I’ve said it before: the best infrastructure is invisible because you don’t see it until it breaks. Even worse, no one ever expects it to break. Infrastructure is taken for granted; always there, always doing what it should.
When it does break, oh the outrage, the inconvenience. How could it fail at this time, why now? If you don’t believe it, ask yourself a question. When was the last time you paused in quiet appreciation as fresh, clean water poured from the faucet? How long has it been since you marveled that a room was illuminated the instant you operated the light switch? How often do you thank your broadband provider when FaceBook floods your Messenger with notifications?
On the other hand, remember how inconvenienced you felt when water service was shut off? When commercial electric power failed during a storm? When the speed of your Internet speed crawled to a halt?
Let’s face it, expectations are always high for infrastructure. Infrastructure operators are rarely praised for the reliability of their service, and never get a pass when their service fails.
What does this mean for Telecoms Technologists like us? It means that we are likely to spend most of our workdays in thankless effort keeping the network in service. Most of us will do fine work, outstanding even, and no one will notice or say thanks.
But don’t despair. Someone will take the place of your boss when he leaves. Would you like it to be you? It could be you if you start now to work for it.
So I repeat, if you want to advance your career in Telecoms, don’t expect your success at keeping the network running to advance you up the career ladder. If you want advancement, if you want a promotion, if you want the opportunity to do more, then you must find a way for your efforts to be recognized.
One if the best ways I’ve found is to always focus on trying to squeeze cost out of the business. Cost Containment helps the business in so many ways. And for similar effort, cost-cutting has a greater impact than revenue generation. This is due to revenue entering the balance sheet on the top line, while Cost Containment savings go straight to the bottom line. I’ll talk more about this in a later post.
In the meantime, download our Cost Containment cheat sheet by following the link below. You can write your own Cost Containment ideas in the comments to this post.