Ask Bob Bartz how he got his start in engineering and — bucking the traditional entry — he doesn’t start with a degree. He’ll start with construction boots, fieldwork and a long climb from crew hand to designer.
He kicked off what would become a multi-decade career in field engineering by climbing utility poles, running boar rigs and running cable across Oklahoma. Those years solidified a tradesman’s background and shaped his perspective — eyeing projects from the vantage point of the people actually digging the ditches and laying the cable.
Today, he's “a construction guy who runs an engineering firm,” as he self-described to Broadband Nation. Field crews and engineering teams are deeply interconnected yet notoriously contentious — neither quite sure the other understands the full picture.
Bartz' ability to understand both worlds has been at the core of his work, and it's shaped his view on what the industry gets wrong about its own workforce pipeline.
Despite the underpinning importance of internet connection in everyday life — from remote work to telehealth — working on the infrastructure is not a well-known career path. Bartz believes not only should more job seekers (new and old) consider the industry, but they should follow what interests them within it.
“If you want to start in construction, and then an office job, or you want to move into engineering, that's exactly what I did,” he reflected. Bob believes that for those who really connect with the work, moving up the ladder in the industry isn’t just marketing fluff for a workforce campaign — it’s a climb he made himself.
“Anybody that's getting into the industry now, or is young in the industry, their future looks good… you're going to be able to move through the ranks rapidly if you apply yourself,” he continued. “I'm a perfect example of somebody that can start out of high school, get into the construction trade and continue to learn and advance into, you know, executive leadership roles.”
Work boots to blueprints
As it was for him when he first started, Bartz understands that many young field and construction workers are looking first and foremost for a paycheck and steady hours. At the same time, many engineers may start out more comfortable with code than conduit.
Yet the shape of his own career has led Bartz not only to encourage the two worlds to understand one another, but to actually keep an open mind in the direction of their careers — rather than find a lane and stick to it.
“I tell all the young people we hire… if you don't pay attention to what you're doing in your 20s and 30s, you're doing things you don't want to in your 40s and 50s,” he said. For him, it was following what intrigued him. “I came from the construction world, and just learned more engineering skills, and gradually worked through that.”
That direction made his career fulfilling — and highly valuable in the field-informed perspective he brings to engineering. It’s just one possible direction, but it’s a combination of experience he now looks for in his new hires.
Bartz’s team has pulled in people straight off construction crews — “people that are actually running the equipment and building the network, that are getting tired of the noise… come over and be a field technician that gathers that data for us.”
They have a particularly valuable eye for “constructability,” the unglamorous reality determining whether a beautiful blueprint can actually be built.
“Our field technicians really look for that constructability: ‘What am I seeing in the real world that they didn't see in the imagery that's going to prevent the network from being deployed?’ The ISPs, [the] bulk of their money is spent on construction labor," he explained. "So the better, more constructible your design, the easier the construction is… There's fewer change orders, less impacts to the neighborhood.”
The ones who can read both the map and the mud — who understand the software and the right-of-way it represents — are the ones he says “really make pretty good fielders for us." And from Bartz’s vantage point, it’s become “harder and harder to find those people,” especially those with knowledge and skills in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
The choice comes down to what work stays sustainable and intriguing. Bartz noted construction still often pays better, in many cases; long days in the field are still hard on bodies and families. But he’s quick to add that some peers are perfectly happy to be “out there in the construction world, loving every minute of it” well into their 50s.
The point, in Bartz telling, isn’t that everyone should climb out of the ditch and into design. It’s that the industry is wide enough to follow the learning into new areas — from installs to training, from the splice trailer to the server rack — without needing to start in the right classroom.
Interested in exploring job opportunities within the industry? Check out Broadband Nation's jobs board, training portal and Learning Center.