CULTURE

Network engineering is not “going away.” Network engineering is not less important than it was yesterday, last year, or even a decade ago.

But there still seems to be a gap somewhere. There are fewer folks interested than we need. We need more folks who want to work as full-time network engineers, and more folks with network engineering skills diffused within the larger IT community. More of both is the right answer if we’re going to continue building large-scale systems that work. The real lack of enthusiasm for learning network engineering is hurting all of IT, not just network engineering.

How do we bridge this gap? We’re engineers. We solve problems. This seems to be a problem we might be able to solve (unlike human nature). Let’s try to solve it.

As you might have guessed, I have some ideas. These are not the only ideas in the world—feel free to think up more!

If you walk into a robotics class, even an introductory robotics class, you see people … building robots. If you walk into a coding class, even an introductory one, you see people … writing software. If you walk into a network network engineering class you see … someone lecturing about the OSI model, packet formats, or how to configure BGP.

What problems are people learning to solve robotic engineering? How to build a robot and get it to do something to solve a real-world problem. What problems are people learning to code solving? How to tackle some real-world problem.

Sure, the problems being solved at an introductory level might be trivial, like: “Read this file and spit out a sum of the numbers in the fourth column.” But they are still starting, right from the beginning, by taking requirements and converting them into solutions.

What problems are network engineers learning how to solve? How to choose hardware, string it all together, and configure BGP.

Do you see the difference?

All engineers solve problems—it’s the nature of engineering. But are we creating a mindset in prospective network engineers, or even adjacent fields, that we solve real-world problems? Or are we giving them the impression that we solve whiteboard problems by talking about bits, bytes, configurations, and cable types?

Have you ever seen the glazing over of eyes while explaining how you put four transport protocols on top of one another (look at all the pretty tunnels)? How about when you create a chart showing how TCP and QUIC can be “kind-of sort-of” forced into the OSI model? Or when you spin out your BGP packet format charts, showing how we’ve (mis)used address families to carry everything anyone can imagine?

I’ve been teaching this stuff for years (okay, decades). Over time, I’ve moved away from teaching configurations and packet formats. I’ve gone from Advanced IP Network Design to Computer Networking Problems and Solutions. These are very different ways of looking at network engineering.

Focusing on real-world problems would help connect business and other IT folks to the network, connect theory to practice, and people to network engineering. Going home at the end of the day saying, “I solved a problem,” can be satisfying. Going home at the end of the day saying, “I configured BGP?”

Another thing adopting the mindset of solving real-world problems might do is help us lose unnecessary complexity. I know complexity is necessary to build resilient systems; we cannot build what we build without creating and encountering complexity.

But we often run ourselves into the ditch on both sides of the road.

We unintentionally build too complex because we try to make it too simple. Quick, which is simpler: building a data center fabric with one routing protocol or two? A single chassis system or several smaller fixed format devices? A proprietary system or something built on open standards?

How many balloons fit in a bag? (thanks, Don)

Failing to start with the tradeoffs, and thinking through what problem we’re actually trying to solve, leads to unnecessary complexity. Such designs might not immediately fail, but they will fail, and “it’s so complex” just isn’t an excuse.

Don’t even try to tell me there aren’t any tradeoffs. If you think there aren’t any tradeoffs, that just means you haven’t looked hard enough. Go find them, think about them, and document them.

We also build complex things because we think it offers job security, or it’s neat, or we like to feel like the kid who says to the world, “look what I built!”

I know it’s exciting to hear stories about that time someone rescued a network from a major failure—after all, that’s solving a real-world problem. Building a network that just works might be “boring,” but it solves many more real-world problems than raising a network from the dead.

We love our fashionable capes, but … capes can get caught in a nearby jet engine. Lose the cape. In the long run, it’ll make network engineering more attractive as a career field and field of knowledge.

The Bottom Line

No, the sky is not falling. We still need networks, and we still need network engineers.

Yes, there is a problem. Too many companies are going “to the cloud” because they cannot find people qualified to build and maintain their very complex networks. There’s too much centralization and too little oppeness.

So maybe let’s stop saying “we don’t need network engineers.” And maybe let’s really think about how we’re building things. And maybe let’s focus on solving real-world problems, starting from day one in network engineering classrooms.

Network engineering is still cool—let’s go out there believing—and selling—that idea to the world.

How do you balance loyalty to yourself and loyalty to the company you work for?

This might seem like an odd question, but it’s an important component of work/life balance many of us just don’t think about any longer because, as Pete Davis says in Dedicated, we live in a world of infinite browsing. We’re afraid of sticking to one thing because it might reduce our future options. If we dedicate ourselves to something bigger than ourselves, then we might lose control of our direction. In particular, we should not dedicate ourselves to any single company, especially for too long. As a recent (excellent!) blog post over at the ACM says:

Loyalty is generally a good trait, but extreme loyalty to the organization or mission may cause you to stay in the same job for too long.

The idea that we should control our own destiny, never getting lost in anything larger than ourselves, is ubitiquos like water is to a fish. We don’t question it. We don’t argue. It is just true. We assume there are three people who are going to look after “me:” me, myself, and I.

I get it. Honestly, I do. I’ve been there more times than I want to think about. I was the scapegoat in an argument between people far above my pay grade early in my career, causing much angst and pain. I’ve been laid off,—I cared about a company that simply didn’t care about me. Most recently, the family I’d dedicated more than twenty years of my life to ended through a divorce.

I can see why you might ask yourself hard questions about dedicating yourself to anything or anyone.

The problem, as Pete Davis points out, is that the human person was not designed for the kind of digital nomad life represented by the phrase “live for yourself.” We can try to substitute an online community. We can try to replace community with a string of novel experiences. But the truth is it will eventually catch up with you. When you’re young it’s hard to see how it will ever catch up with you, but it will.

Returning to the top—the author of the ACM article advises balancing between dedicating yourself to a company and dedicating yourself to your career. This is wise advice, but it leaves me wondering “how?” Let me lay out some thoughts here. They may not be all of the answer, but they will, I hope, point in the right direction.

First, resist seeing these two choices as orthogonal. They might be at odds in some companies—there are publishers who want your content to build their brand, and they specifically work at preventing you from building your brand. There are companies that explicitly want to own “your whole professional life.” They don’t want you blogging, going to conferences to speak, etc. Avoid these companies.

Instead, find companies that understand your personal brand is an asset to the company. Having a lot of people with strong personal brands in a company makes the company stronger, not weaker. People with strong brands will form communities around themselves. This community is a pool of people from which to recruit top-flight talent. This community allows them to collect new ideas that can be directly applied to problems in the organization. People with strong personal brands will have greater influence when they walk into a room to meet with a customer, a supplier, or just about anyone else. A company full of people with strong personal brands is stronger than one where everyone is faceless, consumed by/hiding behind the company logo.

Second, learn to manage your time effectively. I understand it’s possible to spend so much time building your brand that you don’t get your job done. As an individual, you need to be sensitive to this and learn how to manage your time effectively.

Third, seek out the win/win. Don’t think of every situation through the lens of “it’s either my brand or my employer’s.” There may be times when you cannot do something because, while it would help your brand immensely, it would harm your company’s. There may be times where you need to have a delicate discussion with your manager because you’ve been asked to do something that would be great for the company but would harm your brand. There is almost always a win/win, you just have to find it.

Fourth, seek out a community that’s not attached to work and dedicate yourself to it. Find something larger than yourself. A community that’s not tied to work will be your lifeline when things go wrong.

Finally, expect to get hurt. I know I have (an old saying in my community—never trust a man who doesn’t walk with a limp). You can be the nicest, humblest person in the world. Someone is still going to take advantage of you. In fact, the nicer and humbler you are—the more you care, the more likely it is people are going to take advantage of you. I am amazed at how much people seem to enjoy hurting one another when they believe there won’t be any consequences.

But … if you expect your life to be perfect, you were born in the wrong world. Build up the mental reserves to deal with this. Build a community that will help carry you through. There is nothing better than sitting down and sharing your hurt over a cup of coffee with a good friend (except I don’t drink coffee).

I get it—the world has moved into a YOLO/FOMO phase. If you don’t “grab it,” and right now! you risk missing something really important. We pile up alternative possibilities in our minds, wondering what might have happened if we’d chosen otherwise. We have deep angst over our personal brand, overthinking the concept to the point of diminishing returns.

The solution, though, is not to draw into yourself, to become self-centered. The solution is to find the balance, seek the win/win, dedicate yourself to something bigger than yourself, and find the right way to build your personal brand.