| I started my professional career in QA, then "downgraded" to a support role in a different company because (a) it was a mile from my house instead of a 2hr commute each way every day and (b) it actually paid more! Now for the interesting part: In support, you have an opportunity to SHOW and CREATE tremendous value! Value drives recognition. Value drives increases in salary. Value drives opportunity - within or outside your current employer. Let me back up my assertions: I worked for a large software company that had acquired a smaller niche company. Niche company had some bugs that caused some problems for its customers. I helped said customers resolve those issues. Those customers wrote really nice letters and sent them to my employer. Regularly. It was actually a little embarrassing after a while. It's almost as though I was asking for them, and I wasn't. It just wasn't "normal" -- enter "Wonder Boy" nickname. That's all good - I got raises and recognition. Next, I developed a utility to help correct this problem. I didn't actually understand much about programming, and it was a fairly complicated issue for me to solve. Had to do with bitwise operators and all that good stuff. I sought out answers to an equation I wasn't smart enough to solve, but for a problem I knew existed. Once I had the bits (funny, huh?) of info I needed, I wrote a very simple program/utility to save companies from experiencing this problem. Guess what happened then? Development manager tried to recruit me (lucky for him, I didn't accept). Then...I started working closer and closer with partners. I was becoming somewhat of a subject matter expert. I then get invited to present in partner training. So I go do this. What do you know? Sales Consulting people see me and say - Wow - this guy is confident, knows his stuff, and can communicate to an audience. Now, I get recruited to sales consulting. Sweet - that works! Not smart enough to figure out complicated bit shifts, but smart enough to solve real world problems and communicate those solutions to high level business people and lower level techies. That works. Create value! Have passion. Seek solutions to problems to problems that only you have visibility to! You are in a unique position - you are the front-line! You are seeing things that escape everyone else. Use it as an opportunity to make people happy. You make them happy and you solve your own situation. You will have customers trying to recruit you when you solve major problems. You'll have internal people fighting for you. You'll have your HR department spinning their heads not knowing what to do when your boss is trying to give you a raise out of cycle, and two or more people from other departments in the same company are asking them for salary advice when trying to negotiate your role in their department. Hope this helps! (no time to proof and hope it makes sense - forgive any typos or strange sentences/fragments - hopefully you get the concepts) |