Path your career has taken?

I know most people consider Help Desk to be the entry point, but where do most people go after that? I thought it might be interesting to ask where people started and what career path they took from there. I was also curious if people were satisfied with their career path.

For instance, mine is:

Support Technician
Field Technician
Help Desk Specialist (current)

The first two jobs were at a mom and pop shop that were paying minimum wage, but they served as a place for me to get my feet wet and to start off my IT career. I currently work at Help Desk, which has enough down-time to allow me to study for my certs. The company also has me assisting as a IS Tech whenever the other techs need some back-up.

I am satisfied with my path. I somewhat dislike how I am labeled as a Help Desk Specialist but also do tech work alongside of that (without the title), but that is me being petty more than anything else.

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Comments

JoJoCal19

My career path has been:

1. JOAT (Small manufacturing shop) 1.5 years
2. Second Level Desktop Support (One of nations largest financial firm/bank) 1.5 years
3. Identity & Access Management (Same company) 6 years
4. Information Security Risk Management (Another of the nations largest financial firms/banks) 6 mos

I'd love to move to the technical side of security but as more time goes on, I don't think that's going to happen, not as my primary job anyways. I'm on a steady path to my ultimate goal which is management, and information security management roles are becoming more in reach everyday, so that's primarily why I'll stick to my current path.

jvrlopez

My job path over the last 6 years has been:

Military
Help Desk
IT Security

Loved the first but not enough to do it long term, saw the second as a way to make ends meet while I job hunted, and the third has been a great opportunity filed with a lot of learning experiences and meeting of new people.

diggitle

Military IT Specialist (E-4)
Entry Level SysAdmin
Deployment Technician
Sr Deployment Technician/Project Manager
Information Security Engineer (Current)

6502

Tech->Sysadmin
Tester
Windows Sysadmin/Networking
Linux Sysadmin/Networking
JOAT
Burn Out! six years of parenting full time
JOAT (current)

I wanted to do networking instead of JOAT again, but I needed the money and the employment gap was hard to deal with. I took what I could. My next job I'd like to have more networking than sys admin and 0% user desktop support.

E Double U

Started in '03:

Contractor building pc's (2+ years): IBM/Lenovo
Contractor pc/printer refresh (2-3 months): Dell, HP
Customer Support Analyst - Telecommunications (4+ years): Cisco routers
Complex Configuration Engineer - Telecommunications (1+ years): Cisco routers/switches
Security Systems Specialist - Telecommunications (less than a year): Cisco ASA, Check Point/Nokia, Bluecoat
Information Security Analyst (Current) - Banking (1+ years): Cisco ASA, Symantec DLP, and more

Went from A+ to CISSP (hopefully lol).

gbdavidx

E Double U wrote: »

Started in '03:

Contractor building pc's (2+ years): IBM/Lenovo
Contractor pc/printer refresh (2-3 months): Dell, HP
Customer Support Analyst - Telecommunications (4+ years): Cisco routers
Complex Configuration Engineer - Telecommunications (1+ years): Cisco routers/switches
Security Systems Specialist - Telecommunications (less than a year): Cisco ASA, Check Point/Nokia, Bluecoat
Information Security Analyst (Current) - Banking (1+ years): Cisco ASA, Symantec DLP, and more

Went from A+ to CISSP (hopefully lol).

I need to go from help desk to network engineer support - hopefully it's possible once i get my ccna

bradtechonline

Spent five years doing both Network & Systems Administration. Took a higher paying job just doing sys admin work. Vmware, Windows, Linux, and AIX administration. Also a lot of SAN work with FC dealing with Brocade Switches/IBM SANs like XIV/V7000/DS4300. When I was head a leg in the networking world was basic switching, routing, and PIX/ASA firewalls along managing call manager/unity.

UniqueAgEnT

Help Desk intern
Database intern
Database developer
Business Intelligence developer
Database Admin
Sr DBA

shodown

Information systems Technician first class(E-6)
Support Engineer 1
Network administrator 4
Network Engineer
Senior UC support Engineer
Senior Voice Engineer

d4nz1g

Mine was:
Tech Internship (about 6 months)
Trainee Analyst (9 months)
Support Analyst (1 year)
Network Admin (6 months)
Network Analyst (1.2 years)
Connectivity Specialist (current)

philz1982

Military weapons specialist (5)
Building Automation System programmer (6 mth)
BAS controls installer (1.5)
BAS controls lead service tech (2)
Operations manager (2)
NA Saas analytics sales engineer (2)
Manager of integrations and alliances for north america. (Current 6mth)

broli720

Local Consultant in my area (Networking) - 1 year
Undergraduate research (Mechanical Engineering) - 1 year
IT internship (first taste of governance work) - 10 months
IT Associate (Server/Network Admin) - 1 year
Cybersecurity Lead (Mix of networking and IA) - 2 years (Current)

I'm still relatively new (25 years old) and the last three jobs have all been with the same company. I'm hoping for a new role this year to keep things fresh.

pevangel

JOAT (1.5 years)
NOC (8 months)
Network Engineer (1 year)

My supervisor has started talking to me about working on SECaaS so Network Security Engineer might be coming soon.

UnixGuy

JoJoCal19 wrote: »

My career path has been:

....

.

