Tech's 10 Worst Entry-Level Jobs

Nicholas Carlson writes "These employers (Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc), and the others hiring for tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs will look good on a resume someday, but for now the only good these jobs promise the world is the pleasant feeling you and I can share knowing we're not the ones stuck in them." The story is really obnoxiously laid out, requiring many many clicks to read very little actual content. Perhaps Valleywag could afford to hire another of tech's worst jobs: the web designer.

Comments

The article sucks?

[DaveV1.0]

So, if it sucks so bad, why did he submit it and why did it make it to the front page?

Re:The article sucks?

[SatanicPuppy]

Probably to start a big discussion about tech's worst jobs. People here actually know, as opposed to VW where they clearly have no clue.

Re:Chiming in

[mikael_j]

I'd have to say that's not the worst entry-level job in tech by a long shot, ever since I started working in the wonderful area of, wait a minute some guy had to restart his DSL modem and needed me to hold his hand, tech support.

Seriously, working in tech support is about as low as it gets, you're expected to have college-level skills while everyone assumes you're some high school dropout who is barely capable of reading and writing, the pay is horrible and very few people really appreciate the work you do (most of the time the first thing you hear after helping someone fix a problem is "...and how are you going to compensate me for this?").

/Mikael

Re:Don't make me laugh.

[Corporate Troll]

I think the point here was that it's about "crap entry level jobs at well known big IT companies". Having Google on your resume is an asset. Your job, while absolutely sucky was not at a high-profile IT company.

Re:Well, this is a slashvertisement for valleywag

[Anonymous Coward]

Suddenly a no-name site with BAD content starts getting a ton of front page articles == paid slashvertisement.

Boycott. For great justice.

Re:Chiming in

[L4t3r4lu5]

Uhhh... Yeah, that's pretty much how it is.

Imagine it the other way around, though; There have been many times where I have been on the phone to somebody like yourself, having already performed ALL of the troubleshooting tips you'll go through (having done them at least three times before on seperate calls), yet you still WILL NOT proceed with escalating a call until you've been through them ONE MORE TIME to make sure we've done it right.

Too damn right you get a mouth full, you insensitive clod!

Tech Ghetto?

[Hankapobe]

From the Amazon Support Engineer link Sysadmin work is the new "tech ghetto," we hear.

Here's my take from back when I was in IT.

Developing software can be really interesting, cool, challenging, stimulating, etc... but when the project it done, they really don't need you anymore - unless you work for a software firm. Even if it's a large company with a shitload of projects, eventually they'll be done. With the current trend of buying canned software and integrating (usually done by the canned software co.) there's less opportunity for he hard core developer.

Support, DBA, and other admin type of jobs.

Ghetto indeed! There' always something to be done and some of the scripts I've seen from you admins can rival much software I've seen. And if I could do it all over again, I would be going for an admin job/career. Why? Because there's a bigger demand for them and you're more likely to have a job. I learned the hard way that it's more important to have a steady job than to be chasing after the highest rate and the coolest project. Well, maybe in the beginning I would do that, but definitely later on, I'd switch to the steady stuff. And, invest my money a bit beter - save, save, save!

Just this old fart's $0.5.

And it only pays $80K.

[khasim]

I'm wondering if they'd be working in Seattle.

Since when is $80K an "entry level job" in this industry?

And when is being a SysAdmin an "entry level job"?

Who writes that crap?

Re:And it only pays $80K.

[antirelic]

Yeah, no kidding. 80K is a very respectable salary, especially if your not living in the major tech hubs across the US. I know lots and lots of people that would do just about anything to make $80k a year.

I know there are pretty crappy jobs in every business. Thats because there is just a lot of crap that needs to be done, period. The real question is "what do you get from it". If you work at Google or Amazon, there is probably a pretty good chance that your job is going to lead to "something else". Even if its just within the company for a few dollars more an hour. If you do things right, chances are you will have career advancement.

Someone needs to define "worse". Mundane, boring jobs may not be what everyone is looking for, but truly 'terrible' jobs, in all industries, are ones with no advancement, no benefits, and expose the employees to all sorts of potential career/health hazards with practically no pay (and yes, there are LOTS AND LOTS of these jobs in every industry, even IT).

Re:And it only pays $80K.

[icebones]

Excellent point. people tend to forget about what really are the worse jobs in every industry. I personally would love a "boring" job paying $80k that i was alone in the office all night with lots of waiting in between. I could get so much more accomplished in that time than just surfing the net. A simple example is bring a laptop and spend half the time working on your own business/web pages and the other half playing games. your basically getting paid to do your own thing. even if there wasn't room for advancment, you would have plenty of time to create your own success. When people think of "worse jobs" they should really remember to includ everything you mentioned and also include overbearing bosses that monitor your every move and have a fit if you actually get on the web when you are supposed to be pretending to be busy because it looks bad. oh and while it wasn't an IT job. next time some here thinks about copmplainng about their job, just be glad your not working a twelve hour shift in a 20 below 0 warehouse making $8.50 an hour. i did that once, you never forget that kind of "worse" job.

So you're not in your dream job at 21

[SashaMan]

Seriously, what a bunch of wimps. News flash to all youngsters: yes, you may dream of running your own mega-billion dollar tech company, or coding for websites from your beach house in St. Barts, or covering Hollywood celebrities in your hot-item-of-the-moment blog, but it most likely ain't gonna happen.

What's so bad about most of these jobs? Sure, they all look kind of mundane and I wouldn't want to do them for 50 years, but when did we start thinking that every job was supposed to be so fun, fun, FUN! I realize this may sound a bit like a "get of my lawn" post, but the biggest fantasy we've hoisted onto young people is making them think that work is supposed to be glamorous and the be all/end all of life.

