Sunday, April 29, 2007

Learn to Listen, Learn not to Speak

Many have asked me the reason why I didn’t update my blog for a while.
Well, my first reason is because currently I’m still learning about how to listen. It sounds easy but really hard to do. I’m a kind of guy who likes to talk about myself, about my past, my job, my experience and projects and so on. I bet you will hate me if you have a chance to meet me in person.

So here I am, with my new job in Cisco, realizing that I’m just an ordinary person here. My co-workers are much better than me technically. They have done more interesting stuff. They know more people. They have more CCIEs.
I have nothing to be proud of. Then I start realizing that this is a good time for me to listen. To learn from anyone who has more experience and exposure in the past.

The second reason is: I’m also learning not to speak. I mean, there are many fascinating stuff and new things that I learn since I joined Cisco, but some of them are confidential information that I can’t just share to public. It was easier when I was outside the system, I could write about anything. But now since I’m part of Cisco I need to make sure that what I write doesn’t reflect about my opinion as Cisco’s employee.

Do I have a problem with my integrity?
Not sure. That’s another thing that I have to learn too.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Himawan,

You should thing that you are another guy but near the best one in the world.
Good luck and to hear only the best.

Anonymous said...

Hi Himawan,

i am reading your blog for a while now...:-) , and i think it is amazing what you achieved and how focused you are. everytime i feel i loose my focuse i read your blog and then i am sitting the next 2 weeks every day until 3 o´clock in the morning afront of my lab and my books.
compared to you i am right at the beginning, compared to your collegues at cisco i am probably not even born but i am young and i´ll do anything that i can do get there. for a guy like me you are a person to look up to, your last posts confirmed this even more.

regards

gernot

Ibrahim / Ibam said...

Hmm, stuck with privacy and propetary agreement :-) But you can still write about your CCIE SP progress as it can inspiring people including me.

Anonymous said...

Heya Himawan,
I am in Big Blue, and every day I am working with ppl more technicaly them me. I found this the best way to achive something. Everyday I have chances to learn another interesting thing. Either we do some complex MPLS configs or debugging some HA on Check Point or other "bla-blas", everything is interesting. Do not let yourself overcome with negative thoughts. You are the best among the best, so this is a normal thing to happen.

Adrian

Anonymous said...

Hi,

me again...i know your time is very restricted but i would love to read your post of Technical Career @ Cisco in brief on your other blog http://himawan.blogsome.com/ in english. unfortunately i can´t understand anything but word snippets like "Edge routing, Core routing, CCIE".....

regards,

gernot
gernot.nusshall@edvg.at

dharmbhai said...

HI Himawan,
I understand you being stuck with IP Law and stuff. But whilst you are learning to listen, pls dont hesitate to talk about your experience with CCIE in the past and in the present.

Also I would like you to know that you are indeed a source of inspiration and Role Model for many of us people outside cisco.

So pls keep blogging. Your honest comments keep us going.

Regards
Dharmesh Shah

Himawan Nugroho said...

Hi gernot.nusshall@edvg.at,
to answer your question, I will try to explain the technical career in Cisco in very brief. There are 2 major groups: products and services. In products, technical guy can be in the developer team (incuding testing), technical marketing engineer or can help the sales team as pre-sales SE (system engineer) and consulting system engineer (CSE, SE with lots experience). In services, technical guy can work in reactive (TAC engineer, called customer service engineer) or proactive as network consulting engineer (NCE). This is only to name a few, and can be the entrance point to Cisco (i.e join as TAC engineer and move to NCE later on, or join as SE and move to become sales or account manager)