Have you found your niche in IT?

After 4 years of doing a bit of Help Desk, Information Assurance, and some networking, I landed a new job a few months ago as a sys admin managing a 90% virtualized environment using VMware.

I absolutely love it. Never have I found joy in the work that I am doing as much as I am now. I think this will be my niche/specialization! Whats your niche and how long did it take you to find it?

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ITSpectre

I know where I want to be.... But I am still working on getting there

No I have not found my niche, but I have found a path to get where I want to be!!!!

"And now you know, and knowing is half the battle" - G.I. Joe

kohr-ah

Yes and no.

I have a love for networking. I enjoy it and it is definitely my passion. I enjoy VMWare work as well but as my field is ever changing the definition of my job is always changing.

I can see myself in some form of networking for a long time. Be it Security related, automation, etc.

techfiend

vSphere is what I've enjoyed most in my short career. However, I think I want to get back into management (was in another field) sooner than later. I have a feeling vSphere is slowly losing demand with the cloud raising in popularity. In that case it might not be a very good thing to focus on 10 years from now.

gorebrush

I am fortunate in that I've worked very hard for 12 years and am MCSE and CCIE. I know networking inside out these days and I will have to sharpen up on my Server skills going into my new role, but I'm very lucky to have the had the chance to do both. Networking I love above all though.

Nightflier101BL

I've been in the IT world for 4 years, myself. I've decided that networking is going to be my thing. I don't know much right now but I do know I love it above anything else. I've been making job moves to position myself into a networking role.

Honestly, it came down to figuring out what I could see myself working on outside of work. Networking is the only thing that holds my interest when I open a book about it.

One other bonus - I don't have to keep buying new books as often as other technologies. I've got networking books 15 years old that are still relevant.

kohr-ah

Protocols don't change but network technology sure is.

Learning Ansible and Python will definitely give you a leg up once you have networking really down pat.

alias454

I agree with the idea that building a career around one technology or another might end up biting you. It is a good idea to learn the fundamentals surrounding that technology. You can then apply that to whatever the newest greatest thing is. Finding a niche is good, but one should be careful of getting too comfortable in it.

The landscape of what a datacenter is, is changing and as we see a migration to the cloud, people need to have a much broader skillset than just x or y IMHO. However, with that said, networking is still networking, DNS is still DNS etc. it is just the way we are interfacing with it that's changing to an extent.

I would define my niche at a broader level such as ops instead of by a specialization like virtualization, networking, systems, security, etc. Within the broader niche of Operations, I can find many things that interest me like security, networking, storage, virtualization etc.

gkca

Totally agree with alias454
I guess that it's best to be "jack of all trades, master of some" within a broader area of complimentary technologies.

Russ5813

I've been a VTC specialist for just shy of a year now (first IT job). It's interesting, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn about voice/video networking and collaboration. That being said, I'm not sure it's my niche. My dream job is to work in GRC-- but who knows? There's so much that I haven't learned or worked with yet that it's hard to say whether or not my long-term goals will change within the next five years. I'm happy for now though

Verities

I have been blessed enough to have good friends and mentors to help me along the way into the Linux field. It took me 3 years but I did it and couldn't be happier. The field is in high demand and not enough supply, so job offers come in all the time on Linkedin and the pay scale is considerably higher than other fields.

beads

Human Network Troubleshooting aka Forensic and Human investigation. I design and redesign, build and rebuild failed systems involving human or technologies in unique ways.

I am the security bad-guy your mother, your boss and the neighborhood paperboy warned you about.

- b/eads

Chevel

Still searching I'm hoping a new jack of all trades will help me decide.

psmeby

I really enjoy writing automation scripts using Powershell and VBScript as a Systems Engineer. Gosh I am good at it too, but unfortunately my boss moved me to working on tickets since we started using Citrix Provisioning server to provide virtual desktops and the tickets are unbearable. She says it temp, but I'm two classes away from my Masters in Information Security and Assurance so I'm trying to determine if a job move is right for me.

Good new is that I have already been assigned projects like disk encryption (PGP and Bitlocker), Antivirus management, and now I am on a project to implement Endpoint Protect, not to mention that I took a part time job teaching Security+ and CEH at a local college. So I'm lingering trying to learn as much as I can.

Still I love writing automation scripts and helping our IT support staff be more efficient by scripting things for them.

UnixGuy

beads wrote: »

Human Network Troubleshooting aka Forensic and Human investigation. I design and redesign, build and rebuild failed systems involving human or technologies in unique ways.

I am the security bad-guy your mother, your boss and the neighborhood paperboy warned you about.

- b/eads

beads you have interesting posts, would you be able to add more details to what you do? is it network security architecture and forensics?

scaredoftests

I have been in a variety of positions throughout the years, learned from each one of them. In a VMware environment now as well, really interesting stuff! I am kinda in the niche I like, doing a variety of things..

E Double U

UnixGuy wrote: »

beads you have interesting posts, would you be able to add more details to what you do?

If he tells you, he'll have to kill you.

