In the last decade, every tech conference and boardroom conversation has danced around the same problem: there aren’t enough engineers. Not the kind you can retrain with a two‑week certification, but the kind who can walk into a datacenter outage, smell the burnt ozone of an overloaded PSU, and know instinctively which part of the network is lying to them. Those engineers, the ones who keep calm when everything else is burning, are vanishing.
It’s an industry‑wide vacuum. We’ve built a digital civilization on people who remember what BGP really does, how packets actually traverse, and why DDoS isn’t just a cost center. And those people? They’re aging out. The graybeards are still showing up, still carrying pagers they refuse to give up, but their replacements are few and far between. Most universities don’t mint network engineers anymore. They mint “cloud architects” who’ve never racked a switch. That’s not a dig. It’s evolution. But we’ve lost a generation of builders in the middle.
When I look across hyperscale networking and security teams, I see a massive, silent gap forming—a skills canyon between the legacy Internet operators and the new cloud‑native generation. What’s worse, we’ve created a culture that equates experience with obsolescence. Companies chase shiny, short‑lived skills while ignoring the raw fundamentals that built the Internet. If you know how to debug routing loops in the dark without Google, you’re suddenly a relic. But when the lights go out, it’s the relics everyone calls.
That’s where I learned something years ago, something the industry still hasn’t fully absorbed: the best untapped engineers aren’t sitting in computer science programs. They’re coming out of the military.
Why Veterans Fit the Gap We Created
The military produces exactly what tech is starving for: disciplined, adaptable, mission‑driven problem solvers. These are men and women who’ve worked in environments where failure isn’t a line item, it’s a life. They understand procedure, redundancy, and the brutal importance of preparation. You can teach syntax. You can’t teach composure under fire.
Rick, the Marine Who Made the 2 a.m. Maintenance Window Feel Like a Drill
Rick was a retired Marine who became a project manager at MCI. He wasn’t the loudest guy in the room, but he had that look, the one that told you everything was handled. At 2 a.m., while most of us were half‑awake and cranky, Rick was already three steps ahead, verifying that every smart‑hands tech was on‑site, every DIMM upgrade staged, every line card replacement cross‑checked. He didn’t just make my life easier. He made chaos predictable.
There’s a saying that comes from the service: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Rick embodied that. He understood that speed comes from readiness, not haste. When a job went sideways, he didn’t shout. He assessed, adapted, and executed. That mentality—the composure born from high‑stakes environments—is what modern engineering desperately lacks. Rick taught me that reliability isn’t a personality trait; it’s a system you live by.
John, the Warrant Officer Who Taught Me Punctuality Was Leadership
Then there was John, a former Army Warrant Officer. We first worked together at Teleglobe, after crossing paths at MCI. By the time we reconnected, he was my Director of Engineering at AS6453. John wasn’t a screamer. He didn’t need to be. He carried authority the way some people carry caffeine—it was just part of him.
Before John, I was that guy who rolled in around lunchtime, maybe grabbed lunch before doing any actual work. I was good, technically, but arrogant about it. John didn’t call me out directly. Instead, he said something deceptively simple: “We can’t be out late working a maintenance window and then show up late for a 7 a.m. meeting. If we’re leaders, we show unity.”
That hit harder than any lecture. It reframed leadership for me. It wasn’t about authority; it was about example. Later, in another conversation, he told a colleague who showed up thirty minutes late to a meeting, “You’re telling everyone else here that your time matters more than theirs.” That line stuck with me for decades. John’s version of discipline wasn’t barking orders. It was about mutual respect, consistency, and quiet accountability. Exactly what a modern security team needs but rarely finds.
Adam, the Special Operator Who Redefined What Leadership Means
Finally, there was Adam, my Chief Security Officer at Tata Communications. Adam was a retired Special Operator—straightforward, brutally efficient, and allergic to bullshit. I once asked him whether firing people ever got easier. He said, “Jim, I never had to fire anyone.” I must’ve looked confused, because he smiled and added, “I just helped them find their path.” That line rewired my understanding of leadership.
Adam didn’t lead through fear. He led through clarity. If you were off‑course, he’d tell you directly, no politics, no padding. “Fix this, or find somewhere you’ll be happier.” In a world of passive‑aggressive management and endless Zoom pep talks, that level of honesty is revolutionary. Military training strips you of pretense; it leaves you with focus. And that’s what tech needs: fewer slogans, more mission.
The Veteran Advantage, Beyond the Slogans
Every veteran I’ve hired, mentored, or worked beside has brought something rare—a refusal to panic. They know how to triage, how to communicate under pressure, how to maintain integrity when everyone else is cutting corners. They bring structure where others bring excuses.
And yet, too many tech companies overlook them because they “lack industry experience.” That’s nonsense. If someone can operate advanced radar systems under battlefield conditions, they can damn well learn Terraform. The tools aren’t the hard part; the mindset is. Veterans come preloaded with that mindset.
The industry talks endlessly about resilience, security posture and operational maturity. Veterans live those concepts. They don’t need slides to explain redundancy or risk mitigation. They’ve lived the consequences of missing either. That’s the kind of DNA we should be embedding in our engineering culture.
Closing the Loop, Building the Next Generation of Reliability
The truth is, we don’t have a talent shortage; we have a recognition shortage. We’re sitting on a reservoir of disciplined, skilled, adaptable people who’ve already proven they can thrive under pressure. What they need isn’t another certification path. They need opportunity, mentorship and leaders who understand that technical ability without reliability is fragility.
Every time I see a veteran walk into an interview, I think back to those late nights and early mornings with Rick, John and Adam. They weren’t “diversity hires.” They were the backbone of teams that never flinched. The people who didn’t need to be told twice. The ones who treated uptime like a moral duty.
That’s what tech’s been missing: the quiet professionals. The ones who don’t crave credit, who don’t post motivational threads, who don’t need to be reminded to care. They already do. They’ve always done it. They just need someone to open the door.
If you run teams that defend, deliver or design—whether at scale or inside your own enterprise—hire the people who already know how to hold the line when the storm hits. They’re the ones who keep the lights on.