I'm lucky enough to be in a job that I enjoy very much, but at the end of the day I realize that it's a JOB and that if for whatever reason I have to work on some projects that are a little mundane or boring it's no big deal.

Re:So you're not in your dream job at 21

[Penguinisto]

I remember cautioning students a long time ago to not expect to be working for a fat paycheck at Novell the minute he/she graduated (I was living in Utah at the time, hence "Novell"). You have to start small, but if you know what you're doing, you stand a good chance of moving up.

Those who listened threw themselves at the entry-level help desk jobs, where they stayed just long enough to angle for a junior admin slot at a start-up or small biz, which in turn was a resume' boost for bigger and better things. It's just how one gets up in the world nowadays... I still get a kick out of hearing from a couple of them, and how they've been doing. The ones who didn't are working in some other field entirely after a ton of disappointment and rejection.

The funniest thing is, I don't think it's us the pros who have foisted visions of joy and glory onto the kids: It's the images from Hollywood of "'leet hackers" (*snort*). It's the unholy size of Bill Gates' bank account. It's the image that all the non-tech-oriented folks project (as if we were keepers of some arcane dogma that only The Chosen Few can ever learn... Cripes, folks - it's just a frickin' BASH prompt!)

That, I think in combination with typical youthful impatience, is what tends to delude the kids into thinking that it's all glory and no muck-hauling...

/P

Re:So you're not in your dream job at 21

[King_TJ]

Do I ever agree! I read this article and thought it was some kind of joke, at first -- or maybe just an attempt to slam the big-name Inet companies.

Just in my own city, I could find 10 "tech" type jobs that are all FAR worse gigs than anything they listed in this article.

Like one guy said, have a Best Buy in your town? How about Geeksquad being on the list? There's a job where you'll never see anything remotely LIKE a $50K a year salary, yet your customers will all place demands and expectations on you like that's what you make (since that's the kind of money they pay Best Buy to get you out there in the first place!).

Or try a call center for any of the telcos? I've had friends doing that job for Verizon and AT&T. You're looking at being packed in a building like sardines, with no windows and poor climate control. The whole place literally stinks of sweat and mildew, and their idea of "variety" is shuffling you around to different cubicles every few weeks. (Really, it just ensures you don't get too friendly with co-workers sitting nearby and actually make new friends!) The pay? $11/hr. if you're lucky.

I know cost of living is different in different parts of the country, but geez! I'm past my mid 30's and I've been working in I.T. since I was 19 or 20. I've STILL never received a salary as high as $50K, much less the $70-80K some of these "worst 10" were offering! I have to work two jobs to get into the lower part of that range at all!

The job you can't escape

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst job has to be the one you can't escape. You can't make nearly as much money elsewhere but you have no chance of advancement where you are.

The guy who fixes our computers has been with us for about ten years. He got the idea that he should upgrade his education. He got a BComm. It cost a lot and it was hard work. The trouble is that he has no administrative experience so our mutual employer won't promote him to anything where he can use the degree. His only option is to quit and take an entry level position elsewhere. The trouble is that he can't afford to take a cut in pay.

That has to be the worst job. Look up 'wage slave' in the dictionary and you see buddy's face.

Re:Is this any better? :)

[wile_e_wonka]

Actually, none of them were that bad. One of them started at $80,000/y. It seemed more like he picked a random sample of 12 entry level jobs a few months ago, took pictures of the associated workspaces and is now looking to get four articles on Slashdot (some of these already made it): 10 Best Workspaces in IT, 10 Worst Workspaces in IT; Ten Worst Entry-Level IT Jobs; and Ten Best Entry-Level IT Jobs--all from the same 12 jobs.

This sounds awful close to the standard Slashdot business model.

Re:Chiming in

[Duradin]

A level 3 tech's time is much more costly to the company than a L1's or even a L2's. It's like a pyramid. Lots of L1 techs to screen out the reboot-will-fix-it-for-now callers, some L2 techs to gather the information for the L3 and possibly script monkey away the problem and avoid escalating to L3 and then just a handful of L3 techs that handle the few calls that get through to them.

Toss in draconian call metric systems, skeleton crews and call volumes that burn out your L1 and L2 techs before they start getting raises and you've got a system that favors not promoting customers up the chain if at all possible.

Another thing to remember: when you call in you are bothering the other person on the other end as well. They really don't want to talk to you. They will make you share in the suffering. If the L2 techs can find a way to keep you in L1 hell, they will. L3 does the same.

I'm amazed that we haven't had enough incidents yet to coin the phrase "going tech support". Hitler and Stalin don't have anything on the average L2 tech when it comes to malevolence and a burning desire to rid the world of all life in the cruelest, most painful ways possible.

Re:Chiming in

[Nerdposeur]

There have been many times where I have been on the phone to somebody like yourself, having already performed ALL of the troubleshooting tips you'll go through

I do technical support for cell phones and BlackBerrys. Although I try to get a feel for each person's competency and react accordingly, it does happen that a competent-sounding person has overlooked something obvious. Better safe than sorry, I say, if the basic troubleshooting is pretty quick to do. It's embarrassing to escalate something and find out that it was a no-brainer after all.

I do get callers who are in charge of setting up other people's devices, and when I hear from them multiple times, I start trusting that they know what they're doing.

One thing's for sure, though: I don't just talk like a robot through some script. I'm a human who likes helping humans.

Re:Is this any better? :)

[john83]

The real horseshit is that a year or two working for one of those companies will open so many doors...You deserve to be put through the wringer if you get to fricking start with an industry leader. Where are all the dead end jobs that pay less, and demand more work? People don't really consider this stuff hard do they? I don't know. I suspect a year or two doing tech support for myspace would classify you as mentally ill. Tech support is generally bad, but myspace users are some of the most spectacularly stupid people on earth.