Hello,
Quick Background, I recently graduated as a CCE engineer specialized in Networking/Telecom (this is the name of the degree much more grandioso than actually how much knowledge I have in the industry), I was capable of landing a junior position in a local ISP where my day is divided into , corporate work, processing and responding directly to customers Issues by email or phone, and technical work, routing IP's and VLANs between switches and routers mainly and sometimes I experiment in creating an OSPF, understand traceroutes, DNS records, Fiber modem configs, MW unit installation with there PoE different make and model, Email servers, testing towards international locations, and a little bit of Firewall which I want to learn more about.
I know that being a network engineer is more than that and I want to land better job and gain more experiences in the future, but there is a saying in the company that I hate where seniors say "once you start working in an ISP you can't go work in different industries your only option is finding another ISP" which I don't believe at all.
I started working in the company 6 months ago as my first professional job, the pay is bad but the experience is great (great team, a lot of customer interactions, work under pressure and learning how to be able to work fast and efficiently), and the good thing is that they have a budget for training, my plan is to give it one more year, get the CCNA on there dime maybe try to complete as well a Firewall certification or the CCNP, I don't mind working a 9 to 5 and continue studying for a certification from 6 till 9. I am 26 and I consider the next 4-6 years as my golden years career wise,
Can anyone advise from there experiences if my short term plan is good/possible and please any recommendation about what should I do after getting the certifications, where should I start looking for a job, what industries might be a good option to look into, Thanks in advance and if I am being delusional let me know,
Source: r/ccna · by /u/Kube00