In a recent article (paywall), Elon Musk has once again turned his wrath to remote workers. Elon has a lot of good ideas, but also many bad ones, such as naming his child “X AE A-XII”. This is certainly proof that we don’t need to take everything he says seriously. Elon has said that those […]
Category: Perspectives
ChatGPT and the problem of authority
I’ve been reluctant to comment on the latest fad in our industry, generative AI, simply because everybody has weighed in on it. I do also try to avoid commenting on subjects outside of my scope of authority. Increasingly, though, people are coming to me at work and asking how we can incorporate this technology into our […]
Some thoughts on “digital twins”
As I mentioned in my last post, I like modeling networks using tools like Cisco Modeling Labs or GNS3. I recalled how, back in TAC, I had access to a Cisco-internal (at the time) tool called IOS on Unix, or IOU. This enabled me to recreate customer environments in minutes, with no need to hunt […]
Back in the lab
We all have to make a decision, at some point in our career, about whether or not we get into the management track. At Cisco, there is a very strong path for individual contributors (IC). You can be come a principal (director-level), a distinguished (senior director-level), and a fellow (VP-level) as an IC, never having […]
The death of CLI: A lesson from Swift
Update: From Fred, who was the guy referenced in the first paragraph: Actually it was a white button with a router icon on it and “make cli great again”, I know this because it was me. It was June 2016. Needless to say in my view that did not age well. When I attended Cisco […]
Product Management
It’s impossible to count how many people at my college wanted to be “writers”. So many early-twenty-somethings here in the US think they are going to spend their lives as screenwriters or novelists. My colleagues from India tell me most people there want to be doctors or engineers, which tells you something about the decline […]
Computers with Brains
A couple of years back I purchased an AI-powered energy monitoring system for my home. It clips on to the power mains and monitors amperage/wattage. I can view an a graph showing energy usage over time, which is really quite helpful to keep tabs on my electricity consumption at a time when electricity is expensive. […]
Back to Cisco Live
I haven’t posted in a while, for the simple reason that writing a blog is a challenge. What the heck am I going to write about? Sometimes ideas come easily, sometimes not. Of course, I have a day job, and part of that day job involves Cisco Live, which is next week, in person, for […]
Are coffee and networks the same?
I shall avoid naming names, but when I worked for Juniper we had a certain CEO who pumped us up as the next $10 billion company. It never happened, and he left and became the CEO of Starbucks. Starbucks has nothing to do with computer networking at all. Why was he hired by Starbucks? How […]
Blogging vs. Video
I must admit, I’m a huge fan of Ivan Peplnjak. This despite the fact that he is a major thorn in the side of product management at Cisco. It is, of course, his job to be a thorn in our side and Ivan is too smart to ignore. He has a long history with Cisco, […]