I started in networking. Somewhere along the way, identity became the thread connecting my IT career — and eventually one of the reasons I could make $170K+ from one W-2.

I didn’t start my IT career saying:

I barely knew what IAM was.

I was learning routers.

Switches.

Firewalls.

Windows.

The normal IT stuff.

Today, a lot of my work sits around Identity and Access Management, in consulting-like positions where I’m expected to understand the technology and explain why a business should care.

And that combination changed what my IT skills were worth.

I Started Where a Lot of IT People Start

One of my earliest jobs was basically building and supporting networks.

Then I moved deeper into enterprise networking.

At the time, I thought networking was the niche.

And technically it was.

But something else was happening in the background.

I was learning:

How enterprise technology fits together.

Then My IT Work Moved Closer to the Business

Eventually I got into more customer-facing IT work.

Still technical.

Still IT.

But now I wasn’t only responsible for making the technology work.

I had to:

• Understand the customer’s environment
• Figure out what problem they were actually trying to solve
• Build and test a solution
• Explain that solution to technical people
• Explain the business value to everyone else

That’s where IT starts to look more like consulting.

The titles might be:

Sales Engineer.

Solutions Engineer.

Technical Consultant.

Solutions Architect.

Whatever.

IT titles are made up. Pay attention to the work.

I was still using the technical experience I had spent years building.

The difference was where I was applying it.

Instead of only operating technology, I was helping organizations decide how technology should solve their problems.

The closer my IT work got to customers, business problems, and revenue, the more valuable my technical experience became.

IAM Was Hiding Inside the Work

Here’s the funny part.

I didn’t make some dramatic career switch into IAM.

IAM kept appearing in the jobs I already had.

Active Directory.

LDAP.

RADIUS.

Authentication.

MFA.

Certificates.

Access controls.

Later it became SAML, OIDC, SCIM, IdPs, federation, passwordless authentication, and identity security.

At some point I realized:

Wait.

There’s a niche here.

And I had already been building experience in it.

That’s why I keep telling mid-career IT people to look backward before randomly choosing their next niche.

Your next high-paying specialty may already be hiding inside your current job.

If you’ve spent years touching Active Directory, onboarding users, troubleshooting MFA, configuring permissions, working with Microsoft 365, or dealing with authentication problems…

You might not need another career.

You might need to reposition the career you already have toward IAM Consulting.

The Money Was in Going More Specific

IT is broad.

Cybersecurity narrows it.

IAM narrows it again.

Then even IAM keeps going:

Identity Security → Passwordless → Federation → IGA → PAM → Identity Consulting → Solution Engineering

Sub-niches make riches.

The mistake I see mid-career IT people make is going in the opposite direction.

They already have five or ten years of experience…

Then decide they need to learn:

AWS.

Python.

Kubernetes.

AI.

Splunk.

Another CompTIA certification.

Brother.

Where are we going?

I made more money by figuring out what part of my experience was becoming unusually valuable and going deeper.

Not wider.

The Bigger Pivot Was From Operator to Advisor

Higher-paying IT isn’t always about becoming the person who configures the most things.

Sometimes it’s becoming the person who can walk into a customer environment and say:

That’s a different skillset.

You need technical chops.

But you also need to communicate.

Ask good questions.

Present.

Write.

Run proof of concepts.

Handle executives.

Translate a complicated identity problem into something the business understands.

That’s where my career progressively went.

And eventually that combination of IAM + consulting + solution engineering pushed my W-2 compensation beyond $170K.

One job.

Not overemployment.

Your Old IT Experience Might Be Worth More Than You Think

This is the part I wish more experienced IT people understood.

You may not need two more years of studying.

You may already be close enough.

Your network experience could become Zero Trust experience.

Your Active Directory experience could become identity experience.

Your help desk work could become identity lifecycle experience.

Your Microsoft 365 experience could become Entra experience.

Your customer support experience could become the communication skill that gets you into Solutions Engineering.

Don’t waste your experience.

The goal isn’t to pretend you’re qualified.

The goal is to uncover what’s already there, close the real gaps, build proof, and position it toward one specific role.

That’s the thinking behind the 90-day system I built for moving into IAM Consulting and Solution Engineering.

Not another endless degree or bootcamp syllabus.

The goal is a job.

If I Had to Do It Again

I would make the path much more deliberate:

Choose the IAM Consulting or Solution Engineering role → Study the actual job descriptions → Close only the important gaps → Build proof → Rewrite my experience around the role → Apply

That’s it.

Not 15 certifications.

Not 1,000 random applications.

Not another year waiting until I felt ready.

Because looking back, IAM wasn’t some completely new career I stumbled into.

It was the niche hiding inside my IT career the entire time.

I just eventually learned how to see it.

And then I learned how to get paid for it.