The Tree Chopping Trap

I’ve been thinking a lot about how network engineers spend their time, and I keep coming back to this metaphor that perfectly captures what I see happening across the industry.

Most of us are stuck chopping down trees. Let me explain what I mean. Your day looks something like this: alerts flooding your monitoring system. A switch that’s reached end-of-life but still works fine. Other teams ask why their application is slow. Your inbox has 247 unread messages. Your Slack is a constant stream of red dots.

So you do what any good engineer does. You chop down trees. You clear tickets. You configure devices. You update the configurations.

You troubleshoot connectivity issues. You attend meetings about meetings. And this work truly matters. It keeps the network running. It keeps users connected. It keeps the business moving.

But if this is ALL you do, you’re in serious trouble.

The Forest Will Run Out

This is the harsh reality that most network engineers don’t see until it’s too late: If all you ever do is chop down trees, eventually you’ll run out of forest. While you’re deep in configuration and troubleshooting, the industry is moving to software-defined & AI networking. While you’re manually updating firewall rules, Infrastructure-as-Code has become the standard. While you’re troubleshooting that MPLS circuit, companies are migrating to cloud-native architectures. You’re solving today’s problems brilliantly. But you’re not planting any seeds for tomorrow’s opportunities. And when the forest is gone i.e when your skills become commoditized, when your manual processes get automated, when your traditional network architecture gets replaced by something you don’t understand, you’ll be stuck with no way forward.

The uncomfortable question: How much of your time is spent chopping down trees, and how much is spent looking for fertile ground? Are you learning Infrastructure as code? Exploring network automation? Understanding how container networking actually works? Testing zero-trust architectures in a home lab?

Every time I talk to network engineers about this, I get the same response: “Kayodel, I get it. But I don’t have time. You don’t understand how busy I am.” The operational demands of network engineering are relentless. There’s always another ticket, another outage, another urgent request from leadership.

But here’s what I tell them, and what I’m telling you now: If you don’t make time to plant seeds now, you’ll be forced to make time later when you’ve run out of trees and by then, it might be too late. That’s the confronting reality of being a network engineer in 2025.

The challenge isn’t choosing between operational excellence and future readiness. It’s finding the balance. It’s carving out 30 minutes three times a week to learn something new. It’s saying no to that fifth meeting so you can experiment with AI Networking. It’s blocking off Friday afternoons for deliberate learning. Because the cost of not doing this is your career.

Your Action Items (The Part Where You Stop Reading and Start Doing)

So here’s what I want you to do this week:

1. Audit your forest. Spend 15 minutes and honestly assess: What percentage of your time is spent chopping trees vs. planting seeds? 90/10? 95/5? 99/1?
2. Block the time. Put a recurring 90-minute block on your calendar every week. Label it "Lab Time" or "Learning" or whatever keeps other meetings from creeping in. Protect this time like you’d protect a critical change window.
3. Pick one seed. Choose ONE technology you’re going to learn this month. Not five. Not ten. One.
4. Do something terrifying. Build something that might fail. Break something in your home lab. Deploy code you’re not sure will work. The discomfort you feel is a sign of growth.
5. Share your failures. Document what you tried and what went wrong. Post it. Share it. Teaching others what didn’t work is how you solidify your own learning.

The network engineering landscape is changing faster than ever. The skills that made you valuable five years ago won’t be enough five years from now. You can either spend your career chopping down trees until the forest runs out or you can start planting seeds for tomorrow’s growth. The choice is yours. But make it quickly because the forest is smaller than you think.

Until next time,

Stay curious.

P.S. — What’s one seed you’re going to plant this week? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.

P.P.S. — If this resonated with you, forward it to that network engineer friend who’s very good at putting out fires. They’ll thank you later.