Failed attempt to become Network Engineer

I always wanted to share my story about attempting to become Network Engineer, how environment and consequences changed my mind.

I've got my CCNA and CCNP at age 16 and 19, respectively. In between, I worked as an intern and then as a NOC engineer at local ISP. During that time I was studying at school and then I become student at local university.

At first, I was really motivated to have CCIE knowledge, but my expectations slowly faded away due to inappropriate salary and low number of vacancies for Network engineers (Compared to developers) at my area (Caucasus) or at job searching platforms worldwide.

Because of my naive childish mind, I thought that after spending so much time apart from family, friends and social activities, even if I had CCNP, I would have at least $80k yearly salary and it would be easier for me to relocate either to EU or NA, but it didn't happen after many unsuccessful attempts.

At that time, I had significant amount of knowledge in Linux system administration, Network engineering and basic scripting, So I unconsciously started to shift to the DevOps role.

I started new job as a QA/DevOps engineer at US startup that had an office in my country. With my team, I successfully completed several projects and moved to the new job at local Bank as a Automation/DevOps Engineer, where I am currently at age 21.

Now, I don't dream about CCIE anymore, I agree that it is valuable knowledge to have, but I think it is better to focus my energy and time to somewhere else. As a DevOps engineer I've got much more perks and prospects ahead of me (I am getting offers from different countries without sending resumes, much more salary, feel more valuable, etc..).

I am glad that I didn't stick to the certification career path due to my characteristic about finishing things to the end, even if it does have negative effects on me or does not have effect at all. I will see how it goes from now.