The meanings behind job titles can be an elusive thing in that they might only make sense to the people actually in the roles. Take networking jobs. It’s pretty common for people to think some titles can be used interchangeably, and that depending on where you work, a job may have a different name. In some cases, even IT professionals believe that the network specialist vs engineer are jobs are really the same responsibilities.

Though I’m a big believer in the importance of network configuration management , even I’ll admit that network switch configuration from a command-line interface (CLI) is still one of the most fundamental network engineering skills you can have. It’s also one of the harder things to pick up if you’re new to the field. And it’s not just knowing what commands to enter. It isn’t always obvious what should be part of a basic configuration.