sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Where to go from here?

I'm 30. I'm about 6 years in to an IT career....but there's something nagging at me. I've always enjoyed telecom work a whole lot more. In my current job, I do get to maintain and perform moves/adds/changes to our customer's phone system, but general IT work is the bulk of what I do. We sell IP phone systems as well, though I installed what will likely be our last on-premise system last fall. Everything since then has been hosted, which comes almost entirely pre-configure. Changes are quick and simple....entry level employees can make changes. There's no challenge in it at all.....and a lot of it is junk.

I'm at a dead end at the firm I am with now, and it's time to move up and out. I've already started working with some recruiters, but honestly, I would rather move to doing telecom full time. Where do I go from here? Is there even much of a future in selling, installing, and maintaining phone systems? I'm sure we are going to see on premise equipment, especially in large installations, for some time. But even that will start to disappear. Am I crazy in wanting to make this jump?

I did have dumb luck and was approached about a position administering a large Avaya system and a dozen or so Nortel BCM's, earlier this spring. They were even going to pay for Avaya training / certification.....unfortunately their budget got cut before I could even start.

Is this doable.....or should I stick it out in IT?

I'd be real careful moving into the Telecom industry - and I say this as someone who's spent 50 years in it.

I remember, years ago, complaining to my wife about the competition the industry was facing from "Trunk Slammers" and the like. Her response was excellent:

"As the equipment gets smarter, the installers can get stupider."

So what if these yahoos can't troubleshoot a simple problem? So what if the install looks like crap? The consumer wanted a cheap job and got it.

My suggestion to you is - if you really want to get into Telecom, try to get into one of the "Cadillac" operations, one of the top places in your area. There will always be some people who are willing to pay top price for top service - but in the coming years they will be few and far between. And I wouldn't leave IT completely, because so much of Telecom will be moving more and more to IT.

Just my $0.02.

Sam

You are young enough and honestly based on what you said in second paragraph, I think you should give it a shot. Many companies in your market want someone with experience in both IT and telcom. That can be hard to find.

PM sent.

Hardware Telecom is coming to a slow end. Even the big guys, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, etc are all going Hosted to the Cloud.

IT is taking over Telecoms, so stay where you are and increase your knowledge.

Most of us old guys with decades of experience who sign on and discuss things here are now doing something other than telecom. Does that answer your question?

Concentrate your efforts on routing and switching (ethernet). CCNA etc. Telephones aren't going anywhere and I would bet that bandwidth is due to start being taxed like a commodity. Stay tuned. Telecom is evolving too but it still has it's place. Hell most people don;t even know where that stupid term cloud is from and what it actually used to relate too. Lord I'm old..lol.

In the meantime, to enhance your overall telephony knowledge, and to allow me to make ends meet, I am forming a 1A, 1A1, 1A2, 4A, 6A, and 9A key system tutorial group. The tuition is $25,500 per semester. Includes room, board, supplies, tools and the supreme benefit of being able to bask in my intellectual arrogance.

The campus is located on beautiful Manhasack-aha-quash-awamoc, just off the Long Island (NY) coast.

Guest instructors will include famous former electro-mechanical telephone system technicians whose comments grace these forum pages.

Arthur, I think this is a movie that you stared in. Click Here

Rcaman

Along the same line:

I'm in IT, have been 16 years, own an IT consulting business for the past 12.5 yrs and I'm seeing some dramatic shifts in our industry. Much like all of you fighting a losing battle with installing key or pbx systems, I'm installing fewer and fewer on-site servers. Installing and maintaining fewer workstations too as a lot of things are going mobile, tablet, or smartphone based. Everything is going to the "cloud". Line of business apps, e-mail, etc. All of my business will become how do I make recurring revenue partnering with cloud vendors on slim margins rather than labor from remotely or on-site configuring & maintaining servers. It stinks. I'd rather be working with my hands installing servers, data cabling, etc. For what it is worth, I've bowed out of installing VoIP for my clients. In fact I pushed one of my clients to someone on this forum to get a small pbx system since it was what they needed.

So things aren't all that rose-y on this side of the tracks.

I'm also seeing the end of copper telco plant in this state. As a contractor for a CLEC installing various DSL and POTS services, that will be real hard for the CLEC to continue to do business with a LEC that is doing almost no maintenance and employees with real knowledge retiring.

Scary times ahead. Wish I had better news for you OP.

Yep it is all going to the cloud. No one seems to care where the equipment is actually located or who has access to all their data.