[geeks] Moving on

[Ido Dubrawsky]

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After four and a third years at Cisco I have decided to move on to
another position.  While certainly not as comfortable as the position
at Cisco that I currently have (my commute is down the stairs and down
the hall to my office...now I will have to initially commute down to
McLean, VA. and in the summer the office is moving to Sterling, VA.)
this new position will allow me to grow more than I can at Cisco.
It's been a lot of fun dickering with the nerd knobs and gears on new
equipment but the problem was that my position at Cisco did not afford
me the ability to move up to greater and greater responsibility.

I am leaving Cisco for Callisma (I start on the 7th of March...my last
day at Cisco is March 4th)...the consulting arm (or one of them I
presume) of SBC.com (funny how I hated them when they were my phone
company in Texas and now I'm going to work for them).  I will be a
senior consultant in the practice (with the very good possibility of
making principal consultant within a year -- I assume a principal is
something akin to a partner in a law firm -- they wouldn't hire me
directly into a prinicpal position because they said that that was not
their practice -- who knows).  Long story short is that it's better
pay (Cisco apparently will announce in a couple of weeks changes to
its compensation methods now that stock options have to be expensed
according to FASB rules) -- substantially better than Cisco -- and the
benefits are better.  I have been tasked to reorganize and develop
their security consulting practice (which has been sorely neglected
apparently for the past several years).  This position will also
afford me a security clearance which will (hopefully) be beneficial to
my career over the long haul.

It's funny how every year the state and county governments want more
and more of your money in the form of property taxes, the cost of
energy keeps rising, and the cost of living keeps rising but your
employer doesn't help compensate by providing raises (Cisco did have
the habit of granting stock options as a means of compensation versus
actual raises -- I don't know what it will be now that options have to
be expensed).

Unfortunately I have to give some gear back to Cisco (namely a 2621
router, a PIX 515 firewall, a 2924XL switch, and a 2511-RJ router) and
reorganize my network.  I've already replaced the 2621 router with a
SPARCstation 10 running Solaris 9 with IPF (boy, that was a pain to
get working...IPF didn't behave like I expected it to...but that's
another story...and yes, I could have installed NetBSD on it -- or
OpenBSD on it and run a more modern -- and less burdensome operating
system -- but I needed something up and running ASAP).  Nevertheless,
the website is back up, mail works, and I'm on the hunt now for some
new gear.  As a final act I may put in an order under the employee
purchase program for some new stuff from Cisco...I don't know.  Why
not...60% off is 60% off.

I'm glad I'm on this mailing list.  I hope to be able to contribute
more to this list in the future.  Thanks Bill for this list...I know
that over time you've had your fair share of headaches from it....but
thanks for keeping it going.

- --
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Ido Dubrawsky, CISSP                    E-mail:ido at dubrawsky.org
Network Security Architect                     idubraws at siliconsec.com
dubrawsky.org
500 Hermleigh Rd
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
(301) 651-5441 (cell)
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