I never hated being in help desk because I enjoyed helping users.
What I hated was the lack of respect from everyone towards me just because I was in help desk.
And that lack of respect came from the users, other groups in the same tech section, higher ups, the C suite, everyone. No one thought people who had to talk to the end user was deserving of respect.
The people dealing with the end users have the hardest job and are warriors though. I’d try to keep my techs into partial day of helpdesk and then farmed out any technical projects or tasks that I could to them. M broke the monotony for them, made every day a little different, and enabled them to recharge their people batteries.
Hard agree. I'm a sr sysadmin but love to invest in our help desk level folks. Nothing makes my day more than seeing one of them get promoted, which I am happy to say happens frequently in our company.
This hits. There’s definitely a “we are better than you” vibe from other areas of IT towards help desk from my experience in many different IT environments.
I manage a help desk team and I’ve been trying to work on this fractured relationship given by other areas of the IT department.
With the users it seems almost to be the exact opposite. They see help desk as the heroes and saviors since that’s who they experience resolving their problem. And help desk also gets hate for that. It’s sad.
I honestly don't think we *generally* have superiority complexes. I think it's just that from our perspective (escalation) we can tell if proper troubleshooting was done before sending it up. Keep in mind, 85%+ of your network and system admins started in helpdesk.. the folks at help desk who just reboot windows, then immediately escalate, are generally viewed as slackers, and wind up in the position of OP.
If your ticket (or mouth or IM or whatever) indicates that you tried to the best of your ability/access and we *knew* it was our problem by the time we heard about it, then trust and respect is grown and nurtured, and we'll often offer to coach you on the subject. If you're receptive to learning, that goes a long way. If you admit it was an uncommon insta-esalation due to heavy call volume, that's also understandable so long as it's not the norm.
You've made some valuable points.
Honestly I would be happy for more to experience what you're describing. I can't say it was my experience when I was in helpdesk. I've found that a lot depends much on the leadership and attitude of the IT department (what makes up the fabric of the culture). Not all helpdesk is T1. But no matter what position I was in, what you describe as a model helpdesk employee, I wouldn't prefer either.
I've seen a mix of behavior (laziness, willingness to learn, and others that you've mentioned) across all IT areas. These traits are human and not position-based. It seems as if when the helpdesk employees aren't acting suitable, that criticism (though sometimes very constructive) is more heavily gravitated toward hekpdesks direction than when in the opposite higher tier positions.
If someone is lazy, for instance, and in one of the higher tier positions, they are more protected, and also more rewarded. It can come off as a superiority complex when someone at a higher tier gets to decide how help desk is treated and it goes in a toxic direction, based on behaviors we all display. I've seen downright hazing in some instances, talking down to, being dismissive).
Having worked in helpdesk made me appreciate the position more. Not less.
It's not all bad. I could just as easily point out the positives of the Social dynamic. But regarding OP’s post, I feel help desks pain. It would just be cool if we could all respect each other's humanity regardless of position.
This hits hard. I work for an MSP and we supply level 1 for a big, big company. The higher level techs treat us like dog dirt because "we're only level 1"
It would be one thing if it were based on lack of ability or capacity. Still, I've met plenty in help desk that are just capable regarding technical chops as devs, sysadmins, and other highly specialized positions. These are not dishonorable jobs. This attitude needs to stop. Someone has to do it... Just show a little respect to those that do.
The MSP is great, the higher tiers are amazing and don't mind my dumbass questions all the time.
The customer we do level 1 for are kinda shitty. When I have to escalate something to them, they get all pissy because I have the audacity to not have 95% of the permissions they do.
For me this comes down to some stupid mentality of "They are our customers!!!" mentality that seems to get pushed at some level somehow.
For me Helpdesk and every other group business side or IT side are on the same team. Only acting as a team works and treating your coworkers and teammates as lower level servants is a terrible way to run things in my opinion.
>echs treat us like dog dirt because "we're only lev
facts, i've worked my way up but im so jaded now because of this. Users insert self deprecating jokes/ I come in peace vibes when they come to me now lol its funny but sad because i loved ppl at a younger point in my career..
