IMHO, RF engineers will be extinct soon. (And I’m not enjoying it, because I’m one of them).
I say RF Engineers on Optimization/Planning role.
R&D will still be there.
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Automation will do everything.
Try to read about Huawei MAE (MBB Automation Engine).
SON is taken to next level with MAE!
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There were times when a base station costed a million dollars, and placing it on the exact spot was really valuable.
Or dimensioning the network to require the minimum quantity of them.
This time is past.
Yes, people use to respect Telecom Engineer.
Well, there is lots of work to be done on 5GC, Mutimedia Services, Edge computing.
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Totally agree!
Consultancy rate degraded a lot.
Hope so old days will be back soon. But maybe only if some miracle will happen.
I don’t think so, the old days will back for AI Engineers, I think.
Problem is that very few people are AI scientists.
Knowing Pyhton and basic Machine Learning will make a million people believe they’re ready for AI. 
Competition will be fierce.
And people love to sugarcoat CVs.
I think new gen passing from college learning these concept in college days will have uper hand.
Our time c++ more popular language but unfortunately it has no value now.
Totally. It’ll level competition from the bottom.
But guess what, I think AI (or data scientists) will be over soon as well.
Too much of a hype.
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I seen few output of AI tool during one of volte project for every call drop reason tool giving reason high prb utilization no other significant contribution.
I came to know Ericsson very much focus on automation for worse cell lot of tools there.
Again, IMHO all engineers will have to know basic AI, scripting, Machine Learning, in spite of their major degree.
Knowing ML/AI will be a given soon, as a tool. knowing only the tool has very limited value.
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Fix your position where you need to enter orchestration, vnf, bare metal. 
In a company AI Scientist position will be very less.
Most of them will be from Mathematics/CS phd background.
Rest all requirements for deployment will be junior engineer who will implement scrips and will have low salary.
Telecom expertise will always require to support AI Scientist.
But obviously day by day optimization enginner requirements will be less.
However I am still not sure how it can be replace the customer expectations in Middle East, India, South East Asia, Africa customers changing expectations.
Service industry can not be totally replaced. I believe.
Few companies are not going to automation, and management also not favour it .
More value for humans instead of machines!
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Truth is half way: automation cost a lot and humans are cheap now.
This will change in coming years.
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That is what I want to say.
It may be possible in Europe, US network where everything follow process.
Why is there is still high salaried job in some places, like Middle East?
Decline in oil prices is the game changer.
Soon all jobs of Middle East would be remote work from RSC of India or Pakistan, etc.
Golden period of Gulf is gone forever.
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