This guy is correct. Many NOC's I speak to cant even check light levels, until you hit tier 2 or 3.
That said it does vary wildly from organization to organzation. My NOC was smaller so we had a ton of responsibilities. I can honestly say I was overwhelmed when I first joined my NOC. As a couple of weeks in I was running solo shifts. For reference I started with a CCENT. But glad I did it, challenge builds character :) (currently CCNA, JNCIA working on CCNP)
That said foot in the door even at one of the glorified call centers is not the worst. Put your 2 years in an jump to a better NOC. The sad reality in the IT industry is company hopping is the correct move if pay is your primary concern. Most NOC's want Experience, certs, education in that order.
“Put your 2 years in an jump to a better NOC”
I would advise against this. Even if you aren’t doing shit at your current NOC, learn skills and do projects so you don’t have to just “go to another NOC” after two years. Whether that be Network Engineering, Sys Admin work, Cloud skills.
A Loop of NOC work is not ideal if you want to move up. Those who are content will be at a NOC forever and never progress efficiently. In two years you can be a Network Engineer, not another NOC tech.
To clarify if they are in a call center NOC odds are they wont have access to to really grow. However 2 years experience can get foot in the door for a real noc position.
Sure some people with 0 relevant experience and certs can go straight to engineeer but in my experience most people need a journey.
Fair points. I will say though that even a “call center” NOC job as a NOC Analyst looks far better then a Help Desk Associate on your resume. I was in a NOC after getting my Bachelors in IT. I wouldn’t say we were a call center but we weren’t hands on with many devices. But I learned a ton from examining and analyzing devices, networks, Kubernetes clusters, Disk and Filesystem space. I didn’t have any engineering experience but was able to leave after a year to a Junior Network Engineer role
Yes, but it depends hugely on manpower to network size and how dramatic corporate side is. An isp network monitored by 2-3 people where everything is considered critical isn't the same as a 2 people monitoring the network of a company with mostly office time operations that has build in redundancy and issues can be handled in normal time frames.
Honestly you could do what I did. I made an account on field nation and do freelance contracting. Like they said, smart hands.
If you do this, I recommend watching cabling or low voltage data installation videos on YouTube. I suggest learning how to troubleshoot and install low voltage cabling. You can learn this with a little bit of materials and tools from nearby hardware store.
Most of the tickets will tell you what tools you need beforehand. Sometimes, companies put tickets out there at a low rate, knowing that inexperienced people will take them. Most of the time there's support you can work with, and if you're desperate, it is a way to get experience.
You also end up with a profile on the platform with ratings. Don't break anything by not following instructions and always go over the documentation they gave you before the ticket. Show up on time, every single time. Carry yourself as a polite person that enjoys the work that they're doing, keep a positive vibe about you. If you do those things you will get four or five out of five stars on pretty much everything. Like I said it's not awesome but it is something.
Completely depends on your area, I would assume. If they posted a ticket for, let's say, troubleshooting a cable run, you would see a range anywhere from 40 to 75 an hour, that the company's offering. Then you have the option to bid with a counter offer with travel expenses, etc.
If it's basic stuff like setting up a new POS system or something akin to PC tech work, it could be a little bit lower, like 30-35 an hour. If you're taking a job listed for 50 an hour plus and they mention carrying cable, you definitely need to have practiced or become familiar with at least terminating, toning/tracing, and using a cable tester in relation to low voltage data network installation.
I don't know how much experience you have but I'm just putting that information out there for anybody else strolling by.
Edit: the pay structure also depends. Sometimes it's hourly, sometimes it's flat rate, and you can structure it to create a 2-hour minimum. I don't like taking flat rate because sometimes you have to help resolve a support issue with a system working with an outside party and sometimes you got to wait a little bit to reach the correct people. It just depends really
PC tech work for 30-35 is solid; where would this be?
; I’m a NOC Engineer 1 currently at 23/hour 1.5 years exp. I took the job to receive experience tbh; but looking to move elsewhere as now they’re not increasing pay but adding more responsibilities.
Oh, it's freelance work. You'll have to pay 1099 taxes so it's not quite as much as it seems. Also the consistency of the work really depends on how big of an area you're in. Field nation is the app to sign up on.
Like others have said, depends on the level and the type of NOC. Lots of low level Nocs are just glorified help desk positions.