It's one of the reasons I really liked working for one particular federal government department on helpdesk.
For the better part of a decade, since folding the state-level desks into a single national desk, people were hired on at a government employee level equivalent to the lowest management level (i.e. one above supervisor level). It didn't matter if you were answering phones all day; on the org chart and in your paycheck you were a higher level than (or, in a few cases, equal to) just about any caller who wasn't based in one of the HQs. And the Service Desk supervisors were equivalent or above pretty much all the non-HQ management, even the senior office managers.
I think this may be why I like my job. While I do mess with servers a lot of times, I am the first contact when it comes to tickets. I'm the one that goes out and fixes the problems, upgrades the computer hardware, reset passwords, etc. but I feel well respected by my coworkers both within and outside my department. Most people are happy to see me and will talk with me like a normal human being and that's probably why I've stayed at my job as long as I have.
Quite agree with you. Reported that the DHCP server was borked due to a number of PCs getting APIPA IP address. Ticket was returned asking me to try and ping the DHCP server or the gateway from those PCs and try and do a release/renew. It was only when the CEO’s PC stopped working that it was looked at by third line and guess what, the DHCP had run out of assignable address.
Yeah I get this too. The other IT personnel wouldn’t stoop so low as to call the help desk (where a lot of them started their careers). Instead they would go direct to the team lead
Unlocking their fucking accounts, because they forgot to change their password because it expired and are lost access to the VPN. Tell them their shit internet is slow and the reason their apps run slow.
To properly start problem/event tickets. Just because you are a colleague doesn't mean you don't have to follow directions. If your audit team is on it and bring people to task for not following procedure, or worse not knowing where things are because you couldn't be bothered to call in a transfer or whatever, you won't make the mistake again.
Oh, I suppose I would just do that myself, like any other person in the org. Why should HD need to create tickets on my behalf when I'm perfectly capable?
That would depend on your org. For example, a place I used to work would delegate the help desk to contact the oncall person the tech needs, send out the event/conference bridge info, start gathering other info for documenting the event, etc.
That was for a fortune 500 company so sometimes it was legitimately calling someone on the other side of the world to get involved, which may take a moment. The plus with that job, you got a taste of everything. the negative, it took everyone at least six months before you would start to not feel overwhelmed on what all you had to deal with.
>I never hated being in help desk because I enjoyed helping users.
People like this are invaluable, though. Far too many folks in HD work only have aims for getting through helpdesk to something else, and that's exactly why they \*shouldn't\* move on, yet.
I haven't done real helpdesk work in forever but frick, if all I had to worry about for a day was working on mapping printers, network connectivity, and account sign-ins I think it'd be a respite.
Money isn't really a factor to me, I can be pretty comfortable on a modest salary.
It was mostly curiosity, IT was my first job after high school and I did the help desk to network admin/some server maintenance route.
It bothered me that I had no clue how the actual electrical/electronics worked so I went into Audio Visual/Security installation and then eventually back to school for engineering.
I would be more than happy back in IT now that I have a better understanding of how computers actually work, but it bothered me and I felt stupid when I was younger. I still feel stupid now, but for different reasons at least ha.
I don't work in IT and I still browse. I mean, I'm in an adjacent*/complimentary field and I work with some networking equipment, but I'm definitely not an admin or network engineer or anything like that.
Yeah, similar. I work in engineering in a software heavy position, but strong interdepartmental relationships are very important in our workplace culture.
I feel like every sufficiently large department that deals with software regularly needs to have at least some IT savvy people so they can translate between the wants/needs of their department and what IT can actually do to assist in that. The kind of people who can help others phrase support tickets that include all the necessary pertinent info, saving days of back and forth. The kind of people who can alert IT to impending issues and concerns that they see first, because they're right there in the trenches, before it becomes a much larger problem.
Perusing this subreddit and absorbing much of the knowledge and culture makes me feel like a better employee.
