Just another opinion thread

Trancewalker

Long time lurker here, looking for a little advice from all the IT veterans here. I have been doing desktop support for around 2.5 years now, and am now looking for something with more responsibility and more challenge. I am not sure which direction I want to take, but I am particularly interested in security and virtualization. I have a few potential positions right now, but one is really interesting. The reason I am concerned is because the position sounds half technical and half business. I have a thorough understanding of the general technical career trajectory, but I'm a bit lost regarding the career path on the business side of IT. My eventual goal is to step into IT management, so it seems like this might be good, but I don't want to pigeonhole myself either. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I have attached the posting information below.The IT Compliance and Identity Management Analyst position is responsible for providing identity management services to [Redacted] employees who access [Redacted] computer environment. The analyst will perform identity management auditing to validate user access rights. The analyst will work together with the IT Security and Compliance team to complete audits.

We are not looking for someone with loads of infosec experience. The pay range for this position is $45-55K (we cannot go above) so someone with a degree in computers that would like an opportunity to use it would be great as long as they are teachable.

RouteMyPacket

So what's the question again?

Look at it this way, if you head the "Management" route you will most likely stop performing any technical role. Is that what you want?

Right now you say your interest lies within "Security" and "Virtualization", those are blanket statements so be specific. Sounds like you are on the system side of the house so i'm guessing VMware interests you? If so, begin looking for opportunities that lead down the System Administration path.

"Security", again what do you mean by Security? Work on a compliance type team who do pen testing etc? Go the Network Security route (i.e. Firewalls, IDS/IPS)? IT Security auditor?

The position you posted would most definitely aid you in going down the pen testing/auditing route and will entail Security but again, what do YOU mean by Security?

Trancewalker

Sorry for the vagueness of my post. You are correct that I meant VMware when I said "virtualization". As far as "security", I'm not exactly which path I would be interested in since I have very little experience in any of these domains. I guess I mainly wanted to ensure that the position I posted could lead to other opportunities in the future, and wouldn't pigeonhole me into a tiny area of IT, but it seems like it would open up the auditing/pentesting route which could in turn lead to security mgmt. positions. Only other question is if I could ever go into other areas of IT later (such as VMware) or if I will be permanently boxed into security (or risk taking a pay cut.)