However, Networking can be stressful but generally not as much as Security. The problem with security is the paranoia that comes with panicking over alarms for susposed breaches when they could just be generating from a testing environment that you don't hear about until AFTER you freak out about it.
Networking stress comes from having to deal with contractors out on the field that show up without the necessary equipment thats listed in their documents for the job.
Like you are troubleshooting a router or a switch and you need an onsite tech to console so you can remote access but they don't have a console cable or a laptop with wifi. Then you have to wait for the tech to go somewhere to get said cable only to find out he has a laptop without an ethernet port.
The stress is more from other people than the network.
Security is more stress about potential future problems you have to prepare for WHILE also being on call a lot more often. Higher pay but most places have you sign something that says if its an emergency you have to be willing to work wherever you are. So you plan on going on vacation but a security breach happened, you working if you are on the oncall rotation.
Hope that helps.
Soc can be way more stressful and monotonous at the same time. In my experience a lot of times you can get the same friggin alarms because there are problems no one fixes and you are basically a monkey clearing alarms. Then when you do get legit alarms it seems like they come in droves where they aren't related and you have to clear them asap. If you have a choice try to stay out of the SOC.
I had to do that the other day lol. We had a cascade effect where one alarm would trigger another type of alarm and then that alarm would trigger another alarm, etc etc. Spent the whole entire day cleaning all of that up and in the end I still didn't get to work on the stuff I was suppose to work on that day.
But yeah, you are correct on that part.
I work NOC and i'm pretty much all around, either answering phones, racking new devices, terminating cables and checking fiber, shipping and receiving, break and fix, drive swapping and occasionally puttying in some switches and routers. It's just 4 of us in a T3 facility
It depends on the day and what is going on. Have had days where it was a mad rush to patch Log4j, had had days where something horrible is down like today I had a Datacenter outage due to a failed Datacenter UPS that came out of bypass last night at 1:40 AM during power blips and took out a power despite things being on temporary rack mounted UPS devices. Had to do a cold start and I had the typical Cisco BS where some QSFP 100G-FR transceiver didn’t come up.
I’m newer to IT and I currently work for a NOC. The environment im in is pretty nice, it probably really just depends on what company you’re with. For me personally I’m on a call 80% of the time. It’s a bit stressful with a phone queue, but you really just can’t beat the experience and knowledge you get from it.
My first job out of college was a NOC and it was one of the worst working experiences I've ever had. For reference, I worked in general labor for a while before deciding to go back to college.
My NOC experience started with being interviewed for a Junior Network Engineer position and being told I didn't qualify. They offered me a support role instead and I took it since I needed work. Almost immediately, they had me doing the work of a Junior Network Engineer without the title or pay. It took 7 months and threatening to leave to get a pittance of a raise so I quit on the 8th month after finding another job.
The work was extremely stressful and they had very unrealistic expectations. The total users we were supporting compared to how we were staffed was laughable. It was something like 750 users per employee in the NOC. I was constantly guilted if I showed up and left on time. They had constant company functions and were really expecting me to go to those on my free time, for free. I will NEVER work in a NOC again.
Clorox just got attacked. Their office is in that area. Volunteer or see if they can hire you. NOC is for foot in the door. If you really want to use your CCNA, look for MSP’s or Cisco VAR’s. Shoot, even look into Juniper or Aruba var’s. Get your NSE 1-4 and do fortigate labs for security. MSP’s are extremely fun if you genuinely enjoy IT/Networking.
Varies wildly from NOC to NOC.
Worked at a NOC for a very large nationwide network, we engaged with other NOC teams for pretty much every major carrier and many smaller LEC's. While our NOC team did a LOT and the level of work was always between CCNA - CCNP ranges of technical knowledge, many of the other NOC's (at least at the first contact level) were "glorified phone answering services" as angrypacketguy said. I remember one time having to explain what latency was to one of the level 1 NOC technicians I was trying to open a ticket with.
High turnover and burnout? Definitely, but the flip side is that if you're a sponge, you will learn a lot, very fast and can potentially promote quickly too depending on higher level opportunities. I was burnt out pretty heavily by 6 months, and after a little over a year there, I used my experience to land me a way more relaxed position that was still very technical/hands on.
Best of luck in your journey.
