is-there-future-for-networking-engineers.html

---
url: /2019/11/is-there-future-for-networking-engineers.html
title: "Is There a Future for Networking Engineers?"
date: "2019-11-27T10:19:00.000+01:00"
tags: [ SDN ]
---

<p>Someone sent me this observation after reading my <em><a href="https://blog.ipspace.net/2019/10/you-cannot-have-public-cloud-without.html">You Cannot Have Public Cloud without Networking</a></em> blog post:</p>
<blockquote class="cite"><p>As much as I sympathize with your view, scales matter. And if you make ATMs that deal with all the massive client population, the number of bank tellers needed will go down. A lot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Based on what I read a while ago a really interesting thing happened in financial industry: while the number of tellers went down, number of front-end bank employees did not go down nearly as dramatically, they just turned into “consultants”.<!--more--></p>
<div class="note" data-markdown="1">Of course I lost the link to that article. If someone has something along these lines handy, please post it in the comments. </div>
<p>Something similar might happen in networking. While the number of VLAN- or firewall rule manipulators will be drastically reduced (I hope), the number of networking engineers required (assuming they deserve that title) might not follow that same curve - they will just do more productive stuff.</p>
<blockquote class="cite"><p>A bunch of engineers for the SPs does not compare with all enterprises needing one or two…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately many enterprises I know have only one or two networking engineers (and maybe a few technicians). As long as someone believes they need to have some networking knowledge in-house, they will have to keep those two ;)</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind how many things that should be done are NOT done because nobody has time to do them.</p>
<p>Finally, once we stop believing in <a href="https://blog.ipspace.net/2016/07/why-is-every-sdn-vendor-bashing.html">software-defined fairy tales</a>, and realize <a href="https://blog.ipspace.net/2013/11/typical-enterprise-application.html">application problems have to be solved in application layer</a> and not <a href="https://blog.ipspace.net/2013/04/this-is-what-makes-networking-so-complex.html">pushed down to networking</a> (I will probably retire before that happens), I expect networking to become more like power transmission. You will need experts, but not nearly as many mid-range engineers as before. On the other hand, people pulling cables in buildings are still making good money ;))</p>