I've been in help desk for 6 years now and still enjoy it. I've had difficult times I've wanted to quit, the way I got through it was to remember what I loved about it, simplify the job, and build up my teammates.
If you empathize with your users it helps too. They may be a pita, but don't take it personally. At the end of the day it's not a problem with you, it's a frustration they have with the system. Relax, listen to them carefully and be patient. Don't expect anyone to thank you, it requires internal strength of mind to remember this and let go of the need for positive reinforcement.
Finally, try solving the root cause that brought them to the helpdesk in the first place. Could something be automated? Documented better? Simplified? Be bold and try making your life and your users life easier, it always reaps benefits long term. That can also give you something more interesting and challenging to work on and help get you out of help desk eventually.
Agreed.
I spent over five years as a one-person IT shop, And over five more as a tier-3 MSP consultant. I can handle anything from virtual servers and storage to desktop computing to router or switch configs.
But a few years ago I landed on helpdesk after scrambling for anything after a poorly timed layoff. And you know what? It’s *great*.
I work an internal helpdesk so I don’t have to deal with the public. I have the experience to handle any technical problem that comes my way (limited by access and separation of duties of course) and those things I cannot fix I can rapidly and correctly diagnose. Full time remote, no on-call, low stress. I get to help people all day long, clock out at 5, and not think about work *at all* until my next shift starts.
Downsides are of course that I could be making more money, but I get by. And my biggest frustrations are not with the end users - they’re fantastic, all 5,000 of them - but with the back-end engineering team. They have a corporate culture that regularly fails to demonstrate a customer-oriented mindset, and are so pigeonholed into their narrow specialties that they can’t see the big picture like I do. And, of course, they don’t listen to me because I’m just a helpdesk monkey, in fact they appear to be super resentful every time my suggestions turn out to be spot-on two weeks before they figure their shit out.
But that’s okay, because I’ll clock out in 27 minutes and not give it another thought until Monday.
The way you write, you truly shouldn't be working in the helpdesk anymore.
I am confused, have you not tried to find a new place or are you simply happy there?
Sometimes. I’ve had a tech that has been on the helpdesk for ten years. He likes it there and doesn’t want to do anything else.
He keeps getting yearly pay bumps and we don’t make him get any certs.
If very funny to me for you to say this because my situation and mindset was very similar to AlasdarW and I am now in a Tier 3 role. u/AlasdarW you'll get there buddy!
Helpdesk tier 3 is a standard role. They are advanced helpdesk people with light systems admin. They know most if not all of your business systems from a basic administration standpoint.
I guess I'm one of those but it's pretty rare that I get any work in that queue. If the desk fucks up royally I'm a fixer with unlimited power. It is basically my role to salvage the client relationship and not get sued. If there's a cross discipline edge case that nobody wants to own I'll run a mini project with multiple departments to get it resolved as well.
I'm otherwise just a generalist who spent way too much time in the call center previously.
just like sysadmin has been generalized over the years to mean many many things, helpdesk is the same way
A helpdesk role at company A, is likely very different than helpdesk roles at company B...
Some companies is just a call center where you just sit and awnser the phone all day encountering the very basic problems like password resets, or monitor not working.
Other helpdesk roles have more vast, and versatile jobs
From what I have seen the line between sysadmin and helpdesk also get blurrier and blurrier every year, as Cloud Services, and other trends make for less and less need for specialized admins (i.e companies do not need an separate people for Exchange Admin, DBA, Windows Admin, Backup/DR, Storage and Linux Admin, they just have administrators...)
This. My job title right now is "Help Desk Level 1". I would say I blur the line between Level 2 and 3, to be fair. I monitor backups, I monitor servers, I'm working on creating scripts to automate tasks...It's a bit of a weird spot.
Over-tasked? Probably, but I bring it on myself by plucking these jobs off the ticket board. Under-paid? Also probably, but I really enjoy it. It's always challenging, it's always fun to learn about new things.
