Ugh, how do I get out? That is the question. Forget about that "to be or not to be" c-ap. I have a nice salary (not as nice as it used to be now that bonuses and raises are down, but still. . .). And I have a sizeable number of RSUs vesting over the next few years.
But clearly the long term future at Juniper is FLAT at best.
Do I just wait for whenever the layoff comes? The Juniper life is easy. I have little interest in a sweatshop like AWS for any length of time.
As an ex-Juniper employee I totally agree with @VGm29xI-1rxi . I am now at Cisco and its WAY better out here. Cisco is also hiring loads of people , so that could be an option. Having Cisco on CV is much better than having just Juniper in case recession does hit the market and one has to be on the lookout for jobs.
As an ex-Juniper employee, I would advise that unless you have made enough money to retire, study hard and get out of Juniper ASAP. Even though the job market is at its best right now, it is extremely hard for techies from Juniper to get a job. I had to face numerous rejections before I finally bagged an offer.
Juniper life is easy, if you get used to it, it would be hard to do real work in a real company. Also, Junos is horribly outdated, so software engineers who work in Junos do not have relevant skills to get a job. I personally know several PEs, DEs in Juniper who are interviewing and unable to get jobs outside. Those guys are supposedly top performers in Juniper.
The market is good now but might turn south when the next recession strikes. If you do not get out now, it will be impossible to get a job in the next inevitable downturn. Dedicate around 6 months of study time before you start interviewing.
As a follow-up to my long post below, I'd also like to pose a question than only YOU guys can answer.
As a techie, you must constantly maintain yourself "relevant"! If you're doing great/interesting/relevant industry wide work already at Juniper, it'll be an easy sell to an interviewer.
If you're working on legacy stuff, how easy will it be to convince others? My guess is it'll be harder to a state-of-the-art FANG, etc where they're used to picking graduates who are already up-to-date on stuff (and cheaper) and/or worked for another FANG, etc on similar stuff.
So my concern for any of you is how "dinosaur" do you feel? How motivated are you to learn new stuff? Stats show that most coders life span is short due to their unwillingness to revamp at 35+. It can be done. Older Tech experts get hired at FANG all the time but they are still "relevant" on their tech.
If you're truly stuck in a rut working on old useless cr*p that nobody outside of J gives a damn about and you still want to work for a decade or more, my suggestion is to revamp ASAP and get out to a company that's doing relevant/interesting work--BEFORE that mountain slope becomes too steep to even attempt. Tech skills are all about relevancy on a time scale. Not staying frosty will ultimately cost you in your career. It's the nature of the tech beast. ......And only YOU will be able to answer this!
(BTW, even as a dinsosaur, you will still get interviewed, but you will have to study your a-- off. Plain and simple).
You like the work/life balance at Juniper, so stay there or find a place that's healthier that pays well and offers good WLB like Microsoft, Cisco, Google (don't know enough about Arista...FB also is hit/miss on WLB). Stay away from unicorn startups (i.e. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, etc) if WLB is an issue for you. And yes, Amazon "can" be a sweatshop (or not) depending on the team, but they pay very well and looks good on a resume as a 1 yr. stepping stone (an they're hiring by the truckload right now).
Of course, there's TONS of other great companies that offer a good WLB and that's up to you to look into by Google search.
The ONE theme that you WILL encounter when applying is your tech skills/interview skills. You ABSOLUTELY WILL NEEED to STUDY! It will take you MANY,MANY, MANY MONTHS to get into "championship form" to crack these interviews. The power is in you (you ain't a chump, you got into Juniper after all), but you have to treat it like part-time University (i.e. no weekends/evenings off). Getting an interview isn't the hard part! By far the hard part WILL be PASSING the tech portions of these interviews. You will get your pants pulled down in an embarrassing manner if you don't study hard. The questions, even for a brilliant person who's in the game, will be challenging! No joke! Over 60%+ of on-sites fail.
So is the prep work WHILE working at Juniper worth it to you? To many, it's not. Admittedly, it's TRULY a slog (it was for me)!! Many will wait for the multi-month layoff severance and THEN start prepping. Usually, it's the younger, ambitious, no family yet people who'll do the prep while working. It's really up to you to decide. As long as you have savings and can ride it out 6+ months with severance comp you should be able to adequately land a great gig with full 100% days of prep time to study for interviews.
If you're the lazy, comfortable type. Then you already answered your question. Otherwise, it's 6 good months of Leetcode to get those veins to show up on your arms! Good luck whichever way you go bruh.
Once you are inside Juniper its not easy to get out. The company's run like a mafia - come to EMEA and you will experience that first hand, big time. Worthless, inexperienced political people promoted from no-body to senior managers and given the mandate to hire low grade people and bully the productive ones. Management knows this is happening for years but does nothing.
So, being inside Juniper is like being part of the Corleone clan: " Evrrytime I wanna get out, they s--- me back in!"
stay there and extract the most off the gravy train, its either us or the bi****s of AA
yup! they are meant to be s---ed off from and to be used for your desires
You are destined for Juniper - stay there - perfect fit