Job for IT generalist ...

... seeking advice from most highly respected commentards ... please indulge me ... I'm an IT generalist. I know a bit of everything - I can behave appropriately up to Cxx level both internally and with clients, and I'm happy to crawl under a desk to plug in network cables. I know a little bit about how nearly …

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick one that you enjoy and specialise in it, buy the books, read them, do the exercises, do the certs/degree/whatever qualification is suitable for that area.

You're correct in saying that a generalist won't ever earn much, but having a good grounding in multiple disciplines already puts you in a much better position than many, and it should allow you to choose a field that is growing. This may seem unfair, but it's near impossible to learn everything to the depth required to operate it effectively in a larger scale, and this is where the money is.

The generalist will only ever exist as a filter for the specialists (i.e. 2nd line), or in a small company with small IT budget. I know this as I used to be a generalist, and tried to learn everything (Programming, SQL, Security, Networking, Windows, Linux, Telephony etc). A lot of it stuck, and it makes it easier to learn new things, but unless you do something regularly you'll never get good at it. I specialised, and I’m now 10 years later I’m earning a very good wage, with a good employer, and I’m looking to move into Architecture/Pre-Sales /Consultancy type work.

When it comes to applying for a specialist job, focus your CV so that you only really mention the parts that a relative to your chosen specialisation in detail, and be prepared to be asked the tough technical questions to prove that what you say on your CV is true. Don’t discount the rest of your experience, mention it if you think it’s relevant to the role. If you can get through the technical interview, and your CV demonstrates the experience required you are on the way to getting into your chosen career.

Good Luck!

[MonkeyFeet]

Good set of skills

It seems like you're weary of committing to a specialist path but also worried not specialising is hitting your pay and prospects.

It depends on how good your overall skills really are but the breadth is impressive.

Architecture is something you could look to move into given how much you understand across the whole system range.

I think you've named your own preferred area though, that being problem resolution. Live support, incident analysis etc. are all important for most companies. It can be an under appreciated area but most companies eventually understand that the person who keeps their systems running, even with sticking plaster and string, is a vital part of their organisation.

I'd suggest you look at senior positions for support and operations, it sounds like you have the skills and interest to do very well in that area.

[HereIsMyHandle]

Pre-Sales.

Pre-sales might be a good tack - if you're presentable in front of customers and can build trust based on some level of expertise then you have what is needed. Of course if you are really good at schmoozing then consider a move into pure sales as having the people and technical skills together is quite rare and valuable.

[cjstephen]

Sell yourself

Sounds like you have a good grasp of the benefits you bring yourself. If you're personable and have self-confidence you should be a sure thing if you get through the recruitment consultants to a technical interview. Have confidence to sell yourself on that generalist, adaptable, not just flavour of the month, problem solving track record. Particularly emphasise how you have handled responsibility and shown leadership. Don't sell yourself short so that an existing technical manager doesn't feel undermined, if you're selling yourself up you don't need someone putting you in your place you need somewhere you can take on responsibility and build your role. Take your skills elsewhere.

I think you sound like a technical leader any sensible organisation should hire over a niche greenhorn. Whilst HR types might be averse to someone with less pigeonholed skills, many mature organisations need adaptable problems solvers who can fix problems more than someone who knows the latest J* golden hammer and can be hired by the day from Tech Mahindra. If you've worked on large projects before, emphasise what you achieved rather than the means you used. Even in companies doing swathes of outsourcing they'll need generalists who can spot bullshit and quality control the outsourced development teams / cloud services. Non-technical managers just can't do that. Project management can be a separate stream in itself where you're competing with folk who've done Prince & that kind of right of passage management specialist stuff so not a shoe in, but having a solid technical skill base would put you in a different class for project or techical leadership essentially as you can't be bullshitted. Moving up to running a technical team or being a technical director in a small company would seem a good move. If recruitment consultants are getting in the way find better ones, use your contacts or contact employers directly and pitch yourself as a highly skilled senior technical leader with a track record solving problems on serious projects, ex of your most impressive employer rather than underselling yourself by competing as a narrow pigeonhold DB/Java/support specialist.

[David Rickard]

I'm pretty much identical to OP by the sounds of it. I'm principally a Cisco voice person, but I also do Wireless, Switching, Routing, Firewalls, AD, VMware, Security, and christ knows what else. I often find myself flicking between these different areas ALL the time.

Recent events have made me question what happens to me if I do go looking for a job, because I have zero qualifications in any area, and because I'm constantly flip-flopping between things, I've found studying hard - I've tried to study for CCNA, and to be honest I could probably almost pass it anyway, but reading and trying to process the course materials is hard when I might've spent all day bashing away at LDAP stuff, then come home and try and study something completely different. For some reason that just doesn't work for me.

So yeah, I'm kinda worried about this, as if I go apply for jobs, I've little to show for my knowledge, except for the fact I've spent about six or seven years doing it in anger. But then throw me into a problem and I'll probably dig my way through it and find a solution.

Project management really doesn't appeal to me either, as being at the sharp end is where I enjoy things most, so whilst I will do project management, it's a means to an end, and I can't help but feel it'd suck all the fun out of working in IT for me.

[bbulkow]

my old title: "Utility Infielder"

Answer first, questions later.

Pitch yourself as having specific skills. Choose a few of your skills, pitch them. Like, you do your homework about a job, you find out it's a c# networking job, and you pitch yourself as a c# and networking guy. You get the job, you spend 6 months doing the specific job (which will further hone your skills), then you pitch some other job within the group.

This is an essential problem in marketing. I have it in my company (a very fast NoSQL database called Aerospike). Our marketing deparment wants to talk about the speed of the database, because it's fast. And they want to talk about the reliability, because it's NoSQL that does ACID. And they want to talk about our Flash and SSD optimizations, because those are great for lowering in memory database cost. And they want to talk about our happy customers. And the real-time analytics that beat Hana. Or they talk about replacing redis and memcache and hbase. Or our incredibly robust clustering algorithm.

