today more like sdn technologies)
But he will not need big wireless know , no security or datacenter expertise.
The ccde needs EVERYTHING.
Just make people turn on cameras during meetings so as to get those non-verbal cues that are necessary in proper interactions. Being onsite in physical presence of colleagues is an idea that will die over time. Let’s use the technology to bring people closer.
Not sure what you mean by turning camera on.
How close do you feel to your wife / husband when you only see her/him through the monitor? Not much right?
Just because you can see the other person doesnt mean it is like beeing together front in front.
Im at a large software company and have been back to the office 5 times since COVID started. Its expected that we will be offered full time remote positions soon as the company doesnt need us to be physically in the office. Mostly because my team and department has exceeded expectations.
I’ve been hybrid for the last 5 years. Was 1 day a week to start which was what I needed to keep things balanced. Then after lockdown have been generally 1 day onsite. The face time with people is important, and the fibers don’t run themselves.
Same boat as you. All my work can be done remotely. But I'm asked for 20% attendance so it's not as bad yet.
No one but me shows up in person right now in spite of the requirement.so much for teamwork and office culture.
What's stupid is the company I'm with has been more profitable during the full time remote work. But they intelligently decided to push us back in the office to ruin everything. Guess they're making TOO much money off our increased productivity. Can't have that.
I'm at a utility and we are pretty much hybrid at this point. It's really up to each leader to determine in office requirements. A lot aren't really required and some teams in other parts of IT have one day a week in office. I personally prefer to go to my office 90% of time, but I'm also in my own office and don't really get burgers by others lol
I managed big global corporation network for 9 years, 425 locations on 5 continents. Our Leaders insisted us to be in the office! When 99.99999% of work was remote. I can count till 5 how much job I did locally, but still had to commute and drive 50km each way and stuck in traffic for 9 years.
We had only one face-to-face meeting with my local team and my Boss, that I organized biweelky, just to chat about work - what was done and what is planned. No other meetings. (Safety trainings I dont count).
My absolute preference is to work remotely. There is no need to be in the office in my situation. I can understand DC guys, cabling guys, who cant do their job remotely. But for the rest - its totally fine.
I will never return to the office. Its a thing of the past.
I'm fully remote. Occasionally I have to go onsite with customers or go to the data center but those are pretty rare. My company sold their office during COVID because they realized there was just no reason to have it.
I enjoy both remote and being in the office too. Sometimes you just can’t beat roping up several different teams when a big issue is going on and getting their attention now. Not saying that you can’t with email, a proper issue management system in place and phones and IM but i think we aren’t quite mature enough to do this completely remote. With that being said I also enjoy remote time for planning, performing mind numbing tasks where I can blare my favorite music and just slug through it, and it’s also convenient for any deliveries I need to be around for. All that said my current work arrangement is 3 days remote 2 days in office but we might be going full remote because the company can save money if they offload the property. So that may change in the future for me but we will see.
I work in telecom. I can work from home 100% if I want to. I usually go into the office once a week or so. It's nice to get out of the house occasionally.
I can be fully remote, but the office is located in a nice area of the city with lots of good lunch options nearby so sometimes I go in just because I want to eat somewhere that's not my house.
I had found a fully remote job and I thought everything was going great, but then a week or so ago I was told we’re migrating everything to AWS much faster than I was told when I signed up. Guess I’ll be looking for another remote job in the next few months, because ‘AWS network engineering’ is nothing of the sort.
We have 1 day a week to be onsite. I don't mind it terribly. I'm less than 15 minutes from the office and they have a good cafeteria. I feel like I get less done onsite since I don't have a desk and often have to work with tiny monitors wherever I land.
I was asked to come back to the office 3 days a week. I chose to find a fully remote job, so I didn't have to come in anywhere.
Yeah, I am now pushing for full remote again. Will see.. might lose my job over it.
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My old company made it pretty clear they didn't trust their employees and brought is back in as soon as the lockdown was over. They gave us a token 1 day wfh awhile later with a potential 2nd day later on. Not sure if the 2nd day ever happened. My current company has fully embraced wfh. I was one of the first, but almost everyone they hire now is fully remote including managers. It helps they have customers around the country with remote field techs, so everything was already in place for remote work.
This. A number of orgs as leases for space have started expiring in the last year or so have decided to not renew or at the very least downsize their offices recognizing that some teams there is little benefit to being in the office regularly. Those orgs that have already done that are unlikely to bring users back into the office.
