TELCOS DO NOT NEED ENGINEERS!!!!!!

Yes, you heard it right. Telcos do not need engineers anymore. Infact the engineers that the telcos have are not more than a liability. The engineers, heads, managers, technical team….. a mere cost item, precisely the Right hand side of the balance sheet.

Surprised! You ought to be. I, myself am an engineer in this industry for the last 18 odd years and I am saying that. So why such a change? Why such an iconoclastic statement?

The reason is the definition of “Engineer” that the conventional telco understands is way outdated and way under the requirement. An engineer in today’s telco industry is a person who has to tread a line of processes, forgetting creativity and unconventional thinking. There are sets of ground rules that have to be adhered, sometimes breaking those ground rules is not only a flouting of policy but like a criminal offence.

Result! The same old thing repeating again and again. So called engineers become human robots following monotonous orders and doing the same stuff. Working in this industry in the conventional way does not seem interesting anymore and this affects the overall performance and nature of the company. Every technical staff, of the 100% effort that he/she makes, 90% is devoted to saving himself/herself from something. The attitude that shouts out loud, “I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE” is written everywhere in the company and finally we have “NOBODY RESPONSIBLE” in the entire structure.

The thing that happens is that nothing new comes out of the industry and we have same old services again and again without a shade of change. Scary job environment just mandates one thing and that is to keep your job. The best thing over here is when the planning guy feels insecure he does a charade of taking out a tender as if he/she were to design a NASA space shuttle. Tender process goes on for six to eight months and this is the time the planning guy looks out for another job. The outcome is either the planning guy has moved out to a new company or the tender is postponed for another six months.

Operations is funnier. Sometimes in order to see that they have work, they pray for some fault to come, and when it really comes and they are helpless, they just pick up their phones and make calls to the managed service partner, without applying any significant brains on the problem. As if they were hired in the company to just be telephone operators, they just drain the batteries of their phones and their energy bags shouting at the managed service partner and vendor. Once the fault is fixed, a thank you note to the vendor and a gallantry award from the operations manager who is equally scared of his/her job. Finally, a breather for another three months and life goes on.

IN ALL THIS CIRCUS THE BIGGEST CASUALTY IS THE CONCEPT OF “ENGINEERING”…. RIP

It is much better that such mundane activities are now being outsourced to machines through Artificial Intelligence and automation. Automation today can replace most of the monotonous work in the telecom industry and believe me most of the work is monotonous even planning. Artificial intelligence and automation comes as a boon and not bane. At least if not everything, it shows the mirror to the engineers at all level that they have to be “engineers”, because robots can be made by synthetic things as well.

Well after all this acerbity that I have spat out, I am surely expected to be trolled. After all telling the truth comes with its occupational hazards. However, I have spoken out.

So what is needed? What do we need to do in order to come out of this vicious circle?

Will speak about this in the next article.

Cheers,

Kalyan