Xguard86 posted:

I've posted similar questions before in the IT thread but this seems more appropriate for my question:

I'm currently a business systems analyst, ~ 3 years out of school on my second job, been working for 2.5 years. The company I work for is cool, fairly flexible hours/schedule, I like the people, management is good to great (as far as I can tell) and I think we have an exciting product in a boring industry.

The problem is that at heart I am not an analyst. I am a communicator consensus builder extrovert kind of guy. Sometimes, I come home from work really sad because I've had 3 conversations in 9 hours and feel so lonely despite sitting in a room full of people.

When I graduated, the economy was bad but I managed to grab a job that was more technically oriented than I was really looking for because it was what I could get. I am pretty sure I am doing a good job here, my boss complimented my attention to detail and analytic ability and moved me over to another team that needed heavy excel monkeying. They had two temps quit or get dropped and one full time guy walk because he couldn't/wouldn't handle the work so I knew they were worried. I told him I'd do it because I'm a team guy and happy to put my skills where they're needed but did mention its not really where I want to be longterm. Its kind of like that SEAL thing, I jumped into paint scraping because someones got to do it.

My problem is that I'm afraid I'm losing control of my career narrative and will end up on a path I don't want to be on, just because I can do things apparently many others can't or won't. I don't want to leave my current company and don't mind digging the ditches for a while but I don't want to be "the data guy" my whole life.