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Getting Beyond the Helldesk
An anonymous reader writes "I've been working as a helpdesk monkey for over a year in a small-medium sized law firm of around 200 users and I don't know if my patience and sanity can last much longer. I'd like to remain in IT, but in less of a front-line role where I can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes by a jamming printer or frozen instance of Outlook. There isn't really any room for progression at my current employer, and with the weak job market it seems I can only move sideways into another support role. I've been considering a full-time Masters degree in a specialized Computer Science area such as databases or Web development, but I don't know if the financial cost and the loss of a year's income and experience can justify it. Do any Slashdotters who have made it beyond the helpdesk have any knowledge or wisdom to impart? Is formal education a good avenue, or would I better off moving back home, getting a mindless but low-stress job, and teaching myself technologies in my free time?"
" I'd like to remain in IT, but in less of a front-line role where I can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes by a jamming printer or frozen instance of Outlook."
Um. If you are on the helpdesk - unjamming printers and unfreezing outlook is your job. Your work isn't being interrupted every five minutes, but rather you are being called on to do your job every five minutes.
IT is a support function, deal with it or find a different career field.
My ignorant opinion is to get more education. It's worth it, if you want it.
If full time isn't possible, do it correspondence/distance education.
Helldesk really is HELL.
It's amazing what padding your resume does. You have to take the first step.
As for moving back home, I wouldn't do that.
But if you get along with your family, I guess its an option.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that it gets better once you are out of the helpdesk. It only looks like it does. You get less stupid end-users, and more stupid bosses.
Get out, now, while you still can. Go get a degree in plumbing, or electrical work. (Heck, if you want to stay with computers, get certified to install fiber. It's only going to grow, and I've had trouble finding anyone to install it in the new house.) Something that doesn't expect you for the rest of your life to be answering the phone at 12:45am on random nights.
Got to run, the pager's going off...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Go back to school. Have sex with college girls while you still can. Go to any open lectures and take some off the wall classes. Study abroad or save your money for six months and party in Brazil. Meet some people who have lofty ideas, and try to get jobs at companies with the same.
You aren't going to learn anything but how to take shit and wallow in misery at your current job. If you think that's a valuable skill that you need to learn, then stay.
You might consider pursuing a job at a smaller organization where the IT department consists of you, possibly a non-profit. Compensation will be lower but there are often other "benefits" of working non-profit, such as reduced hours or a rewarding culture. These organizations are looking for somebody with experience but realize they can't afford the most experience. You'll get a lot of experience with a wide range of administration, preferably including managing a few servers, although you will still be working with the end users. Variety is wonderful, though.
Due to the current job market this plan may still leave you in your current position for a while, but that could be a good thing for your marketability anyway, as it's good not to look too fickle when an employer doesn't want to have to hire a replacement for you again in another 12-18 months.
I've noticed that most people are getting smarter, understand technology, privacy, business, free enterprise, propoganda, and are becoming less reliant on help desks, friends, church groups, retailers, and especially the government for help.
Just stick with it, I'm sure it will get better! How bad can it really be, they are just lawyers?
That's definitely not the case here in Michigan, there's still a ton of stupid people in mixed into the general public.
There are a few excellent reasons to go to school:
- your field has you using multi-million dollar equipment that you simply cannot access outside of the academic world
- you don't know what you want, and need someone to plot a course through life for you
- you can't read and need to be taught the alphabet
In this field, help-desk, databases, web-development are all the same:
- exceptionally well and accurately documented
- always using very inexpensive or free tools
- catering to intelligent people
If you want to learn web development, grab as many books as you like, read through MSDN and your favourite firefox wiki. Read, tinker, play. Read the HTML specifications. Keep playing. In school, you'd simply have shorter hours, and someone telling you to read chapter 1, then telling you to read chapter 2, then telling you to read chapter 3. Oh yeah, and they'd tell you that you read only 92% of chapter 2.
If you want to learn about databases, install mysql with about ten clicks, and read the mysql documention. It's not a puzzle, it's just a process. By the time you've read the, what 500 pages of syntax, you'll be able to play forever.
You don't need someone else telling you how to do something when it's written down. After all, there aren't that many people who know more about mysql than is written in the documentation. Maybe six of the people who built it. Everyone else simply read the documentation before you. Professors included. The story would be different if your goal were to build databases for enormous applications. But like I tell all of my clients when they ask if my selection of mysql as a database can meet their company's needs: "your company has 500 clients and 10 employees, the database world is concerned with millions of records. we'll talk again after your widget takes over manhattan".
