What is your opinion on the future of the network engineering profession?

I have read multiple articles that throw out really good job growth numbers for networking admin/engineering positions from now until 2020 (20-40% job growth over that time). I have also read as many articles saying there will be very few networking positions within the next 4-10 years. I'm sure a lot of us have heard many of the reasons why "experts" believe networking positions will be phased out; the infamous out-sourcing, networks will be able to trouble themselves, etc..

I am just wondering what you all think about the future of networking jobs.

* How do you think the profession will change over the next 2-10 years?
* Will we see less networking jobs in the future? why?
* If someone came up to you and asked if they should get into the networking profession, what would you tell this person?

Feel free to add anything else.

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MickQ

* How do you think the profession will change over the next 2-10 years?
- Wider tech variety, more wireless, harder to **** in exams (I can dream, can't I?).

* Will we see less networking jobs in the future? why?
- Probably same/more. Increasing levels of communication need the grunts to make it happen, the outsourcers need staff.

* If someone came up to you and asked if they should get into the networking profession, what would you tell this person?
- Same as any job, only do it if you like it.

Vik210

I think things are getting more and more difficult with time and it will continue to be like that. This has nothing to do with IT or any other field in particular – it’s for everything.
To answer your question, I think we will have more jobs in years to come but we have even more qualified people waiting for the right opportunity. Sir Ken Robinson said ‘there will be more graduates in next 30 years then the beginning of history’.
It all comes down to the ‘Survival of the Fittest’. It wasn’t long ago when MCSE/ CCNA certifications had job guarantees. Tell me if you don’t know unemployed CCNPs now!
+1 to MickQ. Do it if you like it.

hiddenknight821

Migrating to IPv6. I know many are going to say it's already being deployed out there, but they're currently in dual-stack configuration.

the_Grinch

Wifi. I think that will probably be one of the biggest things in networking. With the explosion of mobile devices you can only conclude that wifi will become bigger and bigger.

networker050184

* How do you think the profession will change over the next 2-10 years?

Technology is always changing so the profession will need to adapt.

* Will we see less networking jobs in the future? why?

No, we will see more jobs. The need for communication, especially over the internet, continues to grow rapidly. The people that ensure this can happen will always be in demand.

* If someone came up to you and asked if they should get into the networking profession, what would you tell this person?

I'd tell them it takes a lot of keeping up with technology if you want to be successful. Its not really the career for the person that wants to do it 9-5 and never learn anything new.

Now, will there always be jobs at small-medium businesses for dedicated networking professionals? I don't know, but if you are serious about this career thats not where the good opportunities are anyway. The places with the real career growth and opportunities are in the very large enterprise and service provider networks.

ptilsen

There will be more networking jobs. Outsourcing, the cloud, and whatever other terms you want to use don't seriously impact the quantity of jobs, at least not as much as growth and technology advancement do. The jobs are just moving. You'll start to see more service providers -- ISPs, MSPs, x-as-a-service providers, etc. I think in ten years many, if not most of us will work for service providers rather than for large corporations internal IT shops. Those internal shops aren't going away; there will just be more service provider jobs, IMO. For network engineering specifically, I think this is even more true -- I suspect the vast majority of network engineers will work for service providers and consulting firms.

I think that the days of IT professionals (especially network engineers) in SMB shops are all but over. Ten years from now pretty any company with less than 50M in revenue and/or 500 employees/nodes will be losing money to have its own IT staff, and it won't be able to keep them for long because they won't want to stay.

WafflesAndRootbeer

As growth occurs in new network technology and upgrades there will be more networking jobs on a temp basis in the engineering and installation niches. As it cools off, those jobs will go. Network control and monitoring is now being outsourced across the board except where it's risky or impractical for security purposes, so we will see some growth in those traditional network engineering and control jobs for service providers, but in-house jobs will likely continue to decline as IT as a service becomes the norm for many businesses. Even the small-business sector is transitioning to IT as a service and local telecom providers are getting in on that like crazy, leaving the IT Small business crowd without work and that's one of the reasons why Geek Squad is a sinking ship for Best Buy as they pushed very hard to try and get into the IT as a service for small business market and it didn't pay off when they could not provide the services that they wanted without actually having qualified staffing.

networker050184

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

As growth occurs in new network technology and upgrades there will be more networking jobs on a temp basis in the engineering and installation niches. As it cools off, those jobs will go.

Thats the thing, it never cools off. By the time we can get one technology, software or hardware completely rolled out its about time to move onto the next best thing.

Again, this doesn't really hold true in the small business sector where they keep the same edge router and three switches until they fall apart.

dead_p00l

I personally think that network engineering jobs will increase. Technology is always changing and the general consumer has now integrated the internet and networked applications into their daily lives. The number of people and devices will continue to grow as well as the changing technologies. I definitely not see network engineering declining.

Roguetadhg

We're still using roads the Romans were using, right?

If im a betting man (I am), I'm willing to bet that laying down a decent understanding of Past and Present will only yield better results in the future. It's evolution. Buzzwords comes, Buzzwords go. The underlying mediums of transferring pr0n and cat videos will need to be built, paved, polished and torn down.

When/if we decide to leave this blue marble, we'll have a whole slew of challenges and changes. There will be an ever-growing need to fill that void.

I don't see us as humans not wanting to expand into new areas. When we get to those new areas, we'll depends on communication, showers, fresh food, and cat videos for entertainment.