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Lost (career-wise)
precisionk
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I am 22, have a good job as a Network Admin and I am completely unsatisfied. My job is fairly easy and I surf the internet a good portion of the day, because not much happens in a small 40 person company. Computers in general I am good with, but I have drive nor intention on pursuing further into this career field.
In reality, I have already reached the top of my career field as a Director of IT/Network Admin. Where do I go from here? My life is pretty good. I have everything I want and need material wise, but my life just lacks in general. Day in and day out, its the same thing usually. This has been a problem for awhile and I have thought on it and really, the only conclusion I can come to is my job really isn't fulfilling and I am lacking that aformented "spice" in my life.
I have plenty of interests but nothing that seems "viable". Viable meaning making decent money and having decent hours. When people ask what I want to do for a job, the only response that comes to my head is, "I don't know." I really don't and it bothers the crap out of me.
I want an answer on what I am "built" for doing based on my personality and interests, but I can't seem to find that. Going back to school is always an option, but for what? What am I suppose to be? I want to feel alive again in my career, but how, I do not know.
I know I am probably sounding like I am talking in riddles, but I am just so confused. I want more, but what exactly, I do not know. I would love to own my own franchise, but unless money falls from the sky, I don't see that happening.
Not sure what definitive question to ask here, but any advice would be great. I just feel like, I want someone to point me in the right direction, cause I feel like I am blindfolded.
In reality, I have already reached the top of my career field as a Director of IT/Network Admin. Where do I go from here? My life is pretty good. I have everything I want and need material wise, but my life just lacks in general. Day in and day out, its the same thing usually. This has been a problem for awhile and I have thought on it and really, the only conclusion I can come to is my job really isn't fulfilling and I am lacking that aformented "spice" in my life.
I have plenty of interests but nothing that seems "viable". Viable meaning making decent money and having decent hours. When people ask what I want to do for a job, the only response that comes to my head is, "I don't know." I really don't and it bothers the crap out of me.
I want an answer on what I am "built" for doing based on my personality and interests, but I can't seem to find that. Going back to school is always an option, but for what? What am I suppose to be? I want to feel alive again in my career, but how, I do not know.
I know I am probably sounding like I am talking in riddles, but I am just so confused. I want more, but what exactly, I do not know. I would love to own my own franchise, but unless money falls from the sky, I don't see that happening.
Not sure what definitive question to ask here, but any advice would be great. I just feel like, I want someone to point me in the right direction, cause I feel like I am blindfolded.
precisionk on
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If you were to choose to stay in IT, there is room for upward mobility: Move up to a larger company where you can handle larger networks. Leave for an IT consulting firm where you can be a manager rather than a frontline tech. Specialize in one tech area.
I'm not suggesting that you stay in IT, I'm just pointing out that upward mobility is possible.
My suggestion: take some night classes at a community college. Whatever strikes your fancy. Go a little crazy. Molecular biology? Music theory? Underwater basket weaving? Go pass/fail if you want.
Have you ever read What Color is Your Parachute? It deals with exactly these issues.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
In relation to the IT, see, this was my ideal setting. A small company, enough for me to handle everything and not having to deal with the bureacratic nonsense. I have worked for larger companies and I just prefer smaller, so, at least in my retrospect, I have reached the top.
I definitely will look into that book and check it out at the library. Any leads to helping me out, is a good lead.
Start here:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/doit/
Well at least I am choosing it for now. In reality, I really just feel I am in completely the wrong field. Went to Barnes & Nobles and read some of the career books there. It seems after taking a multitude of tests, they all come out similar, in that I should be in a social career, using persuasion and such. Salesperson always comes up. Now I don't mind people and I have the gift of gab, but I HATE selling.
Or if you don't feel confident in starting your own business, there are companies who would love to have a salesman for their own networking products who actually knows what they're talking about. We have people who sell leased lines within our company who make a lot of money off commission, and it's always the ones who actually know what they're talking about who do the best; they tend to make more realistic promises to their clients, for one :P
If you feel like you've peaked, there are always other avenues to explore.
Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize. Your career isn't just what you do, it's where and how you do it and with whom. Okay, so you should be in a social career where you talk to people. Fine. This could mean you sell a product, or it means you teach a subject, or it means you work as a political activist or lobbyist... And this opens up the questions - what product, what subject, what cause?
You don't have to pigeonhole yourself in a specific career like sales. Sales isn't the only job where you verbally persuade people to do things.
What helped me figure out where I wanted to be in life was working as an IT consultant. I went around to all different kinds of organizations (and a bunch of people's home offices) and saw the kind of people who worked in different fields, the kinds of hours they kept, the level of autonomy they have. It helped me, a lot, in figuring out the kind of working environment I wanted to be in.
I'd say you need to expose yourself more to different fields. Maybe you could cut your hours at your current job and do some consulting on the side. (For a while I did 20 hours a week as a system admin for a small company and 20 hours a week as a field network tech.) Or, like I said above, take some classes at a community college.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The problem with SA work is that, in the end, it’s probably the most unproductive work out there. You probably spend most of your time either making sure that the backups ran properly before surfing the web and chatting all day until you have a meeting or something breaks or a password is forgotten. If you are an engineer, most of the projects you work on get canceled before anything is implemented, so all the work you did is down the drain. On the off-chance a project ever gets finished, something will often lead to it being killed before going into production. And no matter what you do in IT, everyone, including you, gets laid off on a regular basis unless you work at Microsoft or Google.
