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The 'Cable Guy' Now a Network Specialist
Hugh Pickens writes "Amy Chozick reports that cable guys, long depicted as slovenly cranks who dodged growling dogs and tracked mud on the living room carpet, often have backgrounds in engineering and computer science and certifications in network engineering. 'Back in my day, you called the phone company, we hooked it up, gave you a phone book and left,' says Paul Holloway, a 30-year employee of Verizon, which offers phone, Internet, television and home monitoring services through its FiOS fiber optic network. 'These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home.' The surge in high-tech offerings comes at a critical time for cable companies in an increasingly saturated Internet-based market where growth must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades. 'They should really change the name to Time Warner Internet,' says Quirino Madia, a supervisor for Time Warner Cable. 'Nine out of 10 times, that's all people care about.' Despite their enhanced stature and additional responsibilities, technicians haven't benefited much financially. The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."
Last time I had a comcast tech out to fix my cable modem, I had to show them how to use ping.
he had several meters and black boxes his employer had given him but hadn't shown him how to use. He was standing there clipping clips to different connectors, saying "Is this what I hook this to?"
The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."
Terrific start to the year with that sentence!
shows you how worthless those are, considering your partner may have just been hired cause he owned a truck and a hand drill
I don't know that the cable providers are really trying to get "Network Specialists" to do the installs? I completely agree that times are changing, and today's installer is much more likely to be bringing the connection into a home for Internet service than for simply watching TV. But the median pay doesn't sound that out of line to me, for what I think they're really looking for -- which is someone capable of efficiently driving to customer locations and following some defined procedures to hook up the cable and attach the required equipment.
The real "Network Specialists" they'd pay a lot more for would be the guys working at the "back end" of the cable company, managing the large switches handling all the traffic going out to various neighborhoods and ensuring people aren't hacking a modem in some way to get more bandwidth than they paid for. Other back end workers would be responsible for such things as rolling out firmware upgrades to the cable modems or set-top boxes on their network, testing equipment that comes back in as defective or customer returns, and keeping on top of network outages.
Just because today's customer is more sophisticated and wants to attach 15 or 20 devices to their connection doesn't mean the INSTALLER is expected to assist with any of that. My personal experience with cable company troubleshooting of issues (such as intermittent connections) tells me that if anything, they'll ask you to disconnect the cable modem from everything else and troubleshoot with only one PC connected directly to it. They don't really understand, or WANT to understand all the other things you might be trying to do with it.
Network specialists? My a$$. They are no more network specialists than bloggers are professional journalists (yes, I feel your pain and anger and feel free to think yourselves to be anything you want, which won't change a thing).
If you want to be sure that the work is done right, try to do as much of the local installations yourselves as possible. Otherwise you're in for a treat: lot of wasted time plus paying for stuff you end up doing yourselves anyway.
And no disrespect, but calling an average of >50k for cable installing low... come on, be at least a bit realistic.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I give them a sacrificial computer
"oh yea I totally use that 850MHz Pentium 3 as my daily computer, it meets all of your minimum requirements"
installed a “wireless gateway,” transforming an unused stairwell into a control room for the modem and router that can handle at least 24 devices at 22 megabits per second.
Anybody in this business more than 5 minutes, already knows you don't need an unused stairwell to hold a little apple airport. Unused Barbie Dollhouse stairwell, then I'll be impressed. My unused stairwell has a fileserver psuedo-nas, a small 3 unit compute cluster, a vlan capable ether switch with a zillion ports, a sbc6120 pdp-8 clone with an ethernet to serial telnet converter box, one of my ipphones that connects to the house asterisk ip pbx, and yes, I wedged an apple time machine box in there as a wireless gateway too.
Also not sure about the marketing figure of 24 devices. A /28 for the customer and a /29 for the public guest network? Uh, not. Probably just pulled than number out of a completely meaningless nether region.
Another rant is you don't need certifications in network engineering such as my long expired CCNP to ... crimp a F-connector on a cable, or yank cat-5 thru a wall. I think this is one of those ever so trendy and tiresome "be glad you networking guys at least have some kind of job, because physicists and aerospace engineers are stuck driving taxis" story. Its very much like implying that you "Need" a french literature degree to be a mcdonalds fry cook because that seems to be the only job position hiring french lit grads now a days. You need the overtraining and overeducation due to intense competition and lack of jobs, not because the workload requires it.
