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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.
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.
They have master degrees in "database" and "web development?"
Ahhhh, my Television is moving!!!
Hate to break it to you but you won't necessarily get away from distractions and you may not entirely move away from support. Every job I've ever worked in included distractions and some amount of support work.
I currently work as a software developer but I also work to troubleshoot the existing systems, and I do take second tier customer calls (so less problems, but usually harder ones). I even work shifts and do on-call support. My job's a good one - prestigeous, reasonable pay so I'm not complaining.
That's not to say I would rather be on a help desk, or that you shouldn't try to better yourself. Just make sure your expectations are realistic.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
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.
Way back in the day, I worked at Creative Labs tech support, and those of us in higher positions were made to sit on a Helpdesk, consisting of 4 stations. When an agent would get stumped, they'd call the helpdesk and get one of us at random. Now, some of the folks who had to sit on this thing were not the sharpest tools in the shed. So one day, to screw with a particularly stupid self important idiot, I sat next to him, just up the hunt group chain, so that if my phone was busy or didn't answer the call would go to him.
So I turned my phone down to almost no ring volume, and every time my phone would ring, I'd wait til the 3rd ring, point over to his phone, and say "Your phone will ring... now". The dumbass got mad because he couldn't figure out how I was doing it for over an hour.
I did of course, get a "stern" talking to afterward, BUT, the supervisor was doing his best to not laugh his ass off as he was telling me to please not do it again.
First provide me with your employers contact information. Then quit so you'll feel motivated to find somthing else. I'll apply for your old job so you won't feel tempted to go back to it.
It depends on if you want to be a database one trick pony or a programmer or a sysadmin.
A help desk job is where you cut your teeth for being a sysadmin. If you want to be a dba or programmer, you don't need any experience in the real world. You just go to school and hope it's real life.
If you are interested in being a sysadmin, then understand that you are supporting users, and there are sysadmins supporting you.
Hang out with them and ask them to show you how they do their jobs. Learn about the stuff schools can't and never will be able to afford to teach you. SAN's, Fiber switching, the proprietary tools for HP, Sun, IBM, Dell. Use lunch, free time, smoke breaks, after work- whatever.
Sysadmins always have job offers or know people at other companies with job offers that may not be at their level, but at yours. There is no downside.
Secondarily, you should take advantage of their education program. If it's a law firm, they have one. Put in for your RHCE or LPI or MCSE or whatever the hell it is you're working on. Buy or download the book and make them pay for the tests. A cert will get you more pay than a Master's in anything. Unless you are bucking for middle management or want to write obscure code, a Master's won't do dick.
If you really want to leave though- and you know this because you go home, lay in bed, and literally say "I have to get out of this place" every day- then leave. You ain't gonna learn shit. Follow your gut first, head second.
School is a fine fallback if you have money, but if you don't then guess what. This is your school. You won't ever forget working help desk. People in pain learn their maximum threshold for bullshit, so it's good to learn yours early so you don't spin out when you get a job that actually pays the bills. Helpdesk is hell by repetition. DBA, Sysadmin, and maybe Programmer are hell by catching shit from all sides.
I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you that I, and many of the people here, were in your exact position. If you don't want to kill yourself yet, then you aren't finished. Take advantage of what's around you and then opportunities will open up.
Stay with it , its the people who who are longest in the job that become managers.
Hell, that's good enough reason to quit! Manager of a help desk means you have to take the calls of the screamers who escalate themselves above the first line monkeys, and you take the blame every time you're short staffed because Joe and Jane didn't show up 'cause they're hung-over again.
John
you could go back to school & work at the university while you're there. Generally, the IT Departments at universities are pretty big and they give you a good idea of anything you're going to encounter. At my university when someone shows initiative and they're competent and not a douche they pretty much always get the chance to prove themselves - ymmv, but I get the impression that quite a few universities are like this.
