Filou

I'm a data network guy and I consider myself as (now) relatively experienced, easily learning new subjects by myself and quickly adapting to new requirements.

Exactly two years ago, our Real Estate department wanted to get rid of managing the PBX part of the telephony services (ICT dept. was already managing the administrative part - read: contracts & billing).
We were a small team of two (my colleague with nearly 20 years of experience in a wide range of IT subjects, me a junior with just two years of experience in data) managing the LANs and the MAN for 7 sites located closely to each other, including end-user problems (network card problems, application performance issues, connection patching and troubleshooting, etc.) and in-house full-time monitoring, for about 1500 users.
When it came to chosing people for the task, the ICT dept. management decided we could manage the PBXes too. They were thinking it was just another communications equipment like a new router or a new switch and all be all right very quickly, and they would save big money in the process (switching engineering, anwers to end-users requests and cabling in-house).

It's since been two very very difficult years (my ex-colleague was fired more than a year ago for personal reasons I believe caused for some part by our added responsibilities), during which we had to learn telecom all by ourselves starting from nearly zero knowledge, we had to wrestle with the vendor we were locked in with (Siemens), we tried to provide with only two persons a better (because of an SLA policy of the ICT dept.) level of service than was provided before by: two persons for the LAN/MAN engineering (us), one person for the administrative part of the PBX (answering users request, dealing with Siemens, dealing with management requests etc.), one person for the cabling, one full-time on-site Siemens technician for the PBX engineering, and one person for dealing with telecom providers and 3rd-party connections.

I think I learned quite a lot about telecom during those two years starting from nothing even if I do not consider myself an expert yet, mainly because we are not allowed to deal with advanced features of the PBX that Siemens closes access to and reserves for itself ($$$), and I'm delighted that we are now about to ditch Siemens for an all-new IP system from another vendor, which will let us learn a lot more (new technology, no closed-down vendor policy), gain more experience (managing more of the system by ourselves) and provide a better service (as we are the experts managing both the data network and the telephony system/servers, we can troubleshoot problems quicker instead of playing games between teams and rejecting responsibility).

I can't approve or disprove if teaching networking to a telecom guy is easier, but from experience many telecom guys I've worked with knew and understood as little to networking as I understood to telecom but were more reluctant to learn (or accept!) networking than I was to learn telecom (maybe protectionism of their job in nearly-obsolete technology, especially seen with guys that work for vendors of legacy TDM systems), and I think in the end what matters is the person and her/his will to learn, not the original background he/she comes from.

I had to do the journey the other way (learn telecom being a data guy) all by myself and I think the experience it gave me is highly valuable, so my opinion is that people who know both worlds really have an advantage now with this convergence phase we are entering.

I am now excited to come back more often to this board and participate in telecom discussions to learn more and more of the telecom world and - I hope - exchanging expertise.

Best regards,

Olivier

MSYoung

Very interesting reading these posts and I agree with quite a lot of what is said here. You guys coming from data and adding voice to your resume is great.

The biggest problem I have seen between voice and data techs is the us versus them attitude from both sides. I have always had to prove that I knew how to spell data when I came to a new customer and was adding VoIP capability to the phone system. That still exists but is slowly fading away, however I still encounter places where the voice guy does voice and the data guy does data. And neither one will let the other see what they do or make any attempt to learn the other job, they won't even get together for lunch. These guys will lose out in the end but you can't convince them of that.

I believe that voice patch panels came about because data guys were beginning to do voice and were completely lost at a punch block. Now that is not so much of a problem because most Avaya circuit boards are either 8 port or 24 port boards, but when it started you had 4 port, 8 port, 12 port, 16 port, and 24 port circuit packs. If you replaced a 4 port card with a 16 port card all further work was on hold until the patch panel was replaced.

Where I work all of the patch panels were installed in numerical sequence and the data guy plugs in patch cords for phones also but he still does not know how to count. If he has a problem he tells me that the phone in port 197 is dead.

__________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Marty

sillejo

There was another post in here that I found poignant to this discussion. It dealt with desire to learn. I think there are many times you have IT guys who think the telecom stuff is ancient and wil be out of date soon enough that they don't have to bother with it. By the same token you have Telecom guys that think the data stuff is all over the place and no one knows what they (telecom) know which somehow validates their position and therefore makes them not want to learn anything new since they have a lock on some information.

