If you were a Painter, a really good painter, you would have skills and expertise in painting. You might understand your brush, how to make one, what hair is the best type for a given finish. You might practise on using different shapes, different hair and different movements. You might also be able to make your own paint, mixing the raw materials to produce the different colours. You could grow your own herbs, gather your own minerals and grind / boil and fix them to make your own paints. Your experience knows how to apply the paint, to combine your physical movements with the nature of the paint, surface and other factors to .
But to be an Artist, you would also need to understand shape, form and colour. You would spend time thinking about composition, and relationships, and creating a narrative within the picture frame. You would consider and practice, draft and draw elements of the picture, carry out preliminary sketches and form drawings until you captured the essence, the very spirit of your art. You would also need to have a relationship with those who might buy, or display, or commission you work – you won’t be a serious artist if you can’t survive, and you won’t be serious if you don’t practice your art every day.
A Network Engineer, a really good engineer, should have skills that knows how to trace, to detect, to debug. You should know how the network is connected, and why data flows that way, and not this way. What is its purpose ? What are the elements that join together, that are mixed, to provide the data flow from end to end. And then, make the fix.
But to be a Network Designer, a really good designer, also needs to understand the network, the entire network, and all of the elements that make it up. You should see the form and shape of the entire system, and the external factors that make it the way it is. You should understand what the you can do, with the materials available, and how you can touch-up the picture, to change that shape, to add a little character there. The business factors that created the opportunity, and restrict the picture from being great.
That’s the difference between a good Network Engineer, and a good Network Designer.
Footnote
I originally published this in March 2009, but felt moved after a recent discussion to post it again. Please indulge me if you have already read this.
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About Greg Ferro
Design is also somewhat of a Philosophy. There are certain accepted practices but there is alot of room to interpret how things should be done. You get two Engineers in the same room and ask them to come up with a design and you might see two different ways of accomplishing the same thing. I think designers have become somewhat defensive about a network because they have to continually defend their decisions. Not only to Peers (read any forum that asks for help), but to management who really doesn’t understand.
Wherein lies the difference between art and engineering. Art is creative and non-deterministic, Engineering is directed and linear. And like Art, the communication is a large part of process. Getting your art recognised requires influence, communication, relationships to get people to “see” your vision.
Lots of similarities really.
So do you think that move from engeering to design is a progresstion, like the move from being a painter to a artist?
I think that some people want to create, and other people want to build. It’s not a progression but a choice that people make.
Creative skills are rare in the IT industry, and thus good designers / writer / communicators are hard to find, and lead to higher pay rates. Not because they are better, just because their skill set is harder to find.
I can’t think of an instance where you can separate design from engineering, at least where quality is concerned. An engineer must know debugs and traces within the context of the network design. I have to know what traffic behavior is expected to recognize a deviation in that behavior. Similarly, if I don’t possess solid engineering skills, I cannot perform needs analysis and generate config and test plans for a network tech to execute. Anything less is an account manager, someone who has a copy of Visio and thinks putting shapes on a sheet with connector lines equals “preliminary design”.