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Writer's pictureNicholas Calcutti
Dec 28, 20229 min read

My Career in 2022.


This year has been challenging for me but also a blessing. Over the last couple of years, I managed an IT department, ran full speed at projects and tasks, and coached a team that was asked to do many things quickly. The team always came through; we got together, made a plan each time, and burned the candle at both ends to get the job done. Trying to help my team's sanity, I did my best to block and tackle to make sure they were not being over-extended so they could take time with their families and ensure an effective work-life balance. Mid-way through last year, I realized that I was not taking care of my own needs, and I needed to reevaluate what I needed in my work-life balance. 2021 went, and 2022 began. I was in full tilt, feeling burnt out at my job. The tasks kept piling up, and the team was asked to deploy more technologies and features as we looked at a mountain of tech debt. We needed a project freeze, but that wasn't going to happen. Senior leadership and I didn't align anymore on the path forward from the department, and I knew it was time for me to look for what was next for me,



The problem was I didn't know what I wanted to do next. Stick with management, go back to individual contributor, Security role, Network role, or maybe Product Management, Project Management. I didn't have it narrowed down. Working with recruiters, I started on that path, but I also thought I should probably use my LinkedIn network for higher visibility when I look at these types of roles. I was hoping to talk to a few people and see how these roles function, the day-to-day activities, etcetera. Unfortunately, this led to my immediate departure from that place of employment. I couldn't believe that it had happened. I was in shock for a while over how I was let go; I didn't understand how or why they came to their reasonings since I was vocal with my leadership on how I felt, but because I didn't give them notice about my LinkedIn post they decided it was time for me to get serious about looking for a new role.



That is when I leaned into LinkedIn and the relationships I have made over the years. I had many recruiters and contacts reach out to assist in helping to place me, but still, the central issue I had was I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I had some cash to hold me over while I searched for work. I talked to a few people, who helped narrow it down. Also, time was a factor. I knew two months was not a lot of time to place for many companies because here you apply and hope they see your app and interview you, and I think the average turnaround was about 3-4 weeks if it went to an interview phase promptly. So I had a few interviews with a few companies, most of which were unofficial. I learned I was very good at talking myself out of a job because I was thinking in the interviewer's shoes. At one company, I said if I was in your position, I don't know if I would be the guy you hired at this juncture in your company. You would be better served with a network engineer with deep roots in ISP networks. Another company we talked about was looking for a security analyst role, but this one was more on the application side of things, and I didn't have relevant expertise in that area. I told them I won't be a good fit if that was what they needed. After a few more interviews and no solid hits, I was over a month in, and things didn't look well. I took my job search as a career; I worked 8+ hours a day, either applying for jobs, re-tooling my resume, contacting people, or building this website you see today. After two months of searching, I landed one offer. This is when the market was well for job seekers, but only one offer? I felt defeated. I had 6+ recruiters looking at roles for me. I talked to over a dozen other people about roles and leads and had them review my resume; the output after two months was only one offer. I have an M.S. degree in Information systems management and a few certs plus about ten years of Information Technology experience, and the output was one offer. That thought kept sticking in my brain. Was I not good enough? is my experience too scattered? Did I not follow enough advice from people I met? where did I fail? These questions kept swirling in my head and didn't do well for my self-worth. The offer wasn't bad, I wasn't losing much money going to an individual contributor role, but I had concerns about going to a smaller organization since I had a larger organization tell me In an interview I would be bored working for them and here I am accepting an offer for another company that was the same size as one department from my last job.


