Progressing my career advice?

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.

Hi Guys,

Sorry this may be a bit selfish, but I was wondering if you could give me some advice on what to do in order to advance from where I am.

I suppose the best place to start would be my background, so here it is...

Been working in IT for about 3 years now, the first year of which I did mainly desktop support / call centre IT work. Managed to chew through a few Microsoft Certs and remember seeing a big Cisco container when we moved offices (I worked for an ISP). The fellas that came in were contractors from BT Global, one of the fellas drove a Maserati, and being 16 at the time was quite inspired from that moment to do networking! (Yes I know it was for all the wrong reasons).

Anyhow, started studying the CCENT and found it really interesting, but didnt see how networking was so Important at that point. Continued to do so while I was working as a desktop techie (the thought of a Maserati kept me going).

Eventually I passed the CCENT and managed to get a job in Network security, where I worked for a year picking up vital networking skills and completing the CCNA. Along with this I specialised in Juniper and Checkpoint, I pretty much did this day in day out for about 10 months. Gaining my JNCIS FWV (screenos) and CCSA (Checkpoint).

Suddenly I became much more valuable and at the time I was working as a Junior earning about 15k pa. I was unfortunately missing much of the Cisco practical element to the Job as we didn't support and ASA's etc... Anyway, went for a job interview a bit closer to home and managed to pull of a 10k payrise! Wow was impressed and suddenly started to grow in confidence and believe in myself more!

As it currently stands I am doing well in my new job, and basically doing alot of my new companies network security. They have a large Juniper deployment of around 100 SSG / ISG firewalls.

My dilemma at this point it, I am now working alot with Cisco (mainly the ASA firewalls) which is great for my career. However, it looks like im focusing on security again and im concerned if this is hindering my career. Should I be looking to gain further knowledge in R&S or Voice rather than staying on the security track? I suppose I'm pretty good at security, and I do like it. Ideally I would like to stay in this area of networking, but the big question is am I hindering myself by not exploring other elements?

Be an all rounder or becoming a specialist?

Help!

Thanks, Brad.

 

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.

Security I would say is probably the biggest growth area in Networking and the money is defo there in general! Stick with it I say, build a lab at home and make sure you practice plenty with routing switching, the more you know, you will probably find the more you do at work! IMO.