Be brave because it is not over yet!

2009 has begun her decent upon us like a celestial being surrounded by a golden haze and accompanied by a heavenly chorus. The general consensus seems to be that if anything can save us from 2008 it must be the coming of 2009, the New Year. No matter what religion, race, gender or nationality you are, I am willing to bet that like me, you are ready for a new year. I cannot remember a time in my long life, when I wished for another year to be tagged on to the many I have collected so far.

Many CCIEs in the private sector (this parlance refers to those CCIEs who don’t work for Cisco or channel partners) have weathered the storm of bad economic times. Heads down holding their breath as the ranks of their co-workers and friends have been made redundant, down sized, right sized, laid off or simply let go. Racks of routers, switches, firewalls, and telecom equipment have become redoubts, temporary sanctuary even replacing the trenches of old as protection and hiding places for the CCIEs in some enterprises. Some NOCs and TACs have become a bizarre game of whack a mole, (an arcade game where kids score points by striking a mechanical mole on the head with a mallet). They can be seen gazing over their cubicle walls to get a glimpse of the Grim Reaper from HR, lest he sneak up on them unannounced. These engineers can be seen bouncing up and down as they peak over the tops of their cubicles like gophers on the prairie.

Be brave because it is not over yet!

I have often written about the things I hear from CCIEs. What I have been happiest to hear this year is that most of the ones who are with Cisco Channel Partners are doing OK. I was never really worried, but with the constant media attention being paid to all things miserable, it is nice to know I am recruiting in the right space at the right time. For example just this past week I have had some good offers made to several CCIEs and Network Engineers in Southern California and the Midwestern US. This happened while I was away in Europe so how cool is that? My trip to Zurich and London that week confirmed the trend there as well for CCIEs. I confirmed this when I met with several Channel Partners who shared their continued recruitment efforts with me. There is a ripple though with the major telecoms where I am hearing about some movement going on but mostly from the ranks of the contractors they often use. Their permanent staff seems to be secure, except where you have continued shifts of personnel because of a merger or two. In these cases data centers are consolidating and some CCIEs are not selecting to move to other cities to keep their jobs. (Hell who wants to move to Richardson, Texas, isn’t Waco near there where they keep finding gun toting religious zealots who want to kill you for Jesus?) This is not a bad thing, since Channel Partners do pay a competitive wage going head to head with these big organizations.

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