Career Recovery?

Anyone have any advice on how to essentially revive my career?

Long story short, July 2017 I walked away from a pretty good networking gig because of a case of the burnouts. No job lined up, no real plan in place, just needed to get away from it all and clear my head. About a month in I had what I’m now referring to as a career crisis and decided that I was going to become a software engineer. I decided to go all in on that idea and attended a coding boot camp, learning JavaScript web development, and realized after I graduated that the grass wasn’t as green as I thought it was on the software side of the fence.

Something was just missing but don’t get me wrong I enjoyed every second of it. I made some great connections along the way and gained a bunch of skills and knowledge that I hope to be able to integrate into my career going forward.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has walked away from IT for a bit and has any advice on navigating the journey back? I have an idea of where I'd like to get to, Security, but I feel like I’m in this weird spot of either having a black hole on my resume from last year till now or being seen as someone who has no idea what they’re doing, lol. Any advice is appreciated!

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Comments

Danielm7

Well, it sounds like you're going for the 3rd career shift in a year, so I'd say you want to really decide what you want to do, and why. I'd look at each past job, and future decisions and think about them. You left a good networking job because of burnout, was it just that workplace? Do you not like networking? You went to a code camp but didn't do coding either, no jobs? Got a job and hated it? If the answer to both of those questions is that you just didn't like doing it, then you probably won't like security either.

For security, why? What area of security? What is your idea of what you imagine yourself doing in that job?

NetworkNewb

Kinda sounds like your jumping around popular areas of IT and hoping to love one of them. I'd recommend reading this: https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/0349420211/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Phileeeeeeep651

Oh for sure, I'm with you on the 'really decide what you want to do' part!

I absolutely loved networking and the work that I was doing but it was mainly the workplace that drove me to leave. Lots of bad hires / the consolidation of an entire regional NOC into ours, minus the manpower, led to extremely high workloads. Plenty of other things too like customers calling in and screaming at us because we don't know how to set up whatever unknown wireless equipment they bought off eBay to going through 3 managers in a year, you know, the usual NOC stuff.

In all honestly I think a lot of the coding camp idea was the fact that I always felt like I couldn't do it, that I couldn't ever learn to program. I did it, I had fun with it, learned a lot, but in the end I just didn't feel passionate about it. TBH I've spent the past 2 months trying to find a programming job, blasting resumes out there left and right. Turns out, as cool as full stack JavaScript is, unless you have 5 years experience with .net or java, or have a cs degree, the jobs aren't there.

As far as security goes, it's always been the end goal. I got interested in security when I was in the Navy doing EKMS and COMSEC work, securing circuits and such. My ideal role would probably be in a network security role, working with firewalls, IDS/IPS's, etc. I've also been looking around at csirt type roles as the whole sifting through logs and doing research aspect really seems enjoyable to me.

Phileeeeeeep651

Thanks for that NetworkNewb. I'll have to check that book out. That's for sure something that I've always struggled with, that feeling of whatever job I do has to be my passion or else.... I'm slowly realizing that's not a hard requirement.

yoba222

A year off to attend a trade school and then a not so successful attempt at freelancing doesn't sound all that career damning. Having a software portfolio available as proof would help I'd think, even if you're not going down that path anymore.
I mean software is pretty related. It's not like you tried to open a Cobra Kai school.

What did your old connections say when you contacted them? Any responses from the resumes you've sent yet?

NavyMooseCCNA

Yes; I went from day-to-day for a stint as a technical PM as a defense contractor working on a local AFB for just over five years. When my last contract ended I couldn't get a phone interview doing PM work so I stupidly went into financial services for two years and I got back into IT with a strong focus in security.

Looking back, when my last contract ended in 2013 I should have gotten my Security+ and CCNA and never done financial services.

EANx

Coding definitely has uses in all sorts of networking and sys admin roles. You explored something and learned skills applicable to what you want to do. This is not a problem.