Help wanted and unwanted

So is this a boom time or not? Is the communications industry in the midst of unbridled and unprecedented economic prosperity, or is it just a passing fad? Are fund-raising conditions favorable or hostile? Is the high-tech job market rich with opportunity or are people's positions threatened by the downsizing side effects of increased automation and consolidation?

There seems to be some disagreement. Witness some of the telltale signs of optical opulence from the recent National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Denver, for example. Much of the space on the message board near the entrance to the exhibit hall was taken up by job postings and the business cards of headhunters and corporate recruiters. Meanwhile, many of the streets surrounding the convention center were partially or wholly blocked off to make way for dig sites surrounded with orange construction tape marked "Caution: Fiber Optic Dig." Things were clearly booming in Denver, at least in the fiber realm.

Witness also the other side of the prosperity coin, however. Qwest Communications recently laid off 11,000 workers, calling it a necessary evil of its U S West rollup. 2nd Century Communications is firing a significant chunk of its work force and revamping its business plan to stretch its remaining cash for a while, calling the financial markets hostile and disinterested in unproven start-up plays. Service providers that were once looked upon as the leaders of the new competitive frontier - NorthPoint Communications and Intermedia come immediately to mind - are tanking all around us, in many cases being forced to sell to the very companies they were formed to combat.

I can't quite make sense of the imbalance at play here. Ask any service provider or vendor executive about their company's biggest challenges, and the answer almost always touches on the company's ability to attract and retain talent. Here's a question for them: When you talk about retention, do you mean the ability to entice people to stick around or the ability to keep from firing them?

This magazine alone is jammed with recruiting and help wanted ads for everything from network engineering and technical service jobs to middle and upper management posts. Does job security come with any of these positions or does the overabundance of available positions remove that variable altogether? In other words, if it doesn't work out, there's always the next thing.

The conclusion? Indecision, on account of complete unpredictability. Things can apparently turn on a dime - or on a botched bond placement, a squandered venture round or a cancelled IPO. So get ready, and don't get too comfortable.