Kreken

My niche in IT is sitting somewhere tropical on a beach, drinking dos equis or red stripe with jerk chicken; going sailing, scuba diving or fishing. It didn't take long to find it...

Kore

Kreken wrote: »

My niche in IT is sitting somewhere tropical on a beach, drinking dos equis or red stripe with jerk chicken; going sailing, scuba diving or fishing. It didn't take long to find it...

Irie!

I am still looking but definitely enjoying the broader aspect in working in different areas such as networking, visualization, systems and some security.

beads

@UnixGuy;

When people break things or an incident happens, my niche is to go in "arm, charm and disarm" the organization and or the culprits. Figure out what has either gone wrong; is still going wrong; whats likely to go wrong in the long run. Distill the finger pointing and panic into security terms and create a combination of both technical and human controls to stop said behavior.

What do I find? Every kind of bad thing you can imagine. Think anything worth getting through espionage and the same techniques to get it. Though much of it is PICNIC orientated the possibility exists to find lots of other creepy **** and nasties out there that involve bringing in other authorities.

This could be social engineering, fraud, viruses or whatever the bad guys come up with next. Security people who can talk at all levels and still be very technical are golden. I meet lots of people who are technical and have great skills but are about as sociable as cholera with line of business and C-suite types.

(*Invoking Poe's Law*) Most days its network forensics, malware analysis and resting on my own cloud and looking down on the smaller security peons. Only so many security prayers to answer in one day. (*End Poe's Law*)

"Most days I wake up not knowing if I am going to be the man of international mystery or the man from La Mancha." If you get the joke, its stunningly funny because its so accurate to security.

My phone ring-ith over.

- b/eads

UnixGuy

@Beads: so you work in incidents handling that sometimes involve reporting to HR and/or sometimes law enforcement <== see I managed to make it sound uninteresting :P

Ertaz

UnixGuy wrote: »

@Beads: so you work in incidents handling that sometimes involve reporting to HR and/or sometimes law enforcement <== see I managed to make it sound uninteresting :P

Count on the Unix guy to turn everything into a man page.

beads

UnixGuy;

Must not allow hostile work environments to persist. Nor shall we have people signing fictitious POs. Stealing the secret sauce nor viewing or watching naughty things on computers society doesn't approve.

Basically incident handling with alot of smiling in front of people before they are handcuffed. I have another good one coming up in July I suspect.

Gpenstern or Leo (sp). Will tell you "I talk too much..."

- b/eads

Polynomial

I'll give you one guess to what I'm doing.

I really, really, really like this market segment. I think its one of the best you can be in right now. Complete lack of talent because the ecosystem is expanding so quickly makes this job market heavily in the favor of the individual.

SpetsRepair

Yup, I'm in a great position and great company; however, they don't pay for my current salary/position as other companies. When I decide to move on, I am pretty sure I can make an additional 20k

ITSpectre

Kreken wrote: »

My niche in IT is sitting somewhere tropical on a beach, drinking dos equis or red stripe with jerk chicken; going sailing, scuba diving or fishing. It didn't take long to find it...

Not a big fan of Dos Equis.... but a big fan of red stripe. I love jerk chicken and I have never been fishing (yes this is true). I would add pina coladas, pineapple and shrimp bowls.... and tons of lobster tails and crab legs to that...

ITSpectre

Polynomial wrote: »

I'll give you one guess to what I'm doing.

I really, really, really like this market segment. I think its one of the best you can be in right now. Complete lack of talent because the ecosystem is expanding so quickly makes this job market heavily in the favor of the individual.

You are a secret govt IT guy that keeps track of the networks as well as pen test on a daily basis. You are the eye behind big brother and you are watching me type this as a response.......

You are the James Bond of IT security... and you have a porsche 911 caerra turbo in the parking garage....

beads

Android forensics? If so I can but would rather hand it over to you. I'll show to court and joust with council if needbe.

- b/eads

Kreken

ITSpectre wrote: »

Not a big fan of Dos Equis.... but a big fan of red stripe. I love jerk chicken and I have never been fishing (yes this is true). I would add pina coladas, pineapple and shrimp bowls.... and tons of lobster tails and crab legs to that...

I completely forgot about lobster tails. Kudos.
As for pineapple... I don't like to eat food that eats me in return while I eat it.

As for the actual topic, when I was working as sysadmin, the interwebs awed me with their mystery, complexity and BGP was a scary word. I set on the quest to unravel the mystery and find the pattern to the madness. I went for MS in Telecom, got a job as network engineer and have been doing that since.

knownhero

SharePoint for me. Absolutely love it.

DigitalZeroOne

Mine was working with VMware, but since I started getting heavily into PowerShell some years ago, it's anything PowerShell/script related. I've come to see that a lot of people are not using PowerShell (at least at the last few places that I've been over the years), so when I come in, I'm able to perform the work of a lot of people with scripts.

PowerShell has made me want to use other products, just because they're PS cmdlets for them. So I guess it would be VMware and PowerShell for me.