[TriLUG] OT: Hardware question

[Magnus]

Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> Call me hokey, but what're you doing at _home_ that you need a managed
> switch? I'm sure there are valid reasons, but... I'm curious... what's
> cookin?

I know the question wasn't pointed at me but I'll answer anyway because 
I'm in the same boat.

As a consultant, I float around from shop to shop whenever either myself 
or my client decides they don't feel the need to extend my contract 
another six months.  This has its ups and downs.

Right now I'm on contract with IBM.  I've been extended twice now.  It's 
a really great place to work, and I'm in one of the coolest parts of it 
for a Linux guy to work in, but the simple fact of life there is it is a 
HUUUGE company and they have TEAMS of people to do every little thing there.

At other shops, I have been expected to at least be comfortable figuring 
out how to get a cisco switch to do something useful like establish a 
VLAN or enable snmp.  Easy enough to do when I'm working in a smaller 
shop and have my hands dirty in a little bit of everything.

But at IBM, we have a whole team of Cisco specialists who do nothing but 
manage the switches, routers, and firewalls.  I'm not allowed to touch 
it myself.  So how do I keep from losing my Cisco comfort level all 
together?  I picked up a Cisco switch on eBay (relatively) cheaply and I 
tinker with it.

For those in cushy permanent jobs it might not make a lot of sense but 
when the closest thing to job security some of us have is a piece of 
paper saying "we think we will probably need you for six months but we 
reserve the right to terminate this agreement without cause or notice" 
there is some incentive to have these things at home to keep the 
otherwise neglected neurons firing for those skill sets likely to be 
called upon at future client sites.

-- 
"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory." - Bruce Lee's observations of 
people at TriLUG meetings who won't shut up and let the guest speaker talk