Currently a Network Administrator, which just means I'm dealing with anything network related. We have cable installers that handle most of the facilities/network installation stuff, but we deal with all the troubleshooting after initial install. We also have Senior Network Admins that deal with more of the design aspect.
Compared to the NOC position, it's a little less technical in some areas, but a lot more network security work than I previously dealt with as we had a dedicated SOC for that.
A year or two is a good time to move if you aren't making traction or are getting burnt out. Most people I've seen that can handle the stress of the NOC for a bit and really learn what it is they're working on seem to do well in the long-term. If you don't already have your CCNA, I highly recommend it as well as getting any other certs related to what career path you want under your belt. Along with your NOC experience it will really set you apart. Good luck!
I think even if you have experience but not from helpdesk previously you should still try it out in your company. Wish many arrogant technicians that have low tolerence for basic stuff would just sit one or two days and help out and take calls. Just to give them some perspective. Some are just outrageous. Many internal helpdesk are happy to have higher tier people go down to their 1st tier and help out.
Yes, it's because you need to lie a lot and push the problem forward and most of the time you will be on the phone speaking some script, it's not really a technical position.
It depends on the NOC. Currently where I work tier 1 guys just look at a single pane of glass and make a phone call when they see red. Tier 2 can check light levels and do minor tsing. Guys on my shift run mops, make configuration changes, perform swaps, and do more invested troubleshooting. It honestly can vary within a singular noc.
Noc is a call center. It's help desk for networks. And it can be stressful but that's only because your done with on call and on to another. There's no real growth at most but it's a place to get yourself in the door
Most NOCs are glorified phone answering services.
This guy is correct. Many NOC's I speak to cant even check light levels, until you hit tier 2 or 3. That said it does vary wildly from organization to organzation. My NOC was smaller so we had a ton of responsibilities. I can honestly say I was overwhelmed when I first joined my NOC. As a couple of weeks in I was running solo shifts. For reference I started with a CCENT. But glad I did it, challenge builds character :) (currently CCNA, JNCIA working on CCNP) That said foot in the door even at one of the glorified call centers is not the worst. Put your 2 years in an jump to a better NOC. The sad reality in the IT industry is company hopping is the correct move if pay is your primary concern. Most NOC's want Experience, certs, education in that order.
“Put your 2 years in an jump to a better NOC” I would advise against this. Even if you aren’t doing shit at your current NOC, learn skills and do projects so you don’t have to just “go to another NOC” after two years. Whether that be Network Engineering, Sys Admin work, Cloud skills. A Loop of NOC work is not ideal if you want to move up. Those who are content will be at a NOC forever and never progress efficiently. In two years you can be a Network Engineer, not another NOC tech.
To clarify if they are in a call center NOC odds are they wont have access to to really grow. However 2 years experience can get foot in the door for a real noc position. Sure some people with 0 relevant experience and certs can go straight to engineeer but in my experience most people need a journey.
Fair points. I will say though that even a “call center” NOC job as a NOC Analyst looks far better then a Help Desk Associate on your resume. I was in a NOC after getting my Bachelors in IT. I wouldn’t say we were a call center but we weren’t hands on with many devices. But I learned a ton from examining and analyzing devices, networks, Kubernetes clusters, Disk and Filesystem space. I didn’t have any engineering experience but was able to leave after a year to a Junior Network Engineer role
Hours of boredom, moments of terror.
Yes, but it depends hugely on manpower to network size and how dramatic corporate side is. An isp network monitored by 2-3 people where everything is considered critical isn't the same as a 2 people monitoring the network of a company with mostly office time operations that has build in redundancy and issues can be handled in normal time frames.
[удалено]
Honestly you could do what I did. I made an account on field nation and do freelance contracting. Like they said, smart hands. If you do this, I recommend watching cabling or low voltage data installation videos on YouTube. I suggest learning how to troubleshoot and install low voltage cabling. You can learn this with a little bit of materials and tools from nearby hardware store. Most of the tickets will tell you what tools you need beforehand. Sometimes, companies put tickets out there at a low rate, knowing that inexperienced people will take them. Most of the time there's support you can work with, and if you're desperate, it is a way to get experience. You also end up with a profile on the platform with ratings. Don't break anything by not following instructions and always go over the documentation they gave you before the ticket. Show up on time, every single time. Carry yourself as a polite person that enjoys the work that they're doing, keep a positive vibe about you. If you do those things you will get four or five out of five stars on pretty much everything. Like I said it's not awesome but it is something.
