Where are you at where do you want to be?!

I decided to make a post about where you are at and where you want to be. 2 reason why I decided to do this.

1. Good conversation piece and can strike up some ideas, good and bad I am sure.

2. To help out people and give your opinions about others. Example one guy might be a developer, but want to get into project management, well I am sure we have project manager who could contribute some ideas. Anyway I'll throw it out there and see what you all think

I am a tier 2 help desk technician. I work in a XP environment, however I am one of the only people with Windows 7. I deal with a lot of SAP incidents, and support some legacy servers, AS400, RS6000, HP3000 etc.

I would like to be a service desk supervisor and then transition into a manager of a service desk. That would be my dream job at the moment. Not as sexy as a director of business applications or infrastructure, but it's what I would like do.

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Comments

Bl8ckr0uter

As far as IT? (because my Professional goals are bigger than IT buahhhhhaahaaa)

Seriously I want to be a "consultant". Primary linux, networking, security and virtualization working for banks, fortune 100s and ISPs. I'd also like to work in the legal field.

erpadmin

I'm a Systems/Database Administrator for the PeopleSoft ERP at a university. I have been in IT for 13 years (been involved with PCs for 19 years). I am 32, and will be 33 in a couple of weeks and I now want to go into IT management. Without a degree, I have reached the glass ceiling and am looking for a hammer to break it so that more opportunities are available to me. I would like to remain in the ERP realm as that is seriously where the money is for me. I have 7 years of PeopleSoft experience. My personal plan is get a degree from WGU and then see if I can parlay that into getting a senior-level position involving a PeopleSoft implementation or maintaining an environment that was already set up. It's not even the about the money at this point; it's about having say in what gets bought, what resources are to be used. The days of "dues paying" (and I'm not talking unions...) are very much over for me. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

ColbyG

I'm a mid-level network engineer and I'd like to be an architect eventually. My short term goal is to be a senior engineer, which may be happening sooner than I could have hoped. The next career step for me is senior eng, the next step for me is the CCIE. I'd like to be an architect in the next five years. Seems doable.

Edit: A super long term goal may be management. I don't have a degree (yet?), so that would be tough. I'm very torn about the though of being a manager. I really dig the technological aspects of my job and I loathe the bureaucracy and paperwork. It seems like becoming a manager would take away the part I enjoy and fill my life with the parts I hate. Who knows though, things at 37 will probably look much different than they do at 27.

msteinhilber

Presently I'm in the jack of all trades role. It's good exposure to a wide variety of technology, but makes it hard to specialize. Currently working on rolling out Juniper SRX gateways at each remote office and another SRX at our corporate site with IDP, A/V, Web Filtering. Also have a project in the works to transition over to FreeBSD to replace our existing Windows servers at branch offices and run LDAP through all our sites. A transition of physical servers to ESXi is halfway and somewhat poorly implemented but being optimized as well. As such, it is hard to really become expert in a lot of these areas for me especially as I'm interrupted with helpdesk calls as we all are round-robin style.

Prior to this I was working as a manager of a PC store, and was slowly getting my business to business customer base built up as my interest in more enterprise level technologies grew as did my experience. While that was starting to take off, one of my best customers had an opening where I'm at now.

Where I would like to be is to work my way into an environment where I can play the role of the consultant and begin to focus my area of specialization in a more specific path and work my way up from there. I enjoyed the sales aspect of my past job, and I enjoy hands-on work in the IT industry. Being able to be exposed to a variety of client sites with their own unique needs and help design solutions for them would be my ideal scenario. I like the change of pace as you switch from job to job, I find it refreshing.

N2IT

knwminus wrote: »

As far as IT? (because my Professional goals are bigger than IT buahhhhhaahaaa)

Seriously I want to be a "consultant". Primary linux, networking, security and virtualization working for banks, fortune 100s and ISPs. I'd also like to work in the legal field.

Hey man that's cool!

