5 Lessons I Learned from Working with Network Engineering Influencer, Du’An Lightfoot

 

  

 

    With any constructive professional relationship, I think you should always take away the good qualities and practices you find in those around you. If the working relationship was a success, each of you go away from it a better person and can try to be more like the other in areas where you may be deficient or maybe just could use a little more style or luster in your work.

    In my time working with Du'An Lightfoot, my friend and former coworker, I feel like I gained a great deal! Here are 5 things (really just an abbreviation of the many things that could be said) that I feel like I learned from him that I carry with me today.

 

1.) Persistence

    As his twitter movement (and handle) imply, he labs EVERYDAY. This was obvious to me in the fact that he knew  nuanced aspects of the Cisco CLI like, Tickle (TCL) scripting. He stood by this even doing daily live streams at times so that others could see his process in his lab. I try to copy this by working at my goals daily and specifically at least a little code each day.

 

2.) Humility

    When he was interviewing for the position where we both worked together he initially had gone for the senior position (and probably would have been a great senior engineer). When he felt like he flopped the initial interview, not knowing how to respond to a certain question or two, when requested to interview again for the same company, he came back with an answer. He was prepared to get that senior job. I appreciate that because he was humble enough to improve himself. He didn't just blow off the experience as a loss, but he grew from it. 

 

3.) Thoughtfulness 

    Admittedly, as you will see in our interview together, I was competitive when we were working together initially. Instead of succumbing to my competitive nature in the workplace, he recognized that we’re all on our own journeys and don’t need to compare ourselves to each other, but can instead boost each other up, and admired my good qualities giving me credit when possible. His choosing to not only take the high ground, but also not write me off as a pain to be around, but actually trying to work with me, and even improve me as an engineer has helped me a great deal even now that I approach other technologies! I too try think more of others now. Not of what they are now, but what they can be.

 

 Here's an interview Du'An did with me when I was 20, right before I moved to New York to volunteer full-time.

 

4.) Quiet preparation 

    In his free time at work, instead of working on big projects like network automation (like I was at the time), first he quietly got familiar with the network asking questions here and there after investigating for himself. He was preparing himself as an expert on our network. This probably goes along with persistence and this is probably a rather small thing, but his developing the key foundational information before trying to make big engineering decisions allowed him to be a big asset to our team, to the point that even engineers that had been in the department longer than him began to refer to him for input on network structure.

 

5.) It’s a Journey/Patience

    This is in fact the reason my blog is called the journey blog! That's how big of an impact he (and this specific lesson) he has had on me as a person and on my career! He didn’t rush conversations with workmates until he got what he wanted out of them (like I did). He took time to learn from our tier III team lead, Ron Aarts (also a great engineer! I may have to write about him too). Not every moment in the office was spent in intense focus, nor did he feel that the goal of some project had to be "completed yesterday" all the time. When we were learning to code and automate the network at nearly the same time, he didn’t expect himself to be an expert on automation when he first was learning it. That attitude is super useful! This allows for learning to be sustainable, and lets you not get burnt out as quickly. I still apply this as I continually study data science.

    I am very appreciative of what I have gained from Du'An, and I feel like these lessons will help me to give the same energy to the next workmates I get. I have learned to never limit what you can gain from others!