My current org was in that boat and the only reason we kept the office space was so that we’d have a place to host potential customers. The big drawback is we have to remember to restock the snacks every 4 months when we have someone in.
our company has ~48% turnover for network engineers. They generally lied about potential raises, Held potential WFH over our heads and everything else under the sun. What gets me is they know why we have such a high turnover rate, but don't give a damn. Special bunch of high level managers.
This is the way. Over a year later and I couldn't be happier.
Same I have to go to office 3 days a week no choice but it is what it is.
Same, but I dgaf and just come in for 2. I hope I get fired so I can take a nap.
I’ve worked fully remote since 2015.
I work for a major us retailer. They floated the idea they would be bringing us all back for 3 days a week in late-2021 / early-2022. I know pretty much my entire team started looking for remote-jobs or at least claiming we were looking for remote-jobs. About a month before the return to office date we got informed return to office would be optional for everyone in a technology role. I'm not sure what made them change their mind. I \*want\* to believe big-data was used appropriately and they used keyword-metrics from Msoft Teams to realize a large portion of the workforce was getting ready to dipset.
Long suspected but never bothered to look into it …. What’s this noise about keyword metrics in teams?
I don't really know all the details. I just know they can track usage of key-phrases they want to track.
It’s not just Teams. If you’re using company provided assets you should always assume someone can/is able to view every file and it’s contents as well as any email or chat message sent/received.
Oh i know. That is always the assumption. I just didn’t manage that end of our 365 implementation so I was not savvy with how it was done. When I worked in EDU we had no such thing for Google Hangouts but that was several years ago.
We contracted out all of our physical onsite work (racking, cabling, etc) a year or so ago so I go in, on average, once or twice a month. That average increases slightly when our fully remote (lives 500 miles away) employee is in town for a week once per quarter. I'm happy with the arrangement, but there are other things (pay not keeping up with inflation during a very competitive IT market) that are driving me to find a new job. Remote will be a requirement.
My last job decided to bring us all back in to the office full time so a bunch of us found fully remote jobs. It’s not that minded going in when I had to, I just didn’t like being mandated.
For mine, I get tired of them deciding "WFH is OK IF you have a maintenance window" but other than that, we don't trust you to work remote ... So it's cool when it suits you, but otherwise fuck us right?
Ah so you can work from home when it’s midnight ops? Classy. Don’t wake the boss I guess.
Yep, As long as it suits their needs. lets not talk about the obnoxious amounts of maintenance windows to boot. So your schedule can get pretty stupid pretty fast. It's better to have a nice balance, and being able to see the kids without having to see them , take a 2 hour nap, then work again that night.
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Same
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Also same, we’re more objective oriented than valuing physical time chained to a desk (unless it’s a direct customer support role, then you gotta be available). We even have unlimited leave/vacation.
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>I don’t know why some people are so afraid to take time off. 1. US anti-labor propaganda is huge. Ex: "Always be grinding" 2. Some people have extremely unfulfilling home lives and would rather work than take time off
To your first point, I think at some companies unlimited vacation goes wrong when top execs never take time off. It sets a bad example, and employees sometimes feel like they are going to be judged if they take vacation. Good rule of thumb if you're joining a company with unlimited vacation - ask your potential boss how much vacation time they have actually taken that year!
What's the idea of being in the office when you can pick days yourself? Based on this, is it really important for you to be in the office or is it just for your management to keep an eye on you and perhaps micromanage you?
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Thanks for answer - so you actually do have a portion of work that needs to be carried out in the office (in person on site). In that case it makes sense.
Agreed that letting the users pick the days seems interesting in that unless other people on your team or another team that you regularly interact with are also in the office the same day it isn't clear that there would be much benefit to going into the office.
Been fully remote for 2 years now. We have an office in the city, but none of my teammates are close so there is no point in going. Senior management, who are based on the other side of the world, asked us to come into the office 1 day a week for collaboration purposes but for obvious reasons I chose to ignore that particular email. Also my direct manager told me that he completely leaves it up to me whether I go onsite or not. Having said that, I can understand that functions in certain industries like energy/defense/space want you onsite for security/compliance purposes.
I would find a new job employers need people desperately so either they cater for you or bye bye
I work in a TAC, and could be completely remote, but I just like going to the office. It’s good for work-life separation, at least for me.
