[Asterisk-Users] Career Opportunities

[Douglas Garstang]

I've been working with Asterisk for a little while now, and have been looking recently at my next career opportunity. It seems from searching the various job sites that the predominant VOIP technology is not the applications-based open source approach we took, but Cisco, with a really heavy emphasis on the networking (ie network engineer) aspect. If you do a job search for (VOIP or Voice-over-IP or "IP telephony") and you mostly get results for network engineers with lots of Cisco experience.
 
Because Asterisk is a feature-rich solution, my emphasis has been on providing and developing features, applications and systems (ie asterisk, Linux), redundancy, customisation, programming, as well as overall architecture, especially in relation to SIP (and working around all those Asterisk HA limiations!). There of course has also been a networking component as well. On a side note, apparently my current employer tried a Cisco solution before I came along, and I hear all the time how absolute crap is was. Is that how people who have used Asterisk feel about Cisco? Is Cisco that bad? Is it lacking in features? I know we investigated a Sylantro solution and I remember that was pretty nasty.
 
Anyway, based on the absolute dominance of Cisco it almost seems like what I have been doing with Asterisk has been a complete waste of time from a career perspective. I'm not sure how I can use Asterisk to my advantage over Cisco here. Having moved to a small city and working for a CLEC makes finding work outside the city even tougher.
 
I'm wondering if I should have stuck with Unix or SAN admin that was I doing before, and if my recent work with Asterisk has jeopardised my current experience status with my previously used skills.
 
Anyway, just my 2c worth..... other opinions welcome.
 
Doug.