What happens? We end up with rambling statements without a point, confusing everyone, because they throw in the kitchen sink of buzzwords.

Get specific in each resume, cast yourself as something they understand, and once you're in, they'll use you for more and more.

( One word though: you really do have to be an excellent generalist. I run into a lot of people who say they're generalists but know so little about any given thing that they're useless for everything. They hide behind the "generalist" label because they can't be bothered to learn any single thing. If that's you, nut up, pick one thing, and spend two months without a job learning the living daylights out of that thing, then present yourself as an expert, and win jobs at that. You think you're a problem solver? Solve the problem of getting a job as a...I dunno... high scale Python expert, android hacker, whatever you fancy. That's actually another key to the tech industry that people seem to forget, and gets lost in the comments of ageism. Most older techies start to feel entitled and don't learn new things. I was taught you need to spend 20% of your time always learning new languages & skills, otherwise you get stale. Thus I am an over employed late-forties techie.)

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: my old title: "Utility Infielder"

I think all good IT folk enjoy solving problems, question whether they are "specialists" or "generalists" is just where these problems are. For me it is software design, its complexity, performance and "fit for purpose". For someone else it might be much broader area. The important pointy is not the area - it's enjoying it.

If you enjoy the work you do, you will keep improving (includes learning new technologies) and you have carrier ahead of you. If you pick something you do not enjoy, any improvement will be very hard to achieve.

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: my old title: "Utility Infielder"

Note to self: as a punishment for spelling mistake, write "career" 100x times on a blackboard

[nrunge]

Public Sector Potential

I don't know what lots of money is to you or what the cost of living is in your area but generalists are very common in public sector. Specifically in the EDU space I consider the money pretty good.

That being stated "problem solver" is still just a toe in the door to carving out a technology set. For example I currently admin NetApp SAN, Cisco UCS, vSphere, Citrix, Active Directory...etc. I am not an expert by any stretch in any one of those.

I can also say that in the K12 space that consultants do pretty well because the limited K12 budgets mean that they usually need a guy who can walk in the door and do everything from switch configuration to spyware removal.

So my whole industry exists without having one person who only an Oracle DBA or Linux SysAdmin.

I live in the Midwest and almost everyone on our team (4 sysadmins) is in the 68-80k range. Around here that is good money. Consultants can pull in over six figures.

So I would say for certain that decent money can be made with a general skillset in public sector education.

[localzuk]

Re: Public Sector Potential

Totally agree. IT generalists rule in the education space (not including further education - ie. University). Schools and districts cannot afford to hire in specialists but they still need enterprise class systems.

Problem is, at least in the UK, pay is appalling. Looking at my own role, managing 300+ workstations, a fleet of printers, 25 virtual servers on an enterprise class server setup, a voip phone system, firewall, network switching and routing, school information system, and a plethora of specialist software systems, along with running bespoke inhouse software, plus line managing a technician also, and the £26k I get seems rather low. I could get more if I shopped around - probably up to £35k in an academy chain but that's about it.

The other disadvantage is lack of continuing professional development and career progression. It isn't unheard of for a school's support staff training budget for a year (to cover all non-teachers) to be below £1000. Once you're the Network Manager, you're somewhat stuck - you'll more than likely not be able to enter the senior leadership team as you have no teaching experience too...

Maybe I should be looking at the USA myself!!

[Terry 6]

Re: Public Sector Potential

With cuts etc the job prospects may be getting tighter. More funding is being diverted to core budgets and away from the (actually essential) support roles.

That includes both the IT guys and the educational support professionals.

I was one of the latter, and as a manager worked closely with the former.

I absolutely needed them to be generalists. A good understanding of how we and our schools worked with IT was far more important than a deep understanding of any one kind of device or programme.

Problem solving and listening skills were what made the difference between good support and bad for us.

When I left our IT guy had an MA in computer forensics. But his value was that he could hear our moans about quirky inetwork access or printers doing strange things and get us working again quickly.

[nrunge]

Re: Public Sector Potential

You are correct that support jobs are becoming less plentiful. So beyond the technology set that I own I guess I could also say that I am a business analyst, project manager...etc.

Our budgets definitely force us to opt for automation and self service but I don't think that is unique to the public sector.

Overall i think that it is hard to make blanket statements about EDU IT opportunity simply because of the vast difference in funding models.

Its definitely worth taking a look as long as you understand that there can be certain cultural challenges. I have watched a number of talented individuals frustrate themselves out of good jobs because they were constantly comparing everything to private sector.

It takes a certain brand of crazy to actually enjoy working in the political climate sometimes!

[Don Jefe]

Act Appropriately Up To the Cxx Level...

How do you know you can 'act appropriately up to the Cxx level'?

I ask, because that's a really confusing thing to lead off a list of technical skills with. If you're reporting directly to Executive Management then you aren't an 'IT Generalist', you're an 'IT Operations Specialist' or 'Special Projects Specialist'. Your technical abilities will account for about 50% of your value and your communications abilities will account for the other 50%.

You're going to be competing with lots of technically competent candidates, so unless you're phenomenally exceptional technically, you're going to get lots more traction if you focus on your communications and sell your value to potential employers in a way that directly communicates how you add value to the company. Most of your fellow candidates will be completely forgotten if you explain what you will add to the future of the company instead of going on about what you added to a previous company which obviously wasn't appreciated and/or valuable. Your job is the future, not the past, that's the same job the people who hire you have, so it's good to communicate on the same plane. Generalist isn't anywhere on that plane either.

This next bit is good for more money, but reduces your prospects if a hands on, technical role is where you want to be. However, if a senior technical position where you'll be communicating directly with senior management is your goal it's the best way to get your chance to sell yourself.