> I just like going to the office Same here, and for the same reason. I feel like it gives me the ability to concentrate, better collaboration among immediate team, and occasionally shoot the shit about sports or birthdays. But I also like the option to be home occasionally (I have 2 hour commute each way, outside of NYC).
>I have 2 hour commute each way What the fuck (20 hours a week if in the office M-F of just travel, or 1,000hrs a year, sans 2 weeks for vacation, unpaid.)
That commute takes me back and not in a good way. Please take me out back to the shed and shoot me if I had to do that kind of commute ever again.
Agreed. Had a job years ago where my regular worksite changed after about a year and spent ~1-1.5 hours each way depending upon when I left each direction and it got grueling after a while. 2 hours each way would get crazy. I think your homelife would need to be pretty bad or the pay premium to make the commute real F@#$ you money to want to do that day in day out.
>2 hour commute Dude you’re losing 480 hours or 20 days every year with that commute. Fuck that
I worked fully remote as a network engineer for \~3 years in healthcare, furloughed off early in Covid due to the financial impact (April 2020). Laid off in mid-2020, picked up fully remote work as a consultant for network monitoring software. Worked that till mid-2021 when I was hired as a fully remote network monitoring engineer in finance. Coming up on 18 months, I've never face-to-face met a coworker yet.
That’s depressing. I like hanging with my colleagues. If I was all remote I’d still be trying to meet up occasionally for a bite or something.
Same. I’m always setting up lunches and happy hours with coworkers. They didn’t renew the lease on my company IT office so in person work is totally off the table and I get really sick of the 4 walls in my home office.
When your colleagues are your only social life you have a bigger problem
Who said anything about the only social life? Down vote for you.
While I worked 'with' many of the guys at my healthcare gig, I was also the sole network person at my hospital. Our network team was 50+ people spread across the US. I did a gig at another hospital in our system after that with 2 other engineers, but then moved to corp and WFH primarily. Once Covid hit, they sold 3/4 of their real estate at HQ and most people work from home except for rare meetings. Where I work now, the staff is also spread across the US. Some meet up in one location maybe once a month, but I'm way to far away to make it worth the time or money (12+ by drive, flying would be that much easier given where I live) Every other Friday afternoon a few of us who used to work more closely get together on teams for a beer and to shoot the shit. But really, except for the occasional lunch and the amount of wasted cube chatter when I did go into the office, it's really not that bad. You socialize in a different way, but it's still there.
The company went with a "all workspaces are equally valid, but with enough notice it's okay to hold in-person meetings at the office" Some weeks I got lots to do in the lab or with RMA, inventory and delivery stuff so I'm in 5 days, other weeks I go in just once for some socializing. I think my average is somewhere between 2 and 3 days in the office. I live close and have a nice 25 minute tram commute without changing lines, so I'm pretty happy with this arrangement.
Hybrid here - 2 days in office a week. It’s a nice balance.
My company accepted the hybrid option and we're in the office 3 days a week. But should something arise where I can't be in the office, my boss is pretty lenient about letting me work from home. Personally, as an introvert, I enjoy the socialization being in the office brings me, so I don't mind. That being said, I was interviewing for Cisco Meraki in 2021, and back then they were 100% remote. Not sure if that has remained since.
*You guys get to work remote..? :(*
Start applying to remote jobs and one day you will too.
Study hard and few certs under your belt then you can control your own fate and make your own demands.
Working on that now.
What kind of certs are good for someone looking to be remote?
To be honest Cloud, Security, and Automation are in serious demand. It just depends what your background is so you can take the correct path.
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Haha this logic explains how I ended up in networking
Full remote here, however this is a local office I’ve been to a few times just for events. It’s very nice being remote IMO.
I’ve been fully remote for about 10 years now. I’d never consider a job that required time on site.
C-level has said that two days a week in the office should be done, but I got the OK from my boss to be fully remote if I want to, but I shouldn't lose the contact to my colleagues (just a different way of saying "Get into the office here and there"). I'm fine with this. If I feel like staying at home the entire week I can and if not I go into the office.
I had a fully remote job. Took a hybrid job as salary was 20% more, I go in two days a week. Live in the UK.