If you get on as a student, that's cool, part time, focus on school, show some initiative and try to get a full time job
If you get on as a full timer - awesome for you - most universities offer pretty good benefits, a lot of them include stuff like tuition wavers (full or partial - either way, you're going to end up paying less.)
and finally, working at a university IT department doesn't necessarily mean being in a support role -
our it department has an application development group, a services group (support), a project management group, a system administration/network admin group, a business group that handles contracts & such with other departments/companies, a research computing group (super computers), a dedicated security group, an administration group (payroll), and an HR group. Of those, sysadmins, services, and app devs have to do support. Everyone else is only rarely customer facing. The likelihood that you're going to get into the non-support groups right away is pretty slim, but movement has a tendency to be really fluid.
In case you didn't get the main point of this - the important thing is showing initiative. Show that you're interested in doing something new and interesting - show it by talking to people who do it already and trying to shadow them. Work with your bosses to get involved in projects, do things to get noticed. =)
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.
Engineerus Originalus:
At the very pinnacle of the IT world, these are the people who invent the things that the rest of the IT world relies on for THEIR jobs. The ones who truly deserve the word "engineer" in their job titles. They work for places like Intel, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. Getting here requires nothing less than a Master's degree.
Managerius Pseudogeek:
These people got a four-year CS degree and jumped straight into the job market. They lack the rigors of graduate school, and the practical knowledge that comes with real job experience and/or industry certifications. A lot of front-line software developers fall into this category, though all the really good ones actually belong to the species Scholarus Basementi (see below). In a healthy and growing economy, these folks can get jobs in a variety of fields, from webdev to DBA. In a down economy, they are frequently passed over by experienced people who are already in the industry and desperate to do whatever is necessary to stay there. It should be noted that this species belongs to the Genus Managerius because four-year degrees carry power in the corporate world, but these individuals lack the real intellectual rigor to rise to the top of their fields technically. This leaves middle management as the usual endpoint for their careers.
Genericus Certificans:
Probably the single largest species of IT professional, they bear a great superficial resemblance to Scholarus Basementi but lack the distinctive colors, odors, and sounds that Basemeni uses to distinguish itself when interacting socially. Many have two year Associate CS degrees, but the majority can be identified by the way they build their nests out of an accumulation of IT industry certifications. If you look inside their cubicle and find both Project+ AND "IBM Certified Solution Designer" certificates posted up then you know you've identified a Certificans. Older members of the species will still proudly display their Novell CNAs. Virtually all IT professionals with the word "Administrator" in their job title belong to this species, though the ones that self-identify as "BOFH" will desperately try to pass themselves off as Basmenti.
Scholarus Basmenti
This species is entirely self-taught, and their individual skill levels vary wildly. The less able members of this species frequently flock around the more advanced individuals in order to camouflage their weaknesses. These packs of Basmenti, led by an Alpha, are highly territorial and competitive. It is believed that their incessant desire to compete for control over FOSS projects or to get credit for "clever hacks" is rooted in their job insecurity. Those who are not unemployed are often found working entry-level helpdesk jobs. Those who do better economically are typically Alphas who went out and obtained a degree or an industry certification to validate their ample innate talents. Basmenti can easily be distinguished from Certificans when asked about their credentials. While Certificans will speak proudly of their achievements, Basmenti will ridicule their own credentials as "worthless paper" or boast about how they passed their exams hung over without bothering to study. Occasionally, especially talented Basmenti who also show aptitude forming healthy human relationships will be able to obtain Venture Capital and will eventually rise to the very top of the "Foo Chain." Once at this point, they will spend lots of the "Foo's" money to hire members of all three other species, who will look at the unschooled savant with naked resentment and envy.
I'm having a hard time understanding how someone with a CS or Software Engineering degree could end up in your position though. (Maybe I'm ignorant...)
I will give you the answer; the companies that hire BSc graduates in "IT" tend to be call centers and help desk type companies. In the 1990s you could go straight out of college and land an 80K per year job. These days you are lucky to land a help desk job. Of course the more successful people will have embellished their experiences on their resumes and with their references. The smart people often end up programming in their parents basement.
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.
my professional colleague in London is having to beat off recruiters
Dear god, is that how you get a recruiters attention in the UK? I hope he at least calls you the next morning or sends flowers or something.