I have been a network engineer at Amazon for 6 years and lately realized that I am just getting sucked into solving small problems here and there and do not feel like my knowledge is growing or my career is heading anywhere. Any solution I design for a problem is developed by an SDE and gets the overall credit. I have been coding little bit but not to an extent on building a complete feature but only integrating new solution with automation tools, deploying them globally etc basically shitty python code to get some of my work done. I see all these other job titles here in blind like SRE, production engineer etc etc at Facebook/Google. Are they better than what network engineers do at Amazon? Any successful experienced Network engineer here to shed some light on how to grow to next level ? Should I invest more time on learning to code better and jump the boat to become a full time SDE? Also looking for some details on what are the different rounds of interview in Facebook/Google for network engineer? TC 200k Happy Thanksgiving! Update: I am still a network engineer but another company and my current TC is $500K. Hybrid network environment where it connects all cloud providers and I get to work on VPC etc. On prem data centers building GPU clusters and solving typical clos problems with automation. People who visit this thread often, it’s time to quit Amazon and try out new things out there. I should have quit at max 4 yrs but stayed 8. Had personal issues going on so had to stick around that long.
DM me
Hi, Can i Dm for some advice too?
Can I DM for some advice please?
Seems like a lot of Network guys are going to SRE/DevOps roles or specialty Network Development Engineering, at least in larger companies. Its a very valuable skillset considering most devs don’t know jack sht about networking and the ones that do tend to avoid it
"the ones that do, tend to avoid it" -- guilty as charged 🤣 In fact, I just learnt "Infrastructure as Code" and while I generally pick up new technologies and code stacks pretty quickly by self-learning, this one was so hard as fk to wrap my head around, that I had to borrow a good three to four hours of an expert just to get a simple Terraform configuration working! I mean, if I can get away with doing everything on AWS web console I would!!! Hats off to the experts in this field!
Gfb is spot on. You can no longer rest on Just traditional network knowledge. Python automation along with SRE and cloud knowledge is fundamental. Most SWEs don’t know much about networking and often are not interested in learning it. OP if you are interested in making a move, I’m hiring. PM if interested for details.
I’m a Sr SRE at FAANG (under cover here). I was initially a network engineer for 7Y who moved to a mid level SRE role within the same company and that’s the best thing I did. Network Engineering vacancies reduced significantly in the last couple of years and in contrast SRE/Platform Engineer positions sky rocketed. Network engineers earn a fraction of what SREs make because of high demand low supply and even as a network engineer nowadays, you still have to learn most of the things you have to in order to become SRE. Modern network engineer today has to know source code management control (git) and Ansible/Python. For SRE, you just need to learn Kubernetes and Linux on top of what you already know, but a lot of network engineers I know of already know Linux so it’s just a matter of ramping up Python skills and learning Kubernetes which was exactly what I did. When I first became SRE, I landed on a “mid level SRE” role due to no previous SRE experience but had a bump of 25% TC over my previous network engineer role. Once I got the hang of it, I moved to a senior SRE position with a bump of 110% TC over my previous mid level SRE role (not kidding). I had another bump by moving to a different company of 60% TC over my previous company so the sky is the limit dude.
So do you still do any networking stuff within SRE? If not, do you miss networking?
Can you share the TC progression
- Learn Python - Get familiar with all of the cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) networking products and features - Related to the above, look to blend your networking knowledge in the context of infrastructure (i.e., Using your skill sets to enhance the connectivity of production resources to each other, and your end users.).
SRE way to go +1
We have lots of “network engineers” In Cisco Umbrella. They’re really SRE, but they solve lots of network problems. Its same protocols, but linux networking, python, terraform, other stuff. AWS, GCP, cloud provider scale problems. If you cant do all that you aren’t a useful network engineer in this group.
Following, i am on same boat like you
Network Engineer here, what i can tell you from experience is that you have 3 paths, either go SRE (which is a good thing to do honestly) or go towards architecture, and the last way is cloud
I would like to hear from SRE engineers in google, can you list most have skill sets for SRE in google ?
Check LinkedIn in for such people at google
Feel your pain there. Our roles are all migrating to "NDE". I've seen a lot of us just moving on to be SREs to be honest. I can't officially recommend it because I haven't done it, but it sure seems better than what you're doing now.
What is NDE?
Yes, I am trying to learn more about SRE job role. There seem to be good potential to grow here from what I know so far. @gaes85 NDE is Network Development Engineer.