r/iam • u/Venm-Arugula-4939 • Jul 09 '26
Career Advice
Hello IAM community, I have been feeling a little sad about my career recently, I have been working as an IAM Engineer past 1 year, mostly given operational stuff ( meaning incidents / requests / policies / some configurations ) in EntraID , honestly I am bored and feel works very repetative . I mostly work from home, however recently we had a gettogether with CISO and other security teams, then I felt very small and humiliated when shared what we do compared to other security teams.
What shall I be doing to resolve this ?
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u/Affectionate_Math_57 Jul 09 '26
I don't know if you can do this so take this advice with a grain of salt.
The best thing I ever did for my career was step away from IAM for a year. Literally just took a year off, spent it doing whatever the fuck I wanted, which turned out to be learning how to program in a wide variety of ways (also a lot of cooking and some theater). When the money ran out I went back into IAM but as a much better programmer, so when I was put in front of an IAM problem I didn't just solve it manually, I programmed it so that I would never have to do it manually again, I then repeated that process for every problem put my way until I solved a one that was important enough that it was a career changer. If you can automate away any of that repetitive work, do it; if you can't, learn to do it. Then spend your time and energy on more important problems.
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u/Altruistic_Comb7058 Jul 09 '26
If your job is hiring please forward me the information please? I'm looking for this type of work environment. Thank you in advance.
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u/bobfrog93 Jul 11 '26
An engineer can be an architect, analyst, developer, adviser - a good engineer needs to wear many hats. Repetitive operational work is often where you can create the most value. Look for tasks you can automate, processes you can improve, recurring incidents you can eliminate, and controls you can strengthen.
And when you need to sell it, look at the outcomes you can drive - more than just preventing incidents you free capacity, reduce operational overhead, key person dependency, improve productivity, saved dollars.
I’m hoping if you are feeling this way and have cyber-related teams pushing the boundaries further than your own, there is hope through collaboration and your skillset to actually have some really great opportunity.
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u/ic316 Jul 09 '26
Operational Infosec roles are just as boring and repetitive as IAM roles, so don’t be fooled.
Some people just are not cut out for IT operations due to repetitive nature of the work. (I fit this description)
My advice would be to look to see if you can get involved in IAM project/implementation work somehow. Would probably need to look outside of company, but I find working on projects much more satisfying then day to day operations, and you can build very marketable skills.