A couple of years ago, one of our network security architects at work told me that I was in the wrong business. Storage, virtualization, data centers, it’s all going to the cloud. I’d soon be out of a job.

I barely knew the guy. At first I politely laughed when he said it, but then realized he was serious. Not really a great way to make new friends at work. The irony of the situation was that he tracked me down on one of the few times I was in the office, and approached me to help him lay out some of the VMware requirements for a Trend Micro Deep Security implementation.

It wasn’t more than a few months later, that he didn’t work for my employer anymore … not by his choice … and I’m still there, two years later, still billable most of the week.

I don’t even remember his name.

But, he’s wasn’t wrong, just a jerk. It’s not as if he was delivering some sort of life changing message, that I’d never heard before. It’s one I hear repeated very often on social media, in conference presentations, etc, and in the wake of this Amazon re:Invent conference last week, I’m hearing it a lot.

It’s undeniable that a big part of my job is chucking boxes of rust and silicon into racks, stringing copper and fiber optics around, and making it all sing together in unison. I kind of enjoy it.

It’s also undeniable that things are changing.