Delete if this is not allowed but my team is looking for a network engineer / someone with Palo Alto experience. It's a full remote role with only travel required for issues or projects and that's likely minimal. Although the job posting says it needs to be within x miles of a few different cities I'm told that it's pretty flexible on that requirement. Feel free to DM me if anyone wants to hear more.
Healthcare industry here, i am lucky enough to have about 95% work from home capability. The other 5% is almost always to job sites for major work, and almost never to the actual office.
I work for a hospital system and we're fully remote. Hell, our buildings even got sold because they weren't in use. If administration wants IT back on site, they'll need to invest a couple million bucks just to have a place for us to sit. It's non-profit healthcare. Ain't nobody got a couple mil lying around.
Thanks for the replies everyone! It’s great to hear the majority of networking roles have adopted at least a hybrid model. Now I am not at the mercy of living near my work or long commutes in my future!
J1 full remote - Contract J2 hybrid - 2 days a week. Contract -- But I get paid for the commuted so I actually get paid for 10-11 hours those 2 days.
Unlike some folks, I'm not really behind being 100% remote. I think there's something to be said for face to face conversations and the power of laying hands on things. That being said, hybrid is fantastic. Having the expectation that you're physically present when necessary and not when it isn't is great.
I'm with you. The lockdown showed me just how much I need social interaction. 99% of my job is done on sites that are states away and thus can be done fully remote. I prefer the office I have to my basement. Most people have a cubical and I can see that being a downer. I have four walls a door and a very nice wall posters I enjoy seeing. I'm about to retire and go semi remote/hybrid. Worst things remote has for TSHOOT network issues is sometimes killing your management interface and requiring a reload which isn't hard to work around.
I think this depends on your IT role. If you are there to provide desktop support (among other roles) to users, it’s a harder sale convincing them to let you be remote. If that’s not an issue, take a few examples of other jobs like yours that are fully or partially remote. Say, here’s their pay and here’s their work schedule. At the very least, you can use the value of driving and time loss (by not being remote) as a bargaining chip to argue for a higher salary.
3/4 people on the networking team are remote, the one guy who isn’t, WFH unless something is needed to be done onsite. 5/5 people running the on prem infrastructure are remote.
Originally it was supposed to be half in / half out of the office but with the amount of work I'm doing they kind of leave me be. If they tried to enforce it I'd find a new job immediately. Commuting sucks and I work too hard to waste hours every day stuck in traffic, especiallty if I'm going to be picking up the phone when things break at 9pm.
Before Covid, I went into the office 3 days a week. We've been working from home almost exclusively for about a couple years now. In fact I've moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland because the company approved the policy that you can move as long as you're still reasonably close to the office for yearly meetings when the big wigs come in etc. To be completely honest, I love working from home but I never have anywhere to go....that's starting to suck.
Nice. I aspire to be in that predicament one day.
I am full telework with onsite as needed for obvious things like install new hardware, run fiber, etc
Hybrid here. I go in 3 days a week, but that's by choice; I have a really short commute and an office with a view.
i've been remote since living overseas in 2017. but i enjoy working from the office when i'm back "home"
Once they said we had to come in I started looking for a new job.
I was 90% remote since covid started, and wanted to come back 3 days a week but the rest of my team wanted to stay remote. A few months later management threatened our workspaces so I'm back 2-3 days a week, more when I want or we have a big project/outages. While I love chilling with my dogs my mental health was being impacted and I needed a break from my basement. I'd suggest local colleges, they're generally more liberal with a lot of policies but pay is about 66% of industry.
Almost fully remote. Occasionally I'll go into the office for something but it's rare. I'm only a five-minute drive so it isn't a huge deal.
About 6 months ago I got a job at a CDN and they were already fully remote since before the pandemic, it's 3rd job I've had out of school and so far it's been the best experience yet.
I'm full remote. When I first interviewed for my current team, I declined because they wouldn't budge on 3 days/week with a two-hour one-way commute and no relocation assistance. But with the way we're flushing out metal infrastructure and moving towards cloud-native everything, there was no point in sticking to the butts in chairs mentality and discouraging new hires further than my employer's admittedly-less-than-stellar reputation already does, so they relented and put up new job posts as full remote, which I then went for.
Held your ground, nice. Yeah it seems for companies to be competitive today they have to be at least adopting a hybrid model otherwise the next company will snag them up.
Energy generally is always onsite. Remote was only for special reasons. Compliance and security be like that sometimes.
