Woes
Sometimes I can feel my career path tottering beneath me.
I used to think I was the man. I built an entire ISP. I programmed routers and switches. I administered Linux systems that I built. I wrote a program that got packaged into a couple of Linux distributions. I built hundreds of computers. I did IP subnetting and vlans and QoS. I brought up T1s and OC3s. People I had tremendous geek-respect for returned that respect. I was on the road to be what I wanted to be, an IT bad ass, a UNIX Systems Administrator, a network designer, a programmer. I was fast, I learned fast, I was where the buck stopped when a problem needed solving.
Then I moved. I took the first job I was offered. This one. Now I sit at this desk and wait for something to happen. I have no chance for advancement because I work for a department--the college-wide network folks and I see each other as some kind of necessary evil. I have probably forgotten more about practical IT work than your average newly minted MSCE knows out of hand.
I pilot this desk and do a lot of livejournal.
Today I've been thinking of what I should do. I wish I could go back to school, maybe get an MS in computer science. Except that I neither have the money nor the time. If I was more disciplined and creative I could think of projects to do to keep my skills up, but I'm not feeling either of those things. Meanwhile, Internet and IT trends are moving right along into realms I know little about.
I feel like as smart and educated as I am I ought to be able to get a job making more money. But TCC is the only outfit that's interviewed me since I moved here--although I've applied to 20 jobs or so since that move. I don't want to be on call all the damn time like I was at NTC. I don't want to be a slave to a cell phone. I want a job where I can put my work in and go home, overtime or not.
I puzzle it over and over in my head--what is it that makes me undesirable? Is there some problem with my resume? Are there too many skills on there? Hell, it's been so long since I did some of those things that I can barely consider myself proficient in them. The hardest thing I ever did on a Cisco system was color traffic based on subnet and then use BGP on a multihomed router to make sure traffic not only went out the right pipe but got attracted back down the same one. The other night in the shower I had to think for a minute to remember how you even list a current router configuration.
Dammit! Should I learn something else? Databases? C? Go back to school and become a programmer?
I feel like there's some kind of mold I should be fitting into, and if I could just figure out how to do that, I could rock some employer's world. That's the biggest fustration of all--everywhere else I've worked, I've impressed the hell out of my superiors and advanced quickly. Here there's no chance to impress anybody because there's nothing for me to do. People barely know who I am.
Dammit, I need to think of something.
I used to think I was the man. I built an entire ISP. I programmed routers and switches. I administered Linux systems that I built. I wrote a program that got packaged into a couple of Linux distributions. I built hundreds of computers. I did IP subnetting and vlans and QoS. I brought up T1s and OC3s. People I had tremendous geek-respect for returned that respect. I was on the road to be what I wanted to be, an IT bad ass, a UNIX Systems Administrator, a network designer, a programmer. I was fast, I learned fast, I was where the buck stopped when a problem needed solving.
Then I moved. I took the first job I was offered. This one. Now I sit at this desk and wait for something to happen. I have no chance for advancement because I work for a department--the college-wide network folks and I see each other as some kind of necessary evil. I have probably forgotten more about practical IT work than your average newly minted MSCE knows out of hand.
I pilot this desk and do a lot of livejournal.
Today I've been thinking of what I should do. I wish I could go back to school, maybe get an MS in computer science. Except that I neither have the money nor the time. If I was more disciplined and creative I could think of projects to do to keep my skills up, but I'm not feeling either of those things. Meanwhile, Internet and IT trends are moving right along into realms I know little about.
I feel like as smart and educated as I am I ought to be able to get a job making more money. But TCC is the only outfit that's interviewed me since I moved here--although I've applied to 20 jobs or so since that move. I don't want to be on call all the damn time like I was at NTC. I don't want to be a slave to a cell phone. I want a job where I can put my work in and go home, overtime or not.
I puzzle it over and over in my head--what is it that makes me undesirable? Is there some problem with my resume? Are there too many skills on there? Hell, it's been so long since I did some of those things that I can barely consider myself proficient in them. The hardest thing I ever did on a Cisco system was color traffic based on subnet and then use BGP on a multihomed router to make sure traffic not only went out the right pipe but got attracted back down the same one. The other night in the shower I had to think for a minute to remember how you even list a current router configuration.
Dammit! Should I learn something else? Databases? C? Go back to school and become a programmer?
I feel like there's some kind of mold I should be fitting into, and if I could just figure out how to do that, I could rock some employer's world. That's the biggest fustration of all--everywhere else I've worked, I've impressed the hell out of my superiors and advanced quickly. Here there's no chance to impress anybody because there's nothing for me to do. People barely know who I am.
Dammit, I need to think of something.