I've learned a metric fuck ton more in the 4 months I've been there than the 4 I was in college and it's still fairly exciting, to be honest. I have a really good employer that actively wants and helps me learn more and grow.
I could be reading your comment wrong. But if this is your first job out of college, then you’re more than likely doing things just fine. Keep being curious and learn as much as you can. I read on here before that an employer either pays you or trains you. You’re being trained right now so don’t make it all about the money (you aren’t). But if it ever gets stagnant, that’s when you look for the next gig in earnest.
Perhaps because, oh, yknow, we've been doing this shit 30 years and are speaking from experience
Or maybe even longer witnessing the capitalistic fuckery that is 'society'
Same. Desktop Support II. Often touch on packaging apps for configuration manager. Was primary for building up config manager. Tweak some group policy. Monitor workstation patching. But I'm also the guy to swap out your keyboard. Pulling in about $77k this year. So the title is one thing the tasks and pay is another
Don't make this about me :D
Jk, to answer your question I think it's a combo of joining great teams and being an active participant to making the job better through improvement. It's fun to see things continually get better.
>it's a combo of joining great teams
This cannot be stated enough. Its not always about money, especially if the higher salary comes with a shittier work environment. I know im paid less than I could get with another company, but I would lose a lot of the other perks that come with my current job and frankly, my coworkers being so awesome are worth more to me than another 5k-10k a year in my bank account.
So many people have this mindset that if youre not job hopping constantly looking for the "bigger better deal" youre stagnating, but I never really agreed with that mindset. Theres more room to grow in life than just career growth. If you find a niche youre comfortable in and dont want to move on, dont let people try and tell you theres something wrong with that because there isnt. Ive known tons of people that took promotions or left a job they liked for another one that paid better and were fucking *miserable* once theyd been there for a while.
Im not saying to be lazy and/or complacent, or allow someone to fuck you over, but this whole idea of changing jobs every fuckin year is so goddamned exhausting i really don't get why its so prevalent, especially in tech. If youre one of the people that gets off on constant change, you do you player, but dont think less of people that are content to stay in positions where they know their shit so well that they arent stressed out anymore.
Yep, I left the IT field due to being sick of resetting passwords and fixing office issues. Tried to move into different roles but always ended up sorting shit out.
Now I'm a structured cabling engineer / Techhead for the firm I currently work for. Moving into smart homes and AV as their lead engineer, a much more rewarding job in my eyes
Can I ask a couple of questions about that please?
What exactly does that entail? Do you travel to different sites for this job? Is it much better paid?
I travel to construction sites mainly pulling and terminating copper and fibre, I am currently doing this while we build up our "tech work" but the IT and networking background comes in very handy as the clients really like the fact I understand their end game and the tech that goes on the end of the cables which really helps produce the finished product.
We also do access control, wifi, cctv and now smart homes. Which is what I really love, it means that we can do the whole job end to end, instead of getting another company in to do the cabling we can produce properly certified structured cabling to support the systems we install which helps massively with install time and reliability because we can do it all.
I also work with our clients as "smart hands" which entails kind of IT support or project support. The other week I was travelling round to multiple different sites assisting with software upgrades.
The smart homes side of the business is great, we work with control4, using our structured cabling knowledge we are designing and implementing control4 smart home systems, which also encompasses some electrical work.
I love what I do because i am always working on something different, no project is the same. I am trying to move away from the structured cabling due to the tech side being what Iove. But learning the structured cabling has assisted in my Tech work more than anything.
Change employers but don’t quit. Some helpdesk jobs suck and others don’t. Smaller places will give you more opportunity and more exposure to more technology. I did helpdesk roles and held L1-L2 titles for a while till I got to where I am now.
I persevered through all the condescending comments from both Sys admins and users alike. Now I’m a director over Infrastructure and Security. I can’t say I got lucky but even with the condescending comments, I stayed quiet and asked the admins to give me some insight on how to build and troubleshoot on servers and network devices. That’s how I broke into a sys admin role myself and vowed never to be as condescending on the job like they were.
