No, I Will Not Fix Your #@$!! Computer → Re: [Education] Looking for some direction. How did you find your niche?

it depends on what excites/motivates you the most. from the few things you listed off, i can recommend networking and pbx work. where do you feel the most comfortable? are you looking to keep your business and add new services? or are you looking to close/sell your business and work for someone else?

i am on the fence about specializing in something. you can really go either way, here are some obvious reasons:

-if you specialize in something, you are limiting yourself to one skill (for the most part)
-people who specialize in something typically get paid more because they *are/should be* subject matter experts

at the same time, being a jack of all trades is great for a small shop, but i feel that being a jack of all trades guy may not allow you to branch off into something more specific (i am in this situation, right now).

why do you think your business will be dead, soon? there will always be devices that break that people don't want to touch. maybe focus on other services to integrate into your current business.

A couple things to add to this....

Specializing in something is only valuable to a large organization. Many small - medium sized companies don't want specialized people. They want people who are good at a variety of things. Larger companies pay more for specialized people for sure.

I have been a jack of all trades for a long time now, and even now as a Director of IT for a medium sized company, I find my skills to be very meaningful. If anything, I have "specialized" in network design, implementation, and maintenance. I haven't lost my jack of all trades skill set though.

IMHO, if you live in a large city or see a lot of need for specialized IT people, then you should pick something and focus on it.

Other things you could do is to look at your certifications and education background as well. Like it or not, education and certifications factor into your job prospects if you are trying to break into a new industry.

well put, agreed.

I was thinking of just starting; even if I have no direction. Getting some basic certifications, like going for the CCNA. I don't want to get the certification so I can get a job, I want to get it so I can meet people while in class, talk to people in the industry, get some idea what people with this certification even do, and figure out if there's anyplace for me to fit myself in with my skillset & approach to things. Just to start. I accept that I may wind up miles in the opposite direction of where I started, but I figure starting anywhere is more productive than sitting here and wondering "where do I start?"I am looking to keep my business. While I want to be an active participant and help grow it & ensure it runs well, I am at the point where I can not go to work and everything is just fine. I don't plan on closing that! For PC laptops, it already is. A laptop that does everything the average person needs costs $300 at best buy. It doesn't matter if I can fix your motherboard at component level when you spill beer on it, because you can just buy another one for $300.

With Apple stuff, they are going down in price and becoming more of a pain in the ass. For example.

a) iPad mini costs HALF what the iPad costs, but repair parts often cost twice as much money. It is also more of a pain in the ass to work on.

b) Price of "pro" level machines has come down. The retina is as low as $1200 with the sales & coupons some sites have going. The idea that you can sell a no-frills laptop for $1200 is a bubble that will eventually burst, I believe Apple will have to come to terms with this.

c) Proprietary parts are used for the most basic essentials. RAM is soldered to a motherboard, recovering data off an SSD vs. a hard drive is magnitudes of times more expensive & difficult.

I don't mind doing basic motherboard repairs, but when I have to replace 16 very small BGA chips just to diagnose whether the RAM was even the issue.. no.

d) The industry is going more mobile. Less computers, more tablets & phones, which are dropping in price like crazy. Even before the price drops, phones were always much less profitable to work on.

It's not like it's a dead industry right now, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking that in ten years my business model will be viable.

I love soldering. I like solving problems. I enjoyed setting up the PBX, I feel comfortable solving basic linux problems & finding solutions for them when they're complicated problems. Setting up FTP servers/storage solutions. Nothing crazy complicated since I've never done it for the enterprise, but it interests me and I've done basic stuff like LVM on top of several RAID arrays and FTP servers with advanced user monitoring features before.

That is a very good insight you have there. I also see the same thing in that PCs and laptops have gone down in price enough that if someone breaks it, they'll just go out and buy a new one. I knew Apple was/is proprietary hence I don't work with them.

My 2 pennies, I can recommend trying out website development. I'm taking a class on it right now and hoping I can understand it enough to start doing that on the side.