Re: Zayo woes

[Matthew Petach <mpetach () netflight com>]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 12:21 PM Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net> wrote:

> Well sure, and I would like to think (probably mistakenly) that just no
> one important enough (to the money people) made the money people that these
> other things are *REQUIRED* to make the deal work.
>
> Obviously, people lower on the ladder say it all of the time, but the
> important enough money people probably don't consider those people
> important enough to listen to.


Not quite.

It's more of what Mark said:

"  I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet with
whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers."

I have worked time and time again with absolute miracle workers in the
networking field.
They say over and over again "to make this work, we need $X M to get the
right hardware", even directly to the CFO.

They get handed a roll of duct tape, some baling wire, a used access point
and a $25 gift card from Office Depot, and they turn it into a functional
BGP-speaking backbone, because that's what they're good at.

The CFO and the rest of the executives that said "no" to the request for $X
M to make the integration work properly pat themselves on the back, saying
"see, we knew they didn't really NEED that money to make it work."

A year down the line, customers are posting to NANOG wondering why things
are going to hell in a handbasket at ISP A, as the BGP-speaking access
point with some duct tape, baling wire, and SFPs purchased from Office
Depot that ties the two networks together starts failing.

As network engineers, we collectively set ourselves up for this by being so
damn good at pulling miracles out of our backside to keep things running.
We've effectively been training our executives that if they habitually turn
down our requests for resources, we'll still find some way of making things
work.

We pride ourselves on being able to keep a dozen spinning plates going like
a circus performer, without letting any of them crash to the floor.

It's a hard thing to do, but one lesson I've taught junior network
engineers of all ages is that sometimes, you have to step back, and watch a
plate smash into the floor, *even if you could have rescued it*, if it
seems like that's the only way your executive team will understand that if
requests for necessary resources are denied, there will be operational
impacts.

Now, it's not something you should do lightly, and not something to do
without first working with the executives to understand why the resource
request is being denied.
If you are working at a startup, and the money is running out, and the
company is one step ahead of the creditors, probably not the time to put
the foot down and intentionally let things crash and burn.

But if the company is doing well, has the money, and the executives just
want the numbers to look good for wall street analysts, then it's time to
pause the miracle working, and help them understand that they cannot simply
expect you to pull a miracle out of your backside every time, just so they
can look good.

If we continue to pull off miracles after telling executives that
additional resources are required, it's no wonder they don't take the
requests as seriously as they should.  ^_^;

Matt




> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Mark Tinka" <mark@tinka.africa>
> *To: *nanog () nanog org
> *Sent: *Tuesday, September 19, 2023 10:28:26 AM
> *Subject: *Re: Zayo woes
>
>
>
> On 9/19/23 16:48, Mike Hammett wrote:
>
> As someone that has been planning to be in the acquiring seat for a while
> (but yet to do one), I've consistently passed to the money people that
> there's the purchase price and then there's the % on top of that for
> equipment, contractors, etc. to integrate, improve, optimize future
> cashflow, etc. those acquisitions with the rest of what we have.
>
>
> I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet with
> whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers.
>
> The money people assume that all routers are the same, all vendors are the
> same, all software is the same, and all features are easily deployable. And
> that all that is possible if you can simply do a better job finding the
> cheapest box compared to your competition.
>
> In general, I don't fancy nuance when designing for the majority. But with
> acquisition and integration, nuance is critical, and nuance quickly shows
> that the acquisition was either underestimated, or not worth doing at all.
>
> Mark.