Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Job Change question

So, I've been in IT for 25 years, I'm 47 now. I work as a network engineer for a large company with thousands of locations, got my current job at a 99% cisco shop because my company was acquired and they needed lan engineers. I was really a "do it all" type of guy, primarily focused on VMware at the time, had my VCP cert 6 years ago. So now I'm 100% Cisco and it's been a stressful 5 years. I manage, plan and implement huge remodels, upgrades, acquisitions all the time. But it's so stressful because I don't really know what I'm doing half the time - I'm not really a CCIE level who can just reconfigure and design stuff on the fly.

I've been offered multiple times over the years at my company to switch to the virtualization team, which needs help. I think I know that aspect of server, virtualization, etc.. better than I know my 100% Cisco networking role, which I struggle with, in fear of causing an outage or being alone doing a change at 4 am, where I can knock out 3k people from working in 3 hours if I didn't plan correctly or screw up.

So, I've been out of virtualization for 5 years - I'm looking for advice on whether or not I should just stay a network engineer or go back to virtualization. My current network engineer role is a lot of travel and stress upgrading or integrating new companies, managing teams of 10 people for a weekend, replacing and re-designing 50 switch sites almost quarterly. Sometimes I have to work 18 days straight, traveling across the country, sometimes driving sometimes flying. It's getting old, I get it done but so stressful since i'm never really sure I'm doing it right and hesitant to ask too many questions because then they'll know how little I actually know. Same pay, less travel, 90% sure less stress.

What do you guys and gals think?



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