Identify your business specialty and/or industry and support that with your technical abilities. Everybody you're interacting with is going to have technical abilities. If you focus on those you're effectively setting up a competition between yourself and any other candidates with the same skills. Who has 'the best' or 'the most' among competing candidates isn't anything you can control and reducing variables is going to be the key that gets you the opportunity to justify your rate. Let the others fight out who is the last true COBOL expert on Earth, or whatever.

While those guys are debating the merits of various query structures you get to walk in and get the job because you talked about how you excell at accelerating new business unit growth by creating an invisible, seamlessly integrated IT environment that delivers business services that 'just work' by focusing on the needs of the users and the demands of the business through technical excellence and communication. Or some shit like that (the above is an off the cuff garbage example, don't use that in practice. Be specific about what you do :).

You're getting hired to serve the needs of others, it's on you to figure out how your technical skills best translate into meeting and exceeding those needs and communicating that in a way that's useful and, crucially, noticeable above all the noise. I'll give you a hint though, your skills are a statement of what you have, unless you're interviewing to be robbed the only thing that matters is what you are going to give to the future. Your skills are like a tool inventory, and worth fuck all by themselves. How you're going to use that inventory is all that matters.

I got my big break when I was hiring myself out as a professional interim executive. Mostly for hedge funds who were 'realigning' (destroying) companies. They needed somebody to go in and determine what should be kept and amalgamated with other things, and what should he sold off. Then I had to turn whatever was left into a functional, money making, business. That's about as 'generalized' as you can get. I reorganized everything from small generic pharmacy products manufacturers to two firearms manufacturers, a laboratory equipment manufacturer and finally a network equipment manufacturer where I was offered a permanent role as COO where I was responsible for getting 31,000 employees organized for an IPO six years later and coming back later to help with the acquisition of that company.

That's relevant here because at no point was a selling myself as a 'generalist'. If you're not a technical specialist that doesn't make you a 'geberalist' that makes you an, as yet, unlabeled business specialist. You just need to find, or create, a label that let's others know what you do. These days I'm running my own little specialty manufacturing business and I'm on the board of a VC firm in DC. I've got an enormous database of business specialists I call on to put inside our portfolio companies to ensure success. Many of their day rates are in $2k+ range and the reality is most of them are 'generalists', but there's nary a single 'generalist' search parameter in my database. The system is all business oriented and organized by business specialty.

Your technical skills are nothing more than what you use in your specialty work. You need to define your business specialty. The career path and money you're looking for are there.

[Pete 2]

Re: Act Appropriately Up To the Cxx Level...

When I "act appropriately at the Cxx level" it means a combination of things.

First of all: suit and tie. Imperative. Plus it saves a lot of time. (A modest, tailored, skirt/jacket if you prefer) Instead of having to spend the first 20 minutes of any meeting establishing your credentials, being dressed for the part and having "a firm handshake, a certain look in the eye and an easy smile" means you have at least 30 seconds to tell them something they need to know, before their attention wavers or their phone rings.

Second: listen.

Third: listen some more. This is more a sign of showing respect. If you've prepared properly, you will already know what they will say to you.

When you do speak, speak slowly. Use business terms (but never cliches you picked up from buzzword-bingo). Never, ever, make the person you're talking to feel stupid or insecure. Always explain everything - you don't get to be CxO by being stupid, so they pick stuff up quickly if it's in their interests to. So make it in their interests.

Leave your phone behind or switch it off. The chances of the caller being more important that your audience is almost zero.

Finally: know why you have gone into that meeting and know what you are going to ask for after you've made your pitch. The primary goal of the meeting is to tell them something to their advantage. Your goal is to get what you want. If you aren't asking for anything, there's no point being there. When you do ask, don't apply pressure - try to give them as much warning as you can (maybe a comment right at the start) and don't drop any surprises on them.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want the big bucks, then you'll probably need to specialise - otherwise you will be aiming for an IT Manager role in a small to medium organisation - and they don't come up that often.

I'd look into IT consulting, talk to some of the larger companies that you've heard of, and ask them about what sort of career progression and training they can offer. Talking to people at trade expos is a good place to start, they usually happy to have someone drop by who actually wants to talk to them, even if you're not buying something.

It sounds to me like your aiming for an Architect or Managing Consultant type role, but you need to prove your worth on the engineering or technical consulting rungs before you climb to the top. I don't think you'll still be wanting to dive in under desks in 10-15 years time, so now is the time to think about your options. You might need to specialise in the short term in order to get you that chance to be a well paid generalist in the medium term.

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a good local consultancy to join

I am sort of similar to you.

I earn £100K a year which is decent money I think.

I can pretty much do anything out there - from any technology, to team leading, project management, etc.

It's been built up from 20 years experience, and a gift for picking up new technology and skills very quickly and within a month or so being in a position of 'expert' in any environment you put me in.

For a consultancy this makes you very valuable. They know that whatever requirements come there way in the 1000s of different technologies I'll be able to do it.

I have enough history is all sort of technology too, that usually the client has enough confidence after an interview that I will be the man for the job.

So when a blue chip client comes to my consultancy looking for 'skills in XYZ' and the fact they can't find them anywhere. they can put me in front of them - I have skills in ABC, and CDE… in the same area as XYZ, and I can show from the sheer number of engagements enough information for them to have confidence in me picking up XYZ quicker than anyone they are likely to find.

Any single company is not going to give you these opportunities, but on the other side, you need to be flexible working for a consutlancy- I pretty much live out of hotels working on clients sites.

For example, I am currently working on a niche SOA technology. I knew nothing about this product when I joined the client at the start of last year. However the client could see my general SOA skills, and skills with other SOA technologies. They were persuaded to take me on for 3 months.

I'm still there 14 months later, and now assure the technical quality of the SOA deliverables.

