Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I have run several tech companies and worked in some high performing team. My experience is more software development than network engineering but the two are similar.
Employees often overestimate the importance of technical skills. We need a few really technically competent people but most just need to be able to do their job. Many technically weak people have succeeded in the industry. Even productivity requirements are often not that high and as long as you are producing something on a regular basis you are fine.
My main issue with devs is the inability to think. Developers who get assigned tasks and only focus on those tasks going away always cause problems. Your job is not your assigned tasks and the goal is not to clear tasks. Your team has some higher goal. Maybe it is a new feature, maybe the company wants to build new infrastructure and increase network load 10x. Maybe they want to get some compliance certificate. You need to keep the actual goal in the back of your mind and question what you are doing and ensure that it is aligned with the actual goal.
It is mindboggling how many in tech have worked on a product for years and have zero clue how it works, what the clients are, what the product road map is or the what the value of what they are working on is.
Lets say you are working for a company that makes software for dentists. Some people will work on the booking flow for months without really having any sense of how the booking goes. Instead of actually thinking through things words like booking, patient or dentist become abstract words. For example a sentence like "A dentist can only work one shift a day", becomes "A zongzong can only wingwang one zong per wang". It is some obscure businessrule that they have memorized but has no concrete value or meaning.
Taking responsibility for the network is key to succeeding. Feel a sense of ownership over it. It is your job to ensure it is doing its job and that it is improving. This doesn't mean going rouge and doing your own thing, it means asking questions, coming with suggestions, finding better ways of doing things and protecting the interests of the users.
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