Further development/career progression advice needed

mikesz

Hi All,
It's been a while since I visited here (busy buying house and settling in a new position).

I'm missing studying and this forum. So I'm coming back for an advice.

I live and work in UK earning quite ok: £31k, but....

Just after 6 months in current position I knew that I won't be able to do this job for long. We have 8 servers in total, 4 hosted virtual, some networking equipment (hosted as well) and as a result there is not much to learn or even practice newly gained knowledge. Any changes to the networking equipment or servers is made by companies that host them.

My question is, with my current certifications and 4 years of experience in which direction should I go? I very much enjoy networking (hence working on CCNA) and server side of things. I wonder whether maybe I should crack on my studies once again and wait for job market to fully recover (while I carry on with current position) or keep on trying now?

Any comments/advices greatly appreciated.

Mikesz

healthyboy

you did not exactly state what you do?

daily what do you do?

what have you done so far in your role?

you feeling bored and do not get opportunity to show your full potentials?

mikesz

Thank you for your reply.

I have been doing both server admin and desktop support, sadly the latter one more. I feel like I'm moving backward instead of progressing my career (it is even more painful after investing so much time and money in last 3 years of studies).
I took part in some migrations, setup remote offices, installed prepared few servers etc.

I get bored and when I do, I lose interest (over period of 4years I changed job 4 times for this very reason).

Thanks

healthyboy

ok,

so how long have you being in your current role,

i am currently in the same boat as you only some networking/systems work and lots of desktops support level work,


it looks bad if you move companies before your 1 year period but if your are feeling not being challenged then i say move on, looks like you are being paid well, I say move on, if you feel that you are not learning much and loosing your current experience then move on, and get a full server admin level role.

healthyboy

I get paid alright, but my responsibilities are so easy and not challenging, i reckon I could do way better so if I do not get a promotion or a salary increase I am outti.

I asked them to give me more responsiblity and expressed my interests I think you should do the same,

if they do not listen then leave, what is the point in respecting a company if they do not respect you.

Mrock4

My opinion is, if you're in a job you don't absolutely hate, and want to get more qualified, stay there until you can find something better..but don't rush it. Get your certs- and then look elsewhere for something more fitting to your interests, and more than likely that'll include a bump in your pay since you'll be more qualified and have more credentials.

Whether you go to the server side or network side, I would most certainly pick a direction and head in it with a purpose. There's nothing wrong with being a jack of all trades, but from my own experience the better jobs tend to be more specialized.

ptilsen

If your current job is easy and you have downtime at work, study for some new certs. It's always nice to have that kind of downtime, and if I had it again I'd take advantage of it.

That being said, you're horribly over-qualified for what you're doing, judging by what I do know. I mean that -- horribly, disgustingly overqualified. The study time is nice, but I'd be bored. I don't have much more experience than you, have fewer/lower level certs, and I support closer to 100 servers and 1000 workstations between 35 clients. My bigger clients are much larger than the environment you described. Even with that considered, I'm bored with the infrastructure I have to support and wish we had larger clients. If I were you, I'd be bored to tears, as I'm sure you are.

I would say finish you CCNA and move on. You could be making even better money doing something much more professionally fulfilling in short order. I guess I can't comment on the UK market, but I know that IT in general is not that bad. If you were in Minnesota, there would be some good jobs open to you that paid at least a little bit more and were much more interesting.

mikesz

Thank you all who replied for taking time to do so.

I think I will follow most of the people advice and stick to it for another 6 months and get my CCNA and possibly mcitp:Messaging. At that point, market will hopefully return to its pick and I will be able to get something more interesting and challenging.

All that under one condition: DIABLO 3 will not consume me entirely

Mikesz81