Both cases are wrong. Yes it's important to know telecom staples because it has similar uses in IT and Yes it's important learn new things because in technology, knowledge is fleeting.

If IP Tel gets me to retirement as a productive worker, then I will be one lucky SOB. But I'm playing it with a hedge that I'll be doing something completly different in 10 years.

For anyone reading this in IT who believes they don't need to learn telecom info because it's basic or outdated, try to think about all the PHd's at Bell Labs Nortel and AT&T that invented the stuff. Do you realy think it's easy? Think about al the cable buried in the ground and in walls of buildings. Do you realy think it will all just disapear overnight?

And for the telecom guys that think it will be easy to pick up the IT side and that they already know the hard stuff.....please.....There have been millions upon millions spent on R&D by Cisco, Avaya, Foundry, Extreme, etc. just to get to this point today where they can justifiably replace old POTS equipment. To quote a band leader I heard once "Give it for them folks, that $h1t ain't easy...it ain't hard, but it ain't easy neither."

So both sides will have to get off their high horses and take a dip in the waters that are convergence.

__________________
Deus ex machina

MSYoung

Amen, couldn't say it better myself.

__________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Marty

bobmay

I have no intention in presenting this topic as us against them. I am not protective of my telecom knowledge. I love to teach others what I know. The network guys on my team are a great bunch of guys, and we get along great. The network guys are more than willing to share, and teach me. None of us has the time in our fast paced production environments to cross train. We are officially sanctioned, and instructed to cross train by managment. Managment runs staff so lean that there is no time for cross training. We have all we can do to keep up with production demands. I agree both sides need to learn the other, and we will eventually. My original rant was the expectations of the recruiters looking for this converged talent as if it exists on every street corner. The employment ads should read experienced telco willing to learn networking, or experienced networking willing to learn telecom. I think recruiters should realize this combined experience is not readily available, and should not lead companies to believe it is. One other point, when you have this talent what will you be paid? Not telecom, or network wages I hope. This position should pay real close to six figures. Agree?

MSYoung

You may not have time during the day to cross train, but both data and telecom have jobs that must be done after hours if necessary. Data might have to add a new router, or change the IP addresses on a segment of the LAN. Telecom might have a move for a bunch of people, or a system upgrade, or just rebooting the Intuity. You could offer to be a spare pair of hands when needed and give them the same opportunity. That is one way to learn the other product.

As far as pay scale, the only ones I know that can ask (and get) a near six figure income are those with pockets full of Microsoft and Cisco certificates plus a few years using that knowledge. Avaya, Nortel, and Siemens certificates do not have the same weight with HR.

When I was looking for a job last year, and I have pockets full of Avaya certificates, one of the places I applied to had an Avaya S8710 with twenty S8300 LSPs. I had actually been one of the techs that installed this system but the job went to a person that had CCNA and CCIE certificates who had never done any phone work.

__________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Marty

sillejo

That's was probaly indicative of existing in house Avaya knowledge and a lack of Cisco knowledge. right now the convergence is pulling in Wireless, VLAN's , redundancy and security which lends itself to Cisco certs more so than Avaya certs. Getting solid encryption to occure on a WiFi phone is more a data specialty with an understanding of how that layer affects a call.

Granted HR sees certs as a way to qualify people, not that it is a real yardstick, but it also must e supply and demand to some degree.

__________________
Deus ex machina

MSYoung

You might think so but the job they posted was to hire a person inhouse to administer their Avaya PBX. The job offer specifically mentioned that Avaya knowledge would be a plus but they went with the CCNA anyway.

I'm happy though because I ended up with a better job.

__________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Marty

Chas2002

I wrote an article about this very topic a while back:

http://www.pbxinfo.com/modules.php?o...6&page_id=1049

What I found is that 'Although they want a Nortel Tech and a Network tech "converged" into one' - they (the companies) we're not willing to fork out the cash for such a person.

I mean, it's only logical to me, that the company wants the (1) person to do (2) roles then the money should equate to what a nortel tech would make + what a network guy/gal would make.

I noted that the HR people had gotten away from posting (1 in all) positions - but I guess it's back on the rise again.

Chas2002

__________________
Free Preview of my fictional book: Chaos Theorem .:-:. Employment: Find a new job on pbxjobs.com

Best Video Jukebox on the net (mini-flash widget) | and | Do you want to store your MP3 files? visit: Musecast.com

Why not start a blog http://www.pbxinfo.com/blog.php - it's 110% free.