I need some career advice also

This is a bit embarrassing to admit here, but the thought of having my own home network lab bores me to tears. What I love doing best is providing excellent customer service, building relationships, and fixing technical problems. What I loved best about my job before last was redeeming the reputation of our team with our peers, which was in shambles when I joined (I'd been there a while so already had the good relationships), and making the customer (federal agency) happy with the service we provided. And I liked keeping nice tidy well-documented firewall configurations. I like writing crystal-clear documentation that anyone could follow to reproduce what I've done. I like mentoring other people. But on my own time...no thanks.

Am I even in the right field if the thought of scoring cheap lab equipment on ebay leaves me yawning? (Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't have that itch that needs scratching).

The path I'd like to follow is to CCIE Security...do you think my soft skills and the path leading to it could combine well? Or do you think that the CCIE Security is absolutely out of reach if I am not interested in building a home lab? (Yes, I admit, the reason I'd like to take my certs to that level is simply money).

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Comments

erpadmin

I'm going to leave the editorializing to the next guy or gal (or try to...

). I suppose if you don't want to spend the time and energy [oh and money too...] on a lab (and with twins, I can totally understand why), there's always a bootcamp. For probably a bit less than a Cisco lab, you can just cram some knowledge at one of those places. Because without a lab, I don't see how you would even pass the lab portion of the CCIE unless you bootcamped. Reading by itself won't help you on the lab part. Most good CCIEs that I've read about (I don't know any) already had their CCNA/CCNP already and were busting out router work for years.

dynamik

Have you thought about a managerial/administrative role? You don't need to be a CCIE to write firewall policies. How about sales or project management?

Also, I think a CCIE is completely out of reach if you are not willing to commit a significant portion of your personal time to it. Go read Turgon's sticky in the CCIE forum if you haven't already; that will give you an idea of what'll be required of you. I don't think you're in the wrong field, but I don't think the path you're considering will take you where you want to go.

forkvoid

I think your skills are highly needed in a field that is primarily people who would rather be behind a locked door surrounded by servers. Customers are the reason we all a job, but the typical techie mindset is rarely so customer-focused. Most of our jobs are not about the technology--it's the stuff that can't be taught: the customer service. If you sincerely enjoy that aspect more than playing with a rack of equipment, then I think you're going to make yourself a very valuable asset to any IT team.

erpadmin

Yup...you need to start looking for companies that are hiring for "Business Analysts." That would seriously be right up your alley. Yeah you've done tech work, but you seem to enjoy the people aspect more and plus can communicate between the IT people and the rest of the user community. That might even lead to a management job for you.

earweed

I'll have to agree that you will probably take your people skills into a management position and most likely you would not benefit (or be successful or happy) from pursuing a CCIE. The CCIE requires a LOT of lab hours and hands on work.

SubnettingGoddess

Thank you for the comments. I actually tries sales (data sales for a telecom) and wanted to poke my eyeballs out. I didn't fit in with the other sales people and hated cold calling (I was supposed to be a "farmer" rather than "hunter" but we ended up with such a crap account base that we had to pursue new clients). The part that made me happiest was helping my peers master technical knowledge.

Maybe I should get ITIL certified and go into service delivery? I think I'd miss being appreciated too much though...I love being the one to troubleshoot and fix problems. As others were walking out the door during contract transition at my government agency, I got handed a couple of issues that had TAC cases open, and even with my limited skills, guess who figured one out and fixed both post haste? And they had been open a while. I'd hate to leave this world (ok, not that I've been in it for 2 1/2 years - my last position doing server security was not at ALL the same in terms of job satisfaction - our team was made to feel very much a hindrance.)

I think another issue is that I really liked not having to depend on others to get the bulk of my work done. lol it's nice when the only bottleneck for most of your responsibilities can be you yourself.

*sigh*

erpadmin

SubnettingGoddess wrote: »

Thank you for the comments. I actually tries sales (data sales for a telecom) and wanted to poke my eyeballs out. I didn't fit in with the other sales people and hated cold calling (I was supposed to be a "farmer" rather than "hunter" but we ended up with such a crap account base that we had to pursue new clients). The part that made me happiest was helping my peers master technical knowledge.

Maybe I should get ITIL certified and go into service delivery? I think I'd miss being appreciated too much though...I love being the one to troubleshoot and fix problems. As others were walking out the door during contract transition at my government agency, I got handed a couple of issues that had TAC cases open, and even with my limited skills, guess who figured one out and fixed both post haste? And they had been open a while. I'd hate to leave this world (ok, not that I've been in it for 2 1/2 years - my last position doing server security was not at ALL the same in terms of job satisfaction - our team was made to feel very much a hindrance.)