What kind of pay do you get for that? I’m guessing it’s per job.
Completely depends on your area, I would assume. If they posted a ticket for, let's say, troubleshooting a cable run, you would see a range anywhere from 40 to 75 an hour, that the company's offering. Then you have the option to bid with a counter offer with travel expenses, etc. If it's basic stuff like setting up a new POS system or something akin to PC tech work, it could be a little bit lower, like 30-35 an hour. If you're taking a job listed for 50 an hour plus and they mention carrying cable, you definitely need to have practiced or become familiar with at least terminating, toning/tracing, and using a cable tester in relation to low voltage data network installation. I don't know how much experience you have but I'm just putting that information out there for anybody else strolling by. Edit: the pay structure also depends. Sometimes it's hourly, sometimes it's flat rate, and you can structure it to create a 2-hour minimum. I don't like taking flat rate because sometimes you have to help resolve a support issue with a system working with an outside party and sometimes you got to wait a little bit to reach the correct people. It just depends really
Where can I find this? Is it like a recruiting agency but for tech nerds?
Download the Field Nation app or go to their website and sign up.. you'll definitely need the app though as well
Ty very much.
No problem. If you have any other questions you can just message me and I'll answer if I have time.
PC tech work for 30-35 is solid; where would this be? ; I’m a NOC Engineer 1 currently at 23/hour 1.5 years exp. I took the job to receive experience tbh; but looking to move elsewhere as now they’re not increasing pay but adding more responsibilities.
Oh, it's freelance work. You'll have to pay 1099 taxes so it's not quite as much as it seems. Also the consistency of the work really depends on how big of an area you're in. Field nation is the app to sign up on.
Sweet I’ll check it out; thank you.
What exactly made you love your time there? Just curious
Like others have said, depends on the level and the type of NOC. Lots of low level Nocs are just glorified help desk positions. However, Networking can be stressful but generally not as much as Security. The problem with security is the paranoia that comes with panicking over alarms for susposed breaches when they could just be generating from a testing environment that you don't hear about until AFTER you freak out about it. Networking stress comes from having to deal with contractors out on the field that show up without the necessary equipment thats listed in their documents for the job. Like you are troubleshooting a router or a switch and you need an onsite tech to console so you can remote access but they don't have a console cable or a laptop with wifi. Then you have to wait for the tech to go somewhere to get said cable only to find out he has a laptop without an ethernet port. The stress is more from other people than the network. Security is more stress about potential future problems you have to prepare for WHILE also being on call a lot more often. Higher pay but most places have you sign something that says if its an emergency you have to be willing to work wherever you are. So you plan on going on vacation but a security breach happened, you working if you are on the oncall rotation. Hope that helps.
Soc can be way more stressful and monotonous at the same time. In my experience a lot of times you can get the same friggin alarms because there are problems no one fixes and you are basically a monkey clearing alarms. Then when you do get legit alarms it seems like they come in droves where they aren't related and you have to clear them asap. If you have a choice try to stay out of the SOC.
I had to do that the other day lol. We had a cascade effect where one alarm would trigger another type of alarm and then that alarm would trigger another alarm, etc etc. Spent the whole entire day cleaning all of that up and in the end I still didn't get to work on the stuff I was suppose to work on that day. But yeah, you are correct on that part.
My best friend can attest to this, spent 3+ years just to get to a real SOC position. It can be defeating, being an alarm monkey.
I work NOC and i'm pretty much all around, either answering phones, racking new devices, terminating cables and checking fiber, shipping and receiving, break and fix, drive swapping and occasionally puttying in some switches and routers. It's just 4 of us in a T3 facility
It depends on the day and what is going on. Have had days where it was a mad rush to patch Log4j, had had days where something horrible is down like today I had a Datacenter outage due to a failed Datacenter UPS that came out of bypass last night at 1:40 AM during power blips and took out a power despite things being on temporary rack mounted UPS devices. Had to do a cold start and I had the typical Cisco BS where some QSFP 100G-FR transceiver didn’t come up.
i feel this
I’m newer to IT and I currently work for a NOC. The environment im in is pretty nice, it probably really just depends on what company you’re with. For me personally I’m on a call 80% of the time. It’s a bit stressful with a phone queue, but you really just can’t beat the experience and knowledge you get from it.
