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Hi all. I recently left my Systems Administrator role of five years for a Security Consultant role at a major bank. At the time of accepting that role I was also offered a new Systems Administrator role at a major IT firm and so had to choose between the two roles. I have been at the Security Consultant for 3 weeks now and is not living up to what I hoped and I am really starting to question my choice. I dropped the IT firm recruiter an email to see if the Sys Admin role was still available out of interest. He said it was and he would put a feeler out about me potentially coming in for that role. Now they may come back and say no way. But what if they say yes? My initial reactions of this Security Consultant role are not good but have I given it enough time? I find myself getting excited about the prospect of the Sys Admin job which doesn’t bode well for the Security role I am in now. My wife says I come home unhappy and I am massively confused. Any opinions welcome.

Thanks

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Life is way too short to stay doing something that is not making you happy. You at least potentially have a choice here, hopefully the Sys Admin job comes through. Good luck with it all, do only what is right for you. Sometimes the grass is not always greener. :slight_smile:

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If you get offered the other role just tell the consulting company that it wasn’t a good fit and you are looking elsewhere.

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Sit down and make a list of the things you like doing, and the things you don’t.

WHY does the security role make you unhappy? Is it the role, the commute, the management? Do you miss being hands on? Only you have the answers for what to do, you just need to ask yourself in the right way.

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If you don’t like the new job then it’s not an option to stay in it if you’ve got a way out.

Having said that you obviously thought it was something you would like doing or you wouldn’t have applied for the job in the first place and 3 weeks isn’t really that long, I think if it isn’t turning out to be “as advertised” I’d go and have a chat with the management and see if it couldn’t be made better - definitely do that if you can’t make the quick jump.

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Thanks for your opinion guy’s. The commute for the job I’m currently in is much better than the sys admin role would be. roughly half the distance. I do massivley miss being hands on but I chose this role as I thought security is a booming industry and would be a good career long term.

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It is hard to rationalize something that your built yourself up for, only to find it was not all you imagined it should have been. Irregardless of the other position, if your wife is noticing it after only 3 weeks, cut your losses or buck up. Life is too short to be doing things that affect you like that unless you have really good reasons for it.

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Just wait. If you are a security consultant at a financial institution I could guess that things can get interesting very quickly. You may see malware and attacks you’d never see being a systems admin for another type of business. If your aim is to be at the forefront of security and help address new threats then I can’t really imagine there being any other place better to be then a bank or a hospital in the role you are currently in. If you took a job in security and then you now have an interest in something else I would take the above advice about writing something down. We can’t really afford not to do this because it helps prevent us from wasting time and having misdirection in our careers.

Reading the OP’s last post I thought it was telling. You made the choice based on a trend and possibly job stability. Security is a booming industry but the work involved doesn’t make a lot of people happy at all. It is tedious and painful most of the time because you are going through logs and configuration files to see where things are wrong. Granted there is software to help with this but you have to stay current even more so then you do with other fields because of the constantly developing threat landscape. This is a major time drain for someone that has other things going on in their lives. Typically the people that are “all in” for systems security and the like are literally that. They don’t have time for much else at all. If this isn’t for you then I would correct the situation ASAP because you’ll resent yourself and every moment you spend doing that creates self doubt…and that is toxic and hard to get over.

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I think what I miss most is being hands on. This security role is basically and advisory role. What I mean by that is I will never touch another router switch or server again! I basically advise the IT teams, sys admins etc on how to implement new changes focusing on security. They will put a request in for a change they want to make and I will review it from a security perspective. I will then pass my recommendations on and they will implement it as I have aadvised. I took the job as I do have an interest in security but I also love being hands on which is where the dilemma is really. I thought being hands off would bring more money and a better career path which may still be true but will I be happy doing it? I don’t know

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If you don’t mind me asking, what do you not like about your current job? It may enlighten your eventual choice.

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I am a big fan of listening to my gut. I find that people in the IT field usually have pretty good gut instincts about things.

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Not at all acorrilo. The main thing I don’t like is being so hands off. I love working with routers switches Linux etc. Will never do that here I just advise on how ppeople SHOULD do things. At first I saw that as a step up as most people go into some form of hands off role later on their career.

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There is a much to be said for enjoying what you do for a living, if you are not happy already do you think that will change over time?

If the other opportunity is more to your liking you may enjoy it more day to day.

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If you’re not digging your current role, find something else! It truly is as simple as that.

