Slashdot Mirror
Growth Job Sector: Freelance Technical Support
An anonymous reader wrotes: "Over at World New York, they've posted excellent advice to the geek masses: If you're out of work and know how to use a computer, you can make a killing doing freelance technical support." Update: 07/25 20:00 GMT by M : The author has asked that we link to the article on homepage.mac.com due to server overload. :)
no one makes money doing freelance technical work.
If there's one thing we'll never run out of, it's idiots.
The whole "the Universe or human stupidity" thing.
But would you fix air conditioners in Phoenix in July?
Why yes I would. I can't even stand to give technical support to my family and I love them.
Taking angry calls from people who think ie is the internet and trying to fix some computer completely loaded with spyware over the phone sounds like a 40 hour a week root cannel to me.
ThunderBird. Nuff said.
Well, I have certifications and job experience going for me to land me a job. I don't have a College degree (two years of college under my belt), but then at least I'm not in debt over it either. Besides, I STILL don't know if I want to be working with computers all my life. Which by the way is primarly why I haven't pushed for the effort.
Life is not for the lazy.
I agree with this.. I was able to round up several small programming jobs and training over the Internet and collected some nice little checks, but I had my wife's health insurance and little liability since I wasn't working directly on their computer. If I knew there would be a steady stream of jobs coming in and I could pick and choose -- maybe I'd try it again. http://www.mp2kmag.com - The Magazine for MapPoint
http://www.mp2kmag.com
You couldn't pay me enough to deal with that crap. I used to do freelance tech work, and you know, it was quite possibly the worse job I've ever done. There were far too many miles put on my car, and having to do your own customer service calls really sucks. I don't think I was ever at a point of higher stress. Its not that it didn't pay, but trying to fix and teach the common person how to deal with everyday computer problems gets repetitive and grueling. I think if I'm ever in a situation where I was when I did freelance work, Ill sell sperm instead... at least Id get some sense of satisfaction out of it.
This is why you do one of, or both of two things...
1) get a million dollars worth of liability insurance. Cheap enough really.
2) Form your service as a Limited Liability Corporation that has no assets.
So, if you do get sued, and they do gain ownership of your LLC; they get nothing. And, you can happily go off, form another LLC and continue business.
Remember, your dealing with idiots, and when dealing with idiots you can't do enough CYA.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I charged a nice $20 dollars an hour deal, with extra charges for hardware replacement, software installation. My little business was able to "boom" simply because I was cheaper. All the freelance techs out there now think, "Hey, I'm so 'elite' I can charge $75 an hour!" Wrong.
The hourly rate one can charge depends entirely on what skills one has and the type of work being done for whom. If I had to go it alone, being a Unix System Admin, I wouldn't dream of charging less than $100/hr, and mostly likely closer to twice that. I also would try to concentrate on the Fortune 5000 types of corporations, as those are the guys with the money to burn. Of course, I'd only work about 30 hours a week as a result, but much of that would likely be 2nd or 3rd shift. Those are the hours critcal work is best done, and leaves the regular staff (if any) available for the 9 - 5 routine.
I have done a little bit of work on the side doing this, usually when the normal guy is on vacation or something. I hate these jobs. Why? Because I'm always cleaning up messes left by the normal guy. Have you ever seen a network of 50 workstations, all without any centralized user/workstation management (ie: no domain or anything)? I have. It's scary. How do you make a printer avail on the network? Duh, printer sharing... the thought never occures to anyone to get a stand-alone print server. How do you deploy software? Over sneakernet. We won't even go into the horrible network security, the rampant viruses, or the spyware installed on every workstation (but hey, Outlook has color now!). Since i'm always just the fill-in guy, whatever I recommend falls on deaf ears. The icing on the cake? The usual guy makes $60/hour doing this. Before anyone says it, no, these shoddy networks are not the result of lack of funding... these companies have plasma screens on the walls, and very nice chairs.... it's not lack of funding, it's a lack of will on the part of the IT guy to improve the situation, and perhaps a lack of skill/knowledge. For someone who knows better, it's a very frustrating experience.