The biggest reason to dodge formal education in these types of areas is that the curiculum is set-in-stone well before you start the course -- actually well before your sign up for the course, and even well before they decide to offer the course. So you're guaranteed to be learning old technologies. In this industry, six months counts as old. This all means that when you're done, and out, you won't have any confidence in your skills simply because you will not have used them in the real world. Academic assignments are useless.
So in the end, you'll have a very valuable piece of paper. It has the following values: .H.R. departments, look for that stuff. These are the same .H.R. departments that wanted 6 years of Java from me when Java was 2 years old. It's actually quite funny, or would be if it weren't so very very sad.
- you spent time and money to acquire it. that alone is an achievement recognized not only by many but will certainly be a point of pride for you.
- some others, namely
Clients will never ask you for credentials, or certificates, or diplomas, or degrees. Clients ask for guarantees, and you don't supply those either in our industry.
So if you really want to do something about your skills, then the following is what you truly desire:
- assistance (not guidance) in acquiring the skills
- a forum for testing and experimenting with those skills
- confidence in those skills
- an understanding of the applications of those skills
Then what you want is a job in a company where you will learn those skills on your own. Offer to work for very little pay. Either for businesses outside of the industry where they will benefit from whatever you actually can produce as you learn to produce it; or for a company in the industry who will gladly help to train you in the hopes that eventually you'll be good enou
I have been in many different aspects of I.T. from the HP helpdesk to a mom and pop repair shop and a network admin at a bank (current). I can tell you the scenery may change but the actual job does not you will still have end users asking questions and expecting help for some pretty strange and annoying things sometimes. It's the nature of the beast. I seem to think that any faucet of this industry will have that as it is community driven IE: people asking questions.
With a 200 person law firm, you're probably the lowest of 2 or 3 people. Find a position somewhere where you're the jack-of-all-trades -- you do the tech support, server management, web development, purchasing, etc. You'll work long hours because the tech support prevents focused work on the other things, so be prepared. But you'll learn alot if you're driven and you can finally have "Server Administration" or "Web Design" on your resume. It won't get you into Google, but experience may get you a junior admin job.
To find this entry level everything job, look at 100 person or less businesses or colleges. Colleges will be easier as they aren't money driven.
Alternatively, in this job market, go to school.
More relevant I think is to perhaps use a Unix to learn network related skills such as TCP/IP network design, DNS, mail routing, VOIP, etc.
Unix (or Windows) is a tool to accomplish a given task. Learn the fundamentals of what you are trying to do and how the protocols work together, and then you can apply this to whatever operating system you happen to get lumbered with by the bean counters or previous management/admin...
So yeah, download a free unix, but remember, its just a tool to achieve a desired service. Focus on the services (and how to diagnose them), rather than the actual particular software package so much. Knowing Linux's quirks (just for example) inside out won't do you any good if you're trying to support Windows or Solaris (or SCO or FreeBSD, etc)...
Keep your mind open, and get exposure to as many tools as possible, it will increase your opportunity for employment...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It really depends - do you want to do a technical role? Or do you want to move into management. Here's assuming you want to stay in IT.
If you want to do a technical role, I'd second a few of the suggestions here that you should download a 'nix, install some tools and learn everything there is to know about that particular technology. Bonus points for picking something that can be carted cross-platform (SQL, XML etc).
Then you can start applying for junior roles in other companies "We require a junior DBA working on MS-SQL and Oracle...". If you're good enough, you won't stay junior for long. The software is out there and it's all free - start learning it!
If you want to move into management, you generally have two career paths - managing technology or managing people. Managing technology requires you to learn about things like data centre operations, Capacity Management, Availability Management, cost accounting and charging etc etc. All these things go into making the technology side hum ie "the hardware is working properly, and we know we can pay for it now, and in the future". Companies are screaming for this type of management as they realise that the old reactive model of bodging it up to get it working now, and panic buying stuff they don't really need isn't working. They're looking for people who can formulate an IT strategy and make it work in the real world.
If you want to manage people, then start looking at leadership books, guides and education. Do you want to manage a helpdesk (didn't think so). Maybe the relevant institute of management has a short course that you could do.