Finally, $55K is for a national job not just flyover big cities on the coasts. In the semi-rural area where I live, three times that gets you basically my house, a nice landed estate, an upgraded non-mcmansion house, an acre or so to grow gardens or have the kids play or put up a ham radio antenna in a non-HOA neighborhood, more or less low crime, decent neighbors, great four season weather, tons of money left over for kids education, travel/vacations, excellent local schools, tech toys, gourmet food, etc. Two spouses income and if you want you can live a rather more elaborate lifestyle, like perhaps own a house on a lakeshore, or substantial land for a private hunting reserve, etc. So spare me the comments that $55K in the flyover coastal areas or Chicago means living in a cardboard box and eating mac n cheese in the park; we know that. I know that TW pay has at least a small correction factor for local cost of living. The difference in salary required for "the good life" varies across the US by darn near a factor of 10, so if you can get a mid paying job in a fantastic area, its pretty good indeed.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Install cable systems is very hands on and lack of skills can you or others killed. Some of what cable guys do is like electricians and I want some who knows what they are doing not some one with just certs or Degrees. THIS IS LEARN ON THE JOB JOB! that should need a min of a degree to get in.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/106756
Just look at the story's where a cable guy grounds to a GAS LINE and other stuff.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/79994 Botched Comcast Install Blows Up House
Investigators believe grounding rod punctured gas line
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25415431-Comcast-fried-my-new-Sony-52q-lcd-tv
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80151
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80368 both technicians stated that the company-installed "system" of cables on the roof were "a real mess" and were unsafely stretched over and near an electrical box and associated cables."
While I have a "good" (but small) cable company (right down to putting paper booties on when they enter the house), when I have a line problem and they talk about coming out, I always disconnect all of my other other routers and subnets and pipe the cable modem to one dedicated dumb little PC.
Habit formed from experience with a "bad" (but huge) cable company that would always blame the problem on my equipment if there was more than one wire between their modem and the PC.
If the big cable companies have gotten better at all, I would point the finger at their having better test equipment - equipment that obviates the need for knowledge.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If unions like the Communications Workers of America (CWA) taught network engineering skills to members it would make a bigger union and a better workforce. Maybe make one's tuition payable out of one's union dues, with discounts for grades above 50%ile. Trade schools should be run out of the revenue of the trade, not out of the public pocket as a subsidy to that industry. The public should be in the business only of certifying minimum education standards, properly primarily educating applicants through highschool, and stimulating the incoming student body size to ensure strategic industries have a raw labor pool on which to grow and compete.
If the United Autoworkers had opened robotics and engineering schools for members in the 1980s instead of resisting automation, we'd have a better organized, educated and productive workforce, and a stronger domestic industry - and better cars.
If these unions were strong enough and offered better benefits, their membership would grow enough that we could have competing unions instead of the monopoly. Then strikes and other labor negotiations would bottom line at what's actually better for the industry's workforce as a whole, instead of just the members of that union.
--
make install -not war
So you can get around systems that lock you to 1 mac.
Wait you're complaining about 250GB? Man come to canada where most ISP's are still at 60GB.
Om, nomnomnom...
The original article/post links to a page describing "Radio and Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers" and their pay of $55,600, however what is actually being discussed here falls more under the "Line Installers and Repairers" description and their pay of $39,970. Hopefully that makes some of you feel better about the service (or lack thereof) you received from your 'cable guy'. The correct link for this job description is.... http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm
All companies regard employees as a pain in the ass. Going by the capitalist model, all workers are essentially profit-stealing overhead. Ideally a company with no employees, run entirely by machines, is the most profitable.
Basic economics works against the working class.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I can see a Xfinity SSID right now and they are only useing WEP.
one time , i even had one ask me 'how my day was going'.
can you imagine the nerve of these servants?
to talk to me, a LINUX user, like that? and they dont even know how to disassemble their makefiles? balderdash!
He does. It's you that doesn't because of your commie upbringing!
And mentioned, that my based on the definition that I like the most, some of them are journalists.
How is that ignoring the others that contradict me?
The point is that bloggers who are attempting to appeal to popular culture are journalists by definition.
Don't put any stock in karma. Read my posting history to decide how you feel about me. It won't take long.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe you should consider what the cable company does...