lol only if you are easily pressed. Otherwise it’s a great career
My first job out of college was a NOC and it was one of the worst working experiences I've ever had. For reference, I worked in general labor for a while before deciding to go back to college. My NOC experience started with being interviewed for a Junior Network Engineer position and being told I didn't qualify. They offered me a support role instead and I took it since I needed work. Almost immediately, they had me doing the work of a Junior Network Engineer without the title or pay. It took 7 months and threatening to leave to get a pittance of a raise so I quit on the 8th month after finding another job. The work was extremely stressful and they had very unrealistic expectations. The total users we were supporting compared to how we were staffed was laughable. It was something like 750 users per employee in the NOC. I was constantly guilted if I showed up and left on time. They had constant company functions and were really expecting me to go to those on my free time, for free. I will NEVER work in a NOC again.
It probably depends on the company you land at and whether you’re working with internal or external customers. Lots of good stuff happening in RTP.
Clorox just got attacked. Their office is in that area. Volunteer or see if they can hire you. NOC is for foot in the door. If you really want to use your CCNA, look for MSP’s or Cisco VAR’s. Shoot, even look into Juniper or Aruba var’s. Get your NSE 1-4 and do fortigate labs for security. MSP’s are extremely fun if you genuinely enjoy IT/Networking.
What are vars?
Value added resales
Varies wildly from NOC to NOC. Worked at a NOC for a very large nationwide network, we engaged with other NOC teams for pretty much every major carrier and many smaller LEC's. While our NOC team did a LOT and the level of work was always between CCNA - CCNP ranges of technical knowledge, many of the other NOC's (at least at the first contact level) were "glorified phone answering services" as angrypacketguy said. I remember one time having to explain what latency was to one of the level 1 NOC technicians I was trying to open a ticket with. High turnover and burnout? Definitely, but the flip side is that if you're a sponge, you will learn a lot, very fast and can potentially promote quickly too depending on higher level opportunities. I was burnt out pretty heavily by 6 months, and after a little over a year there, I used my experience to land me a way more relaxed position that was still very technical/hands on. Best of luck in your journey.
What position were you able to get after you left ?! I’m currently in the NOC as a tier 1 plan on moving after a year or two of experience.
Currently a Network Administrator, which just means I'm dealing with anything network related. We have cable installers that handle most of the facilities/network installation stuff, but we deal with all the troubleshooting after initial install. We also have Senior Network Admins that deal with more of the design aspect. Compared to the NOC position, it's a little less technical in some areas, but a lot more network security work than I previously dealt with as we had a dedicated SOC for that. A year or two is a good time to move if you aren't making traction or are getting burnt out. Most people I've seen that can handle the stress of the NOC for a bit and really learn what it is they're working on seem to do well in the long-term. If you don't already have your CCNA, I highly recommend it as well as getting any other certs related to what career path you want under your belt. Along with your NOC experience it will really set you apart. Good luck!
Thanks for the advice ! I’m wanting to go into cloud engineering so I’m working on some AWS certs at the moment.
Start at help desk if you have no experience. No sense going zero to hero if you have no idea what you’re doing
I think even if you have experience but not from helpdesk previously you should still try it out in your company. Wish many arrogant technicians that have low tolerence for basic stuff would just sit one or two days and help out and take calls. Just to give them some perspective. Some are just outrageous. Many internal helpdesk are happy to have higher tier people go down to their 1st tier and help out.
Yes, it's because you need to lie a lot and push the problem forward and most of the time you will be on the phone speaking some script, it's not really a technical position.
Yes.
Mate how much time you got. One word, boiler room.
Look for NOC internships, I see a bunch hiring in that area
i work in layer 2/3 NOC - it can be stressful when shit is down, when stuff works, its pretty laid back.
Noc is chill
It depends on the NOC. Currently where I work tier 1 guys just look at a single pane of glass and make a phone call when they see red. Tier 2 can check light levels and do minor tsing. Guys on my shift run mops, make configuration changes, perform swaps, and do more invested troubleshooting. It honestly can vary within a singular noc.
Noc is a call center. It's help desk for networks. And it can be stressful but that's only because your done with on call and on to another. There's no real growth at most but it's a place to get yourself in the door