I made it past the helpdesk. I started off after high school building PCs and crawling under desks with CAT-5 between my teeth. I did that for 5 years, then was a sysadmin for a web hosting company for a year, then a service desk operator for 2, then a process specialist for another year. I've been in my current role as a process manager for just over a year making 6 figures.
It can be done, but you need to differentiate yourself. Lots of guys can fix a printer - but to really add value, figure out which companies are looking to extend themselves from a reactive environment to a proactive customer focussed one, and jump on board.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Companies that have programmers or other techs who learned all their people skills from interaction with a pet gerbil are not really clear on the concept of staying in business. I work in tech support and that friends is a person oriented skill. You can have the gosh gee whiz tech creds out the wazoo and still piss off a customer. They don't care how many .NET routines you have written they are interested in getting their screen un-stuck and back to their JOB. Talk down to your co-workers NOT the person who ultimately pays for your play-toys
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
You know what? My excellent karma be damned.
How about you help desk workers actually solve some shit for a change. I'm tired of calling the help desk (be it corporate or extra-corporate like my cellphone provider) and never getting anything fixed. I don't give a damn about where you want to get to or what (or who) you think you're supposed to be. That's precisely the problem. You're worried about where you think you're supposed to be instead of getting your fucking job done. Fuck you. To high holy hell. Solve some goddamn problems instead of whining. Or don't work the fucking helpdesk if that's not where you want to be.
Guess what. I don't give a fuck about you or your career, any more than I do the corner mechanic. Solve my fucking computer problems. That's it. That's what you're paid to do. That's what I call you for. That's your job. Goddamn fucking do it. For once. Okay?
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Yes, the Helpdesk sucks. I started doing it 15 years ago at the school I went to making a whopping 7.50 an hour. Within a year I was administrating systems on the campus. Why? Because I busted my ass. An example, we had an old Vax that was crapping out and had to do an emergency upgrade to an Alpha server. I stayed up the entire night with the Admins and learned. I then cracked open the extremely dry manuals for VMS. Always take the time of crisis and turn it into an opportunity. If there is an Administrator who's going through a rough time, ask if you can watch / help.
Worst case, get some VM's set up and see if you can bogart some copies of various Microsoft titles off of TechNet, or set up your own linux box. Talk to your boss and tell him that you want to learn and ask him to create an environment for you to learn and test new skills. See if you have old Cisco equipment and learn how to configure it. With google as your companion, you can learn to do many different tasks and use them as a foundation to grow upon.
If your boss is not able to create that environment, then maybe it is not a right fit. I personally have taken marketing majors straight from college with no formal IT experience and flipped them into very good jobs as short as a year later. I don't think of myself as anyone special, but if you don't have someone who is invested in your growth, then you should look somewhere else for employment.
If certifications are your thing, then study for them. But please do yourself a favor and don't memorize the book, actually learn it. In the past I have interviewed people with certifications, particularly Microsoft and wind up dancing circles around them in a tech interview because all they did was memorize.
And it also comes down to what I like to call a clock watcher. I typically have three types of staff members. 1) The ones who are out the door by 5pm 2) The ones who will only stay when shit hits the fan and or have deadlines 3) The ones who are committed to learning as much as possible no matter what and will hang with me during a crisis to learn. I can assure you that if you are in the first category, you should rethink your career..because it is obvious that this is something you don't love.
Lastly, I hate to break it to you, but even after working 15 years in IT, the CEO will call you and ask for help with his Blackberry because he doesn't have time to deal with the help desk. It's the nature of the job.
IT Manager has an opportunity to frame the IT function in terms of ROI when talking to the suits.
Do not underestimate the value of a perception among suits that your role reduces liability or generates revenue.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'll second this - my previous job wasn't in the IT sector, but it WAS call center and it DID involve a lot of IT; my company was developing new LOB software in-house for which I was consulting, and I was working on some of my own projects involving process-and-procedure documentation and some automation using Office to make up for some of the shortcomings of the new system which the developers could not/would not address.
I was promoted to supervisory status for my above-and-beyond work performance and contributions to the company. I was ecstatic at first - with the burden of constantly taking phone calls lifted, I was free to complete these projects I was working on faster...or so I thought. Managers often seem like idiots because they're dealing with everyone else's problems and have no time for their own. Be careful what you wish for.
