About 11 years and pretty much all of 'em. The vendor-specific acronyms trip me up sometimes, but more on that in a second.

The 'alphabet soup' language is the result of working within a standards-driven industry. I actually consider it a good thing.

Consider: A computer network comprises so many different technologies. Drop a blank Cisco firewall and switch in front of someone who's never done this before, and think about all the disparate services and systems they'll have to learn just to get out to the internet.

Over the years, we've developed a nomenclature where we refer to these services and systems by their underlying standards and protocols. It's really not so dissimilar from electricians' relationship with the NEC.

Now: When you're a non-technical person or just starting out, it's easy to think these network engineers are deliberately abbreviating things to be jerks. That may be true in some cases, but I promise it is genuinely easier to talk this way.

Lastly, I would argue the alphabet soup is what makes the networking field so approachable. (!) Once you develop a skill foundation, these acronyms make networking A) easier to learn, and B) easier to communicate with other people. If someone spews out some letters you don't understand, a quick google search will tell you exactly what they are talking about, because they are referring to the underlying standard which lays out how the whole thing works.

I wish all trades worked like that.