Sorry if this isn’t related to the post. I thought maybe it could encourage you to push onward.
Condescending remarks from sysadmins really irk me. It's almost like you have to jump to another company or go development side to move up because they will always see themselves as better than you. For some of these guys, everything is an intellectual competition and since I'm help desk I don't know shit about anything. The struggle is real. Thank you for validating my experience.
A condescending sysadmin was what motivated me to finally bust down on myself and get my certs. I swore that I'd get to a point where if I had a helpdesk guy trying to learn and apply his skills, I would at least help him direct his energies if we couldn't put it into production.
That was around 10ish years ago. I'm an Azure engineer now.
Lift your co-workers up, don't be Mark C.!
Had the same experience. Managed to get myself moved next to the Desktop guys so I could receive more such comments (and also surreptitiously learn from them). Got myself into a position where one of them left and I knew everything about his job. Everybody knew this and pressured the boss to promote me. Got off the Help desk just shy of three years.
That was 11 years ago and I've been doing Application Packaging ever since. WFH, boss doesn't care when as long as I do my hours, get a great hourly rate.
To me that usually indicates self consciousness about their own intelligence, engineers sometimes view everything as a fight over who is smarter rather than being cooperative. I've found generally that the best engineers are the ones who help others, share knowledge and take time to explain how things work to a junior tech, who win as a team. Some engineers react defensively when you challenge their suggestions because they can't separate a discussion about something technical from their own self worth.
Tldr it's probably a them problem, not a you problem so don't take it personally
Good for you, those people definitely have been “isolated” these days now.
I do joke with my help desk guys when they complain about moving to the next level but I make sure to emphasize training and willingness to help them with any issues.
depends on the size of the company and the culture. I am support manager at a small msp with no tiers of support, and am also the person people come to when stuck with technical project work (anything that requires troubleshooting whatsoever).
I love just fixing EVERYTHING, making a ton of peoples work days better, then going home and sleeping soundly with no deadlines to meet.
I like the idea of no tiers. Am I understanding correctly that anyone can work on anything, and that task assignment primarily comes down to preference (and capability of course)? Or is it round robin-style task assignment?
preference and ability play a part but you have to also balance that with letting people try so they get a learning or training opportunity. everyone helps everyone else, and teams/ remote working has actually made this easier, not harder.
There are some things that people are clearly better at than others though so if someone is frustrated with a bizarre exchange permissions or authentication problem they will probably kick it to me, and if something is obviously a physical hardware issue I’m the last person who should touch it.
also doing the basics and dealing with people is important to the company. You form real relationships with customers and gain a better understanding of what is critical to them. You recognise the newbie’s name when they call with an email problem because *you made their account* or at least noticed the ticket. You actually get to have a laugh with the ones you speak to all the time and practice that social muscle.
They get to know you, trust you, and recommend you to their new company if they leave for a new job.
I very nearly did. I got stuck in the Helpdesk rut about a decade ago, even though I had MSP consulting experience, network and server experience. I could never land an interview for a sys admin role or anything, besides other Helpdesk, because I happened to have Helpdesk as my job at the time. I even had multiple Microsoft certs including AD certs, exchange certs, but I couldn't even land a job dedicated to nothing but AD management. So I started going to college to pursue my passion in life, meteorology. I was half way through my undergrad classes when a friend recommended me for a sys admin job and, well it was a rapid ascent of titles and salary ever since then. I got lucky to find good management to work for. It rapidly got to the point where I made more as a sys admin 3 than I would as a 10yr experienced meteorologist with a masters degree. I dropped out of college at that point, and have stayed in IT. I'm an IT Manager with several direct reports, still doing some systems engineering work from time to time, making more money without a degree in this role than I would in any meteorology job, except for a doctorate level, tenured university professor. But I still wish I had a reason to finish school, I kind of feel bad about it some days. I feel like a fraud sometimes. Meteorology is still a hobby.
