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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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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