Now that it is public knowledge that I have accepted a new position in the financial services industry, I have been getting questions from many people on my choice to leave the telecommunications industry. It has been a decision I have been contemplating for at least 2 years now. I initiated looking outside the telecommunications industry back in August 2009. Technically, I was working for a vendor who provided telecommunications companies with hardware and services, but anyone that works for a vendor will tell you that the goals and beliefs of your customer are your goals and beliefs whether you want them to be or not. Here are the main reasons I chose try a different industry.
Telecommunications companies are not concerned about security, or more specifically their customers’ security. They are concerned about security that affects their systems or their brand image. But if you are trying to get them to spend money on technology that will help secure their customers or make the Internet a better place, it is a much more difficult sell. Basically, unless there is some way it will affect the customer directly or they will look bad if it becomes public or they experience downtime that might tarnish their image, they are not interested. There are international differences with telecommunications companies and security, but even in these cases you can boil it down to laws or issues that will affect the customer directly in some way. When they do engage in security, if the telecommunications company can spin it so it looks better for the them taking care of their customer, all the better.
The telecommunications industry should be regulated. Just as gas, hydro, and emergency services are regulated industries, so should the telecommunications industry. The Internet is an essential service now, for those that disagree I encourage you to go and pull the plug on your Internet service during a peak time and see what happens. These companies should have simple and clear business objectives. You deliver bits of information. Your job is to deliver packets to their destination as quickly and efficiently as possible. The type of packet or data it contains is not your concern, just deliver it and charge accordingly. And yes, charging accordingly should be regulated, just like electricity. I am not suggesting there is not a need to prioritize certain traffic over other traffic, just that the telecommunications companies should not be concerned about that.
They are fighting against becoming a commodity. When I started at my previous employer, they were easily one of the top in their field and the best at what they did. There was and still is a great group of people that work there to make that happen everyday. Although there was competition, they were easily the leader. Move ahead 5 years and there are many players that are as good. Cisco, Juniper, offer comparable feature sets in their existing hardware and that didn’t exist before. From a security perspective, some of their ideas were ahead of their time. But they have been surpassed in this area now due to increased competition and smaller companies with a focus in specific areas. The big focus in the industry over the last year or so has been wireless. While wireless offers many opportunities, the competition is not as it was when broadband became popular. Lessons learned from broadband will be applied to wireless by everyone. The playing field is much more level now than it was in the past.
Net Neutrality. While a recent decision has the market declaring that net neutrality is dead, I don’t believe it is over. Rather the fight has just begun. Personally I feel the way to end the debate is to force everyone to pay for what they use, and regulate the industry and what they can reasonably charge, like other essential services. Given the increase of encryption, privacy awareness, and detection avoidance practices, the current methods of deep packet inspection will become useless. A different approach has to be developed.
These are the major reasons for wanting to leave telecommunications for the time being. I did look at and consider other offers in the telecommunications field and I may go back someday. For now I’ll enjoy watching what happens from a distance. In my new position, I will still be working with telecommunications carriers and vendors, just as a customer. Albeit a customer with a lot of experience and knowledge from the other side. In a future post I will write about my reasons for choosing the financial services industry.
Do you ever consider changing not just your current employer, but an entire industry? What would make you consider such a switch if at all?
