Make Yourself Redundant, Before Someone Else Does

I’ve worked with telecom companies for years. And here’s something you may not hear often: telcos hate being called telcos.

Why? Because “telco” makes them sound like a utility. A dumb pipe. Just the cables and the towers. It doesn’t reflect the ambition they have, to be tech players, digital platforms, even AI leaders.

But here’s the tension. Telcos are among the most staffed industries in the world. This is surprising when you remember they’re in a digital business. Compare that to retail or manufacturing, which have been around for centuries and still often run leaner.

Now think about this: When WhatsApp was sold to Facebook for $19 billion, they had just 55 employees. Some of the telcos I’ve worked with, bringing in similar levels of revenue, have over 100,000 employees. That’s a huge difference. One of the key metrics in companies' annual reports is revenue per employee. And it’s not pretty. This is why you hear the message from a telco to a techco at every major telecommunications conference. Everyone wants to replicate the WhatsApp scale and agility.

There was a funny article back then asking: What else could you buy for $19 billion? The article discussed that with that money, you could have built four World Trade Centers, or Mark Zuckerberg could have indulged himself with four Aircraft Carriers at $4.5 billion each. This is why I remind people of the difference in scale between a million and a billion.

🔴 The number of seconds in a day ﹦ 86,400
🔴 One Million seconds ﹦11.5 Days
🔴 One Billion seconds ﹦ 31.5 Years        

But no one really asked the serious question: Why does it take 100,000 people to do what 55 managed to do with software? ( I am well aware that WhatsApp operations and Tier-1 telco operations are of different complexities; however, the level of automation used in WhatsApp is what the telcos would like to achieve).

And that brings us to today. At every tech conference, you’ll hear telcos talk about “autonomous networks,” “AI-powered operations,” or “zero-touch architecture.” But here’s the part no one says out loud: They want fewer people. The whole telco to techcho has a big motivation behind it, i.e., Revenue Per Employee. This metric is a key indicator of efficiency and productivity. When a company can generate more revenue with fewer people, it signals a leaner, more agile operation. This is precisely why Tier-1 telcos, despite their inherent complexity compared to a company like WhatsApp, are striving to automate tasks that traditionally required massive human intervention. The goal is to shift from a high-touch, labor-intensive model to one where software and AI handle much of the heavy lifting, ultimately boosting their revenue per employee and overall efficiency.

It’s not just about being smart. It’s about being smaller. Improving revenue per employee is the real goal. Automation isn’t just about performance, it’s about headcount.

Sam Altman from OpenAI suggested that we might see one person Unicorn companies in the future due to AI. This is the extreme form of automation.

What can we do?

So, if you work in telcos (or any industry, really), this is something worth pondering. I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m saying this so you can prepare.

The safest way forward isn’t to fear being replaced. It’s to make yourself replaceable, on your own terms. Learn to solve better problems. Find new ones no one’s noticed. Blend your skills in ways that AI can’t. In short, don’t just protect your job. Reinvent your role. Work on first principles, work on things that will not change. Improve your communication skills, build a network.

Because the truth is, the only way to survive the future of work, is to stay ahead of it.

This is why I am writing the book "Working in the Age of AI" with Wiley to provide a framework on how to stay relevant in a constantly changing world. Please share your ideas and tips that have worked for you.

I write weekly on different topics related to Data and AI. Feel free to subscribe to FAQ on Data newsletter and/or follow Fawad Qureshi on LinkedIn or FawadQureshi on X.