Career Advice needed please

Howdy!

So, as I have mentioned in a couple posts, I consider myself more of an IT Generalist at this point, and need a specialization to focus on.

The two areas that interest me are Web Dev and Networking.

I was kinda hoping to do Networking as a full-time career, and web dev on the side (consultant, side business), or even have web dev as a backup career (just in case in this crappy job market).

Does this seem like too much?
The networking portion would be mainly in Cisco products, going for ICND 1 then 2, then CCNA Security, then maybe CCNP (and God forbid CCIE, lol).

CIW certs would be Web Foundations and see where that goes.

CWTS--- at least take this exam and maybe move on through higher level exams for this.

Thoughts on this? Doable? Too unfocused?

Thanks for any feedback in advance!

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Everyone

I can't help much on the Networking side... but as far as Web Development goes, do you like programming? Because that is basically what you'll be doing. Writing web applications in ASP, .NET, PHP, whatever.

If you're more into the back-end stuff, you probably want to look more at Web Administration, which would be more like installing, configuring, and maintaining web servers. IIS, apache, etc.

I tend to pick up a secondary specialization that is related to my primary.

If Networking is your main interest, you may want to look at other areas of infrastructure that are more like Networking as a secondary. Voice systems may be a good choice, especially VOIP. You may also be interested in Storage, specifically SAN infrastructure, as they rely heavily on Fiber switches or even Network switches (for iSCSI).

MrRyte

whatthehell wrote: »

Thoughts on this? Doable? Too unfocused?

That depends on you......

It can be done; but it may takes some sacrifice. As long as you're willing to do what it takes then there's no reason it can't be done.

instant000

I think it's doable, though it would be a bit of a strange mix of skills.

At least if you truly gain programming skills, then the types of administrative scripting that you'd have to do on the admin side would be much simpler, in comparison.

RobertKaucher

whatthehell wrote: »

Howdy!

So, as I have mentioned in a couple posts, I consider myself more of an IT Generalist at this point, and need a specialization to focus on.

The two areas that interest me are Web Dev and Networking.

I was kinda hoping to do Networking as a full-time career, and web dev on the side (consultant, side business), or even have web dev as a backup career (just in case in this crappy job market).

Does this seem like too much?
The networking portion would be mainly in Cisco products, going for ICND 1 then 2, then CCNA Security, then maybe CCNP (and God forbid CCIE, lol).

CIW certs would be Web Foundations and see where that goes.

CWTS--- at least take this exam and maybe move on through higher level exams for this.

Thoughts on this? Doable? Too unfocused?

Thanks for any feedback in advance!

Yes, it does sound like too much. If you want to become anything more than a hack, you need to focus. From a systems side, learning the fundamentals of networking very well is exceptionally useful; however the same is of much more limited value in reverse. If you are throwing your hat in to networking then you need to do that and focus on it. There is no way on god's green earth you will be able to master two fields of knowledge that are so different at the same time.

When you attempt to master two domains of knowledge you should seek to optimize tranferability by ensuring that they as closely are related as possible. Also I would mention that CCNP level skills are not really a specialization - it is merely a professional level certification within a specific branch of IT. Specialization would be more detailed knowledge of specifically VoIP, Wireless, etc.

Web development is just as broad a category as "networking" where you would need to be familiar with things such as AJAX, JSON, Web Services like WCF, HTML5, Silverlight or Flash, SQL, and Object Oriented Programming. Many of these technologies are on a 2-3 year life cycle! Meaning you have to study a lot just to keep up with trends. "Web development" is not something you just learn by picking up a book on PHP and MySQL and reading it on the weekend any more than knowing how to configure a router makes you skilled at networking or knowing how to install Exchange makes you compitent with Exchange server.

If you want to be really, really good at something focus on that and focus hard. Learn it from the inside out and don't waste time on completely unrelated items. If you want to be good at two things to spread the risk (and I feel this is a good objective to have) ensure those things are related enough that you can optimize skill-transfer. One such skill will always suffer at the expense of the other and if they are completely unrelated like web dev and Cisco networking, the "second" skill will never be something you get good enough at to become a professional.

whatthehell

Thank you all for the great advice.

I think at this point, I am at the beginning stages, and I am trying to figure out where I should put the majority of my efforts. I'll be going for the CCENT relatively soon, and will also go for the CIW Web Foundations cert. This will at least give me good exposure to both areas. Whichever interests me the most, I figure I will devote my efforts to. The secondary one would be in my "free time", if there is such a thing nowadays.

I agree that you have to devote yourself to something to be excellent at it, which is why I am trying to figure out a focus, instead of just skimming the edge of knowledge for particular IT fields and seeing how interesting they seem from a high level perspective (which leads to the thoughts .... hmmm I could do that!).

Hope this makes sense, and appreciate you all helping me to narrow something down a bit more!

RobertKaucher

whatthehell wrote: »

Thank you all for the great advice.

I think at this point, I am at the beginning stages, and I am trying to figure out where I should put the majority of my efforts. I'll be going for the CCENT relatively soon, and will also go for the CIW Web Foundations cert. This will at least give me good exposure to both areas. Whichever interests me the most, I figure I will devote my efforts to. The secondary one would be in my "free time", if there is such a thing nowadays.

I agree that you have to devote yourself to something to be excellent at it, which is why I am trying to figure out a focus, instead of just skimming the edge of knowledge for particular IT fields and seeing how interesting they seem from a high level perspective (which leads to the thoughts .... hmmm I could do that!).

Hope this makes sense, and appreciate you all helping me to narrow something down a bit more!

I totally understand this. But whereas I might go to a hobbyist to build a simple web site for me, I would never allow such a person near my SQL Servers...

I really enjoy web development. It's a lot of fun. But It is so hard for me to get really deep into things like Silverlight and ASP.NET and still go really deep into SQL Server. And those are quasi related! There is no way I would be able to continue to progress as a professional in the tech I actually work in and get a CCNA and keep said CCNA knowledge at a level I might be able to expect to actually use it to get a NOC job.