Reply to post: It's a very tough sell.

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.