[Asterisk-Users] Career Opportunities

[Dan Austin]

Douglas wrote:
> 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.

They are the big player, so their products and tools tend to get the
attention.
 
> 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.

While either approach, application or infrastructure, you will run into
issues that
cannot be solved in that discipline.  I feel that an engineer in this
field must
be well versed in the infrastructure, and bonus points for being able to
develop
for the system.  I don't mean they have to be able to code native
applications, but
clever dialplans that solve problems can demonstrate that the understand
how the
system works.

As to the quality of the Cisco product, well it has its place.  The
management
tools are suited to putting them in the hands of front line staff to
perform
Adds/Moves/Changes without to much anguish.  Each release gets a small
bit better,
like our favorite open source package.  The fact that it is possible to
offer
almost every feature and service with Asterisk that CCM does, speaks
volumes
for the developers.  
 
> 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.

Not at all.  For all the Cisco-isms in a Call Manager environment, there
are a lot
of parallels.  If you know Asterisk inside out, you can learn the Cisco
way without
too much effort.

> 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.

All learning is good.  If you cannot make money with what you've learned
about
VoIP while exploring Asterisk, then at least you've added experience
that might
make the next techology you work with easier to understand, and maybe
that one
will make you money.

> Anyway, just my 2c worth..... other opinions welcome.
 
> Doug.
 
 
 
Dan