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I am a fresh graduate student and I am looking trough job boards all day long for junior positions. My goal is to start a career in sys admin, of course.

Today I find an open spot near my area as a Junior NOC Specialist and I am ashamed to confess that this is a job title I never heard about before even if the requested skills looks familiar (helpdesk, different OSs experience, networking knowledge etc).

So my question is: what is(are) the difference(s) between a Junior Sys Admin and a Junior Network Operation Center Specialist?

Thank you!

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Ask them for a job description? Or look for one on there web site. – Zoredache Sep 22 '10 at 16:36
@Zoredache the job description is this: 1) management and mantainance of network infrastructure and 2) third level helpdesk (???) – lbwtz2 Sep 22 '10 at 17:01
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Ah...buzzword bingo... – Bart Silverstrim Sep 22 '10 at 17:08
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NOC: "an undercover agent who is given no official cover" ;-) – splattne♦ Sep 22 '10 at 17:32
@lbwtz2, At least where I work there is a 2-4 page document that describes the duties of a specific job, I suspect almost any larger company will have something like this. Many will provide it to you if you ask. The summary in the job board is almost certainly incomplete. In any case it probably wouldn't hurt to apply even if it isn't a junior position, and the summary matches your skills. If anything you can use the interview to ask the people about the job, and see if it is something you would like doing. – Zoredache Sep 22 '10 at 17:34
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3 Answers

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NOC is very network centric. You will not deal so much with operating systems as with higher end network equipment (cisco, juniver, extreme networks). This lis likely a larger ISP or telco position.

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Good answer, though getting coffee/food/things-from-the-printer for network guys is probably very similar to doing the same for sysadmins :) – Chopper3 Sep 22 '10 at 16:39
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Maybe the difference is in who gets to yell at you, being end users vs. other admins. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 22 '10 at 16:49
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up vote 6 down vote

Depends on the company, titles are cheap :P

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up vote 0 down vote

Depends on the company, some big Data Centers call their employees NOC specialiast and they are sort of do-all workers who change disks, do basic troubleshooting, connect terminals, etc.

In a regular (non data center) company a NOC worker is usually more network centric, but I agree with the above commentary, it is all essentially operations work vs. development side, so it is similar. I have worked in networking groups, web operations, and as just a plain sys-admin, it is all kind of the same.

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