At a crossroads in my IT career

[Z064life]

Hi All,

So I got a job offer to do the same I'm doing today (Microsoft application administration and engineering).

I would enjoy this job and great company, but in my current role there is exposure to work on skills which are more transferable, as I do today, but to a more in-depth level. Techs like AWS, Azure, F5, ADFS, MIM

From a career longetivity perspective I'm thinking stay and learn these techs and then go from there. More jobs, more money. I do also enjoy these technologies, but are a bit newer to me.

What would you guys suggest?

[Ynox]

I'd stay put and maybe learn about AWS, Azure etc.

Thought about trying for a counter offer? Can sometimes go majorly tits up though!

[The jiffle king]

What sort of IT career do you want? Do you want to be a CIO/Director or are you happier with strong expandable tech skills which can also provide a good career path?

If you want a technical career path, then I would skill up in cloud, data/analytics and security (NIST and the like) and get specialized and talk about your deliveries and be the expert.

If you want a more CIO type career path, I would do 5 years of tech then start moving around IT and be a project manager, business partner and get involved with strategy work

[Z064life]

Ynox said:

I'd stay put and maybe learn about AWS, Azure etc.

Thought about trying for a counter offer? Can sometimes go majorly tits up though!

How would I go about instigating one? Think there was a thread on this somewhere!

[Z064life]

The jiffle king said:

What sort of IT career do you want? Do you want to be a CIO/Director or are you happier with strong expandable tech skills which can also provide a good career path?

If you want a technical career path, then I would skill up in cloud, data/analytics and security (NIST and the like) and get specialized and talk about your deliveries and be the expert.

If you want a more CIO type career path, I would do 5 years of tech then start moving around IT and be a project manager, business partner and get involved with strategy work

I'd like the latter (expandable tech skills). I like tech work as it is rewarding, etc. My concern is making sure I am relevant to the industry. If someone wanted to get into IT and asked me what they should do I'd say either Devops/cloud, networking, security, server infrastructure (cloud or not, this is still relevant, etc), etc. I would not say Microsoft Application Architecture.

I like the idea of WinOps - Windows Server admin, devops, deployment automation, etc. I have skills in those areas but just need to polish them a bit more!

But I would like to remain working for a big company.

[Ynox]

Z064life said:

How would I go about instigating one? Think there was a thread on this somewhere!

Resign (or threaten to do so). That's the only way really.

[The jiffle king]

Z064life said:

I'd like the latter (expandable tech skills). I like tech work as it is rewarding, etc. My concern is making sure I am relevant to the industry. If someone wanted to get into IT and asked me what they should do I'd say either Devops/cloud, networking, security, server infrastructure (cloud or not, this is still relevant, etc), etc. I would not say Microsoft Application Architecture.

I like the idea of WinOps - Windows Server admin, devops, deployment automation, etc. I have skills in those areas but just need to polish them a bit more!

But I would like to remain working for a big company.

Agree with the focus areas, the challenge is how to get the skills and taking another role doing the same thing is likely to stall you for 2 years unless you have specifically agreed up front that they want to develop you quickly.

I would ask for a career planning session with my current manager and explain that you have looked at the industry and where it is going and that you want to change your skillset to one of the areas you mention. Talk about your 10 year plan to be a technical manager and that you want to plan out the next 2 roles to get the people/tech/leadership skills to get there.

During that meeting, ask for their help on how to make it happen and ask for follow up in 1 week. You'll get your answer about what the company/your manager thinks of you and might get a career path started.

As a CIO, my number 1 departmental challenge is getting IT people to tell their managers what they really want to do and talk realistically about their careers. You need to ask for what you want, make sure it's realistic and keep asking every 2 months for feedback/progress.

[Z064life]

The jiffle king said:

Agree with the focus areas, the challenge is how to get the skills and taking another role doing the same thing is likely to stall you for 2 years unless you have specifically agreed up front that they want to develop you quickly.

I would ask for a career planning session with my current manager and explain that you have looked at the industry and where it is going and that you want to change your skillset to one of the areas you mention. Talk about your 10 year plan to be a technical manager and that you want to plan out the next 2 roles to get the people/tech/leadership skills to get there.

During that meeting, ask for their help on how to make it happen and ask for follow up in 1 week. You'll get your answer about what the company/your manager thinks of you and might get a career path started.

As a CIO, my number 1 departmental challenge is getting IT people to tell their managers what they really want to do and talk realistically about their careers. You need to ask for what you want, make sure it's realistic and keep asking every 2 months for feedback/progress.

Yeah it will be a few years of hard work to upskill, get the confidence, the certs, etc, but I am up for the challenge (something I'd like!). But it's the risk you take with keeping relevant. Devops/cloud is a lot more transferable than what I do today so I doubt I'd cross train again.

The other job offers the same salary and for the current job I do, I'm on a good salary (I've not seen higher for this type of job anywhere).

I have experience in some of the techs for this target role already (Powershell, IIS, Windows Server), and got exposure to other tools used for DevOps (we also use the cloud increasingly heavily). My company needs to tie it altogether (in fact, I plan to for some of the smaller but important systems with automated deployments!).

So some of the training opportunities do exist. Not every single training opportunity I need, but I have to take it on myself too.

Have a meeting with my manager next week anyway, so will take the above advice.