I started my telecommunications career in the Army and I've spent eight years running VSAT systems for Cisco-based voice and data networks. I've worked communications jobs in Afghanistan, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Texas, Arkansas, and the Gulf of Mexico.This work has given me experience with various antennas, signal propagation techniques, switches, routers, computers, phones, wireless transceivers, modems, AC generators, UPS, and many other types of equipment. I've built and rebuilt networks, served thousands of customers, run operations for hundreds of sites, and traveled around the world many times.That experience was invaluable, and it taught me an important lesson: your technology needs to work, but that is not an end in itself. The services that we provide are useless if they don't enrich the lives of people in the real world, and if we ultimately fail to satisfy the needs of customers, then we too are useless.When I was 16 years old, my mom told me I would never escape the inevitable reality that business is about people. Turns out she was right.