Backstory:
I work as General Support Specialist in the IT department at a local university. This is essentially a help desk job for all faculty, staff, and students on campus. I deal with all sorts of hardware and software issues on campus, ranging from building and deploying PCs, to repairing defective PCs, to installing and supporting software, to dealing with printers, etc...
Now onto what's going on, and what I've been offered:
One of our networking guys has left us, which has opened up a Network/Systems Support Specialist position. The position will be a pay raise and it offers lots of overtime hours. It'll also give me a totally new skill set, as I know very little about networking and server shit. My current boss is urging me to go to the new position, as it'll ease up relations between the department I'm in now and the department I'd be going to. The head of the entire IT division is extremely confident in my ability to do the job despite my lack of any real experience in the area, and he's told me flat out that if I apply I'm going to get the job.
I've been really mulling over this for a week, and I'm not quite sure what direction I'm gonig to go. While everything sounds good in the above post, there are some things worth noting that I'm concerned about:
One of the main reasons the networking guy left is that his coworker is functionally useless here at work. He comes in *maybe* 3 days a week, and doesn't ever really do anything. Now, granted, I've heard he gets more done from home than he does here, but that left one of our guys doing 90% of the work here while the other slacked off. And to be honest, that really scares me. I don't want to find myself in a situation where I'm still trying to learn what to do and the guy I'm working with is as useful as a lump hair. I've been assured by the division head that he's going to get a stern talking to before anyone new fills the roll so that he won't continue to slack off, but I still find it to be a big concern.
One of my other concerns is that I'm really not qualified for what the old guy did. Now I can tell you that he did a lot more than what his job description stated he should be doing, but if I walk into his role, people are gonig to look for me to do the same stuff pretty quickly. I can see this leading to 6 months - 1 year where I'm pretty much useless as I learn everything. I'm also pretty happy where I am now, and I'm concerned about putting myself in a situation that won't work out for me, and then either being stuck there or being forced to leave.
And yet, with all of this rolling around in my head I've got both my manager and the division head telling me I'll be fine and not to worry about it because I'll pick it up quickly.
So, I'm torn between staying at the bottom of the barrel in our department, or moving up to an area I know almost nothing about and working with someone who's notorious for not actually working.
Decisions, decisions. Life-changing decisions.