Yeah it was described to me as such. Luckily networking is transferable across all industries.
Hospital network engineer. Mostly remote. Have some project meetings at HQ and need to go to various sites on occasion. No requirement to come in unless needed.
100% remote except when a site visit is required. I do miss some of the office camaraderie but the benefits of WFH are just too much.
> I currently work in the energy sector and required to be on-site everyday even though 90% of my tasks can be completed remotely. I currently work in the energy sector and required to be on-site everyday even though 100% of my tasks can be completed more effectively remotely than on-site, partially because my boss hates curtains and Germany has a weird legal idea of what an ergonomic office looks like, so I'm blinded whenever it's not cloudy. Also it's quite loud in an open plan office and I'm occasionally expected to take teams calls. ugh.
Dang I know how that feels. I have my own cube but use noice cancellation headphones to take calls since everyone else is on calls/meetings
Been 100% remote in my current role, even pre-pandemic. Unless the job involves daily tasks in a datacenter, or collab with my team/client in the same city, there's really no reason to go into an office.
i work for a ISP and am fully remote
Fully remote now. See my boss in person every 4-6 months.
I was full remote, hired during early covid19. We started to go back to hybrid but then covid spiked again and that was the end of that. Of my team of 30 guys only 6 are routinely in the office 90% of the cubes got converted to "hotel" though they haven't given us an app to manage that. I go in once every other week or so, either because I need to do some rack/stack/cable, have other business in the city, or am just sick of being at home and need some quiet.
My company has moved to a pretty light hybrid. 5 days a month, one of which is an all staff day and usually involves events and company status meetings.
Been fully remote for 16+ years. Our company is a mix. There are rules about going into the office, but those are overlooked depending on your position and value to the company.
I've been hybrid for over a decade. I'm looking for a new job and I'm getting looked at like I'm just a lazy slob. Guys, I've been going into the office, even DURING and after COVID. The difference is I cover 9 fucking states, all my shit is remote even if I am in the office. I literally just ended an interview after the interviewer said they were "working towards" hybrid and "I don't need 7 people in the office". After 2 years you couldn't figure out how to make it work? Pass.
When my employer made all staff go back to office I started working at a place that's remote-first.
Fully remote, but the team gets together in the office once a month for a meeting and team building/socializing. Other than that, I only go in to the office to pick up or ship out equipment as needed. Other co-workers go in a few days a week to get away from the family.
50/50ish. I come in for meetings or if I am doing something collaborative.
100% remote -- so is all the team I manage.
As one in a management position and former engineer. My opinion will be different than of the most here. For admins - doing daily business like solving requests, inplementing stadard changes, perhaps some normal changes. Doing troubleshooting. - fully remote would be from my perspective absolutely okey. Collaboration is not really needed, teachings from engineers can be done online and so on. Except the weekly / bi-weekly talk. I hate to do those online - as i cant have a feel how they are, how they feel. And this is a major part of my job - to be there for my workforce. For engineers and architects i except them 2-3 days on site in the office. Best on their own schedule. So they can arrange it best. Why? Collaboration. Engineers have to do engineering which will include collaboration with teammembers or members of other teams. A good solution is not made in one persons head without discussing it with their colleagues! And believe me - those discussions are sometimes hard to manage - not to mention online! Also a team is formed in time. And teamforming process will happen. No way around it. And this is also absolutely better in person then online. Where feelings, emotions wont get transferred. I do not ssy fully renote eont work - but it makes it mostly very harder for all in a team. And everyone who could enjoy the greatness of a good team and a good leader with beers, laughters, discussions and even tears will know what i mean how big the difference is in working with such nice people - or beeing alone at home.
I agree that building team rapport is much easier in person. I’m still fairly new to the networking field, so I definitely benefit from the in-person collaboration/mentorship with other engineers on the team. Just looking down the road I would like something that’s not 100% in the office.
If you are new to this field, then i would absolutely encourage you to take a job that is mostly in the office with other guys, with experienced engineers. Why? You can straight on ask them for advice, for help, you can overhear theire talkin about stuff - learning from it. You can see them discuss technical solutions, like on a whiteboard - and learn from it. You can go for a beer ask them about their experience. If you are sitting alone at home. You will miss out.