I like your career path, and I think it's a smart choice. I think InfoSec management and staying AWAY from the technical side of things might be the smart thing to do. I might do the same soon-ish

UnixGuy

Unix/Servers/Storage support/implementation =~ 3 .8 yrs
Unix Admin = 2.7 yrs
Linux Admin = 1 yr.

martell1000

network technician
community management
real estate
network engineer

the_Grinch

Law Enforcement
IT Analyst
NOC/Helpdesk Technician
Support Tech
Network Administrator <----Current and here I work investigations, do system administration, IT security audits, and pretty much 9000 other things

I'm overall pretty happy with my path thus far. I was hoping to me a little more specialized and I do miss some aspects of law enforcement. But my current position has me doing the investigation side I was missing with the IT side of things which I wanted so overall I am pretty happy. I suspect I'll be moving to an Investigator spot at some point where I am currently working.

Barone

Hardware Technician (2 years)
Information Technology Assistant (4 years)
Network/Systems Administrator (3 years) ---> Effectively a 2IC role; passed over for promotion.
ICT Communications Officer (1 year) ----> Further reduction in responsibility, removed from project opportunities cause I'm too good at Tier 2.
Service Desk Operator (2.5 years)

> Entire department outsourced due to bad management.
ICT Consultant (3 months and counting)

> Glorified Service Desk Operator.

With hindsight I should not stayed with the company so long (14.5 years), I got passed over for promotion three times, had lateral department moves blocked on several occasions, got removed from any project opportunities because I didn't get on with the Systems Administrator who got my "supposed" promotion. Got outsourced, got picked up by new mob, the tier 1 guy got promoted over me in our initial interviews....

So you know, six months in I'll be sorting my stuff out and looking for another job. Long term, I'll study until I've got a degree in Human Resources or something to do with Business management. I love working in ICT but the complete lack of promotions, development opportunities and any form of appreciation has really demorilized me with the whole "IT career path".

jibbajabba

Degree in Electronics Engineering
Electronics Engineer for Public Transport in Germany
Driving Bus / Lorry (Electric stuff got outsourced)
Sys Admin (doing computer stuff)
>>Moved to Ireland
Tech Support in some big tech companies (Xerox / Symantec / HP)
>>Moved to Gibraltar
Infrastructure Guy in 888.com
>>Moved to England
Senior IT monkey in several MSPs and large finance companies ..

LinkedIn

Kragster

desktop tech
3rd shift help desk
help desk team lead
help desk
sys admin 1 (desktop support/server admin, tiny bit of networking)
sys admin 2 (server/network admin)
network admin (network/server admin, some joat)
Current - Network Analyst 3 (network/some high level server)
next - ??? I have no idea, debating towards security or moving into management, or saying to heck with it and working at a bar on a beach somewhere

nathandrake

Help Desk level 1
Help Desk level 2
Associate Desktop Tech
Desktop Tech
Senior Desktop Tech

All at the same company. Really looking to get into the security field, but probably going to have to change companies for that to happen. I've been here 13 years, so kind of scared to leave since I've been here so long.

6502

nathandrake,

Take a chance and find something new. 13 years is a looong time to be at the same place.

Master Of Puppets

Network security + administration(5 months)
Network security(1 year)

Next will probably be something more on the offensive side.

NinjaBoy

For me it has been:

IT Tech (rolling rota of helpdesk, workshop & field service) -> Senior IT Tech -> IT Manager

Not sure which direction to go to next on my next position... Upper management or more technical...

-Ken

Jackace

My 6+ year career outline is below:

Network Technician: Basically a standard windows domain admin. Lots of desktop support and AD management.
Operations Technician: Inch deep and a mile wide. Touched Mainframe, AS400, Data Center Network, Compellent Storage Arrays, VMware, UNIX servers, Linux servers and Windows servers. Basically anything that you could find in a Data Center I was allowed to touch and work with, but only in a limited fashion for most of it.
Provisioning Analyst: Basically a net admin for a service provider.
Network Engineer: Building and Designing Networks.

puertorico1985

I've been in IT for about 6 years, and below is the different roles I have had:

Helpdesk: 9 months
Instructor: 10 months
JOAT for a small company: 3 months
Back to my original Helpdesk job: 2 years
Network/Sys Admin: 2 years
NetSec: 1 month

I received my net/sys admin job right before obtaining my BS degree, and recently started a new job and I am 5 months away from my MS degree. I believe that having my degrees (or being close to the finish line) is what has helped me achieve these new positions.

VikingWarlord

I screwed mine up and had to start pretty much completely over to get back to general IT.

IT intern (1 semester)
ISP support (1 year)
Telecom engineering (3 years, job sucked, got laid off)
On-site repair (1.5 years)
Medical software support (4+ years, quit to move to another state for my wife's job)

Now I'm trying to go back to a general helpdesk and it's a ***** getting back in. The up side is that I'm in the DC area, which is ripe with openings.

kohr-ah

Helpdesk (1 yr)- JOAT (1.5 yrs) - Network Engineer/NOC Supervisor (1 yr) - Systems Support Engineer Engineer (0.5 yrs) (All same MSP)
Network Engineer (3 months - Company relocated and was doing layoffs told me to go find work. That sucked)
Network Engineer (7 months now)

I really enjoy networking and would to get into security or virtualization. Some reason though I seem to keep ending up working at places where my team mates are great but some body gets promoted to management and then shortly after all my teammates start to quit because the new manager is terrible and I am stuck there for a while so it wont hurt my resume

RomBUS

Field Technician/Jr. Network Admin/JOAT (1 year and a half)---> Helpdesk for MSP(8 mos.) --> Network Admin (bit of a glorified title...its like a JOAT Sys Admin gig) (past 2.5 yrs)

Skipped over a few positions because they were temporary but mostly end user support positions/desktop specialist

I am curious to those that posted they went from desktop side of things to getting into the security side