Who, me? Techie with three months' experience was sent in as the Cisco expert and proceeded to blow everything up
The real mistake here was probably sending someone so young to do the job
In a tale of a rookie tech worker, Martin shares his horrifying encounter with a customer's IT team. Fresh off the boat as a Cisco engineer, Martin was thrust into a client's network that utilized Nortel equipment instead of Cisco. Armed with his novice Cisco expertise, Martin arrived ready to tackle the task at hand.
With a warm welcome from the client's team and a complimentary cup of coffee, Martin set to work by configuring the switch, setting up VLANs, and connecting all the necessary components. However, his day took a disastrous turn when the phone rang, and the customer's team demanded to know if he had caused the problem.
The customer's network had fallen victim to over 4,000 AS/400 sessions dropping, and Martin knew he was the culprit. The incident was traced back to the new switch's spanning-tree settings, which interfered with the SNA over TCP/IP emulation used by the AS/400. In the ensuing hours, Martin's client's team worked tirelessly to manually restore the sessions, leaving Martin feeling deeply embarrassed.
Upon reflection, Martin realized that his managers were ultimately responsible for his mistake. They had labeled him "The Expert" without proper vetting, and he had been left unattended at a large client site. While he did not face immediate consequences, Martin vowed to learn from this experience and never again assume he knew everything about the tech he worked with.
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