I’ve been unexpectedly away for a couple days. Had a bit of blog-writer’s block, but I think I was also quite stressed. I did something I didn’t really expect to do on Friday:
I turned down a job.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this job wasn’t a perfect proposition. The pay wasn’t enough for me to meet my obligations at home, so I would have slowly bled cash, and the commute was wonky. But it would have been customer service and customer tech support experience, both of which I’m a little starved for at the moment. Plus, the company was wonderful. Enough that I want to look at working for them again once I have the skills for another position, especially if I move a little closer to their offices.
In the end, though, the negatives weren’t enough on their own to make me turn it down. What did it was some advice I got from Adam, my brother-in-law. That right now my approach to tech was scattershot, and that was going to limit my job opportunities moving forward. That this job, being so basic and in another specialty (IT support) would be a continuation of that pattern.
I have some good experience in developer operations-style stuff. Which means I kind of have a specialty already. I can answer basic questions about build tools and troubleshoot them, I can get your server back up and running, I can guide you through giving me enough actual information so I can do your complicated server move of switch replacement. In the industry, though, I needed experience building the architecture of these systems and automating it, not just maintaining it, to get a job. So while I have some good experience, it’s more of a strong basis to continue in that vein at the same level instead of enough to keep moving up the ladder/ramp/climbing wall to bigger things.
In essence, I faced a choice. Did I want to take the job I’d been offered, which would have offered me some useful experience at the cost of an enormous step backwards as far as my position in the industry, or did I want to take some extra time, get a job that would not require as much mental energy, and study up so I can keep advancing from where I’m at?
As you can see, I chose the latter. Sort of.
I’ve been interested in information security for a while, as I’ve discussed on this very blog. But now I”m recommitting to learning it, and to try to do so as fast as I can. It’s part of the tech field I always find interesting, but not one you can just walk into off the street. So I’m going to start studying up more (Network+ and Security+ books, here I come), working on getting a home lab set up, and start messing around with the tools. I think as long as I’m doing both theory and application at the same time, I won’t slow down to a crawl like I had with the A+ certification. Plus I’ll have applied experience to show future employers. (“Hey, look, I learned how to break into Chrome! Or at least understand how other people do it and have hypotheses on how to do it myself! And test it! Oh no I bricked my machine, one sec!”)
In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a job where I can get some direct customer service experience without burning all of my mental energy. Whether it’s forward-facing technical support (a la Apple’s Genius Bar), work in a bookstore (please Elliot Bay call me about my application, I want to work for you so bad), or something else. That way I’ll be in a stronger position to move into libraries, too, once I’m done with my degree. If that ends up being the way I want to go. I could also see uses for library/information science in the information security field, and if I could find a way to include giving back to the community with those skills, it would be *chef’s kiss.*
So that’s where I’m at. Refocusing on information security, and doubling down on studying long and studying hard. I’m going to finish learning Python, because a) I don’t want to give up halfway through, and b) I really could use a solid scripting language for doing security stuff, anyway. After that, though? It’s going to be time to learn some new skills and figure out how to break some stuff. And then, hopefully, how to stop other people from breaking it.
Dang I hope this works. I’m not as used to this whole “risk” thing, but this seems like the right move. Now to see if I can pull it off.
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