...and then I got laid off, along with most of my team (save two people, who where able to relocate) and the entire rest of the building. Wheeeee economy!
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I personally would be happy if I could get a competent help desk monkey, but unfortunately after downsizing, I was lucky enough to have help desk monkey added to my network admin responsibilities. I'm going to make some assumptions here: You already have a bachelors degree, your work pays all or part of certification and/or formal education, and you actually like IT work.
First thing you need to do is get exposure to some of the things you think you may like to do in IT. Read about them, talk to admins, dba's, etc. in your own company, or find someone in another company you could talk to about their work.
Once you have a good idea what you want to do, start going to school or training courses for it. Whether you choose online training, night classes, etc. is up to you, but education will help you move out of help desk work.
You will also need hands on work aside from just learning about the trade you pick, so I would suggest (as other have) to load software at home and start working with it. Hands on work is an excellent complement to book learning, and will ensure you know the material.
As far as dealing with your current job while you are working towards your goal, it would help if you changed your attitude towards your work. Instead of getting pissed that you have to unjam paper or help someone with their software, try showing the person how they can fix it themselves. If they don't want to learn it, then that's fine. I think most people would rather not have to call someone and wait for help if they can fix the issue on their own. Get creative. If you are working towards being a DBA or web designer, try setting up a self-service web site where the user can type in a problem and your program lists common fixes. It would be a great way to get the experience you need and definitely something to put on your resume.
Remember that there are a lot of people without jobs, some with families, that would kill to just be getting a steady paycheck. Be thankful.
I wish I could mod you up - but other people beat me to it.
turns out lots of people don't think of anything other than having minions... there's that phrase, "with great power comes great responsibility" well, ok, but what about "with mediocre power comes a huge pile of political bullshit" =)
Because there's nothing sysadmins love more than training helpdesk people (or any people) to do sysadmin stuff.
An internal helpdesk for responding to employee problems may be a good stepping stone. The problem is that employees and managers only see you when stuff is broken, and you are out of mind when stuff is running without issue. So, there is an association with the helpdesk people and problems.
;-)
One thing that may accumulate surprisingly good results: keep some track of who you have helped out and find the time to simply go ask, "Is it still alright?". Now they remember you fixed something for them (maybe even what it was), they re-associate you with the current no-problem state, and the smarter of them appreciate that you care enough about *their* work to actually come ask. People talk in any company, big or small.
BTW, some will see it as you care about the company's productivity, some will see it as you care about your fellow workers as people; both are a big addition to mere "good fixing tech problems". Don't expect much direct feedback though, it's easier if you keep it just a matter of professional pride and a (maybe quite refreshing) daily habit.
Just check before that there indeed is no problem when you go ask.
Good ones love it - they know that if helpdesk know how to do whatever needs doing, they don't have to get woken up at 2am to do it themselves.
That, and most geeks love to talk about the latest toys they're playing with.
Move to somewhere with very few people, like the Yukon Territory. That's how I started my IT career when it became obvious that in the big city it didn't matter how good I was, I was looking at doing my time in helpdesk. If you're serious about IT as a career, and can't stand doing your time on the line, that's one alternative. By the end of my 5 years up there I had run a regional ISP, and been the head network person for the Dept of Eduction. Also nothing makes you look good like being able to tell the cliche bear stories. My favorite though is the time the internet went out because a hunter with bad aim missed a moose and hit the waveguide on one of the microwave towers I was using!
Now here's the bad news: :)
I've been doing IT for almost 20 years, I manage the architecture team for a mid sized business with offices in 3 cities and 2 countries, I hold a CISSP and am responsible for the security of the company, and the owners/CEO/Execs STILL asks me to fix their computer. On the plus side I'd say my average between interruptions is down to about 20 mins. The interruptions tend to also be bigger problems. Some days I wish rebooting the PC would solve the tickets that get assigned to me, but my desktop support guy is good at that
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Er ...
https://www.redhat.com/training/
100% correct. Law Firms are hell holes to work for - and I'm an attorney! You only see the tip of the political iceberg in those operations.
I've represented over a dozen IT professionals out of the banking industry and age discrimination / outsourcing are so common that you might as well learn to speak Hindi.
Find a medium-sized 3'rd party tech support operation - go to school too - but contemplate broadening your skill set beyond pure IT - take a year to go to the Vancouver Film School and earn one of their computer-based degrees (animation, sound recording/transformation) and lateral into the production industry.