The reason that I hate doing any type of tech support for friends, co-workers, family, or anyone one else I know, is the golden rule of fixing computers. Which reads, if you fix it for them once, the next time anything goes wrong, they blame you, or want you to immediately come and fix it. Then somehow think a fixed computer comes with a 5 year repair warranty. They will call you all the time to "ask a quick question", as if your time means nothing. After this happened a couple of times, I won't touch anyone's computer.
My best method is to just let them talk. Try and pay attention enough to get the details you need, then zone out for a while. Most people who are frustrated with their computer have already had people talking down to them like you said and just want to be heard out. Also while they were waiting on hold, they've already thought of every point they can argue with you and if you let them get it all out first, they don't have any fight left to disagree with what you tell them. And it gives you time to think about the problem and come up with a solution or at least make up something that sounds good to get them off the phone.
You don't need geeks to provide tech support. Actually geeks are just about the worst type of people to provide this service.
... why don't you just do x and leave me the alone". It's sufficient if you can understand what a customer is trying to ask and then read the correct answer from your screen.
What you need are people that have people-skills: they must be capable to talk to people, calm them down and get them to understand stuff. That's not going to work if your attitude is going to be along the lines of "you stupid
Don't misunderstand me and read that I'm saying that no geeks are capable of doing this. It's just that your average geek didn't become a geek by being big on people skills.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Recently read a book saying that any sort of repair-related career does fine during a recession. Reason should be obvious: people can't afford to buy a "new" whatever, or are scared to put out that kind of money, so they spend money keeping up to speed whatever they already have.
Also, think about the huge demographic of baby-boomers retiring or about to retire. All those parents, grandmas and grandpas about to have a huge chunk of free time on their hands. Maybe they're not so mobile anymore and hanging out at home a great deat. Most likely they're going to be buying a computer and getting on-line, for email, to do their amateur photography, etc. A huge target market. Plus they may be sitting on a nice pile of retirement money.
So I'd propose starting a up a consultant type business where you repair people's computers, do tech support, maybe even help people pick out computers to purchase, and target older retirees. Focus on house calls, and of course, super friendly customer support (say "yes sir, no ma'am"). Oldsters eat that stuff up.
Just as long as I'm the boss and you do all the house calls...
One of the main problems is that computers depreciate in value extremely quickly. You would need to lease the computers to the home users at a price that would be near the same cost of buying the computer. Thus, because individuals (in general) prefer ownership to leasing, they would just buy the computer as opposed to leasing it from you.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Ok, i worked as a senior Technical Support, i had a team of 4 engineers, all well well trained and stuff.. I was well paid....I supported very complex multiple platform/database client server and web applications (i.e knowledge scope of our employees was quite amusing)...thats one part of the story
A friend of mine, was a freelancer support geek, he supported ppl with no idea of computers , install windows here, reconfigure a driver there, fix the Internet connection over here, stuff like that...
AND HE MADE TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS I DID....
Move your guns away from my face,i am not complaining here, my point here, is that it is irrelevant...you can be doing really complex things in a very large firm and another guy with half the work load you have gets paid twice as much just because of his connections and ofcorse (his spare time being unemployed)..
The lunatic is in my head
One way this could be really beneficial to people is to consider it an alternative and temporary source of income between job hunts. It doesn't take a -lot- of effort to put together a decent looking flyer, and a waiver form to limit or eliminate liability. A couple weeks ago I noticed such a flyer at a convenience store near where I work. Here are some things I noticed that were major signs to stay away.
1: 'Certified' was in italics on the lower left hand corner. All by itself. Alone. One word. Certified in WHAT? If you have applicable certifications, explain them genuinely. If you don't, describe your actual knowledge instead.
2: Let the prospective customer know you stand behind your work - but at the same time, don't put yourself in a bad position to be liable for anything. Say that your liabilty is limited to one free hour of additional service, should you determine that an oversight on the initial visit wasn't sufficient.
