To the author -
If you have remained in IT and are now earning a 2002 salary, might I recommend that you consider that your skills have grown stagnant. Like all highly technical fields, the required industry skills change over time and to remain viable, one must stay current.
As a remedy, consider a shift to cyber security. Likely it would not require a significant adjustment. If you have a programing background, there is a demand for code reviewers. If networking is your background, consider specializing in firewalls, vpns, routers etc. If you want to have some fun, consider penetration testing. Recent estimates show that cybersecurity will have a shortfall of 500,000 positions in the US alone.
I’ve heard the siren’s call of cybersecurity elsewhere.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about cybersecurity jobs a few days ago.
A former co-worker attended a cybersecurity conference where one of the sessions was state & federal officials lamenting they couldn’t fill their cybersecurity openings, since industry was stealing their workers.
Good luck finding those openings. They don’t exist.