*sigh*

It seems to me that you care more about the "appreciation" aspect then actually fixing problems. That's actually ok...sometimes it's good to get that "good job."

Personally, I don't have to be the one that fixed it to still get praise. I was part of a team that figured out why millions of dollars wasn't getting disbursed to students. I troubleshot the issue, ascertained that it wasn't technical in nature (yup, users f'ed that up), and had it escalated to our techno-functional developer. The head user included me in her thanks to my boss, and my boss in terms gave us all the "great jobs", including the manager who did nothing but had us find the problem. I actually have that as part of my repertoire when I have to give a story on something major I fixed....with the e-mails to back that up!

You want to be (like) that manager......and really, that's ok too. Unless you are at tiny shop, managers don't get to be hands on. That's why you have teams.

TrainingDaze

"The part that made me happiest was helping my peers master technical knowledge. I like mentoring other people. But on my own time...no thanks. "

Teacher

"I like writing crystal-clear documentation that anyone could follow to reproduce what I've done."

Technical Writer

"The path I'd like to follow is to CCIE Security...do you think my soft skills and the path leading to it could combine well? Or do you think that the CCIE Security is absolutely out of reach if I am not interested in building a home lab? (Yes, I admit, the reason I'd like to take my certs to that level is simply money)."

Security Policy Consultant

networker050184

Sounds like a help desk would be the perfect job for you. You would get your troubleshooting fix while still getting to help people and work with others. You also won't have to spend too much time outside of work learning. The money will suck though.

veritas_libertas

networker050184 wrote: »

Sounds like a help desk would be the perfect job for you. You would get your troubleshooting fix while still getting to help people and work with others. You also won't have to spend too much time outside of work learning. The money will suck though.

Would this necessarily be true if you were the Help Desk Manager?

Just curious. Our Help Desk is outsourced so I have no idea about how the Help Desk structure works in a large company.

erpadmin

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Would that necessarily be true if you were the Help Desk Manager? Just curious...

Help Desk Managers, on average see about $65k-85k (slightly more, slightly less), depending on the org. At least from what I've seen around here. From what I gather, all they do is route calls in the queue to folks and scheduling the help desk folks. Unless it's a real small shop (and we're talking like small to medium-size), an HDM isn't doing any calls or taking them.

SubnettingGoddess

networker050184 wrote: »

Sounds like a help desk would be the perfect job for you. You would get your troubleshooting fix while still getting to help people and work with others. You also won't have to spend too much time outside of work learning. The money will suck though.

Gahhh no. My last job I made (barely, but still) 6 figures. I know I won't get that in Texas but I need to make decent money to support my children.

networker050184

I don't really know what to tell you then. It sounds like you want a help desk type job, but those don't pay much. In IT the more you deal with people the less you get paid usually.

dynamik

I'm still going with project management. That seems like a nice blend of technical and social work. A trainer might be good too.

SubnettingGoddess

networker050184 wrote: »

I don't really know what to tell you then. It sounds like you want a help desk type job, but those don't pay much. In IT the more you deal with people the less you get paid usually.

I dunno...the job I loved, I dealt with people all the time - customer and peers - and it was certainly technical enough. At one point, all there was to run the entire network for a midsize federal agency was me, a guy who'd been there forever would not venture above level 2 EVER, and a guy who did VoIP but was not very proficient in it yet. And a guy at our disaster recovery site but he was pretty involved in DR only. So I'd pretty much taken over everything else because there was no one else to do it.

SubnettingGoddess

dynamik wrote: »

I'm still going with project management. That seems like a nice blend of technical and social work. A trainer might be good too.

Do I get to force people to follow timelines? lol where is the whip cracking icon? I really like training as part of my job but am not sure about in total.

vCole

SubnettingGoddess wrote: »

Do I get to force people to follow timelines? lol where is the whip cracking icon? I really like training as part of my job but am not sure about in total.

How long have you been unemployed for?

SubnettingGoddess

FadeToBright wrote: »

How long have you been unemployed for?

Technically since last September though I last worked in July. My children had a 4 month NICU stay and I could not return to work, and they could not hold my job. Then I could only work if I could find a job that would pay a nanny since they could not go to day care (yeah, right, a nanny in DC on what I could make? Even 100k is nowhere near going to cut it). So I moved to an economically depressed area (my family's here, about 120 miles from Dallas) with a low COL where I could live on unemployment. And there truly are NO jobs here. A call center opened that paid $7.25/hr to start and people were lined up for jobs! It's bad here. I expect I'll be moving to the metroplex...if anyone will hire an out of town candidate! Kinda a catch 22 moving here but I did what I need to. Long answer, sorry!