Looking for career advice

nagao

Hi there!

So I'd appreciate if you guys and gals could give me some advise on career and cert direction.

So a brief intro: early forties, live in a major urban centre in Canada and hold a few certifications such as older MCSE and MCITP as well as RHCE and BS IT.

Most of my work experience is systems administration within small to medium enterprise and as you can imagine it's a typical JOAT role as I would jump from managing Exchange to setting up the SAN to provisioning vms to checking why the ftp server is down to configuring the firewall to fixing iPhone issues for higher-ups. A mile wide and an inch deep so to speak.

So I'm sick and tired of those semi-helpdesk positions and looking for change but not sure about direction.

So far I'm considering the following options:

a) Get a CISSP certified as I've dealt with at lease 6 of 8 domains in some capacity over the years and enrol to WGU MS Cybersecurity and try to get an entry level security position.

b) Try to leverage my existing Linux and scripting knowledge and get AWS certified and try to get a junior DevOps position.

c) Something else?

Thank for reading and sharing your thoughts!

Node Man

If i was looking for a change in career path, I would first try and find out who the local employers and recruiters are. Get to know the tech landscape of my region, then I would try and get a sense for the jobs available. Then find the one i like best and tailor my resume for the requirements of the new job.

nagao

I'm in the major urban centre as I've mentioned in the first post, so there's the whole range of employers from small businesses to major banks HQs and national ISPs.

beads

I meet a 25 year old "security architect" yesterday with no CISSP, etc. More the norm these days than not. She wanted to go into security having started on the help desk just last year. Pretty common these days. Having a single certification probably isn't going to change the career outlook much as applying for the positions your interested in. Overall North America lost IT positions last year and this year looks to be much the same due to an increase in the number of applicants available.

Worry less about having a piece of paper or advanced degree if you already have the skills to do the work. Find a good C2H gig and work it through. Its looking more and more like a rough couple of career years ahead.

- b/eads

Node Man

if i was changing career paths, i would try to get into the biggest tech company (ISP) i could reach. They often hire entire groups of people at once and are less likely to to say a position is no longer available.

nagao

b/eads, Node Man, thanks for the insights!

Mutata

I would tailor it to the urban centre you're in. I'm here in Canada and also in a very large urban centre. DevOps is pretty on fire right now and I found it a rather easy transition from Sysadmin

nagao

Hi Mutata,

I'm in GTA if that matters and from what I see there's plenty of DevOps positions, but I'm a bit concerned about the career longevity as well as cultural fit as I'm in my (early) forties and not really sure whether my age might be a problem as it seems to be more of a younger peeps game, though my perception might be skewed due to all the FUD from the Bay area, not sure...

UnixGuy

my background is sort of similar to yours

I strongly recommend you actively apply to jobs, even if you don't think you meet their requirements. Say you find a Cloud Engineer position, apply and show them that you're willing to learn. This will be the best way to learn


As far as self development go, I highly recommend getting into AWS. Learn everything cloud!