Question about moving into IT manager role

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I think I've pretty much hit a cap for salary for my level in IT. I'm a 2nd line Engineer and have in the past done elements of 3rd Line but want to make my next step in IT to a managers role or specialise in an area. What's the best way to do this and any tips on what would give me a good chance of getting interviews for managers roles.

At present I look after the north east for a internation shipping company on my own with the rest of IT in London and want to think about in the next couple of years of moving on into a role away from 2nd line. I've done it for over 5 years and am getting tired of it and want a new challange.

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I think the best way forward in your case would be to take a dive into the unknown. Well by that I mean start applying for senior roles and apply yourself and don't think less or sell yourself shot. Maybe, in the long run if you have the time look into Prince 2 as well. Cheerio and best wishes

 

I was looking into Prince 2 after I pull my finger out and finish off my MCSA. I'm trying to push myself back into study mode as I want it finished by June/July at the latest in order for me to start moving into other areas in a couple of years.

 

I’m not sure how big your team is or how much exposure you’ve seen into management, but the question is do you want to be on the techie side or business side? Here’s something to think about.

On the techie side the manager is really a team leader. Usually in this role the person may still be involved in bigger issues/solutions, but also assign team members to issues/business ideas as necessary. The role keeps the manager very involved in technology.

Whereas as the business side helps on deciding which direction the business should take. Does it make sense to be an exclusive Cisco shop; do you entertain Open Source; etc… As well, this person is responsible for costs, budgeting, staff, etc… This role usually involves decisions with long term impacts but it’s not necessarily a ‘technology’ based role.

 

from my perspective a good way into management is to not only know your IT, but also your market. For instance I work in education, I happen to do IT, but I work in education.

I started out with a reseller who had a lot of cutomers in different fields, corporate, local government, schools. I was given some exposure to them all but the area I preferred was education so I started to focus on that. I then moved into a school based role as a tech, and then onto network manager. it is my experience of the education environment that I believe helped to land me my current role with the LEA. Had I simply gone for the position I have now and relied on my certs and tech experience then I do not think that I'd have landed the job.

 

There are plenty of routes up on the technical side
3rd line, project based roles, architects, consultants, product SE's etc
the technical side (when coupled with other skills, in the above examples, troublshooting, project management, architecture, implementation and design, sales and architecture) your salary can easily raise to 100k (ok so its not EASY, but there are plenty of roles out there for the right candidates, networking (cisco in perticular pay very well)

 

The line between the techie side and the business side is becoming more and more blurred, so to succeed you would need to have a good grounding in both.

 

Wizard is correct, pretty much all of the roles I posted above rely heavily on both skill sets, one is not enough for those kind of high end roles

 

I'd say it depends on the company (maybe industry too) and the reporting structure (org charts do make a difference). Yes in many cases (especially small/medium sized orgs) the lines are more blurred. However in other companies they are separate and distinct roles. In my current company (large enterprise) the managers are responsible for the people and project assignments, whereas the Sr. managers and Directors are more 'business' focused. In a previous company (approx 300 employees) the 3 managers (Corp IT; Engineering; and Security) were responsible for the staff and the daily and midterm assignments. Whereas the IT Director was focused on the Mid-to-Long term goals and directions.