Set those goals high!

ipconfig.all

my dream is to have a dream. I am so depressed

uhtrinity

Currently a Tech Coordinator at a small Charter School District. Currently administrating (and designed) an 80 computer network and 3 servers. These include domain, school data management, and a library server. I personally handle all the IT and technical issues and teach computer lab to 1st through 8th graders. We just started our 5th year and I have been in IT for ~15 years.

The next step is to put together a High School level tech program for next year when the school expands and hopefully get myself into some kind of tech director position. When we move to the new facility this coming summer the network will be redesigned and expanded and I may virtualize the servers. I hope to do this long term as I love the challenge of teaching as well as doing the entire IT gambit. Variety keeps things interesting.

SubnettingGoddess

What I am doing now is directly to your left. Er...or up/down a bit.

I'd really like to get to where I know Cisco security inside and out. And I want to stay in operations, which is where my heart is. I only want to support one customer though. Preferably fortune 100ish.

ColbyG

ipconfig.all wrote: »

my dream is to have a dream. I am so depressed

cheer up emo kid

rogue2shadow

Where I'm at: I'm in the processes of starting a new sec job.
Want to be: I want to work for the best of the best doing either security consulting or dealing in pen testing and forensic hacking in Cali or Florida for a federal agency (maybe? lol)

colemic

ColbyG wrote: »

cheer up emo kid

LOL that reminds me of this:
YouTube - Irn-Bru Goth Holiday

GT-Rob

Where I am: working
Where I want to be: Retired

forkvoid

I'm a systems engineer/consultant doing everything IT for mainly manufacturing facilities.

Short-Term: Same thing above, except on my own instead of for someone else. I don't like working for someone else's dream; I'd rather for my own.

Long-Term: I'd like to be a systems architect, specializing in policies/procedures and very high-level/overview design.

Essendon

Currently : A Systems Engineer
Want to be : Owner Consultant

tpatt100

I want to pay my house off early so if I get burnt out I can easily do a career change

vCole

I'm somewhat where I want to be in terms of career. I'm a Network Analyst for a Fortune 100 company, specializing in Security, Linux, MS and VMware. It's a pretty sweet gig I'd say.

I'd like to get into more of the architect role before moving into a management position.

shaqazoolu

tpatt100 wrote: »

I want to pay my house off early so if I get burnt out I can easily do a career change

Where I am: InfoSec Analyst just gathering as much experience and learning as much as possible.

Want to be: Mine is similar. I want to pay my house off so I can start my own InfoSec consulting business and it won't matter if it fails.

lincis_aus

Now: unemplyed, student, currently doing a double major in CS

2-3 years: Finished degree, get as many certs as possible, get my foot in the door

5-10 years: Decent amount of work experience, buy house/apartment, nice car, and keep going with those certs

networker050184

Where I'm at - I'm pretty much where I want to be right now. I'm an engineer at an ISP and I don't deal with customers! On a day to day basis I'm working with large scale BGP/MPLS projects which is what I really enjoy right now.

Where I want to be - At this point I have no desire to manage anyone but myself. I'd like to be an architect/consultant for large ISP networks one day. I think I'll be president of the world one day too.

jmasterj206

I am currently a system administrator/network administrator/help desk/clinical support/printer repair/VOIP admin/web designer/project manager for a small hospital.

Future: I'm tired of working for the man. I'd rather be the man.

Monkerz

Last week I was an on-site IT Support Tech. Just accepted a promotion, so this week I am a Network Engineer. I would like to be a Senior Network engineer one day.

eansdad

Currently a Computer Tech for a large school district in S. Jersey. I take care of 1 building with 1,500 students, 150 staff/teachers, 800 PCs and do everything from resetting passwords to purchasing to deployment to wiring to AD to well everything.

I'd like to be VP of IT for Disney (just sounds fun). Realistically I'd settle for a job with good pay, good hours, good benefits in a state that isn't NJ.

gorebrush

Currently I run an entire network for an SME in South Wales. In terms of "is it what I want?" - No, I have to deal with users on the telephone, I have to answer software queries, fix printers, and it bores the crap out of me.

On the other hand, just before christmas I designed a new network for a warehouse we just opened, I implemented the switches and the configuration, commission it, setup wireless, got it all running sweet, even extended our VoIP up there, considering I have never been trained how to use CCM 4.1, I think I've done a great job.

