> ...writing code for the network team of a different company... Something like is the kind of job that i think i want to do next. It need not be for a network

> ...writing code for the network team of a different company... Something like is the kind of job that i think i want to do next. It need not be for a network team...but i'm headed more for back-end work and these days i rather engage with internal teams. Separately, to your comment on sharp divide...The sharp divide that i have seen is a lack of cohesion for the following 4 IT groups: first-level support which gets sent to off-shore; the folks who (honestly have the most face time with internal clients who) roam around the office fixing desktops and building network/wiring, and setting up/fixing A/V equipment in conference rooms; sys admins; and developers. Furthermore, in the last 2 companies that i worked for, there has been a push to "centralize" certain functions like IT and HR to "shared services"...but at the end, none of these groups seem centralized! They all now work more separated than ever before...and most of the interaction between each of these groups - and even between the 4 subgroups i noted above in IT alone - mostly communicate via tickets, or some other thick-layered mechanism. Sure, they've been centralized in that these people were pulled from some respective business unit, and brought under a more single umbrella...but in the end, these workers hate it, the effecicny drops, more bureacracy is created (which creates no value)...and some executive gets to lead the shared services...and of course some management consultant company gets their payday. Oh, and yeah, IT at these orgs definitely does not use any of the good parts of devops, agilescrum whatever. Some orgs try and adopt some cookiecutter approach only to have it create yet more bureacracy...but "hey, we're agile!" /sigh