First, please allow me to give some general personal background. As an undergrad nearing the completion of 2 majors – Art, and Communications – I got into web design as a communicator, feeling it was the perfect blend of my creative abilities, as well as using my writing skills. I loved doing one-off sites, perhaps showcasing a band, or an online game, or a company’s products. In 1994, it was mostly front-end work and HTML, and it was the one career I thought I would do for the rest of my life.
My first ‘real’ full-time job came in 1999 as a web designer for a local newspaper in Texas. It was basically pulling in content, formatting it and uploading it to the server. But a large part of the work involved creating commercial sites for businesses. I felt left behind however, as I saw all these wonderfully dynamic sites, so I started to teach myself ColdFusion as my first programming language. When I got a job doing it full-time, I found it, well – a bit boring.
But I kept at it for the money. I ended up next working as a Human Factors / Usability specialist and really enjoyed it. Then back to being a web developer, then systems administrator, then as a design / project manager. (Loved the designing, did the managing because I had to, though I think the team pretty much managed themselves) Then finally as a business analyst, on a contract basis.
Now that the contract is over, I’ve been offered a position as a web developer for a small company. I am not sure what kind of step this is – a step back, a step sideways, or otherwise. The money however doesn’t seem to be in designing; and where there is design work, I feel as if I must keep up with the latest and greatest (Ajax, Flash).
So the upshot of this whole thing is that, despite having been doing something in technology for over 10 years, I only have a smattering of lots of different things. I am a decent designer; I can do development on an intermediate level (not much OOP but some); capable of doing analysis; have experience in database management at an intermediate level; my linux and windows 2003 server administration is at a passable level; and my manual QA testing is at least competent. But I truly feel as if I’m not where I should be in 10+ years time.
Do I need to take a step back and pursue one avenue? Should I reassess my skill set and start hammering away in one area? Should I try to move into project management? Or am I being too unrealistic?