For someone with only a passing understanding of router innards, what should I watch out for from this talk to avoid coming away with an incorrect understanding of how things work?
In my experience programmers are very friendly and kind and are always eager to help everybody understand what they do understand about programming.
In contrast with that, people from the "networking" world often look with despise to people who don't understand what they do and want to prevent them from learning, they love to just say what is wrong and never point to what would be right and why, they also will most of the times just keep saying they must hire someone to do the job instead of learning.
That is my experience on Networking Stack Exchange, on ##networking channel on Freenode and also the impression I have from a friend that deals with networking, although I try to not talk about it with him for the reasons above.
I've been working alongside network engineers for thirty years in a variety of ISP, IXP, RIR, corporate, carrier, DC and public cloud environments, and do not recognise the people you are describing. These colleagues run the usual gamut of human personalities, but invariably the most respected and senior contributors are those that enable others through sharing their knowledge and experience. They were never anything but helpful and patient even when I was just getting started and full of basic questions about BGP and mixing up my fibre modes.
However, I have also contributed to Stack Overflow and managed IRC channels and servers. The negative traits you've described do correlate to the hostile attitudes endemic within many StackExchange and IRC communities. They are not correlated to my workplace experience of network engineers.
There’s definitely a personality type that is attracted to networking and security who is motivated by control. Usually the end up in management roles. I’ve run into my share of people like this, more so than with software people.
On the whole, network engineers are a cool bunch though. They’re often called in to make stuff work without any real background or understanding of wtf is going on in advance. As a profession, they don’t get the respect they are do.
People do all kinds of things for different reasons, and when talking about large groups -- network engineers, security professionals, &c -- you really can't boil down the group and distill the traits of the individual.
Early in my career, when I did a mixture of systems administration and security, my mentor on both of those things was a super-chill, skinny-as-they-come mega-pothead. Exact opposite of a control freak.
Dude was wicked smart, though, and the security mindset that he helped me build has paid dividends over the years.
Personally, I went into management precisely because I worked for a few "control freak" types, and felt that I had a sort of moral duty to build teams free of that sort of environment, even if it meant that I had to swap my text editor for a calendar.
I know many other managers with a similar backstory. None of us want to be the PHB.
As an aside, if anyone reading this is looking at management: look to nudge, rather than control. We learn by making mistakes, and sometimes, you actually do need a report -- or maybe even the entire team! -- to make a mess and clean it up, because the process of doing so will make them stronger, and will benefit your organization in the medium-to-long term.
As with all things, there are trade-offs to be made and balances to be struck! But one of the biggest mistakes I see new managers make is investing the bulk of their energy in preventing mistakes, instead of building a team that can recover-and-adapt quickly.
(Also, a nit, which you might not have noticed: "respect they are due")
To counter your anecdote with my own, I've been working for 10 years on a team which has seen Network Engineers, Systems Engineers and Software Engineers come and go, and I've seen three(!) very arrogant Software Engineers who as it turned out didn't know what they were doing. But the same goes for other disciplines, we've had a straight up antisocial Network Engineer who only worked from home and never answered his phone (he did excellent diagrams though). We've had an arrogant Systems Engineer that refused to document anything. These people were fired, but my point is that you should blame the person rather than the discipline.
That typical personality doesn't show up at all in StackOverFlow, ServerFault, Databases, WebApps, Bitcoin, Mathematics and other StackExchange communities.
Or if they show up, it's counterbalanced by a giant number of nice programmers willing to help. While on the Networking StackExchange they are the only ones.
