Cats. In sinks. – Adventures in Network Engineering

By Eric Hanson
When I got out of the military in late 2000, I came to Austin to make my riches in the tech world. I got here just in time to see the tech bubble burst.
Fortunately, I was able to sign on with a law firm in one of its remote offices as the network administrator/trainer/helpdesk/whatever they needed done. I thought it would be a nice secure job because, as we all know, everyone needs lawyers.
For the first three years, I got to do some really challenging stuff. The firm converted from Novell to Active Directory, and from GroupWise and WordPerfect to Exchange and Office – and everything was going great. I was learning a ton of new technologies and working a ton of overtime (which equated to tons of money!).
Once we got everything done, though, management started isolating the different offices, and started giving us less and less to do. Our role changed from network administration to helpdesk. There were very few projects handed down so needless to say, I got very bored telling people, “reboot your computer.” Very little came across my desk that I hadn’t seen before, so I began surfing the Internet.
This Internet surfing turned into a job search; eventually, I sent out resumes and went on interviews. I was offered a new job with a new title (and new money) at a new law firm. I gave two weeks’ notice and much to my amazement, my current law firm countered, offering to match the new pay and title with the promise of more assignments. I accepted and everything was great, especially with the large pay raise. But less than a year and two small projects later, I found myself right back where I started… “Hello, help desk?”… “Ok, try rebooting your computer.”
So it was back to the Internet for me. I visited every Web site you could possibly buy from, like Craigslist and Ebay, and read every article on Slashdot. I believe it was when I discovered The Onion that I also discovered “Cats in Sinks.”
I thought, there really wasn’t a Web site that featured nothing but pictures of cats in sinks. I thought, maybe it was code for something else… or a joke. Nope, it was cats in sinks. Nothing but cats in sinks. Nearly 60 clicks later I finally resigned myself to the fact that there was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. I realized that I had come to the very end of the Internet superhighway, and there was nowhere else to go.
Frustrated, I talked to my office manager, who pretty much told me there wasn’t much more for me to do there, and that I’d probably be working the help desk for the rest of my time at the law firm.
So I took a big risk, and left a stable career to take a contract job, which meant that if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid, and I didn’t eat. This move was all about the challenge – I was doing absolutely nothing at the law firm. I loved the new job – I was back to doing real work everyday. I didn’t necessarily like the work, but it kept me busy, and I was learning stuff again – I’d come in at 8:00 AM and before I knew it, it would be time to go home.
Toward the end of the contract, I began looking for a new job and found one at NetQoS where I get to work toward a goal and learn a lot more about networking and performance. That’s one of the big things about my job that gets me in everyday before my boss.
This brings me back to the cat in sinks part of my story. Companies often think they can throw money and benefits at people and they will be happy. However, as I found out, money isn’t always the great motivator or a cure-all.
Companies also tend to take this approach with networks. If there is a problem, buy a new server, a new router, more bandwidth; no matter what the issue is, money should fix it. As with my story, money might help but unless you figure out the root cause of an issue, money is only a temporary fix. Until you fully understand the issue and its cause, no matter how much money you throw at it, you still end up with cats in sinks.
Eric Hanson is a trainer in technical communications at NetQoS and recently taught the NetFlow certification course at the 2007 NetQoS symposium.