Your strengths sound similar:

- an ability to solve problems agnostic to technology/prodcts

- a proven ability to be able to pick up (to expert level) any technology quicker than the majority of people.

Find a local consultancy, and they will value these skills very highly.

[Mario Becroft]

Dived into thread to say 'you took the words out of my mouth', fantastic to hear the question many of us are asking articulated, and the many deeply insightful replies.

My problem is I am contracting, selling myself as IT work-for-hire to highest bidder, getting unlimited work and a middle-of-the-road income, but I am bored out of my mind; it's clear that I am way under-selling myself and could be delivering so much more as a consultant, if I could figure out how to do it.

So far I feel Don Jefe's reply spoke to me most directly--thanks for that Don. I need to build my business skills--problem is I find the management world (in my industry/part of the world) ultra-competitive and toxic. I suppose being able to handle this gracefully is what distinguishes the men from the boys.

I will be following this thread keenly. Thanks all who have constributed your heard-earned knowledge and experience.

[Carl W]

Tech PM at 75k+bens perm -- get yourself on a PRINCE2 or PMI course

[Anonymous Coward]

"get yourself on a PRINCE2 or PMI course"

Prince 2 and then MSP are far better regarded in general that PMI. Which tends to be a legacy of outdated American companies. Also consider ITIL (same source as Prince 2 / MSP)

[Anonymous Coward]

Do what's fun

As an IT generalist with a 43 year track record of solving "impossible" system problems life was usually interesting. However company structures now favour certification. It is not until there is a nasty system interaction problem that the specialists are found to be too narrow to diagnose it. The inclination of management afterwards is to offer the IT Generalist a promotion into a management or a consultant role - both usually the graveyard of technical expertise.

Every time I had to fill in the "ambition" part of the annual staff review I would put "to stay at least as good as I am now with whatever changes come in the IT world".

Don't expect big bucks though. That world disappeared about the same time that certification became the be all and end all of trumpeting how good the staff are.

You do get to be involved in cutting edge things going wrong - without having to have slogged over the hurdles of a proscribed imprint^H^H^H training programme that closes the mind ...and that's fun.

PS It also damages your long-term health and social life pulling chestnuts out of the fire when all the specialists and managers are tucked up cosy in their beds. ...but who wants a long boring life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not testing? Approached the right way, you get to use a holistic skill set while remaining far more hands on than you do if you drift into project management. A good tester needs to quickly understand a system from top to bottom to understand where the risks are, and start digging where the bodies are most likely buried. Being able to quickly find the issues that matter, articulate them in appropriate language for both the dev side and the business side, and, even better, highlight potential issues during design and planning turns out to be a highly desirable skill set. Being able to quickly knock up a complex test network, code some automated integration tests, do some SQL queries, do some network analysis with wireshark through to getting code reviewed, merged in and deployed to production is all part of the job. In terms of consultancy, you can quickly get a reputation as a very useful person to have around.

There is a specialist aspect in that you do need a slightly evil brain to be a good tester, and if you're working with anything GUI/front end based, you do need to have more empathy for end users than your average dev/sysadmin, but this is more about attitude than skills. While not for everyone, it's a specialism that the right sort of generalist can dive into and thrive. One word of warning, there's still a lot of old school 'write a detailed manual test script in excel, then brainlessly follow it' testing out there, especially in the corporate outsourcing world. You don't want that. No one wants that.

[ultimate_noob]

I have to agree with the idea of going the "Verification Engineer/SQA" road. In my area in the US, there are two major defense contractors in the area and no shortage of people looking for work: PMs, IT, Software Dev, you name it. What they seem to lack is a number of people lining up to do the verification. So I picked a job working for a "managed engineering services firm" which means contracts from a bunch of companies. In the seven years I've been with them, I've watched devs, IT guys and even managers come and go from both companies and even my own. What I haven't seen is anyone who's actually a good problem solver with a strong broad skill set disappear from my department. We get kinda catered to since people like that are hard to come by. Anyone can be taught to code to requirements, anyone can make a PowerPoint slide with help but it takes a very special mind to not only find issues in the design and code but understand when not to back down on getting those issues fixed. Real problem solvers are there to the end. If you can also train, get software installed, develop solutions and run the group, that also helps. I get decent benefits, fair pay--I'm only about 10% off of where I wanted to be for my age--and regularly changing work so I'm not bored (well, it's managed to tolerable levels). In all, going this road, I make enough money to pay for my house, my car, my kids and be comfortable all with the added bonus of not having to be in before 10am most days.

[Charles Manning]

Nitty gritty problem solver?

C'mon, if you're a good problem solver you can also solve this career issue.

First off, reflect on why sales people earn stupid money compared to their skills: they realise that they are selling themselves to the company. You must do that too.

People don't buy skills, they buy VALUE. They want to see that if they hire you they will make more money. For that you need to be able to demonstrate achievements in a way that can be linked to money.

"I designed X which allowed the company to use Y instead of Z. That saved the company $2million last year."

If you say "I know a bit of C#", they throw you in the bucket with all the other people that know a bit of C# (whatever the hell that is).

If you de-congested a project, then equate that to money. "I brought the project to market 3 months earlier. That earned the company $5M extra revenue."

You need to learn to use numbers and words like revenue, saving, bottom line and less of the "I know a bit of C#".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nitty gritty problem solver?

Then I must keep running into the numpties, because I've I used those magic words and have actually helped directly save multi-million dollar deals and smoothed the way on billion dollar mergers and they still only offer me fish and chips pay.

Yes, I bathe regularly and dress nice. (once a day and slacks and button down shirts that aren't tattered and shoes polished)

[Anonymous Coward]

Service Delivery: Managing Outsourcers

Look for a company who needs a generalist to help manage the service delivery of one or more of their outsourced providers.