3: Offer what you know. This sign I saw in the store said they offered -computer detailing- service, anti-virus and OS installation... and that was about it. If this person knew more, they'd have said it.
4: If you have a logo... don't use stock clip-art. This sign used the lined-pyramid default image on every default MS Publisher template as his logo. Depressing.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Meet them?? ;-)
Some of those callers seemed to have so bad attitude problems that it's no wonder they are lonely housewives. Which ofcourse made me happy there was a phoneline and >100 kilometers between us
Signature under construction
Once you touch an idiot's computer, you are seen by them as responsible for everything/anything that happens to them afterwards.
Also, from this point on, they won't consider for a second to investigate their problems for themselves, but insist that you fix them.
For example, I had a friend that I helped out by upgrading his computer. 2-3 weeks later he calls me with problems. Since I'm a nice guy, I go check it out.
Turns out it's nothing I did, but a trojan that infected his computer. When I got there, I already knew how to fix it, as a result of a 5sec. search I did on Google from the symptoms he gave me.
The main problem of outsourced IT is that I've rarely seen two different consultants agree on anything!
...repeat as necessary with *every* piece of software/hardware in the environment, each time a new consultant comes by.
Consultant one: Well, you have a small shop and don't want a dedicated IT guy, so I'll set up Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server) so you'll have any function you can possibly need.
Consultant two: I don't know what that other guy was thinking, but it's pointless! You could have just bought (insert single application here) and saved a TON of money!
Something broken? Obviously the guy who worked on it last/set it up was a moron. Needless to say that this gets much worse depending on how many different guys you use. And not having a company-to-company relationship can really hurt when the e-mail server is down and John won't return phone calls.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Local programmers who are willing to market themselves properly regarding these differences will still do well.
Just like much of the mindless mechanical work that used to be done in factories in the U.S., much mindless mechanical programming is being exported so that Abdula and Apu can work for 1/3 the cost of a U.S. programmer, who would eventually not want to do that kind of mindless mechanical programming anyway.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Disposal laws impact businesses; home users mostly ignore them. We
have comprehensive disposal laws for things like used motor oil and
leftover paint, but you don't see home users paying fees to dispose
of _them_. Nope. Pour it into a used milk jug, bag it up with the
rest of the trash, and leave it for the garbage truck; that's the
only approach I've seen home users take.
This is of course illegal and morally questionable at best, but it's
nevertheless what people do. They'll do the same thing with anything
else there are disposal laws for.
Then there are the people who just _keep_ things. I've still got my
ITT XTRA (an 8086), if you must know... haven't turned it on in a
good long while, but I have it. We also still have my dad's 286,
my sister's 386, and my other sister's 486. My Pentium II got parted
out to build two other systems, but I've got the CPU sitting around...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Having complete control of your work life is a great thing compared to being a cog in a larger company. It is also fraught with perils. If you are a technical wizard with little people skills, stay out of this business. In freelance technical support the 'technical' part is rarely challenging and is often a minor part of your job. You will act as an explainer, camp counselor, big brother, hand holder, accountant, and buck stopper as much as a propeller head.
Customers won't be calling you with blue skies and singing birdies. They will call you at the last minute when some problem has their entire business on the line. They have come to depend on you, so that often means they will piss and shit on you and blame you for the problems of the world. Don't take it personally. They are just trying to transfer the stress. That is partly what they are paying you for, even if they don't know it.
If you can deal with this social stuff, freelance technical support can provide a long and fruitful career where people treat you like a hero when the problem gets solved. If you are not the people type, this career will seem an endless hell.
They're not - and best of all, idiot computer people can screw up a computer far worse than normal idiots.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
I can't RTFA (since it's /.ed) but I am doing freelance tech support. I setup home wirless and wired LANs, setup NAT/Firewall boxes for cable/DSL subscribers, apply patches, re-installs, and some general security tweaks and basic security training with each customer. I also help with any problem my customer's has (yes any, I get some dumb emails) for free, if they can handle it through email. If I have to go to their house (or call them), they get charged. I charge a reasonable rate (depending on the job up to $15 an hour plus gas, and travel time). I am not getting rich by any means, but I make a decent living and can schedule work around time for my kids, and being a single parent, that is very important to me.
