The Future of Phones
Mark Nelson
Employer: Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco Systems
Job: Tech Lead
DDJ: What exactly is your job?
MN: We're working on voice-over-IP phone systems, and right now I'm working on firmware for phones and gateways.
DDJ: What do you find satisfying or rewarding about your job?
MN: It's really rewarding to start from scratch and see new hardware and software all pulled together to become a complete system. The first phones I worked on 20 years ago were limited to a couple K of assembly code. We now have 64 MB of Flash and can put essentially a whole call-processing system into a telephone. It's a lot of fun to have that power and to see the features we get out of it.
DDJ: What's challenging about your job?
MN: The biggest challenge is software engineering: the scheduling, management, working with other teams in design. Not everybody has been well trained at that, not everybody's good at it, and I don't know too many people who like it. Programming is the fun part, but that's kind of like the end product. After you've done the software engineering, you get to do the programming.
