Senior Engineer > ? (Bonus: What am I worth?)
Looking to make the move from big fish in a small pond to...whatever my next rung of growth is. Curious about what salary range I should expect and what kind of roles I should be looking into for the next few years. Microsoft MCSA + MCP in O365 Citrix CCA-V VMware VCP Working as a Systems Engineer managing ~15 techs and junior engineers for an enterprise consulting firm for the last 4 years. IT for the last 10 from Help Desk to Admin to Engineering. I also do some freelance custom WordPress dev on the side- relics of a past life :) I have a knack for turning complex subject matter into consumable, actionable information. Trouble is...I'm located in an area that has an extremely limited amount of enterprise-scale businesses. What should I be looking for next? CTO? CIO? Directorship?
This has Google written all over it. 😏
That would be an unbelievable change of scenery. I'm curious, what makes you say that?
You said MTN view. + You seem skilled enough based on your resume. Just a personal thought, I obviously don't represent the Google.
the modern technology industry has no interest in your operations skill set. sorry, but if you list your certifications on your resume, it goes straight into the trash can. move to Palo Alto and find a job as a sales engineer, idk
I'm surprised to hear layer 7 can operate so well without any infrastructure beneath it. Thanks for the input. Edit: Your CTO comes from a VMware background. I'm amused. :)
Certifications are just considered dirty to prominently display on the resume for most bay area companies. All you have to do is convert them into English sentences explaining the skills you have.
lol
Becoming a senior systems engineer at a company where you actually do the work, as opposed to herd junior people around, is honestly probably a step up. Like other have said, you may be incredibly skilled and talented but the way your resume reads means you'll have to crush the technical interview.
Thanks for the input. My current role is ~30 billable hours per week and 15-25 hours per week handling management tasks. That being said, my original post was meant to be the 1000' view shared amongst other technical folks. Based on your comment and others, it appears it came off as literally "this is my resume", which was not my intention.
NVIDIA has a lot of jobs in this area, Uber has a big vmware ecosystem, most banks have a huge vmware ecosystem, they are all out there
The certs don't help... Gotta show what you can do, not what you've memorized
Just to give you a real prospective of what others wanna say and its kinda true but they have put in blunt way.. Your skills are going to be aligned with non technical jobs coz certifications and managing are pretty much anyone can do. So if you wanna move into technical field than those experience has to be demonstrated in your technical interviews and the contributions you have made TECHNICALLY with them.. I am not sure if you have been attaining interview but the same things you are claiming to be your advantages are the one which will held you down. Thats coz people expect a tons from the ones who claimed so much. Thats just a perspective of mine and many of others. Overall I would say you taste the water by yourself but just dont get demotivated by us saying you what we think or the outcome of those interviews.. Its just what it is..
Wow, these fucks obviously know nothing about layers 1-6. There are absolutely System Engineer gigs out there that pay 6 figures. They're not hard to find, but you will NOT find them in a small market. I have a sibling who is Senior Systems Engineer. He made like 50k in a small market and doubled it by moving to Fort Worth. Another sibling is in a small market and he's somewhat of a Jack of all trades. He's now CTO for a franchise company in a small market, but the money still isn't there. Maybe 70k per annum. If there's any advice I can offer, it's this: go where the money is. You'll be astonished how much value you have there.
if you want to be a big wave surfer then move to the beach.
...totally. You think there's a path for transition from the world of virtualization / networking / etc. to the Mountain Views of the world?
There absolutely is. I can only speak for FB, but you're going to have to convince them that you're an engineer. You've been managing a lot of people, which often means you tell other people what to do and don't actually get your hands dirty. You need to absolutely destroy the coding interview to show that you've kept growing as an engineer. You need to be convincing about wanting to adapt to a very different workplace culture. Humility may also be in order; it's a fair bet that your level may start a bit below what you value yourself at, but if you have the skills you can climb two levels in a single year. If that sounds like it's for you, go for it!