Honestly, I couldn't ask for a better job, sure it has it's headaches, and some weeks the work is sparse, but I wouldn't trade the flexability it gives me with my kids for anything.
For the single healthy under-25 male living in cheap rented accomodation with a paid off car, no pension plan, and a false name, who only takes cash and who changes his phone number every week. Depending on your exact situation and how lucky you get with your customers, you may find yourself better off on welfare.
I did this for a year or so when I was young and eager, and enjoyed it up until the point where I had a critical mass of customers calling me up at all hours (and I mean all hours) demanding to know what I'd done to their Win95 machines that made them crash 3 months later. No, give me the safe hidey hole of a cube job any day.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No but assuming you get laid off with some severance or have a bit of money on the side (I try to keep enough to pay rent/car payment/insurance for about 8 months. I think it might be a good stopgap..
I've found the problem is often that the customer lies. They say half the channels work, but what they really mean is that they were watching a channel two days before, and today they tried to watch another channnel and they couldn't, so therefore half the channels work.
Sometimes it is best to assume nothing the customer says is right. Otherwise you'll go crazy trying to figure out some weird explanation when in reality the power cord isn't plugged in, and when they said they plugged it in they meant that they were going to.
I'm a pretty smart guy, and for most problems, sure I can fix those. But every once in a while, you run into something that's been obfuscated by black-box-engineering. You can't figure out what the problem is, without seeing inside. In some cases, it's as simple as spending your money on an incredibly overpriced "xxx Unleashed" book. In other cases, you have to swap out bad hardware, and it could be one of a couple of dozen possible components.
Do you stock your own supply of spare parts? Can you purchase them at cost, or do you have to pay retail for them?
Finally - you'll always eventually hit some problem that you simply can't find answers for, either in expensive documentation - or PAID (cha-ching$$$) support calls to a vendor. Where you get endlessly jerked around. Personally, I could do every facet of this job, except this one, and love it. When I get stumped - and I know the answer's in there, but for a lack of good documentation, you're just plain stuck - as a freelancer.
Hell, even when I've worked for Big Software Company Dot Com, and we had clout with Microsoft - I would hit problems that even Microsoft developer support could not explain. That's a crappy position to be in, and exactly why I am a believer in Open Source. If you can't find someone who understands their own f0cking source code, then you can at least go in and look yourself.
I'm just saying - as a standalone freelance technical consultant, you don't have clout with the vendors, and you can't get the truly nasty problems fixed. Period.
On the other hand, getting $100/hr taking apart iMacs to get CD's out of froze-up slot-loading CD drives ain't a bad way to make a living.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Although in this case if they don't know what they're doing, they're not stupid, just ignorant. And there's nothing wrong with that, so long as there are people there to step in and counter their ignorance.
However the only thing worse than ignorance is a misguided individual that thinks they know what they're talking about. And somehow these individuals end up in management.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
When I first moved to NYC I took a job at 90k. 90k quickly becomes about 55k after the city, state and federal take their cuts. Drop another 30k for rent (Upper West Side) and that leaves 25k a year to live in Manhattan. Like to eat out (or have to because your kitchen is the size of a toaster)? Add a grand a month, easy. Now we have about 13k in which to pay bills, entertain yourself, etc... Needless to say, when I took my next job I asked for (and got) a hell of a lot more.
That being said, I knew people who seemed to live okay on the island for 40-50k/year. Usually with a couple of roommates in either the Lower (lower, lower) East Side or in Harlem or the Bronx.
The problem with idiots is that if you touch their machine once then the next time something *unrelated* goes wrong they will blame you. I've seen it happen too many times.
I know someone who called a heating contractor to replace a broken furnace igniter. The contractor inspected the furnace, pointed out some potential problems that would have cost extra to have repaired (that the guy's wife declined), replaced the bad part and went on his way. Now, every time *anything* goes wrong with the furnce, the guy's wife gets mad at him for hiring the contractor!
