Quote:
Originally Posted by GirgsAndGrigs
Yeah I've got a basic plan coming down the pipe:
CCNA (Finally) and RHCSA, along with picking up some powershell to keep me current on the windows side of things. I thought about specializing but, IMHO, in IT that really limits your options. What is more important to me than exactly what I do (Network, System Administrator or even a Do-everything Admin/IT Support for a smaller company) is that I land at a place that is both able to take care of me and compensate me long term, but is that considered an important part of the infrastructure and treated as such. Last thing I want to be is another disposable cog (or being treated as a disposable cog even if the reality is much different). I am treated very well at my current job and, while the income/long term security stuff is important, I'm not quite running for the door quite yet because of the environment. However, with a wedding to pay for as well as my fiance being on a fixed resident income for at least 5 years, anything I can do in the next year to improve my income and long term stability will really improve our quality of living until she starts getting the big doctor dollars.
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It's kind of a fine line. Specializations do limit your options, but at the same time they do help you to not become that replaceable cog. If you're the guy that knows everything there is to know about X and that system stays running running solely because of you, it becomes harder to replace you. On the flip side you'll have way more options as a jack of all trades IT guy, but there's also a billion other people that do that. Hell, our copier repair guy was telling me yesterday the company he works for is requiring all their techs to get A+ and Net+ certs because they want to cover small business IT while they're on location fixing copiers. You're more easily replaceable if you don't have something within the business to label as your own.
That said, that's why I target small to medium sized (20 to a couple hundred employees), non-IT businesses when I'm looking. If you can get in somewhere as the sole point of contact IT person for a business, you're pretty much golden. In that kind of role it's good to have a broad knowledge of everything, but at the same time because you're the sole point of contact for the business you have ownership over all things IT. Once you start building or replacing systems, they pretty much become yours and it becomes difficult to replace you. Plus in a non-IT business, your word basically becomes law since you're generally not going to get challenged over IT decisions (unless it's budget related).