You will need to demonstrate communication and management skills, and sufficient technical ability to determine when an outsourcer is blowing smoke and work with/force them to correct their behavior before it becomes a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Specialization is the way to higher pay

It has always been this way. If you're one of only 10 people in the country qualified to a particularly narrow IT field, you can pull down $300-$500/hr as a contractor. I know a couple guys like this.

The risk is, if things change and that specialization is no longer relevant, your pay can quickly drop to zero. What's the difference between someone who specialized in a niche for SAP back in the 90s, versus a guy who specialized in a similar niche for Baan? One is still making bank, the other is probably struggling if he hasn't moved on.

Being a generalist is fine, but you need to have at least one niche you can point to as a specialty. If you want to do project management or architecture you can start in that specialty, and your generalist skills will allow you to break you to managing the whole project or as a chief architect, where someone who is truly just a specialist will not. I'm a true generalist with a couple specialties, and I parlayed that into architecture roles in that specialty and then to chief architect roles where my generalist knowledge has been invaluable. Someone who worried only about their specialty wouldn't have a prayer of success doing what I do.

The other way to go is to get hired on by a small company as "their IT guy", or contract to several even smaller companies as "their IT guy". If you're fine with doing the grunt work like running cable or installing a new PC, your generalist skills will come in handy and you can maybe sell them on the idea of giving you a bonus based on a the percentage of the reduction in "added cost" IT expenses they avoid because you can do everything (i.e. not having to have some company run cable, another company configure your new firewall device, another company migrate your storage when you buy a new RAID)

[ewozza]

Be a specialist in a lot of things

You're not a generalist - you're a polymath specialist. Anyone who can learn C# in 2 days, well enough to spot the mistakes, is already good enough to add value to a C# project, and would be a tremendous asset to any IT project.

Obtaining recognition for this ability is just a matter of demonstrating your value to your potential clients.

Before starting my own app business in 2012, I was an IT contractor in London, working the merchant banking circuit. I never had trouble landing the highest paid contracts, despite the fact each role was significantly different to the previous role.

The reason - I never present myself as a generalist, I presented myself as a specialist with a broad range of skills.

When pitching to a client, I work out what they want, and list recent occasions on which I used the skills they require. If I don't have that exact skill, I try to demonstrate the relevance of a similar skill.

When I wanted to move into C++, I was straight up - I said "I don't have a lot of commercial C++ experience, but I've been working hard to learn it. I'm hoping my skills will be useful to you"

Obviously this was a challenge to ask a lot of difficult questions - but I passed.

When interviewing once for Microsoft, they got so desperate to find a question I couldn't answer, they started asking about internal details of SQL Server. I said "come on guys, I haven't seen the sourcecode". I got that contract as well.

Be positive about your approach. Nobody has the exact skills clients need. But you can demonstrate that you will add value to their project, by being confident, by demonstrating your relevant experience, and by demonstrating how you have handled learning new skills in the past.

Eric Worrall (click the link if you want to ask me more questions offline).

[Jay Zelos]

Most of the roles I've seen tend towards one of either, developer, db admin, systems admin or network admin. (systems being servers, no one ever mentions desktops).

At the coalface this is fine, probably a good idea since the skills are so in depth these days. However someone needs to tell all these folk how it all links together and this is where the architect role comes in. It's typically more design and emergency problem solving than operational day to day stuff, great fun, varied and rewarding.

I performed that role for a government agency for a few years with fair bit of project management thrown in as well. The pay was terrible and recognition less than ideal at the very top, but since leaving for the private sector I've found my skill set in huge demand. Typically after I've taken a job as a developer (my primary skill of choice) my other abilities and knowledge get me moved onto urgent projects that are behind and in need of expert assistance. I then get asked to help out with planning and design to stop the same situation arising again. I'm currently in my second stint with my current UK based employer precisely because this employer valued those skills and was willing to chase me down and offer the rewards they deserve. Its a hard sell, but once you're in a company, all your skills will get noticed and promoted as long as you volunteer and get stuck in. It may take some time to find the right placement, but it will happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a very tough sell.

Most of the elite IT people I have met over my 3 decades have come from a hobby / general interest and hence generalist IT background.

Most the the over paid paperweights (Management excluded) have come from pigeon holed techs who have badges up to their arm pits but haven't bothered to peer around the corner their coop and think ten years doing one thing one way for globalmega corp is worth real money in the real world.

If you are passionate about IT it is important you stick with what you enjoy - if you get enjoyment from being able to find solutions to dead ends other people have created then something like product development within a consultancy (sound daft by name) could be great for you.

I bailed about 10 years ago and started my own consultancy looking at predominantly financial, but basically any SMB holistic solutions as well as more 'fancy' stuff for larger organisations. We all daily do 'fun' stuff like server roll outs, automation, firewall builds and pen testing - but I also ensure even seniors (myself included) answer the phone and do our fair share of 'have you rebooted it', 'change language to GB', 'Is there a disk in the drive' and so on and so forth. Keeping up to date with how a receptionist works is just as important as keeping up to date with the IOPS and latency readings on a SAN - IMVHO.

Like you, I (well, we, now) have a massive skill set which pretty much makes keeping qualifications up to scratch impossible - but that doesn't mean I don't do training or spend most waking spare time reading white papers and best practice guides. Knowing where to find information - having an aptitude for what that means with regards to business and systems analysis and not being scared to ask for (or pay for) expert help when the times comes is only second to being able to confidently delegate whilst maintaining ownership.

The latter is very hard - on all levels, but if you are going to earn cash and enjoy yourself, it is a skill you have to master above all others.

And don't feel superior, angry or smug (well maybe in little bits) just because from time to time you still get to flex your generalist skills - I recently introduced a 30 year old 170k virtualisation specialist to the wonders of tokens in batch files, when bash and cygwin were not viable.

If you choose to go it alone, be prepared for a few years of being poor and scared.

