[hn_version_0023]

“the people that used to cable and connect servers are not as important anymore”

What an arrogant take. As someone who does this, and is also a self-taught, no-degree-having troglodyte, I am forced to completely disagree.

Your cloud servers are built by people. That you don’t value those people says WAY more about you than anything else. I understand the abstraction— but that isn’t gonna matter when the PDUs are offline or the fibers get cut.

Tinkerers still exist and still get hired. Just not at FAANG. There is an entire world outside FAANG.

[caymanjim]

They're all centralized now, though. It used to be that every medium-to-large business needed in-house networking expertise and ran their own small data centers, or at least ran a server room that required a couple full-time people to manage. Now everything is cloud-hosted, and those kinds of jobs have all but vanished, unless you work at your regional AWS data center.

Offices don't even need simple cable runs and switches/routers anymore. A basic consumer-level network connection and ISP-provided WiFi AP are all the vast majority of businesses need. Everyone has a laptop and there's nothing to plug in or manage.

[mlinhares]

You're free do disagree, doesn't change the reality that most infrastructure will be running on monopolized data centers that need less and less people to operate.

I'm not devaluing anyone here, just stating that, as running infrastructure becomes a more and more concentrated business, there will be less jobs because the small shops/ISPs/data centers are disappearing, and what will be left will be the large cloud providers and equinixes out there.