What to do with 3 to 5 years.....

Be friendly to anyone else you meet in the industry. You never know

when they might have a connection to a job. This happened to me.

That's exactly how I got my current job.  I worked a contract job and was level 2 support for a Windows 7 to Window 10 project.  The person who let me know about this job was a level 1 person who I worked with there.  She mentioned the job and I only applied because I was being nice.  Then I found out it was only three miles from home.  I turned down another offer going from contract to permanent that paid $5k more a year.  The hour or more I saved on my daily commute was worth it.  Turns out to have been one of the better employment decisions I've made, as I was working all through 2020 and the level 2 position I was told would never be able to work remote now allows me out of the office over 80% of the time.

On that note, if you do support being able to support people remotely is a huge plus.  Knowing what you can and cannot do remotely is a big help too.

A caution: Be careful about going too far down

the road into one specialty.

During the time I was working, I saw lots of men

and women become very specialized, and then

later saw them unemployed, depending on the

specialty.

Try to keep some general experience and keep

learning general theory, whether or not you

specialize. It helps keep your marketable.

Oh, one other thing..try to stay open to many

vendors products. Cisco certified people will

always tell you that their gear is the best,

many Windows techs/admins will tell you LInux

is terrible (and of course vice versa). It's part

of their indoctrination.

There are advantages to knowing more than

one vendor's products, or better yet, knowing

the theory that underlies most of the vendors'

products.