I believe in what I do, but I never seem to be able to concentrate on what I'm really interesed in. Our network, while it runs perfectly well - does not conform to the standards I would like. For example, we don't have a management VLAN (well, our data VLAN is not VLAN1, but VLAN1 is shutdown), no proper logging setup (syslogging), our firewall needs attention, I want to move to VMWare but been told we're not going to because our parent company already have it, and our setup will eventually get migrated.

I want to be a pure Network Engineer - working properly on big enterprise networks. I may even get there in the company I'm in - Aforementioned parent company are thinking of migrating everything down there and redploying me specifically as a network guy.

I hope.

Being positive though, I'm only 27, yet make £30K in South Wales, which means I've done pretty well. My fiancée is a nurse and makes similar money through overtime/sunday shifts, so between us we're not doing bad at all.

Ultimately I want to be a networking/telephony consultant, hence my interest in the CCIE:R&S and probably CCIE: Voice tracks.

veritas_libertas

Current:

IT Operations Specialist - About 50% Desktop Support and 50% Full Drive Encryption Administration, developing new ghost images for our different laptop configurations, and deployment.

Near-Future:

System Administrator

Dream:

Security Analyst

Hyper-Me

I'd say im mostly where I want to be. I'm currently an IT consultant for SMB's. I wouldn't mind stepping it up in a couple years and working with much larger companies, though.

I'm not sure I could ever go back to being in-house IT. There are a lot of good reasons to do in-house, but many many more to do consulting. It's not all easy, though. Consulting definitely has a steep learning curve.

it_consultant

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I'd say im mostly where I want to be. I'm currently an IT consultant for SMB's. I wouldn't mind stepping it up in a couple years and working with much larger companies, though.

I'm not sure I could ever go back to being in-house IT. There are a lot of good reasons to do in-house, but many many more to do consulting. It's not all easy, though. Consulting definitely has a steep learning curve.

I am at about the same place. Consulting gives you a far different perspective on IT. Hyper and I argued on another board (I think it was you) about the ups and downs of putting people on hosted services like BPOS through Microsoft. Its great to be on the point of that kind of discussion. I have clients who host, those who have internal exchange. As a consultant, I work on, and get experience on, both products. You don't get that with internal IT.

Where I want to be? The only other option is to train to be an airline pilot. I don't think I am ready to give up the high pay I have become accustomed too and start all over from the bottom.

Paul Boz

Past - InfoSec consultant (financial industry)

Current - InfoSec engineer for a publicly traded healthcare company

Goal - Start a InfoSec consulting firm with Dynamik

We've actually built out the plans, we just need an LLC and insurance.

vCole

Paul Boz wrote: »

Past - InfoSec consultant (financial industry)

Current - InfoSec engineer for a publicly traded healthcare company

Goal - Start a InfoSec consulting firm with Dynamik

We've actually built out the plans, we just need an LLC and insurance.

Let me change me current goal to: To work with Paul and Dynamik

veritas_libertas

FadeToBright wrote: »

Let me change me current goal to: To work with Paul and Dynamik

LOL, nice...

APA

ColbyG wrote: »

I'm a mid-level network engineer and I'd like to be an architect eventually. My short term goal is to be a senior engineer, which may be happening sooner than I could have hoped. The next career step for me is senior eng, the next step for me is the CCIE. I'd like to be an architect in the next five years. Seems doable.

Edit: A super long term goal may be management. I don't have a degree (yet?), so that would be tough. I'm very torn about the though of being a manager. I really dig the technological aspects of my job and I loathe the bureaucracy and paperwork. It seems like becoming a manager would take away the part I enjoy and fill my life with the parts I hate. Who knows though, things at 37 will probably look much different than they do at 27.

+1 - this is exactly my scenario right now.... including the becoming a Senior Engineer at my current company sooner than I had thought... time will tell, if anything my current age would be the killer...

Bring on CCIE and a couple more years experience....

Oh and Hi again everyone.... I'm back from my European Escapades.....