IT career advise please, feeling stuck in my IT support role

ash2008

I've been doing IT support since getting my degree back in the early 2000s. My degree was mostly programming based, but I've since lost any skills that I once had in that. To be honest, I never had much skills in the first place as I didnt apply myself back then like I should have. I don't want a complete career change, but I'd like to move up the ladder a bit more. Feel like I'm trapped in a support role right now. There's only so much to learn. I feel like most people work their way up from support role within a company, but there's no progression where I am as people don't leave. It's well paid and people are comfortable here, which is why I've been here so long.

How do people get out of support role to try something else? I know I don't want to do server or networking. I'd rather do something under the IT umbrella (so I don't have to completely retrain), but using a bit more soft skills and not so technical, if that makes sense. I just have no ideas of what that would be, hence my post on here.

Thanks for any advice and sorry about the vagueness of this post. Just feel a bit lost and stuck in the same old job.

L1011

If you feel like moving up the ladder yet trapped in support, can you describe what you do want to do? A lot of the forms of progression still feel like support, for a while at least.

Standard support role progression moves in to training, ops, support management or mixed support/ops roles in smaller companies; and eventually possibly in to senior IT management. Or you can go sideways and possibly further upward from field/deskside roles (unless that was the type of support you're doing now). You could also look at a specialist support and implementation role for a specific technology which can often pay Rather A Lot but is not very fun (been there, done that).

You may need to move sideways to somewhere with a progression path if you don't think you're up for going for one of those ways up and out right away.

ash2008

I guess that's where I'm stuck. I don't know what I want or can do from here.

I'm good at customer service, though I don't think I want to always have to a customer facing role. I like research, documentation and troubleshooting software problems. I just don't know how any of that translates into another role. Where I work, people in support role just eventually move into server or networking and I really have no interest in either of those as they are too technical for me.

Sorry, I realise I am not being very helpful :(

Buddy Bubs

How about software sales and implementation? I have been project manager for my company (non IT) implementing many key pieces of software in last few years to help us run the business, accounting, purchasing, pricing, manufacturing and design, field tool for service engineers...and integrated them where needed. Always worked with a sales and an implementation person from the software provider. And then there's user training too...