You sound like the good sort, and perhaps the sort to get hired by a properly good consultancy who care about their clients and not just reselling whatever gives them the best margins, lock in and easy income. But to make proper money you would obviously need to get a directorship, ideally.

[DesktopGuy]

Work for yourself - be in charge of your own destiny.

Specialisation does bring in more income.

In my case, it is not skill set specialisation, but industry specialisation.

90% of my work is with creative industries - design, advertising, publishing, video, photography.

Like anything else you need to adapt and specialisation can make you harder to employ if your field/industry takes a downturn.

Originally I worked solely in publishing fields as I have a trade background and know the workflows involved, the industry lingo and key industry players.

The entire publishing industry has taken a massive hit in the last few years so I diversified into video and also do some work with non-profits (to scrub my soul clean!!)

I am seeing a big downturn in photography over the last few months so will probably need to adapt again.

As a side not, I am often brought into large companies as a consultant and more often than not, come to the same conclusions for workflow/processes as the internal IT, but when someone from outside recommends something, its like - WOW why didn't our guys recommend that (roll eyes).

Lastly, it may sound counter intuitive, but don't cast your net too wide.

Pick clients that match your skill sets and set realistic expectations - if the arrangement isn't working out, recommend them to a colleague/competitor and get out without souring the relationship.

[Mikel]

Making other people rich

Most people don't get this, but the reason why people pay you money for your work is that they turn a profit on it. As soon as you can, look into working for yourself. I guarantee your boss will be the biggest ass, the most demanding jerk you have ever worked for - but you get to keep the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Making other people rich

The alternative is to change employers frequently. Once you work for one employer for while then you will find your pay is dropping behind that of new people of lesser ability/experience. You can also usually rejoin your old company after about a year - when they are happy to pay market value for you.

An enlightened boss decided to do a market survey of pay for the long-serving members of the team - with a view to guarding against losing their skills. He was horrified to find that they would command about double - and HR would only allow him to pay a 10% rise for "retention". He was fortunate that they enjoyed working for the company. Fancy job titles and money per se were not their motivation.

[DainB]

IT Generalist

n.

Person who thinks that he knows more than 5 separate IT Specialists and confident that he can easily replace all of them but somehow gets paid less then each of them. Successful if confined to lower management roles and not allowed to touch anything at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

IT Generalist

n

Person who actually sees the global picture, thus allowing 5 (or less) separate IT specialists to cut time faffing about trying to figure out what each other is saying.

[Anonymous Coward]

A decent IT Generalist knows they don't know everything. However - they expect the specialists to be able to answer in-depth questions about their specialism. The generalist is the interface - communicating and translating between the specialists - each with their own terminology. The generalist sees the bigger picture - and has the ability to find the pieces of the jigsaw.

Specialists these days are often quite shallow in their knowledge in their specialist area. They tend to assume that the lower layers on which they depend are perfect and have no contextual constraints.

In this respect "Architects" are often merely another set of certificated specialists. They have been taught how to design systems according to set recipes. They often do not understand the basics of computing or networking that would enable them to produce innovative solutions specific to a customer's needs.

[DainB]

"The generalist is the interface"

Interface here is speech, not a person. Get 5 specialists into one room and you'll see they easily figure out solution using their cross-discipline skills without anyone else required.

What OP is a Jack of all trades in IT. Master of none.

[Anonymous Coward]

>What OP is a Jack of all trades in IT. Master of none.

I think you're totally right but you're only going to get a stream of down votes.

You have to consider that a lot of register readers only have basic skills but think that they are the cutting edge in "IT". I dare say many people here need to have this illusion of "specialists need normal guys like us to act as middle man to integrate them with the rest of the company" to keep their job that could otherwise be outsourced to a generic Indian or Chinese offshore worker.

What is my basis for this opinion you ask... look at articles like the recent one about IoT requiring IPv6 adoption to survive. So many posters had arguments like "I'm a network administrator, I don't want to type or learn how new things work so IPv6 is bad". Discussion of the technical issues was non-existent. Any post about some recently discovered bug in Linux or other large open source project has comments that are >3/4 "hah, told you Windows is the bestest!".

I'm not saying we don't need jack of all trades. Companies need desktop support etc.. but a guy that knows "a bit of Java" or something that tries to get in the middle of technical discussion is beyond annoying. The OP wrote something like "I don't know C# really, but I learned enough to look at some outsourced code and tell my boss is was bad". The code could have been bad or the OP didn't have the experience required to know why it was how it was. With limited insight it's very easy to imagine that everything should be intuitive and clean but in the real world that's not the case. It doubt it matters for an offshore guy but if I had just worked my balls off on something really difficult and it looked like a dog's breakfast because of all the edge cases involved and some guy that would spend most of their time replacing mouse balls if they weren't all optical now started trying to inject their uninformed opinion via their boss etc I wouldn't be best pleased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Architect

Earlier in the thread someone suggested the architect route. TOGAF seems to be the must have certification for this week (sigh). But if you can learn a bit of nay of the main methods (e.g. Zachman) and show how your previous projects aligned to it then that may well be enough. The big consultancies will put you through a case study / role play scenario as part of recruitment so impressing on the day counts for a lot.

There's also good money to be made as a technical PM: the key problem there is that you are not really in charge of the solution - but making sure that it goes in as designed. And you will be measured solely on delivering on time etc. But having the nous to spot when it's going to go pear shaped and know what to do to fix it early is very valuable.

The main thing to note, IMHO: the very nature of your question suggests that you are not yet 'branding' yourself as architect or PM or whatever role you think you can do and which pays better. So you need to review your previous 2 - 5 years' work and see how you can portray it in the terms of the role you are going for: identify (i.e. be clear in your own mind) what was consultancy to CxO level; what was project management; what was mentoring staff; what was managing teams; what was managing third-party suppliers etc. Then when you prepare a CV, or answer interview questions, you can quickly highlight the right bit of your experience - and if you don't have it exactly you can say so quickly and honestly, but perhaps point to a project where you worked closely with the person who did do that role, so you've seen it done etc.

