Tim McElligott Blog: OSS' Dirty Little Secret

They say 3 percent of the people use 5 to 6 percent of their brain
97 percent use 3 percent and the rest goes down the drain
I'll never know which one I am but I'll bet you my last dime
99 percent think we're 3 percent 100 percent of the time

– Statistician’s Blues, Todd Snider

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently calculated an unemployment rate in the telecom sector at 10.1 percent. It says our industry lost more than 49,000 jobs in the last year and 5,800 just in the last month.

Make of it what you will – right-leaning politicians would make an attack ad out of it, left-leaning ones would use it to rally support for unemployment extensions – but like it or not, here is what I make of it. I call it a resounding success.

I don’t believe there is a baseline for full or ideal employment in a sector with as much change as this one. So I don’t know how they can say what percent telecom unemployment is up or down. But more importantly, if there are almost 50,000 fewer jobs in telecom today than last year, you have to admit – if you are in the business of process automation, of operational excellence, of self-care, of workforce management, of BSS and OSS in general – that you have done your job well.

Other than developing the technology to create and deliver new services, everything else in telecom software is about streamlining and automating the business. It’s about taking the people, the instigators of error and siphons of profit, out of the equation. You can’t take credit for all that job reduction, but still — Bravo!

My point is not to heap guilt upon anyone. The only heaping to be done is with congratulations. Seriously. Do I think the industry could afford to maintain many more jobs? Yes. Do I wonder why the 126 projects worth $1.2 billion in stimulus dollars and another $117 million in private investment already announced haven’t yet created new jobs? Heck yeah. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to do yours.

Even if the stimulus creates thousands of jobs, the telecom unemployment rate doesn’t suddenly become an acceptable 5.6 percent or 4.1 percent. How far back can you go to get a baseline for how many people telecom should be employing? All that new jobs would mean in terms of statistics is that telecom is in a temporary and artificial growth phase that you will be asked to manage and support as efficiently as possible to keep labor costs low, activation automated and errors minimized.

If telecom companies can run profitably and stay competitive with fewer people, so be it. I am more concerned with getting less disparity between the worth of the CEO and the rank-and-file than I am with fighting against the tide of automation. But that’s an argument for another day.

Your job will continue to be to guard against the upward creep of headcount. Ideally, by doing your job well you make your company or customers more efficient and innovative and therefore more competitive. Being more competitive is what makes the companies grow. And real growth is what brings new jobs, jobs that will be within the tolerance of the almighty profit margin.

So it is clear you are doing your part. You’ve streamlined away a good portion of those 49,000 jobs. You’ve made your companies more competitive. Now it's time for them to do their part.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.