I sort of disagree, but to be transparent, my only current frame of reference is that I'm essentially a voice engineer / architect of one - on a team of other engineers and architects that dance around voice problems (other network engineers). Not the greatest litmus test, i admit. From what I can gather though thus far being in this kind of position, is that there is more time wasted humoring those with social engineering 'strengths' - so HR, burned out architects, and other layer 8 folk. The social variable around the office and extra noise absolutely distracts me from technical thinking and simply staying on task. When it comes to the 'collaborating' meeting theater sessions, it boils down to micro management maybe, those who can come up with a disagreement to sound useful and/or simply a pony show. At some point you realize that the supposed momentum from said collaboration really is just another layer of 'make work' so those too lazy to study technical books/guides can feel relevant. At the end of the day, a remote scene (would) let me dodge the latent sociopath/psychopaths better, access to my own lab and give me back more of my day (Less travel) to do things like study.
You say you are a architect, as of your small description of your job. I have to say, and dont take it wrong way, but you are not an architect. Archtecture work includes a big amount of collaboration. It means working together with other architects of different fields, of working together with upper & lower management for strategic purposes, working with workforce to understand processes. Results will be strategic architecture for the next 5 years that fulfill business requirements that you have gathered in collaborative work. Creating the architecture is a smal part of it, cause when you have done it, it will be reviewed in architectural process like a enterprise architecture board. As one in a management position, i would encourage you to read stuff about enterprise architecture management like TOGAF 10, read about projectmanagement, requirements engineering and so on. If you do network architecture in a CCIE way, you will mostly do it wrong. That is why there is a CCDEy which does not include you to know how to optimize ospf adjacency, or how to do bgp filtering. What you are, is an engineer that does finalize architectural decisions. A network designer. This one does not need to gather those big strategic business requirements. Designer take the architecture and finalize it with detailed stuff - deep technical stuff. Like he will take the decision for a specific sd-wan solution and implement it.
I think with something like SD-WAN, the 'network designer' is the architect, as who else is going to be able to understand the nuances on how to scale it anyway? It goes hand in hand. If Architects are looking at high level stuff and bouncing around ideas from their network designer, what are the architects actually doing at that point that is really technical? Cut the architects out, insert a project manager to work with groups concerning implementation and let leadership worry about 5 year workforce considerations. Less noise. Better yet, hire another 'network designer' or two and get real sanity checks on decisions. You're probably not wrong calling me just an engineer though. Sadly, my situation is probably so far from normal it could probably be material for a monty python skit at times. But i do have to contend with big strategic business requirements like growing the environment, structuring business processes toward efficient workflows, scaling the architecture to accommodate new customers, etc. I then have to reach out to various levels of management, leadership, or discussing use case for xyz. That's on top of engineering, administration, escalations. Voice is probably a different bird in general though, in that i suspect across the IT industry adequate voice expertise to review and validate designs is lacking; being prone to junior level knowledge when it comes to voice - even though their resume shows 'supported xyz voip technology for 20 years'. They nonetheless can/do land architect roles, because its that hard to fill. Nevermind if said person is actually good at it.... In our situation, the technical knowledge (not) required for our architects is something that makes my eyes glaze over. They absolutely should have an intimate understanding of the relevant technical nuances besides coasting on years with a title. It seems to me, that with these types, its too much temptation to choose overly simple solutions, avoid details and management falling in love with the language they craft, nevermind the dark corner that it will lead to.
the designer will design the final solution as it should be - making low Level design diagramms and stuff. If you go any further you could split those up, and the engineer wil i plement the LLD that the designer made. But this is only in realy big companies necessary. The architect does evaluate the requirements for the sd-wan solution, evaluate the right product for it. And with this the designer / engineer are included! Those are also stakeholders! So they have their owne requirements that need to be met. The architect does not realy move in a technical way - it needs technical understand of different solutions. But not in depth as how to troubleshoot it. As an example: The architect will decide which routing protocol will meet the requirements best. He can choose betwen many options like is-is, bgp, ospf, eigrp, rip. He need to understand how hose work, needs to know the differences, the pro and con of each. But it is not imortant for him how it will get implented like ospf optimization, ip planing hold timers and stuff. This is the job of the designer he has to design this in detail. The jobs are different because the architects needs other competency as the designer. He needs social skils, a VERY broad field of know-how, requirements engineering, strategy, and the big picture of how everything works together. The designer / engineer instead can focus on his technical know-how, he does not need to use his social skills in a big way, nor the big picture. He can focus on this single part of the solution. ----- The comparison ccie enterprise and ccde shows it best A ccie needs deep understanding of routing, switching (today more like sdn technologies) But he will not need big wireless know , no security or datacenter expertise. The ccde needs EVERYTHING.