I accepted the offer, even though I felt slightly insulted by the basic study guide questions in the interview process. It seems to be a reoccurring theme when looking back and talking to others about the interviews they have been on. The basic gateway questions weed out people who don't know what they are talking about, but I can't entirely with this approach. Yes, there are some questions you can ask to gauge understanding of technology, but there are people who are sound network engineers or aspiring engineers who could not answer study guide questions but can configure a switch just fine and with best practices in mind. I could write another blog post on how interview questions should go. To keep it brief, ask questions to gauge their troubleshooting mind, not how many octets are in a subnet. During the phone interview, I was asked about ADSM for an ASA, and I had no clue, but I thought that was the VRF capability. Soon after trying to explain it, my brain said wait a minute, that's not right, and I stopped and said, you know, I don't know what that is right now, and that's when they came back and said, oh it is the GUI interface to manage the ASA. I had a duh moment and then said to the interviewer's yea, I used that at so and so company, but honestly, I never called it ASDM, just the GUI login or the piece of crap dashboard because products like Fortinet with HTML5-based management is way better to use than the ASDM that can be problematic. After blowing that question, I was called in for an onsite interview and accepted the offer as a Network Administrator.


Starting the new job, I didn't know how I would enjoy it since I was going from an infrastructure of 300 network devices down to about 25. I was underwhelmed and felt like I just took a huge step back in my career. I remember when I left one employer as a network security administrator to go and manage an IT department, my supervisor there said I would regret leaving the technical side so early and eventually would go back to technical. Ultimately he was right, I didn't want him to be correct, but in the end, he was. Luckily the group of people I work with is excellent, and the environment has little to no stress. So it was exactly what I needed after the ordeal and hell I went through.


I continued to grow and care for my needs. While looking for a new job, I fell back in love with learning new things and listening to podcasts myself with educational things to keep feeding my brain. Something that I haven't done in a while. I have slowly been doing the Full Stack developer course on code academy to learn coding practices and how that whole side of the tech world works. Finishing a software project gives me almost as much joy as configuring an entire network. In today's technology network, engineers are getting closer and closer to software devs with all the automation and infrastructure as code ideas that are now at the forefront of the field. Another reason why I started the Full Stack course Is that a lot of network engineer roles had programming languages on their requirements, and I knew none of them enough to be dangerous; I could read some scripts but build one, I would be lost, and google would have just made it more daunting. So driving around or lounging at the house, I started to listen to podcasts, and here are the podcasts I started to listen to feed my brain.


Books I have read or am reading towards the end of 2021; this year, this is only my professional and personal growth. I have many other fantasy and sci-fi books I read or listened to.


This doesn't include certification study guidebooks, but they are below.

Looking at 2023, I wonder what is next for my career. Have I figured out what I want to do next? The answer is maybe. I know what roles I want to pursue and in what environments. For example, if I went to another networking role, I would like to be on a team of network engineers to gain more knowledge from others since I have mainly always been the only networking person in the room. I would love to have someone say no, Nick; that is not how I would do that look at it this way. A security-focused role would also be rewarding, whether an analyst looking at alarms and managing vulnerabilities or writing policy and looking for gaps in risk coverage. Recently listening to the Art of network engineering podcast, they had a panel on Technical Marketing Engineer, and in that episode, they also went over Sales Engineering and Product Managers. All three of these roles sparked my interest. I knew about sales engineers from talking to other SEs before, but TME and Product manager were in the same wheelhouse, and I would love to do any of those roles. So this year, I will work on landing one of these roles unless I find another position in networking or security that is just too tempting to pass up. I will also take the CISSP and keep taking it until I pass It this year, whether I am in a security role or not because I want to get it. I am going to finish the Codecademy Full Stack Dev course, it's fun, and I know it will give me skills I will use, or at least when I talk to people in software development, I can have an idea of what they are talking about. I recently found TryHackMe.com and have done enough rooms there to be top 4% ranked. The modules are rewarding, and many of the tasks there are some college courses I took in my bachelor's program before they created a cybersecurity degree program there. As for this blog, I will use it more. Writing about this year's experience has been very therapeutic, and I like to talk about things. I will keep posting topics or my progress on my goals.


To the people who helped me this year when I was unemployed, thank you for all you did for me; it meant a lot to have the phone calls. I was a lost ship in the sea and didn't know how to go. Thank you to those who read this, and let me know how you enjoyed this read.








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