I built a system for someone a year and a half ago - this person was really cheap - wanted the cheapest parts even if they were obsolete. I bit my tounge and built the system and installed Win2K on it. It was working great. Now after a year and a half I get an email complaing "the USB isn't as fast as it used to be, can you spend a Saturday looking at it?". No lie.
I could never do tech-support for idiots for a living....
The "no I won't fix your computer" t-shirt is now my favorite piece of clothing!
The hard part is finding an idiot who's smart enough to pay you.
Or stupid enough.
I think thist quote is absolute bullshit. TONS of people have lost money underestimating the intelligence of great masses, especially in the last few years...i'm thinking of America Online, but there are others, especially in the tech sector and double especially in the dot com dreams of Silly Con Valley.
"So easy to use, no wonder it's #1!" Yes. Easy is good when something is cheap, it becomes automatic. But when the price goes up, people are willing to do more work to save a few bucks.
I think the adage should be "A fool and his money are soon parted...but fools don't get that much money to begin with." Managers excepted.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Another thing to consider is that a stereotypical teenager might have observed his stereotypical father driving for 16 years before being allowed to touch the steering wheel. While the teenager hasn't been paying attention to the mechanics of driving all this time, he is developing a great deal of familiarity with the car.
If you pull a stereotypical caveman from the forest, and try to teach him to drive, you'll probably find that he'll be scared to touch the car radio if you didn't explicitly teach him to work it. This is a lot like computer newbies being fearful of clicking on any menu item they weren't taught before.
What we are beginning to see is a generation that grew up watching their parents work the computer. I don't think they will be nearly as uncomfortable as any generation before them.
I've seen a lot of these sorts of comments. What it shows to me is that the company is very poor at managing it's staff and it's relations with clients. Having worked support with my current employer, I know we haven't had much of a turnover rate at all. We are small, encourage the employees to work together on problems, and generally maintain a positive relationship with our clients.
Still, a straight day or week or tech support is draining. However, if that day is broken up with other work (writing code, scripts, documentation, testing, etc) tech support isn't that bad.
You do need to quickly adapt your language to the technical sophistication of the caller. Sometimes, they will know more about X than you do, othertimes they will call the desktop "the screen with all the pictures." If you keep in mind that they are not trying to be difficult and probably aren't dumb, just ignorant, a little effort can get you past most of these problems. The intolerance I'm reading on this board saddens me. It's why some people are frightened to call support and others feel they need to be overly assertive (read abusive).
Treat people with respect and more often than not you'll be treated the same way. This goes for the tech support worker taking calls as well as the manager who struggles with absurd turn-over rates.
Arround here, people sort their recyclables and take stuff like oil and paint to a reclamation center.
Blar.
A good goal is to pay off your car loan ASAP. Then, when necessary, you can drop your insurance to liability only. My car payment was $150 and my insurance was $160! Now I pay ~$60 total (yeah, comp/coll was more than liability).
It may not sound like much to save $250/month, but if you're laid off and barely making the bills, you'll be happy you got rid of your debt.
I have been doing tech support for 3.5 years now and counting. I still have all my marbles, just not always sure where they may be located. I understand people's frustration when dealing with a tier one support level. Where I work we started out with some very good selection of people with all kinds of qualifications and smarts. The hard part was our hands were tied, policy preventing us from doing the job in a way that we would prefer or go as far as we would like. Over time with turn over the quality of the people being brought in has declined significantly with more emphasis being placed on customer service skills than actually fixing the problem. That combined with working for an outsourced company which gets paid by the phone call, you can see that the emphasis is never about fixing the problem, it's all about answering as many calls as possible.
I thought this article is very depressing until I realized that this guy is NOT qualified for anything else.
I'd like to make a point that "household tech support" is a bearable job for someone who knows no more than how to fix a printing problem, because it is "slightly" challenging for him.
