Discussion: Need career advice.

Hello networkers,

I am 36 years old with 13 years IT experience and 11-12 years in the networking sector. I'd say my position/experience between experienced to senior network engineer. However, I am struggling to get the position I feel I deserve and I need advice on how to do so.

I got this feeling that I am either selling myself too short or that I am applying for the more challenging jobs which get me rejected. Although I am grateful for having a job during these times, there is still that feeling that says "Come on man! You can do better than this!".

A bit of background. I am from an island nation of 800k people and worked for the only Cisco silver partner in the island. We were doing everything: hospitals, universities, government, military etc. In 2013 I have moved to the UK, which then I was moving jobs every couple of years. The last job I got was "Technical Design Authority" which sounded great, loved the challenge but the reality was far from it.

It appears that the company was more of a scam with managers not knowing the difference between a DVD player and a router and people leaving every month. To give some hard facts, I have joined in August 2018 and left in October 2019. When I joined, the company was around 50 people and when I left they were less than 20. They eventually got sold to another company in mid 2020 where they kept 7 people and had millions in debt.

Anyway, I changed from TDA to Network Engineer in a conglomerate. I pretty much do nothing most of the day, however at first I was happy because this was my first contract job. The salary was decent, not great, but it was my first contract spot which I was happy. Then 2020 came and the UK laws changed in regards to contracting which my boss offered a non-negotiable salary. I did not like the salary and I wasn't going to proceed. However, lockdown started and I got a bit anxious where I just signed the contract and here I am.

Our profession has different meanings for different companies. For example, I once went on an interview in a company where they needed a Senior Network engineer. Although I answered most of the technical questions correctly on the second part of the interview ( I knew my stuff), I struggled on the first part. Questions like "Tell us an example where you have project managed a team in a project" or "Give an example of a successful migration to the cloud." or "We buy a company, what are the steps you do to integrate this company to our network?".

I am studying for AWS certs now which I have no exposure in my current role (or any role in the past) and I am trying to improve my negotiation skills. But I really want to know what I am doing wrong. Or maybe I am feeling FOMO? I could improve my people networking sills.