Career question

ThorpedoUK · 8 Oct 2010 at 00:06

Hi guys - looking for some advice, imagine you had these 3 potential roads for your future:

1. Work for an established and secure telecomms company on products such as VoIP, Linux, Java, MySQL, PHP, Perl and C# with a VERY minor amount of infrastructure and virtualisation responsibility (no SAN's or disk arrays and not touching Windows Server much or SQL)

2. Work for a small (50 people! good contracts / clients though) ECRM company solely managing 40 servers in a Data Center (new business so growing) with primary responsibility for: SQL Server (2005 // 2008 R2 etc), Disk Arrays (ISCSI // Direct Attach), Dell servers (1950 // 2950 // R910's etc), Windows Server (2003 // 2008) and clustered solutions, Linux servers (MySQL, Apache, PHP - LAMP).

3. Work for a brand new Data Center with prime responsibility (with help from 2 other people, but I have most experience in OS & hardware) for ALL managed services & infrastructure // redundancy (R910's, Disk Arrays, R710's, CISCO, Monitoring, Linux, MySQL, Windows Server Clustered // Non-clustered, VMware, LTO backup, XenServer with pools, XenApp, XenDesktop) and going to potential clients discussing with them there current service and building them a solution, delivering it (kind of like technical architect I guess with the techie deployment as well, hands on)

What do you think?

Security of job is one major and 3 is the newest, Data Centre right now is about a quarter full, 2 is small company but doing well at the moment and 1 is the most stable and successful, but I'm not sure about the future proofing of my career going down the coding route.

I want to pick the one that will get me the best CV, with stability at least for 3-5 years or so and future proof my skills.

Thanks chaps

J.B · 8 Oct 2010 at 09:41

Job 1 seems to be considerably different from job 2 and 3 in my mind. Depends if you want to work with infrastructure or not.

Id probably take the gamble with the smaller company, especially if its a growing company. Get in on the ground floor and all that.

Just what Id do though.

Yamahahahahaha · 8 Oct 2010 at 09:57

Job 1 will probably teach you the most, but you may end up pigeonholed quite quickly. Depends on the organisation.

2 and 3 definitely sound more interesting, depends what you already have on your CV.
There is more chance of seniority as the company grows, which may be a fast track in the end.

Whichever adds the most to your CV is the one you should go for.

BluBallz · 8 Oct 2010 at 11:23

As above it all depends where your interests lie, but #2 sound like the best bet if expansion is in their plans. Early foothold can only be good long term

a1ex2001 · 8 Oct 2010 at 16:01

I would avoid the general infrastructure jobs if you want to future proof your career, the future market for those kind of services in the UK just simply isn't there. Job one gives you the kind of specialised skill that will always be in demand, having said that if your rubish at or hate programming then it's probably not for you.

pdw8 · 8 Oct 2010 at 18:35

It depends, job security is not really applicable any more as you can be made redundant from any size company. Therefore based on the options I would say #1 for security but #3 for more scope to learn and progress.
I work for a telco carrier and have responsibility for the infrastructure all over the UK and Ireland. I have expanded my previous IP only knowledge to now include longhaul transport solutions, fibre and a bit of power.

vsmora · 9 Oct 2010 at 04:34

I'd go for 2 or pref 3 as you'll have much more scope to build your skills and take on challenges that you simply won't get in a large organisation. As the companies grow you'll also be in prime position for rapid advancement.

For programming even though there is plenty of demand, personally I don't rate its long-term viability here. There's little reason to keep coders in the same country and it will always be cheaper to offshore, unless you have very specialised skills/experience to offer. The only thing that would provide sway to #1 is if they are a respected blue-chip and you are going in at a high enough level for it to count on your CV.

As others have said already though, ultimately it comes down to what skills and experience you don't have that you want to add to your CV.

ThorpedoUK · 12 Oct 2010 at 22:58

Thanks guys - your replies are much appreciated as its always good to get some feedback from people in the same industry (which I couldn't at work!), in the end I have chosen option 1, option 3 maybe available again later down the line so its a potential jump ship // opt out anyway!

You all gave really good valid points, cheers, I went with the "go for the one that adds extra value to your CV" which is the development // coding route (my CV is all infrastructure, XenServer, XenApp, VMware, Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, SAN's, Disk Arrays etc etc) so think its hopefully a good choice!

Thanks again