New Job, again.

I am starting a new job for the second time this year. I was actually very sad to leave my last position as I really liked the company and the people, however, it was only a temp job with no benefits, doing level 1 tech support, which I am totally burnt out with.

So I moved to my new position which is a slight pay increase over my temp job, but it is a state job so the benefits are extremely good. I have been there a week and think that I am really going to love it. My official job title is State Networking Specialist, but my functional job title is Unified Communications Engineer. I could not be more happy to be out of Tech Support! The only thing I would rather be doing is Security, but that's an easy step from Networking.

I am being thrown head first into Cisco Voice, with a CCNP:Voice Engineer as my mentor. My only prior Voice experience is with Linksys and Avaya. Linksys was terrible, but I managed to get it working, which impressed my mentor. Avaya was wonderful compared to Linksys, but totally antiquated compared to Unified Communications with Cisco Call Manager. I plan on getting my CCNA: Voice in the next couple of months and going directly into CCNP: Voice. After that I will go back and get my CCNP: R&S and then Security.

My resources are phenomenal. I can check as many Cisco devices as I want to use for a home or work lab. They will also pay for any certification exam that I pass. Since it is a state job, there are not any CCIEs in house, so I don't know if they will pay for going that far or not. They really can't pay a CCIE a salary that would compare with the private sector. They just gave me the cell phone of my choice with the carrier of my choice. I got a brand new laptop, and may be getting a tablet as well as all of the networking tools of my choice. Other perks include only having a 5 minute commute, flexible work schedule plus comp time, and ability to wear jeans everyday! The official dress is business casual, but my manager says that we can wear jeans since we are in network closets nearly everyday.

Most importantly, I am done with Tech Support! The state does not have any tuition assistance (I was shocked to find out), so I have decided to put a hold on getting a Master's and focus on Cisco for a while. Up until last year, they were Cisco only, but now they have started deploying Juniper, so I may get into some of that as well.

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Comments

lsud00d

Cheers to finishing your tenure in tech support

Just a question given your cert list, are you a full CISSP? I mainly ask from the experience requirement.

Congrats again!

Keener

Sweetness! Sounds like a lot of nice perks on the job.
Congratulations on getting out of tech support. I start my new gig as a Network Admin on April 1 and I'm looking forward to being done with break fix as my primary role!

Psoasman

Very nice, sounds like a great opportunity.

Chitownjedi

Congrats!

aaron0011

Congrats, Voice is a good area to be in. You can do well if you enjoy and stick with it.

N2IT

Hope this job turns out to be awesome! Gratz!

olaHalo

Congrats!

you seem to have a lot of Certs and I am assuming youre well qualified
how come it took so long to get out of tech support? just curious

Master Of Puppets

Congrats, this new jobs sounds really awesome!

dave330i

Congrats! Sounds like a major step up.

webgeek

Sounds like an amazing gig! Anytime you can leave a temp job for a perm job is a great thing! Absorb as much as you can

coreyb80

Congrats on the gig and enjoy it!

swild

lsud00d wrote: »

Cheers to finishing your tenure in tech support

Just a question given your cert list, are you a full CISSP? I mainly ask from the experience requirement.

Congrats again!

I am a full CISSP. Most places that I have worked, I have been the only IT staff, so I have always worn a lot hats and my first gig was in a doctor's office so security and compliance was top of the list. Most jobs in IT overflow into the Security domains in some way. When I passed the test, I only had about 50 months of IT experience, but also had the Security+, which waived a year.

olaHalo wrote: »

Congrats!

you seem to have a lot of Certs and I am assuming youre well qualified
how come it took so long to get out of tech support? just curious

Location, location, location. Mine sucks. Also, I just got my BS last year and a lot of employers won't even consider you without a degree. I tried applying in other locations but had a hard time getting anyone to want to move me with just IT Generalist experience, certs or not.