The home is typically pre-wired. They are not responsible for the testing or verification of all wiring in the home. The attach their cable to the home wiring, which should already be properly grounded, and put their cable modem in, which attaches to the residential wired coax and residential wired power. It is not required or expected, of a technician installing a cable modem, to review the residence for proper grounding. It most likely states in the contract or terms of service, that you should have an electrician evaluate your electrical system, and provide a ground as necessary.
I did find a number of other forum posts, where people were complaining that Comcast *wouldn't* install service, because they did *not* have a proper ground. They instructed the customer to contact an electrician or the power company, to install a grounding rod.
When having T1's installed, I've had the providers show me where the "good earth ground" is for them to use, and sign off on the fact that if any equipment is damaged because the ground is not actually a "good earth ground", that I am responsible for any damaged equipment. We had to comply with other requirements also, such as 3/4" thick polyurethane coated plywood board mounted to the wall, for them to install their equipment to, dedicated power circuits, UPS, etc.
We have insufficient information to have an educated opinion. Maybe it was grounded. Maybe it was grounded at the pole. If the house is pre-wired, it should be assumed that it is properly grounded inside.
We do know that lightning does not always follow the shortest path to ground. It can. If you've ever seen high speed photography of a lightning strike, it's not a single arc from point A to B. Even still, there is a huge electrical/static charge and EMP related to, but not directly resulting from, such a discharge.
I live in the "lightning capital of the US". We are very aware of lightning strikes and their results. Anyone who has lived here long has seen what can (and does) happen, even in perfectly grounded environments. If you suffer a direct strike, virtually anything connected to wires, no matter how well grounded and surge protected, can be damaged. It is very common for people to disconnect all of their valuable electronics during a storm. Physically disconnecting them from their sources, not just turning off a switch. Lightning that just went miles through the air will easily jump a fraction of an inch in a switch.
I've seen computers that were turned off, attached to surge protectors that were turned off, where the switch, fuse, and internal components of the surge protector were melted. Heavier electrical devices tend to handle it better, but I've even see those with holes burned in the sides of their casing, where the lightning jumped from them to another piece of metal.
We had several computers damaged in one office, because the telephone and network cables ran under the floor. The building was an older one, with a crawlspace under it. There was a nearby (but not direct) lightning strike, which caused a static charge under the building. Several seemingly unrelated computers and telephones, were damaged or destroyed. Two cables were rendered unusable, as several conductors were broken due to the strike (probably melted). Being under the building, and not touching the ground, weren't enough to protect them.
If we were provided detailed schematics and photographs of the wiring, including grounding, for anything conductive (power, telephone, cable, plumbing, TV antenna mast, satellite dish, etc), we could make an educated opinion to what happened. For all I know, the lightning struck the roof of the house, hitting the main power lines coming it. it then could have traveled through the electrical system, and back out the c
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I used to work in Level3 for a cable company and I can tell you that most of the techs don't even check the RF power levels on the lines half the time. Heck, I've had to send a FOREMAN out just to get someone that would actually unplug a modem to trace a simple RF problem to a splitter and have it fixed in 5 minutes or less. Forget about even expecting them to know how to check the IP address the customer was getting if they can't even take care of an RF issue that "technically" they should be experts in for all the checks they do on the lines for regular TV service all the time.
The fatal flaw of the article is that the techs they mention in it are all foreman level or supervisors. NONE of which are the regular cable techs that we all know and loath. Install techs are also better trained and have higher expectations placed on them so they are (generally) at least a little better than the average tech but still no where near being called a "Specialist" given that many of them still needed one of us to tell them how to put in a wireless key on a MAC or PC.
That being said though, the cable industry itself is changing. Gradually all cable techs will have no choice but to actually learn something or take a hike thanks to the newer technologies coming out (ex DOCSIS Set-top Gateway).
I've dealt with plenty of level 1 tech support BS, but I've never had a problem with home installers.
the install techs just make sure the modem is hooked up. I can and do handle the home networking myself. (I suppose this could be specified in the ordering process, so the ISP knows what techs to send out and with what equipment)
Cox - apartment was already wired, so tech just needed to hook up the modem and make sure the line still worked. the only device was my PC, so networking was a moot point
Time Warner - house was not already wired, techs spent a lot of time working out the cable run. switched from another ISP, used the existing home networking setup with the new modem/ISP
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.