Zayo woes

Thu Sep 21 05:15:25 UTC 2023

Laughing out Loud, really, good views all...
Having been through this a few times.. and being one of those who is now
the one of the hated C level guys..
Much truth is spoken here.  EBITA and size are the issues IMHO in our
current system.
Having been the owner of a few "smallish" retail ISPs in the west.. I can
say with certainty that size is an issue.  in the world of today a
small/medium ISP can do OK, but can never access the funds or resources
necessary to actually be a long term survivor.  To that end we look at
sources of money that require us to sell a majority interest in our company
to make it to the next level, that and exhaustion from staying awake nights
wondering how to make next payroll because we spent a couple million on new
gear.
This money seeking then comes with an interview system where we court the
guys with money and they court us.. The outcome is always iffy.  You can
partner with money that has a good plan or one that sucks (done both).
Even if you get good money, you will suffer from culture issues.  Small
ISP's tend to focus on the people and the customers, the larger you get the
more important the money becomes (EBITA) which for a lot of the employees
is, well, hard.
But staying small in general = extinction so  you do what you do to keep
employees working (at least that's what I tell myself).
Good views all, and I totally agree with @Matthew Petach miracles
statement.. I'm no longer that guy, but I like to think I was in the past,
and I've got a bunch of them working for me now, so I try really hard to
appreciate it and to recognize that that is what is happening, I fight for
the money to do it as right as possible.. but I do depend on .... you
miracle workers.

/thanks
/rh

On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 9:30 AM Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 12:21 PM Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
>
>> Well sure, and I would like to think (probably mistakenly) that just no
>> one important enough (to the money people) made the money people that these
>> other things are *REQUIRED* to make the deal work.
>>
>> Obviously, people lower on the ladder say it all of the time, but the
>> important enough money people probably don't consider those people
>> important enough to listen to.
>>
>
>
> Not quite.
>
> It's more of what Mark said:
>
> "  I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet
> with whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers."
>
> I have worked time and time again with absolute miracle workers in the
> networking field.
> They say over and over again "to make this work, we need $X M to get the
> right hardware", even directly to the CFO.
>
> They get handed a roll of duct tape, some baling wire, a used access point
> and a $25 gift card from Office Depot, and they turn it into a functional
> BGP-speaking backbone, because that's what they're good at.
>
> The CFO and the rest of the executives that said "no" to the request for
> $X M to make the integration work properly pat themselves on the back,
> saying "see, we knew they didn't really NEED that money to make it work."
>
> A year down the line, customers are posting to NANOG wondering why things
> are going to hell in a handbasket at ISP A, as the BGP-speaking access
> point with some duct tape, baling wire, and SFPs purchased from Office
> Depot that ties the two networks together starts failing.
>
> As network engineers, we collectively set ourselves up for this by being
> so damn good at pulling miracles out of our backside to keep things running.
> We've effectively been training our executives that if they habitually
> turn down our requests for resources, we'll still find some way of making
> things work.
>
> We pride ourselves on being able to keep a dozen spinning plates going
> like a circus performer, without letting any of them crash to the floor.
>
> It's a hard thing to do, but one lesson I've taught junior network
> engineers of all ages is that sometimes, you have to step back, and watch a
> plate smash into the floor, *even if you could have rescued it*, if it
> seems like that's the only way your executive team will understand that if
> requests for necessary resources are denied, there will be operational
> impacts.
>
> Now, it's not something you should do lightly, and not something to do
> without first working with the executives to understand why the resource
> request is being denied.
> If you are working at a startup, and the money is running out, and the
> company is one step ahead of the creditors, probably not the time to put
> the foot down and intentionally let things crash and burn.
>
> But if the company is doing well, has the money, and the executives just
> want the numbers to look good for wall street analysts, then it's time to
> pause the miracle working, and help them understand that they cannot simply
> expect you to pull a miracle out of your backside every time, just so they
> can look good.
>
> If we continue to pull off miracles after telling executives that
> additional resources are required, it's no wonder they don't take the
> requests as seriously as they should.  ^_^;
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From: *"Mark Tinka" <mark at tinka.africa>
>> *To: *nanog at nanog.org
>> *Sent: *Tuesday, September 19, 2023 10:28:26 AM
>> *Subject: *Re: Zayo woes
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/19/23 16:48, Mike Hammett wrote:
>>
>> As someone that has been planning to be in the acquiring seat for a while
>> (but yet to do one), I've consistently passed to the money people that
>> there's the purchase price and then there's the % on top of that for
>> equipment, contractors, etc. to integrate, improve, optimize future
>> cashflow, etc. those acquisitions with the rest of what we have.
>>
>>
>> I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet with
>> whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers.
>>
>> The money people assume that all routers are the same, all vendors are
>> the same, all software is the same, and all features are easily deployable.
>> And that all that is possible if you can simply do a better job finding the
>> cheapest box compared to your competition.
>>
>> In general, I don't fancy nuance when designing for the majority. But
>> with acquisition and integration, nuance is critical, and nuance quickly
>> shows that the acquisition was either underestimated, or not worth doing at
>> all.
>>
>> Mark.
>>
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20230920/20d7aa35/attachment.html>