I am a long time lurker and commenter here but now I find myself in need of some perspective. For background, I spent much of my adult life working in IT in various roles. I tried to leave it a few times only to come back because it is what I know and what I am good at. After 7 years on disability I landed a state government job on the service desk on May 9th of last year. It was like starting anew but I was given a level 3 because of my background.
The last 10 months have been rough as I am 46, not in my 20s anymore, but I hit my stride right around the 4th month in. Despite this, I find myself in an increasingly dire situation because I despise the IT Director as he has single-handedly made my job and life far more difficult than need be. My manager, who I actually became friends with, is leaving on March 31st for more money and greener pastures and good for him as he deserves it. He too dislikes the IT Director.
So until the service desk manager role gets filled, I will be reporting directly to a PHB; pointy-haired boss, a Dilbert reference. A technologist role opened at my agency which would get me out of the service desk, into a networking role, and out of the direct line of fire of aforementioned PHB. Or I can simply stay where I am at and hope that I get interviewed for a lateral move to a different state agency. The nice thing about the lateral move is that I would be in an office only 3 minutes drive from my home and there would be no after hours on-call.
In the technologist role I would still be under the PHB's chain of command but he tends to leave technologists alone, because by his own admission, he sees the network as magical foo that he doesn't understand. He's come from a service desk background. I have the technologist interview tomorrow afternoon and I still haven't heard from the other agency. I've been told pretty much by everyone that I would be a shoe in the door for the technologist position but I don't know if I am going to be making things worse for myself.
TL;DR – I work for state government and hate my boss' boss. My boss is leaving on March 31st putting me in the direct line of fire of the IT Director. I take a potential promotion to a technologist role that would put me still in the IT Director's chain of command but he would be much less hands on. I have that interview tomorrow. Or I could hang in there and wait to be called to an interview for a lateral transfer to a different state agency. The upshot of the lateral is that I would be 5 minutes from home, hybrid work, and no on-call. The downside is that it is still customer facing.