Where am I going again?

I have a real dilema with my career atm. On the one hand, I've been tapped on the shoulder to be part of the technical architecture team, which sounds like an awesome opportunity to anyone with less than 3 years of IT experience. Problem is the team is so new and the new manager has so no clue that I'm not doing anything interesting, nor is there any guidance from senior architects which I was promised to before my move. Formal architecture is really an unexplored territory where I am and I need a starting point. Say what are our short term and long term IT goals to start off with. I still haven't got my answer. I've been given a task of creating a pattern for a specific function. Thing is the solution down to the technical level has already been pre-determined. I'm retro-fitting the pattern to the solution. Not only that, I do not come from a software development background so this stuff is somewhat alien to me. I will try my best though but I can't see myself doing this more than one time because it seems all that I am doing is documentation and not architecture. It's not where I want to go.

The other hand of my dilema is that I am always welcomed to return to my old team. With me leaving there is really no one left who knows enough about the applications and systems we support without spending some decent time poking around, which the team can't really afford with all the fire fighting going on, which is why I left the team in the first place. I'm sick of fire fighting. I don't get to learn anything new. The only knowledge I get more of is in-depth understanding of the systems we have. That does not help me with my career and I'm not interested in working here forever. It's not where I want to be.

I've talked about picking option 3 before which is leaving the place and my boss was cool about it a month ago. She somehow heard from ppl around the woods that I'm looking for a new job and came over to me yesterday asking me if I would change my mind if I'm offered a 2-level pay rise. What is she thinking? Did she think I was kidding when I told her I choose to leave?

I need to keep looking but finding a right job isn't easy, especially with the list of criteria I have. I thought about getting a BA gig to get a change of scenary and I'm prepared for a pay cut for that but having attended a SQL Server user group tonight, my hands are itching to get busy with SQL again.

All tooled up

I've been doing courses in Project Management and ITIL, and I really enjoyed them. I meant really. Ok it's wasn't just the food/ice-cream. It's the content - I almost found the ITIL course (don't laugh) inspiring. It showed me how things (processes in ITIL world) can work together to achieve a bigger goal.

Thinking back I tried to avoid anything non-technical at uni - I even manged to talk myself out of a core business subject I had to do. I saw myself heading towards a career in IT where I don't have to be bothered with the business fluff. How glorious!

My perception has definitely changed. Nowadays I'm more interested in seeing how the pieces fit together to make things work. And I don't just mean technology - it's with people as well. Yeah people is the tricky bit and I have a lot more to learn. I am not looking forward to the politics though - I don't want to get eaten alive.

Workaholic

Some people start early. I just found this one person who started his IT career when he was back in high school. He didn't go to uni, not from what I can tell. He just started working and because it was during the dot com boom, he got some vendor certification and kicked it off from there. By the time he's in his early 20s, he's already a MVP, a team lead, and has written a book on his specialty. It is a scary thought indeed. Oh, and did I mention his $1 million property portfolio?