In other words, you work all day and often have nothing to show for it aside from a fat paycheck. That gets pretty fucking old after a few years. Even people who clean toilets for a living can stop now and then, look at a shiny toilet, and feel proud. But a good SA just looks at the monitor, sees the computers running stable like they have for the last three weeks, notices there's no implementation coming up for another three months, and gets pretty grumpy. The better you get the worse it can be because it takes you less time to get stuff done and the computers will get more stable and need less maintenance.
My advice is to seriously reconsider working as an admin. If you're in it for the money, do something else, because otherwise it will just get more tiresome and depressing and effect your physical health. If you're in it because you like hardware, get a hardware support job for a major vendor. If you like coding, learn to write code and become a programmer. If you like networks, get into network engineering and do consulting work for outrageous fees.
But if you really can't figure out why you should stay in IT, go to college for four years to learn something different—that's what I'm doing now. I threw my career out when I had people begging me to come do senior admin jobs or network engineering gigs. For the last two years I've been in art school. It's hard, and I hate not working, but it's better than screwing with computers for five years and having nothing to show for it other than a bunch of shit I don't need that I bought with money I didn't enjoy earning.
Precisionk, honestly it sounds like while, yes, youve reached the top of your field in your company, youre far from the top of your field. Managing a network with 40 users is pretty much exactly what someone else said, managing a burger king. Its a nice accomplishment, but if you move on you can do much bigger and better things. The central IT guys for my company manage about 10 THOUSAND users, not to mention the central servers we use as well as develop most of the proprietary software we use. It kind of sounds like maybe you dont want to go beyond, so youve sort of convinced yourself "Yeah, this is all there is". But in reality it isnt.
But, if youre really interested in a career move, just go for it, start throwing out resumes. You already have a degree, and unless you want to do something that you actually need schooling for, like accounting, medicine, law, astrophysics, etc, the degree you have now is going to be good enough. If you want something personal, why not look at "Sales" (Not in the retail sense, more like sitting down with a client to figure out what exactly they want after theyve already been sold the basic services), customer service (not the phone jockey sense, the corporate sense), hotel management, advertising, etc etc etc. Just start reading job postings on monster.com until you see something you think would be fun to do, and apply.
But if i were you, id stick with IT. Just probably not at the same company youre with now.
Check out my band, click the banner.
I would kill a man to be in your position.
Use that free time to play pokey. Pokey is fun and exciting.
What drives you? Is it money or passion? If you like doing something just go and do it, screw the hours, screw the pay. I'd rather do a job I love and drive a 1983 Toyota than a job that can get me a Ferrari and hate it.
I'll tell you, I don't make tons of money, sometimes I work 12 hours every week... but I LOVE my job. I had to take chances to get to this point, but it payed off. Get out! Move! Take a chance! Find something you'd do for free and then see how you can make a living out of it.
Work on external projects. Maybe not necessarily at work, but spend time on other things. Doing the other things that you don't think "Viable". People say they'd rather do something they'd love, but if I could walk away with having to chew bees for one hour a week instead of having a real job, I just might do it. I'd be able to persue all the "unviable" things. And if it's one of those sort-of unviable things (like art; I'd like to draw for a living, but I'm really not up to par. If I could motivate myself to practice it and get good, then it would be viable, but as it stands: no way, no how) you can hone your skills until it would be something you could do for a living.
So I say, think about your attitude, think about anything you would want to be, and explore all kinds of things (this includes the 'take night classes' idea listed above).
I guess what I said is the wrong answer, because I said, "Keep the career, work on other things", but that seems the best way to make sure you don't live on the streets during your confusing interim.
[spoiler:126985c398]You could always find religion or family, forget about yourself, and plod away at a deadend job you hate trying to make a future for others or eke an existence of goodness and learning. It's worked for thousands of years.[/spoiler:126985c398]
Satans..... hints.....
I think IT and computers in general are just boring me and really probably didn't have the interest I should have in the first place. I was kind of rushed to make a decision by my family and I just picked a career I was good at.
I know there is bigger and better positions in larger companies, but I have worked for larger companies and at least right now, I am addressed by name instead of System Admin #5423 at Target Corporation. I am not making the most money, but its enough for me to live my lifestyle fine.
I fear trying to change my career I think is the biggest thing from me making a move to something completely unrelated. I have car bills, credit card bills, rent and all sorts of other stuff. I know my parents said I could move back in with them, but I value my freedom way too much for that, plus pride.
I fear if I go back to school, I will be back to working some part-time job, not able to pay off the bills I currently have. Moving from say a comfortable lifestyle to, I can't pay anything off, poor student, is really scary to me.
This is the only thing in my life, I have been this indecesive about. I REALLY don't know what I want to do. There are things that look interesting, but I am just afraid to fail.
If you can apply what you enjoy in the real world into your job, shit man- you're set for life.
That's your problem there.
People can be stuck in a rut, it's easy to get into one and it's easy to stay in one. If you aren't happy with your job you need balls up and change, you don't need to move back in with your parents, you can tell them though, see if you can use their place as storage and move to somewhere cheaper while you try and do something.
Hell sell everything and travel for a year, find a new perspective. Your problem now seems more like you are in a rut with the walls closing in around you and you don't like the colour of the paint.
Satans..... hints.....
I am going to think on this one. Most of what I want I like to do in my spare time, isn't really a viable career in some aspect (professional poker player, building robots (im not good at math)).
In the mean time, I send out some resumes to different aspects in the IT field, while I try to think on what I want to do in my life.