I posted a request for suggestions on my career, but there was no response. Can anyone please guide me if it was posted in the right forum or thread?

Hi Dear,
I am in my early thirties and going through a phase of career confusion. Since I am HPUX, Tru64 administrator I need some councelling from a few experied and senior members. Can you help me posting the message below so that I can get some valuable feedbacks?

Thanks a lot,
Muk


Initial 4 years, I was the system administrator of a small/mid sized company data centre in India. Have done installation, configuration, restore and day-to-day management of not only Tr64 and HPUX systems but also CISCO routers and access servers. Also includes Linux and windows boxes. Though did not have major high end devices to build expertise, but had Alpha DS20, DS40, HP 9000 etc. Intel boxes were mainly Compaq/Hp Proliant and a few XEON.
Then joined the Global Delivery of a major MNC in Bangalore as a Level 2 support for Tru64 and HPUX. I was introduced to not only remote support and high end systems with thousands of user base and business critical data/ application, but also best practices and method of quality of of service. Got certified in ITIL foundation.
After 1 year I was realigned with the application support organization and have been there since then, 5 years now. I have been managing customized applications developed on apache, radius, weblogic and oracle etc. They are all running on Unix.
Initial days of application support was interesting and I was eager child to explore the new technologies. Though I was in a bit of comfort zone that these softwares were running on HPUX platform and was easier for me to manage, but as time passed I realized I was expert of none.

Now my confusion is, what kind of job should I target next. I am tired of application support since without prior experience of development, I cannot dig deep inside. If I want to get back to Unix administration, I may not get paid as much as I am earning now. Moreover, all my last 5 years of experience will be down the drain. I was thinking of targeting shell, perl scripting since I have some amount of knowledge on it and I have done it in the past. I have done a bit of C, C++ programming quite a few years back.
Would highly appreciate if someone can guide me or we can discuss about a few sucess stories where people like me had to fight a mid career crisis.

Moved it here:
What's on Your Mind? - The UNIX and Linux Forums

Hope that's ok - didn't find a more appropriate non technical subforum.

I am not a big help since I think things are different from country to country and even from employee to employee. I would go for the stuff that I like. I usually (if I have the option) do not do the stuff I don't like. If I get some more money for stuff I don't like I will very probably not do it.

It looks to me like your crisis is self-manufactured. You have several choices and you should be thankful that you do. Now decide which you want.

I can't tell you what is right for you, but I know what is right for me. I always pick the job where I can learn the most. I give very little weight to the salary and I have switched jobs into a lower paying job several times. I have never regretted it. I figure that whoever dies with the most knowledge wins! I might even be able to take my knowledge with me. And yes, I'm sure that the computers in Heaven must be running some form of Unix.

My impression.

Go for the big unix servers, big databases, big memory, big networks. You don't sound like a "script monkey" to me. IMHO going into programing is a retrograde step.

In the short term I would avoid Microsoft Windows 7 because that O/S is in dnager of breaking that company.

By logical deduction: Hewlett Packard is a good employer who will let you develop if they know you exist.

Five years on a project, i'd say you are probably bored with it. Have a friend spent almost similar time on a project, doing the same thing day in day out, year in year out and he's also searching, hard for me to tell you or tell him as I'm not in both your shoes.

But I've seen this, some folks spend years trying to get to where they want, I've also seen people who happen to be in the right place at the right time and their careers fly or they get to where they want to go or do what they like but not necessarily make a lot of money.

usually it's the good things or opportunities that come to those who wait, patience, I'm not telling you not to quit your current job but have patience with yourself, give yourself time and space to develop your craft and skill - patience like good Macallan whisky slowly maturing - gets better with age (,