[dan1980]

It's a sad fact of life that you sometimes you have to choose between doing what you love and getting paid more.

If the idea of specialising is really not what you want and would not give you job satisfaction then perhaps that's just something you have to accept.

There are so many choices in life and this is one of them. But even then, those aren't your only options. You can work towards a stronger management position or start your own firm, as many in your position have. But, again, perhaps those options don't appeal to you.

There is great value for companies in having a technical project manager who has enough breadth to see the big picture and make sure the end result is achieved but with enough specialised knowledge to make sure that the details are in order. Those kind of roles, however, are management roles. If you find the right fit of company then you can get a respectable salary and it can be a really fulfilling position because you get to see a project unfold under your direction, knowing that you actually earned the credit you recieve for it! (Unlike some project managers I've known who have next to no clue. Employing people who know what they're talking about it very important but it's just as important to know when you're not being told what you need to know!)

I suppose the question is, what's wrong with getting an average wage? Sure it's nice to get 'the big bucks' but it's up to you if you're willing to do a job you don't enjoy to get them!

[gr00001000]

Business with I.T

Companies do like staff who align their skills with the company products. IT software firms, ISPs, Telecoms, IT Health products, product product product.

[Anonymous Coward]

Married or Single? Willing to travel? Ambitious? Confident?

You may be approaching this all the wrong way. Most companies are run by donkeys who hire donkeys, the pay is crap and the smart money goes to a select few... Think about that for a moment... Finding work is intimidating, but once you have a job, how quickly do you outgrow your job? Be honest with yourself about that..

If you're better than most of the other techs around you after 6 months, then stop underselling yourself even if you are a generalist! It doesn't matter anyway, the crucial question is this: Are you working in an important area or an important project? If not, then why not?

Your work hunt attitude comes across as slightly vulnerable, so for starters be mindful of this and purge any quiet defensiveness and don't give off the vibes of the guy whose desperate for a date. Confidence is everything! For starters stop apologizing like someone singing badly at karaoke and tell us what your goals are, what your dreams are, and keep it practical by way of including a salary / contract range and desired positions, for now and in 5 years etc?

You sound conscientious, the type of guy that will deliver on crucial projects, so try to leverage that. I would actively seek out recruiters struggling to find staff for distressed projects, but only accept those with attractive payouts and seniority. Once you succeed at this a couple of times, no one will ever question your weak points again and they'll see the battle scars. Why? Because when you talk about succeeding in difficult scenarios you take on a whole other persona that is quite powerful in selling yourself without actually selling yourself or selling out etc. So come across as person who delivers. Full stop! ... Because that's what this IT game is about really.

IT is such a shit-hole career now. On a personal note I've stayed in contracting most of my life and tried to avoid those gigs that might be a nest of vipers. Instead I set my sights on tax-free havens such as HK, Dubai, Bermuda. Sometimes I won these, sometimes I didn't like anything else in life. But I kept my high standards regardless. To survive I needed a decent float, at least one or two lucrative earners every couple of years where I could bank it all. Keeping the float intact was surprisingly easy as I was just too busy to blow it all... But here's an Important caveat. I only managed to do this because I wasn't married and was mostly unattached during high income years... Otherwise I've have gotten more than a few P45's in my relationship Christmas stocking!

One last option that some seek out or like me accidentally fell into, is to work for trading shops. But this business is changing so fast its hard to know where the hot areas are right now. After the meltdown hedge funds, LBOs and M&A and HFT shops were the places to go for techs, but I'm not sure anymore. Bloomberg write articles about this from time to time so look under 'view'. But be wary accepting gigs at any of the big banks. If you work there you probably won't even make it to the middle or back office never mind the front desk. Overall, its not very nice work either, but early retirement is definitely on the cards... Strong math is a mega-advantage, but the ability to communicate highly technical ideas to distracted traders in a fast, fun and humorous way gets you noticed!

But mostly, good luck!

[Levente Szileszky]

Sounds like an IT Project Manager or Operations Manager...

...to me, perhaps a better-paid Systems Administrator - seriously, just go for IT Project Manager or Operations Manager.

However regardless of what some people say here do NOT try to sell yourself as an Architect in any of the segments unless you DO have a *real* in-depth knowledge of the solutions out there - eg ask yourself: tomorrow, based on customer requests, can you scope out, design, propose with deadlines then successfully build & deploy clustered setup within your proposed time frame, including storage & servers & networking with all the latest ins and outs, write and implement policies etc as well? If your answer is no/not really then you better stay out of architecture design until you gain enough experience so you can build a strong reputation later - because though it's true that there are plenty of snake oil architects out there but credibility is everything, you can only blow it once with every client and bad rep travels faster than wind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Depressing to say the least!

We all have the same challenge in IT - simply put, contantly having to justify our existence! The "system" is designed to keep prices pushed down - most larger companies hire external consultants / resources through their very stringent and often limited procurement processes (basically ordering people resources like they order office furniture!) - they prioritze on price more than quality & competence - and often have very aggressive terms and conditions (like 90 day payment terms!)

Also, these days - most companies insist on "all-inclusive" rates which mean us consultants have to pay the overhead of doing business with them. On top of that, there are the middle companies involved (recruiters, brokers, service delivery & outsourcers) which sqeeze the prices down adding their markups on top.

What always baffled me - is that most organizations today don't blink an eye when spending literally millions on hardware and software, but when it comes to competence & skills, they cut corners evrey which way (outsourcing, offshoring, etc.) - Unfortunately, Technology is simply a tool (a very powerful one at that!) and is most effective when it is in the "right" hands.

