No one in a corporate job wants to admit it, for fear of being "the example" in the next round of layoffs, but the truth is the truth no matter what the reason is for covering it over; networking and communications technical staff are barely able to keep our networks running because so many technicians have been let go.
There is NO capacity in the industry for major growth or anything larger than regional disasters with partial equipment loss. Technicians throughout the networking industry are chronically sleep-deprived and scrambling to multi-task everything they're doing with very little time, if any for advance preparation or in-depth review of upcoming work. Most technicians, when the comment is made that "Technicians don't sleep, they nap," will laugh, but they will do so while saying "That is SO true." Networking is a high-stakes, 24/7/365 activity. Even though most business gets done during the day, most repairs and upgrades happen at night, when available resources might be a tenth or less of what's available during the day. Physical exhaustion is the norm for these workers.
To top it off, most experienced and capable technicians are male and over forty, in many cases, well over forty. These folk are scrambling so hard, it's difficult to train new people, because trying to train a new tech slows you way down. Online training courses are everywhere around, but the senior techs can't stop to do it, or they can't stay awake through it. New techs can't ask questions of a computer program, and they can't stop an experienced tech in the middle of an escalated issue, and these days 90% of all issues are escalated.
Record-keeping throughout the industry is abysmal, and errors in records are rampant. Much is dependent on the organic memory of individuals working in the field. There is a host of different and proprietary record-keeping and workflow management software programs for each company in the business, and the same goes for management software for every type of hardware in the industry. There is no uniformity of standards for software, for circuit identifiers, for trouble ticketing systems, or records formatting in the industry. This has added layer-upon-layer-upon-layer of unnecessary complexity throughout the industry.
Management continuously adds more and more work on the same people, or less people, year-after-year, They leave NO time in their calculations on how long things take for actually reading and understanding orders, reading and replying to e-mail, shipping & receiving, dealing with security and access issues, figuring out rampant discrepancies, dealing with terrible ergonomics in connections management designs, or travel. All the back-office work that makes the main work possible is completely disregarded in calculations of how long jobs will take. While lip-sevice is given to slowing down, using caution understanding the scope of work, the reality is a massive, non-stop continuous rush-job, with crucifixion of any individual who dares to make a mistake under these conditions.
Make no mistake, this situation exists industry-wide. It isn't any one company that is doing things in this manner, it is ALL of them. The basic problem is that management is entirely sales-oriented and non-technical other than at a surface level. At the deep roots, they do not really understand the systems and processes they're managing, unless they're a lower-level local or regional manager. The low-level managers know what's happening, but they can't say anything to those higher-up, because if they burst upper management's rah-rah-dictated happy bubble, they'll lose their jobs faster than the technicians. Sales people tend to think they can persuade any reality they want into being by using psychology, it's in their blood. The problem is, you can't use persuasion and psychology on human biology or the laws of physics, and sales people don't realize that they're at the limits of both because they think any complaints and requests are a psychology issue rather than a real physical necessity.
These "bean-counters" have taken over the world, and if they're allowed to continue with the false assumption that they're dealing with psychology instead of physical limits, they will crash the world they have taken over in not too many more years. I'll be shocked if it lasts five, and amazed with ten. You see, the networking and communications industries are side-shows of a global problem called capitalism. Capitalism without morals, without ethics, without compassion, and without restraint. Capitalism, with only one guiding vision: gather everything to the top, and leave the least amount possible behind to run the system that sustains a few in whatever they intend.
This is not the capitalism of our founding fathers, guided by law and principle. It's not even possible for those at the top to leave the sick culture they've created if they wanted to; its sheer inertia and scale has locked everyone and everything into a blind and crushing black hole. Only the faintest of light passing by at a very shallow angle can escape. It has pervaded every industry, nearly every country.
Everywhere I go, families are broken up by the necessity of traveling vast distances on the hope of finding work, in some cases even to other nations. Those that are still working are exhausted by the sheer volume of tasks dropped on them, and the utter cutthroat competition and backstabbing of the modern workplace. No matter what job people are working - if they are working - it's the same story; more work on your shoulders and more empty desks surrounding you, like the grim ghosts of those who used to make doing things well, with a deep understanding, and even pride possible. Those ghosts who would come back and take what's left of your life if possible.
The young, who we should be mentoring for the future, have become competitors instead, as have women been pitted against men, as retirement at a decent age and any ability to enjoy a few years before death is robbed away and hope is rendered an empty political slogan chipped away by the endless series of days with not enough sleep. Now, corporate phones follow us everywhere, and hourly workers read emails while away on "vacations" that at best last two weeks, and certainly don't bring you back with anything more than the surface of your exhaustion removed. Just as your body begins to cleanse itself of the first edges of the depth of your tiredness, you go back to the place where the zombies with cold, blank eyes stand ready to cook you for the next round of layoffs.
And in the end, you're lucky to even read the truth on a blog - if you're not too tired to read it.
I watch, and I wonder, how long before the entire system sinks of its own weight. It's an amazing spectacle. It should almost be in a bad science fiction story. Maybe I should just turn on the TV and fall asleep in front of it, too.
The only glimmer of hope I see is the worker-owned collective movement starting to happen in the Midwest, similar to Spain's Mondragon.
Networking and Communications are just a symptomatic example of the problem. Using technology to organize work, materials distribution, and even eliminate the need for overwork and physical labor is an idea in infancy, one that requires a great deal of thought, and cooperative development of common tools and standards that would make cross-industry collaboration and innovation possible. Google seems to be creating some of the first tools that might make it somewhat possible. However, good standards bodies like the IEEE and others need to begin work on this.
And at the moment, I'm just too tired to write more.
Dan
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