Career advice

[sqlcasey]

Hi,

I have been at my present company for about a year and half. Before this job, I had been out of the IT loop for about 4 years due to living on a beautiful tropical island with no IT jobs

That said, I was eager to return to IT, and a real paycheck. My previous career had been as an Oracle DBA/developer, where I had the opportunity to work for 2 different hi-tech firms, as the primary dba/developer. As such, I got to do a lot of "fun" stuff, like designing the databases and writing all the code. At one point, I was administering Oracle 8i on three platforms simultanenously - UNIX, Solaris, and NT.

Then, after being out for 4 years, was offered a job as a junior SQL Server developer. I went in knowing virtually nothing. I now have my MCDBA, and a bit more experience.

Problem is, the company was bought out, and with it, all the managers left... and now, there is no real direction in the company. Basically I am left to twiddle my thumbs all day long. And I don't like it. It is not reasonable to expect that one should be managed properly, and given some direction?? Not to mention, our technology has all kinds of holes in it, gaping holes too big to fix. So, there is a kind of sad resignation among most of my fellow co-workers that this place is going nowhere fast!

That said, I'm ready to move on. But the thing is, I live about 1 1/2 hrs from a big technology center, so I would like to, over time, develop a career that will allow me to work from home part time. DBA work does not really fall into this category.

So, I was thinking that I should either do one of the following: 1.) get into web development, ie) asp.net along with sql development, or 2.) get into data warehousing (although I don't know if that's something one can do from home)

Also, over time I would like to become a contractor, once my skills could justify it. I like the idea of not always being tied down to a 9 to 5. So, lifestyle is an important consideration for me as well.

But the trick of course, is for me to find a company that is willing to take me on, given that I don't really have much experience in web development. I did an 8 month contract doing classic ASP development, using vbscript and javascript. I haven't used asp.net yet. But I have some books I can learn on my own.

I guess, bottom line, is I just want a job with some challenge again. I learn fast, and I'm pretty sharp - so this job is just killing me. The only excitement comes when somebody accidentally destroys something. Help.

Any opinions, encouragement or advice??

Thanks

 

[onoski]

Judging from your post you come across as someone that knows what he or she wants so go for it and apply for jobs and your break would come. Don't limit yourself just apply yourself.

 

[LadySlinger]

Is there any opportunity right now at the company you work for to do that?

Reason I say this is that usually when there is a huge change in management like this, you see a lot of people leave...especially if there isn't management direction for a while.
People get frustrated, they don't see their careers going anywhere, so they look to the other side of the fence. So opportunity could open up that allows you to work in a web development, data warehousing or such.

Otherwise have you thought about doing this on the side to develope yourself? There are plenty of sites that you can sign up for to do web development where businesses can bid for your work. Just do a web search for them.