It is very challenging these days to push through the "chatter" on the open market and promote ones skills properly - nobody has the time or the patience to read through CVs properly anymore - especially when they receive 300 responses to their mostly generic job descriptions posted on the internet (and on less than 3% of those are actually quaslified candidates!) - sad really.

The more diverse your skill set is, the more difficult it is to promote and sell. You not only have to convince initially the recruiter, then the procurment department - then finally the decision making hiring manager (if you get that far) - that you really have the skills they seek - above and beyond the paper tiger you call a CV or Resume.

The key to success is to stay focused and keep up to date in a few areas of "expertise" of your liking (ie: security, architecture, project management or specific industry experience) - and learn to promote yourself - selling your skills goes far beyond just having a resume these days.

Hope this helps - (don't want to paint the picture all black, just a dose of reality)

Cheers -

[GoNoGo]

Get paid for doing multiple roles

In my case, I perform the duties of a facilities manager, electrical engineer, participate in server room design and build, set up servers, network equipment, understand databases, software development cycles and a few other things which are known to be critical for company operations. Basically, I do the job of several people and have presented myself as a "do more with less solution" to the company. After 20 years in the business it gets easier to do. Oh, and by the way, make sure you understand what are the cost centers and profit centers in the company. Ensure that the profit centers can vouch for you in times of need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, Hardware Operations (yes, really)

Full disclosure, I work for Google. Hardware Operations is always specifically looking for generalists and boy are good ones hard to find in a world that emphasizes specialists!

Have a look at the jobs site:

http://www.google.com/about/careers/teams/ops-support/data-center/

And an example of a specific job posting (just one of many countries);

https://www.google.com/about/careers/search/#!t=jo&jid=726002&

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Google, Hardware Operations (yes, really)

Great recommendation! I've bookmarked it and already sent in several applications!

Thanks for the info!

Upvoted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting read here. I am a Generalist too. I do enjoy being a generalist, I get to do what I want within reason for about 30-40% of the time I am at work. I am not sure my managers are aware of this, but everything is running smoothly and I don't have much else to do half the time. I have learned a great deal of things over the last few years, vmware, citrix, bits of SQL and oracle, AD, exchange ect, but it is all in a test environment since I build environments for developers and case resolution. Nothing is actually proper production environment.

I have applied for another job paying way more for probably less skills, but I might learn a bit more about networking and it is closer to where I live. I am at the point now when I think I should start to specialist. My career goal is to be an system architect of some sort, but right now in my early 30's I want more money :)

[Anonymous Coward]

science generalist

I'm in the same boat in biology. I can do some molecular biology work, but also mathematical modelling and simulation.

At the moment I work well at interfacing projects, aligning experimental teams with increasing requirements of data scientists and mathematical modellers. I'm at the technical level however and never moved into any kind of people or project management and now I'm being made redundant.

The job market favours the specialist who can parachute in, do a particular niche job, and parachute out when the contract ends. I read things like "Average is over" and worry that the generalist is over. It seems like only those that are able to see "the next big thing" and jump on that key skill can retain employability, but how many times do you have to do this? And how long can you keep re-training for before you're too old to be constantly rebooting? I'm in my mid 30's now and have had 6 jobs since my degree, returned to university for a doctorate, and again rebooting. Is it normal to be constantly moving on in today's job market? I don't think it's a bad thing, but it's certainly a frustrating thing.

Regarding the question posed for this thread, I would say that the generalist is a dead man walking. Specialise, then specialise again, and again, and again...

[Erik4872]

PM? Not if you actually like doing the work

You mention your generalist status as something that prevents you from getting work. And in a "traditional" company I'd say you're right. However, why not seek out a company that needs your kind of skills? You have lots of strengths as a generalist -- I can't believe how many people I know and work with who have been pigeonholed into an extremely specific job function at a large company. True IT generalists, defined as people who are flexible enough to learn new things fast, are sought after, but unfortunately the flashy "SAP genius" or "Oracle performance tuning rockstar" gets all the glory in most companies. This is because most companies don't do IT as their main business...they prefer to bring in the rockstars as needed, so they advertise for them.

IT services companies love people like us. Well, maybe not "love," but they do staff most projects with a couple good people to offset the wastes of oxygen that the customer sees. My employer values my skillset and that of our group because we are the sorts of people who will dig into a system and figure out what's what, regardless of whose job it's supposed to be. I've been with my current employer for almost 10 years (I even left and came back!) and my job has never been the same for more than a few months. Since I'm the kind of person who likes to get involved with everything, I get assigned challenging work and it's always different. My experience over my career has been that you really can't learn everything about all aspects of technology, but you _can_ work on one aspect, do a project or two with it, move on, then come back later. I've done this with Citrix, working on 3 different versions of the product, and jumping to something else when the time came. Being a generalist, and knowing enough concepts and fundamentals makes it easy to pick up new stuff. I'm currently fixing a horribly broken implementation of CA's client management tools for a customer, and it's clear that these tools are so poorly documented that they could generate several full time jobs' worth of effort to maintain them. Specialists would relish this, because they could just implement the same tricks over and over again once they learned them (cough SAP cough). The problem is that being a specialist could mean you're stuck when the product isn't useful anymore, and you don't have the flexibility to adapt.

Some people are suggesting PM work. I strongly recommend against that if you actually want to keep doing technical work. PMs, although incredibly important, are glorified secretaries that beat you over the head with Gantt charts. You just boss around the people doing the work, and don't do anything yourself. I would say you should find a consultancy / IT services firm (preferably small to mid sized) and sell yourself as a flexible fast learner. Just because the SAP guys are billing $300+ an hour doesn't mean you can't make a decent living doing more interesting stuff. Bonus points for you if you can actually talk to the execs in their language.

[OzBob]

In response to your question

"Yes"

[Ding!]

Next patient, please!