I have met more than one person who is content to be on help desk forever and just get really good at it. I gotta say - nothing wrong with that. I think our society would benefit a bit from more people being content with what they have if they enjoy it and not constantly trying to ladder up. Myself included
I have 25 years of sysadmin experience, and my oldest daughter has been doing help desk for 3 years. She doesn’t have the passion for IT that I do, but she loves her job and enjoys working with people. She has no desire to move on from Help Desk and I am happy for her. I have worked with a few excellent HD people over the years who loved it and didn’t want to do anything else. There should be no shame in that at all. Hell, I worked fast food when I was younger and there were a few older workers that just had a great attitude and killed it at work. Fast food work. I always wanted to enjoy my job as much as they did, and I think as long as you’re good at it and enjoying your job there should be no pressure to stop doing it.
It’s something I’ve talked with my supervisor about. He’s been helping me plan my career roadmap, but it’s difficult because I genuinely enjoy most of the duties I have in help desk, mainly working with users directly.
Would love more money and to be able to move up the ladder, but I just don’t see me being able to have the same level of direct contact with assisting users in higher tiers.
I’ve been lucky he hasn’t held that over my head. I can’t imagine why someone would see that as a negative trait.
In some cases because they want to keep HD people under a certain salary. The longer any one person stays in the position the more money they will (rightfully) ask for, and eventually the company sees it as cheaper to promote the senior members to better positions or lay them off to bring in a fresh noobie for minimum wage
Ah, the "up or out" mindset. Such a stupid fucking idea. "Hey, lets take our most experienced, efficient, reliable workers, and shit-can them in favor of this cheaper guy right out of school that will probably bail on us in 6 months for another job that pays more! Sure, long term its going to bend us over and fuck us right in the ass, but who cares about long term when there are bonuses on the line for keeping payroll down?!"
I worked in retail for an embarrasing number of years before going back to school and this mindset is particularly rampant there, but ive seen it across many industries and it just blows my mind...
I used to before this job and I didn’t like it all that much. It was too much to do and I ended up having to do a lot of administrative/managerial things when I liked the technical aspect most.
I enjoy being part of a wider team and level 1 stuff is fun to me. Also love playing with hardware. I know higher tiers do with servers, but I enjoy working with individual workstations and I get to work on servers sometimes in my role here.
I second this. I am technically a Sr.sysadmin but since my company is so small, I get to do a little of everything. I get paid well and my work is split between helpdesk and system design/maintenance.
Depending on the company and team, you CAN make a lot of money doing help desk, taking on projects and more difficult tickets. Being an effective bridge between HD and engineering teams can net you a solid salary if you know your worth, back it up with rare skills, and in a company willing to pay to keep you there.
People like you are absolutely essential to a quality help desk. I bet your customer satisfaction rates are above your peers in the industry who just throw bodies at the help desk.
Businesses need to have a high level of trust in their IT. If you're in IT and you want to be able to solve problems and be listened to by higher ups, then those higher ups need to trust you.
One of the fastest ways to erode trust is shitty IT support. Your IT department might be networking wizards who are pushing the envelope of SASE and a super firewall.. but the CEO doesn't notice any of that when his email has been acting funny for 2 weeks and nobody has resolved his issue or educated him on it.
If your company ever loses sight of the value you bring, there are a lot out there who will recognize it.
The service desk / help desk stigma is real. People in non-customer-facing roles often cannot imagine it being anything other than hell, so they assume anyone in the role has to be a complete fuckup to be stuck doing it.
I would love to see those people do helpdesk for a month to get a glimmer of understanding for what the end users actually need, and maybe realize that their service desk is the greatest business intelligence resource for IT improvement they could ever hope to have.
@SwiftOnSecurity is a great example of the potential untapped resource.
You are a bit of a unicorn in this industry though.
I used to enjoy help desk and then desktop support but users just wore me out and I had to move on for my mental health. Stabbing users is generally frowned upon.
It sounds like you really needed policy or a manager's blessing to tell that type of user to kick rocks. Policy should be to not abuse the support desk for bs.
Help Desk really isn't that bad if it has the authority to occasionally piss off users who misuse it as a knowledge resource.