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You’ve answered your own question, really. The last one means more than just the superficial hardy-har-har of men/women jokes. Your reaction to your job is affecting you and her. Job dissatisfaction can negatively affect a marriage and family on more than just the surface.

So what if it’s only been 3 weeks? If it’s not a good fit, it’s not a good fit (especially if what you’re doing is not what you expected or were promised). I had a job like that about 17 years ago – I left a job of 5 years for an opportunity to actually get into IT (I was only the unofficial IT guy at that 5-year job). I interviewed and was sold on the fact that it would be the tech support that I wanted to do and get into.

On the first day, I was handed a hastily written instruction manual on the medical billing software that this company published and put on the help desk phone for medical and dental offices that used this software. I’m taking calls from people who needed help using the software, software that I’d never seen before and in an industry that used concepts and terms I’d never heard of.

Within 2 weeks, I was so miserable at feeling useless and incompetent (and the culture of the company didn’t help either – it was a family-n-friends company where the executives and managers were all either friends, spouses, or siblings with one another) that I was habitually coming in late, taking days off, and just dragging. I was also applying for and interviewing at other jobs already. I was finally called into the VP’s office along with two of the managers to hash it out.

It got a little tense, but since the VP already broke the ice by asking if I was looking for another job already and I point-blank said “yes,” no holds needed to be barred. The managers started by criticizing my work ethic and their inability to understand why I couldn’t grasp the concepts of the software to help their clients. I had to remind them that while everyone else in the company came from a medical billing background and all of this was second-nature to them, I and a few of the other lackeys did not, that their training materials were non-existent, the reference materials inadequate, and whenever I’d tried to ask either of them questions to help a caller, I got annoyed sighs from one of them all the time such that I didn’t want to ask them questions anymore.

Straight to the point, they put me in an assignment that I wasn’t qualified for and what wasn’t presented to me when I interviewed for the job. Had they been more forthcoming about that, I wouldn’t have wasted anyone’s time – theirs or mine – in accepting the job. I had left a stable and secure position, even if it wasn’t in the field I wanted. I was angry and frustrated, and I was bringing that attitude home with me.

After that meeting, the VP reassigned me to a position that was much better suited for what I originally interviewed for and what I was capable of.

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The simple short of the matter is… You need to decide for yourself what is best for you. I like advise as well as the next person, but asking folks that have no vested interest or responsibility in your life should not sway your decision one way or the other. Discussing it with your wife and making your decision as a family is the best course of action.

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It’s really hard to say either way, because I know exactly where you are coming from. I love the job that I do now (SysAdmin), but I also have in my mind that it’s only a step in my career progression that will eventually end up in a CIO/CTO position somewhere. Right now, I’m actually on the fast track to move into management because my current manager will be leaving at some point in the near future. On one hand, I’m like, “Yay! One more step up my career ladder!” On the other hand, I’m like, “Do I really want to step out of this job that I love doing to take a step into a position that I’m probably not going to enjoy as much, only for the sake of moving up the corporate ladder?” I keep flipping back and forth in my mind, but I know that decision is coming sooner than later.

Think about where you want to be in the future and if this position helps you to achieve that goal. You obviously got hired for that position because they felt that you were capable of doing the job. It’s only natural that even after 3 weeks you’re still getting your bearing, especially if you’ve never worked in a bank before (trust me, I’ve been in banking almost my entire working career). It may just take a little more time to get adjusted. Starting any new job is usually quite stressful and mentally draining (at least in my experience).

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Life is short, go with what you can be happy with. If you have the choice then go for it, too many times have i seen people in a position they don’t like but don’t ever do anything about it. Take a step and a chance to look for something you can enjoy, and at the end of the day be able to smile about the things you’ve done!

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In the interest of making lemonade out of lemons, how about this approach:

Change management best practices dictate that there is a DEV → QA → Production approach to all change management requests. What if you gather those best practices documents, and armed with them, suggest that they need to build you a Dev environment for you to test new technologies and/or configuration changes in order for you to do your job effectively?

Then you could get your hands dirty in the dev environment (which is usually the most fun environment to work with) while improving the company’s overall security posture by implementing change management best practices?

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Addendum: This would also be the environment where you got to put on your ‘black hat’ (which is always fun) and ‘attack’ the ‘development’ copy of the production environment.

Edit: This should actually be a required no-brainer for a bank. I mean what about the next Heartbleed? Or DOS vulnerability? You need to test the security of your systems (as my bank better %$#$ well be doing,) but are you going to DDoS your own live equipment? No way! Ergo you need this.

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