Field Is Systems

Without all the fiber in the ground, the servers in closets, cables strung on poles, none of this works. Software matters, but don’t forget layer one. The hornet-filled handholes, mysteriously stealthy closets, the cell towers and satellite dishes.

I earned my stripes troubleshooting gear in multi-million dollar homes with lawyers staring me down, just waiting for the chance to escalate. (Not all lawyers… but dang he was a memorable character).

Anyway, I started in the field- probably 110 lbs soaking wet, fighting a 70 lb fiberglass ladder, Every home was a black box, no home runs, and always “the wiring is fine, our electrician is the best”.

By the way, you’ve got 50 minutes to figure it out and fix it. I loved it.

Navigating the raw technical, and sometimes somewhat political nature of reality gave me more systems experience than any book or cert ever could.

Because when you’ve had to:

• Diagnose issues without a meter, because you left it 45 minutes away
• Crawl 200 ft under a house just to find out there is, in fact, nothing there
• Stare at a ceiling, and get a flash of x-ray vision: someone did something stupid up there in 1988.
• Explain BERs and SNRs to “an engineer”

You gain a weird wisdom that can’t be taught. These things aren’t JSON objects- they’re dumb rocks that we tricked into wiggling electrons just convincingly enough to look like they’re thinking.

Through all that blood and sweat, you gain power over those little bastards. Those dumb rocks are now your minions. They speak to you in ways you can’t quite explain.

This all shapes my perspective:

Assume the worst. Bring your own tools. Don’t trust that anyone upstream knew what they were doing.

If you’ve never dug snow to find a pedastal, wrung a quantifiable amount of sweat out of your shirt after being in an attic for 20 minutes, or gazed into the blinking sync LED wondering where your life went wrong, maybe you’re good at software infra.

But you’re not one with the stack.

You don’t need steel-toed boots to understand infrastructure. But it helps. Got a good story to share? greg@urg.systems