I was 21 years old and fresh out technical school (networking focus) when I took the first helpdesk job. It was really great fit at the time, I learned a lot really quickly because it was a small business-focused managed services company which meant I got to deal with everything from basic Outlook questions to "holy shit Exchange is down and no techs are available so I guess its up to me." Because of the small size of the company there were few rules about how long you'd get to work an issue before escalating, as often the escalation meant that person would have to take a look after hours or tomorrow.

I tried really hard to follow the advice I posted in this thread and was rewarded with a promotion to helpdesk lead after about 6 months, and I stayed in that position another 3 years total. Unfortunately that was about 1.5-2 years too long...I stayed on false promises of a promotion to a Jr. field tech and/or helpdesk manager.

Eventually got tired of the lies and left for a sysadmin position at a midsize company which nearly doubled my salary and was quickly promoted to engineer their as well after tackling some really complex projects by myself. Hit the ceiling there too after a while and switched companies once more before entering the consulting.

The only places/times I felt overqualified was on the second half of my tenure to the helpdesk, and in the last year or so at my corporate job (which is why I started looking for a consulting position).

The thing about qualifications is that you're only ever as qualified as you feel like you are. The funny thing about IT is that the only difference between helpdesk (bottom) and consulting (top?) is that the phone is a whiteboard, the caller is a CIO and/or half his direct reports, and the problem isn't a dead workstation, it's a dead storage appliance for the whole virtualization stack. But the troubleshooting and problem solving process is exactly the same!