It all depends upon your ultimate goal. Is it the people that you deal with, your bosses, or the work? You can see less people by working at a computer shop - and still work on systems. You can get different bosses by getting another job. You can move into a different sort of work, but it all depends on the opportunities that you make for yourself - either by education, networking, or pounding the pavement.
It really depends on the type of service desk you work at. If you are in a service desk that cares about metrics like time taken on a call, then get out. Now. If you are on a service desk that values root cause analysis and real problem resolution, then stick around and try to get promoted up levels. Most of these service desks have a lot of high value components that are important enough that they'll appreciate you figuring out the actual problem and advising or implementing solutions that prevent further issues in the future.
I work on a service desk for a multi-national corporation supporting one of their software products. However, this software interacts with a lot of cool technologies that make life interesting - directory services, databases, packet analysis, network discovery, etc. There are enough components to the product itself that problems reported can be very interesting to troubleshoot, and I've learned a lot on the job. It also gives me the opportunity to read up on technologies I've never heard of before, or that I'm interested in. I'm fairly certain I'm seen as a reasonably valuable member of the team, so I get a lot of job satisfaction from what I do.
The rule of thumb, IMO, is that if you aren't learning anything new, then you're stagnating and it's probably time to get out of the job.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"Don't ask, what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." — Howard Thurman
Don't start, young, on a career that gives you no pleasure. Your mind doesn't naturally gravitate towards what computers can do. You have few enough responsibilities that you can get a little ahead doing work that doesn't require your degree, and you have a whole year's worth of savings. Use those. Something, somewhere, just naturally occupies your thoughts when they'd otherwise be idle; there's something you'd rather be contemplating. For your life: find that.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Here's the real question - if you hated programming so much, why didn't you switch to a major you liked? You note that many CS majors take your route, but really, it's no excuse. Those people are silly.
That said, if you find you like web development and DBA, my personal opinion is avoid the masters. The MS is *not* going to help you get an entry level position as a web dev or a DBA. You're risking overqualification here. (if you can even find a respectable MS in web development, that is.) A master's degree is not the magic bullet many people considering them think it is. And blowing (30k + living expenses? I don't know what a grad degree goes for in the UK) during questionable economic times on something that may or not pay off isn't a magic switch for your career either. You may find yourself a year or two from now with nothing but a ligher wallet and the same job prospects.
You say you want to make a clean break, do it. Start applying to positions in the field you're interested in, located in another city. Start doing some small projects on your own so you can provide some backup to your desires and prove a bit of competence in an interview. You're going to face a bit of a hurdle having gone School->unrelated job->Helpdesk, but if you can prove an interest in the job and the ability to handle basic related tasks and learn on your feet, you should have a pretty good shot.
Or perhaps as if the mods were moderating entirely appropriately. Wait a minute, who disrupted the mods' crack supply?
which is totally what she said
I second this advice. Do what you love. If you love what you do, you will be passionate about it and continually strive to improve. This is HUGE for employers, good ones that can see past next quarter's earnings anyway. What you love to do needs to be useful to an employer, but the bottom line is if you love it you will be good at it. If you are good at it you will progress in your career.
It sounds like you're smart but have a very general degree. This is not a problem, but you should start getting some professional certifications - Microsoft, Cisco, what have you. This will do two things for you: it will help you decide what you like to do and what you don't, as they all require a good deal of study to pass, and they look really good on a resume. What certifications you put down will help focus the employer's attention on what you are capable of, as well as provide them with a baseline.
In truth, you should have started in helpdesk while you were still in school. Helpdesk positions are not the best place for breaking into the rest of the market any more (they used to be great for that, not so much now), but given enough time something might turn up.
I would stick with your current job, but work on those certs, and be constantly searching for an entry-level sysadmin or unix admin (very rare, but huge potential if you can get it!) position. Or, once you have some cableing/cisco (sorry, they've got the most widely transferable certs even if you don't like them) certifications you should be able to break into the entry level physical network market.
Valuable things to take away from your helpdesk position are customer relations, troubleshooting skills, and general industry familiarity.
Oh yeah, and make sure your writing and communications skills are up to par. Chances are non-techs will need to read and understand something you write at some point, and sucky writing can be a career limiter.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller