Network Engineering isn’t the hottest profession on the block and people have expressed concerns that the profession is going to be subsumed into other disciplines in the near future. In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, Tom Hollingsworth joins Andy Lapteff and Remington Loose at the table to discuss the decline in network engineering roles. They also talk about changes in perceptions as well as the industry. They close out by discussing the future outlook for roles involving network engineering.
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Andy leads off the podcast by talking about how he believes that he wouldn’t recommend anyone get into the network engineering profession. This is followed by agreement that younger professionals getting into the industry are more focused on careers that are glamorous, such as cybersecurity or AI. Even though network engineering has a higher pay scale and good job security, those starting out would rather do the more exciting things.
Tom jumps in to highlight that network engineering might not be growing but it is far from dying. Looking at careers like mainframe operators or COBOL programmers will show that no matter how old the technology might be there are still people that need to do the job. With the rise of cloud computing, people are training on new technologies and finding that some of the same skills they’ve needed in the past apply in the new role. That means that specialized knowledge is still critical no matter what the actual skill might be.
The real culprit is that engineering skills have been abstracted away as the focus of the operations have moved toward app-centric models and dwell less on the actual infrastructure. That means that people who have trained on those skills in the past will still be valuable even if they aren’t the lords of the datacenter that they previously might have been. Given the reduced prestige and continued long hours, on-call needs, and lack of recognition in the company, it’s a wonder that people want to be network engineers at all. But to say the field is dying is not accurate.
Podcast Information:
Tom Hollingsworth is a Networking and Security Specialist at Gestalt IT and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.
Remington Loose is a Network Architect for Dynamix Group, Inc. You can connect with Remington on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about him on his personal website.
Andy Lapteff is a Network Engineer and the Co-Creator of the Art of Network Engineering Podcast. You can connect with Andy on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about the Art of Network Engineering Podcast on their website.
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