Case Studies

NAME : Victor Solaz Hernandez   NATIONALITY : Spanish   UNIVERSITY ATTENDEND : Universidad Politechnica De Valencia   DEGREE OBTAINED : Bachelor in Computer Science   AGE : 27   JOB TITLE : Customer Support Engineer

 

Since I finished my degree in computer science, I have had a clear idea about what I want to do in my professional career: go as far as I can in the networking arena. Since I had my first contact with the Internet itself almost 10 years ago, I knew that this was my real passion.

 

I had worked in other jobs and with each move I was lucky enough to become closer to what I liked most. With around 5 years of real networking experience, I was already thinking of taking my next step.

 

But at that moment I was not even dreaming of applying to a company like Cisco. For any networking professional, working at the Cisco TAC is seen as the top from a technology point of view.

 

By chance I happened to find out about the assessment event, and I applied for it.

 

The assessment day was challenging in the sense that they are not only testing your technical skills, but also your troubleshooting skills when facing problems. There was a lot of work to be done and it was a long day.

 

However, the experience was really nice, as it is an opportunity to get to know Cisco and the TAC; the interviews were conducted in a friendly atmosphere and I was really feeling good throughout the day and was willing to do my best.

 

In my first months at Cisco I was impressed by the huge amount of information you have at your hands and which you are supposed to assimilate. The number of new things you have to learn at the beginning in order to align to the standard level is astonishing.

 

However, you have many other experienced TAC engineers who you can ask for help and who will give you the right answers for sure. It is amazing the volume of knowledge that your co-workers can share with you. The initial effort is really worthwhile when you see your progress and it is very easy to go forward in this work environment.

 

Something really remarkable about Cisco is, again, the potential of knowledge sharing and open communication in the company. Everybody can communicate to everyone by many different means, no matter what is the level of experience of each of them. For instance, you can be working peer to peer and ask questions to one of the engineers who developed the Cisco 12000 Internet core router.

 

Also, the incredible number of available resources and growth possibilities is one of the things that make you think this is a great company to work for.

 

At this moment my main goals are becoming a CCIE and learning as much as I can. Sometimes learning at Cisco can be compared to drinking from a fire hose!

 

The Cisco TAC is a great place to work for anybody who likes networks in general and wants to have unlimited learning and development in this area.

 

In my view a successful TAC engineer should have a good general troubleshooting methodology and be open to all possibilities. Also very important is an empirical outlook and an interest in learning.