Career Market Fair

This is the good kind of problem to have – you have two choices in front of you that are both good. Electrical utilities across the country (and even in other continents) are very concerned about the wave of baby-boomer retirements that have just started, will really accelerate in 5 years, and then will remain brutally high for another 10 years. They are adjusting retirement programs and building knowledge management capabilities in a desperate attempt to transfer knowledge from these older engineers to a much smaller generation of younger engineers coming behind them. You would probably be welcomed into this field. Besides that, there is a huge shortage of engineers in this country of all stripes.

That said, network engineering is also a hot field and promises to continue to be hot for a long time BUT I would say that there is one caveat. There are a whole lot of people out there these day who are pretty good network engineers. What there are NOT a lot of are dynamite, first rate, highly educated and experienced network engineers who ALSO have the other business skills needed to excel in today’s IT environment. Network engineers who have the financial acumen to create solid business cases, the communications ability to present these business cases to senior leadership, the persuasive skills to be able to “sell in the hallways”, the contract negotiation skills to get fair deals, the project and vendor management skills to make sure that things get done and get done right, the foreign language/culture/experience to be able to manage global networks, international upgrades and implementations, etc. – These skills don’t grow on trees and if you are someone who has them, you can largely write your own ticket.