Jack of all trades, master of none

unclerico

I'd like to know where you all stand on being a jack of all trades type of IT professional. I've been in IT for about 10 years and every one of my jobs required me to wear many hats. I've never had a problem with it until now. I am the only Sr. Level IT person in my company. I manage all things Windows, network (Juniper, Cisco, HP, Extreme), wan optimization, security (Palo Alto, Cisco), VPN, wireless, VMware, SAN/NAS (EMC, Compellent, NetApp), Exchange, systems management (KBOX), antivirus (symantec), and remote support appliance (bomgar). We'll be adding Citrix and SharePoint into the mix over the next few months. We just purchased another company so now I am leading the inter-forest AD and Exchange migration. We have 25 facilities and about 400 very demanding users. We have a team of 8 (not including myself and the director) and only one of those 8 could be considered a sys admin, I say considered because I try to delegate things and end up having to do them anyways.

I used to love getting my hands into the guts of many different technologies, and I used to think it was a huge positive. My feeling now is that all of these hats are making me lose my edge in my bread and butter which is routing/switching/security. I cringe at the thought of troubleshooting a windows box. I used to love VMware, got my VCP and everything, but man I'd love to hand that off to someone else. I have ripped and replaced so much gear over the past 10 months, but haven't had any time to actually write formal documentation for the changes.

I just think I've come to that point in my career where I need to specialize in one, two, or three areas as opposed to 10 or 15. Anyone else in a similar situation?

powerfool

unclerico wrote: »

One thing you are leaving out of this is one of the biggest issues that plagues us in IT probably more than any other industry: EGO. I'm sure one or two (or more) of the SMEs didn't want to admit that he or she is wrong, or that the other person had an idea that better solved the issue at hand. Whenever I get asked for advice from an up and comer I ALWAYS tell them the biggest obstacle for you to learn is your own ego. I don't care if you've got 1 year or 20 years of experience, there are always opportunities to learn from someone else.

I know... it's pretty tough... I am tired of these people not realizing that I am always right!