I'm not trying to be snobby, but I know for sure that good talents are still high in demand. But there's not a lot of ways to distinguish those from clueless people. Microsoft tries hard to do that in thier job interview, but people still have a database of thier questions. This, my friend, is the biggest problem I see in the industry.
There are too many clueless people with a "tech" title whinning about not getting a job. (HTML programmers, anyone? The writer does not have any credentials.) They should do freeland tech support. I also know really skilled people without a job, but it will be a waste of talent to do this.
One more thing: please don't vote for Bush next time. For one, the corporate tax break did nothing more than sending tech jobs overseas.
Actualy Canada (Toronto specificaly) export garbage to the United States. I waiting for some pissed off Customs Agent to ask "Any Fruits or Vegitable back there?" and making the driver open it up for inspection.
Heheh... I hadn't thought of that.
Here's something about that whole situation which strikes me as very stupid:
Now, you can't honestly tell me that a fleet of at least 20, if not 40, trucks doing endless day-night runs to Michigan is cheaper or more efficient than using rail?
Have the unions really blown the cost of rail transportation so high that it's not even suitable for bulk overland anymore? Why is a train operator (I refuse to call them engineers unless they know the pain of 4 years of differential equations) paid more than a truck driver, when the truck drivers have the added responsibility of steering?
Why is it that the most staunch pro-union activists are also the most militant environmentalists, and don't they see the folly of this situation?
I'm a common sense environmentalist (ie. low-flush toilets are a false economy because you have to flush them 6 times to dispose of the ...dark matter), and this just burns me up.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
- Software Vendor says: "Sounds like a hardware issue. Sorry we can't help you, contact your hardware vendor..."
- Hardware Tech support: "Nope, not a hardware issue, must be a software issue. Contact the Software vendor or the makers of your Operating System"
Rinse, repeat ad nauseum. This is assuming that upon reaching a human being, you can even understand that the tech support person (who is likely in another country reading from a rather inflexible/unimaginative script and doesn't even personally own a computer themselves).I know my clients are willing to pay $50-120/hr (depending on the job) for someone who is reliable, who they trust and who will show up and get the job done. Rather than them wasting an entire day of productivity waiting for a human tech support to do utterly nothing for them, or trying to find an answer on the web and rebooting over and over again after trying multiple patch/update/drivers in vain.
There aparently isn't much service in "Customer Service" any more as far as the computer industry is concerned unless you are paying for a multi-million dollar annual service contract.
That's OK, between Window's lousy reliability/maintainability, cheap commodity PC hardware and non-existant manufacturer tech support, I have a guaranteed job.
Funny, don't here from the ones I've switched over to OS X much...
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
Before the business where I work at hired their own tech support staf,f they had blown through a $150,000 budget by calling in a "consultant" - at $50/Hr - to do things like, reboot their machines, install a driver, install the OS, etc. - and those were Macs!! Arguably even simpler to maintain than PC's!
The important distinction to note here is this - a HOME user will want to get away with paying as little as possible beause its THEIR money. A business user won't give a shit if someone charges $50-$75/hr to install 1 memory stick - it's a company expense.
I've given this some thought before, but the reality is, if you are sick of doing tech support now, imagine how nauseaus you'll become doing tech support for every frelled up installation of AOL or "Barbie Beauty Shop". AAARGH!!
There are no ifs ands or buts, tech support for home users SUCKS!!
There are two events in my life as a "LAN admin"/"Corporate Computer Guy"/"Helpdesk Guy" that turned the job from being fun to hell.
1) Seeing John/Jane Q. Public from off the street hired as junior support personnel being trained to follow a problem script rather than relying on their familiaity with an O/S and ability to solve the problem.
2) Being a LAN Admin with a new manager who came in from a merger and being told that we had to follow a problem solving script, not being allowed to use image casting software and being forced to sit through all the progress bar indicators when installing O/S or any software.
I believe that through the last 5 years, IT and the computer nerd had been forced apart by the flood of average people that would have normally gone into blue collar jobs.
Shame.