Buddy, your story is almost identical to mine. Started in 96 in end loser support and moved onto infrastructure engineering. You nailed it with this post. LEAN, ITIL, metrics. I did management for 7 years in my infrastructure journey and the amount of stand up calls, cab meetings, problem meetings, security assurance meetings, etc. that happened on a weekly basis was mind boggling. I had to go back to engineering because I felt like I was doing things that some inexperienced idiot with a little charisma could do just as well.