[afrigeek] AIS 2020 : AfNOG '20 - TIMELINE

[Mark Tinka]

On 10/Dec/19 23:42, Noah Sematimba wrote:

>
> I am not sure I would agree with this argument given how many times I have seen providers struggling to find even basic NOC engineers. One would indeed assume that there now enough individuals trained to do so but that does not factor in the rather rapid population explosion in most of Africa, the exponential growth of most networks and access to the internet as a result, and brain drain as many of those trained have migrated to other locales, been promoted, or otherwise ceased to be hands on techs for one reason or another. 
>
> That said, maybe the regional NOGS make more sense but they would require a lot more support to really have that kind of impact. AfNOG is more than the technical skills taught in class. For some of us it was also the change in mindset that came with interacting with vastly more exposed and experienced individuals from around the world. 

In general, I would tend to agree with Noah, if for no reason other than
what we are seeing, globally, is that new network engineers are coming
in on the back of "automation". They are great network engineers that
understand the theory and can work a GUI to provision a BGP session with
a peer. But the moment the GUI and automation back-end fails, give them
CLI and they don't know where to start (true story, in Vienna).

Over time, I posit that it's going to become harder and harder to find
young network engineers in the game that can work CLI as well as they
can some fancy automation GUI. And this is not to speak against
automation, quite the opposite. However, as we know, these things fail,
and that could be the difference between losing customers or hiring old,
expensive consultants that know what "conf t" is.

This is a discussion PFS and I have had for a while now, and we actively
see the struggle with trying to hand the reigns off to the new blood.

Mark.