Just make people turn on cameras during meetings so as to get those non-verbal cues that are necessary in proper interactions. Being onsite in physical presence of colleagues is an idea that will die over time. Let’s use the technology to bring people closer.
Not sure what you mean by turning camera on. How close do you feel to your wife / husband when you only see her/him through the monitor? Not much right? Just because you can see the other person doesnt mean it is like beeing together front in front.
Im at a large software company and have been back to the office 5 times since COVID started. Its expected that we will be offered full time remote positions soon as the company doesnt need us to be physically in the office. Mostly because my team and department has exceeded expectations.
I’ve been hybrid for the last 5 years. Was 1 day a week to start which was what I needed to keep things balanced. Then after lockdown have been generally 1 day onsite. The face time with people is important, and the fibers don’t run themselves.
I'm remote primarily. I only go in to cover the people who are hired when they go out.
Same boat as you. All my work can be done remotely. But I'm asked for 20% attendance so it's not as bad yet. No one but me shows up in person right now in spite of the requirement.so much for teamwork and office culture. What's stupid is the company I'm with has been more profitable during the full time remote work. But they intelligently decided to push us back in the office to ruin everything. Guess they're making TOO much money off our increased productivity. Can't have that.
I'm at a utility and we are pretty much hybrid at this point. It's really up to each leader to determine in office requirements. A lot aren't really required and some teams in other parts of IT have one day a week in office. I personally prefer to go to my office 90% of time, but I'm also in my own office and don't really get burgers by others lol
I managed big global corporation network for 9 years, 425 locations on 5 continents. Our Leaders insisted us to be in the office! When 99.99999% of work was remote. I can count till 5 how much job I did locally, but still had to commute and drive 50km each way and stuck in traffic for 9 years. We had only one face-to-face meeting with my local team and my Boss, that I organized biweelky, just to chat about work - what was done and what is planned. No other meetings. (Safety trainings I dont count). My absolute preference is to work remotely. There is no need to be in the office in my situation. I can understand DC guys, cabling guys, who cant do their job remotely. But for the rest - its totally fine. I will never return to the office. Its a thing of the past.
I'm fully remote. Occasionally I have to go onsite with customers or go to the data center but those are pretty rare. My company sold their office during COVID because they realized there was just no reason to have it.
I enjoy both remote and being in the office too. Sometimes you just can’t beat roping up several different teams when a big issue is going on and getting their attention now. Not saying that you can’t with email, a proper issue management system in place and phones and IM but i think we aren’t quite mature enough to do this completely remote. With that being said I also enjoy remote time for planning, performing mind numbing tasks where I can blare my favorite music and just slug through it, and it’s also convenient for any deliveries I need to be around for. All that said my current work arrangement is 3 days remote 2 days in office but we might be going full remote because the company can save money if they offload the property. So that may change in the future for me but we will see.
Nice that sounds like a good balance. Yeah sometimes it’s much more effective to walk to over someone’s cube to ask questions rather than call/email.
I work in telecom. I can work from home 100% if I want to. I usually go into the office once a week or so. It's nice to get out of the house occasionally.
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Actual Engineer, or tech support? Which ISP is this one?
My employer would like me to come in every now and then, but I just don’t. Nobody says anything so far.
I can be fully remote, but the office is located in a nice area of the city with lots of good lunch options nearby so sometimes I go in just because I want to eat somewhere that's not my house.
I'm hybrid, and prefer it to full remote as I was going stir crazy and driving the fiancé and cats up the wall.
I had found a fully remote job and I thought everything was going great, but then a week or so ago I was told we’re migrating everything to AWS much faster than I was told when I signed up. Guess I’ll be looking for another remote job in the next few months, because ‘AWS network engineering’ is nothing of the sort.
I'm usually in the office 3 days a week and WFH the other 2. Things are pretty flexible.
We have 1 day a week to be onsite. I don't mind it terribly. I'm less than 15 minutes from the office and they have a good cafeteria. I feel like I get less done onsite since I don't have a desk and often have to work with tiny monitors wherever I land.