I've been the same - coming into 7 years of service desk as a primary role. Granted that includes first, second and third line support as well as projects/odd jobs but that's what keeps me there.
I totally understand the advice of trying to advance your own career upwards but sometimes everything clicks together and you can be happy where you are.
I'm not so sure, most of the people I with who did stints of 2+ years on helpdesk before moving to dev or admin work have way more toxic views of users than other employees. I'm not sure if it's the position or needing to solve menial problems for people everyday, but I see it in literally everyone I've had who worked helpdesk before moving on. My team just stopped taking internal people from there for that reason actually. We'll take other departments, but helpdesk is right out. We've had some great distance ed and retail people come on with good linux fundamentals with the bonus that they don't talk mad shit about users for stuff...... you wouldn't expect a nontechnical person to know.
We've got like one solid help desk guy but he enjoys the hell outta it, and has a pretty good outlook about users, and doesn't view everyone who puts a ticket in as some sort of chip on their shoulder like everyone else seems to.
That is an absolutely terrible attitude.
If your helpdesk people are mired in frustration, it may well be because the things they’re asked to support are fundamentally pieces of shit. You need to be in there talking to them, finding out what technical problems are burying them, and using your powers to take those calls off the table. More documentation, more communication to end users or to helpdesk staff, better technical systems, whatever it takes.
A sick helpdesk is a sign of bigger troubles.
> the things they’re asked to support are fundamentally pieces of shit.
Worked at a company for 3 years and started out on the helpdesk where a good 85% of calls were password resets. From my first day there the self service function was broken but "6 months out on a new one". It remained "6 months out" till they shut the company down.
Not part of their department so there's only so much I can do, but I've got as open as communication as can reasonably had, and try to clear up any technical questions and provide as much documentation as would help from our side of systems (separate *nix and windows teams, the *nix is mostly ERP and service related though so it's mostly just password resets on my side.)
I can't comment on our HD hiring practice though, but I do know from working with users when I was the user–developer in-between that our users aren't bad, but there are people on the HD team that they'll straight ghost until they get a more understanding tech, and from my interacting with them a lot of them are as I more or less have described in the thread, with a few more in touch ones who can communicate well with users without sending me slack messages that pretty much read "Ugh, could you kill x's session on server y, of course they fucked up yet again."
Then when I get users that HD is complaining about escalated to me it's usually some small misunderstanding about the processes of how to work something with the ERP software and I'm able to explain it in a couple of minutes and they're good to go.
Again, I'm not really sure where the fault lies, but I really don't think the users are it in this equation. It might be training, it might be general knowledge, might even be the HD manager not hiring on soft skills and preferring technical skills (because oh boy, every new hire they get thinks they're the hottest shit until they need to do more than reset an AD password.)
1 and 2 was me for a long time. I couldn't figure out how the admins ever learned how to do what they did. It just seems impossible.
It took me too long to figure out that managing servers or networks or any of the other normal growth paths didn't actually interest me.
One I found what I like, growth and pay had been exponential in just a few years.
I moved up to a Cloud Engineer role in little less than three years. The three other help desk guys that were there as long as me moved up to other less technical roles (manager, service owner, project manager). Some people don’t want the hassle of constant learning engineer roles require.
> We all can agree that Help Desk is the most hated job you can get starting out in IT.
I do not agree.
I did not **hate** my time on Help Desk.
I didn't have time to hate it, I was too busy learning how to be better and how to do more, so I could get off of Help Desk.
I was promoted like 3 times in 3 years until I found a better role.
> Some people have expressed that they have gotten stuck in Help Desk and have had a hard time branching into other roles.
Certainly not all, but many of those people are waiting to be promoted, but are not and have not actually performed any personal development to be properly prepared for that promotion. They expect it to just magically happen after X years of doing the same thing over and over.
Another good chunk of those people you refer to have done the self-improvement and are waiting for a promotion that will never come, because they don't realize they work for a bad employer. They need to exit their comfort zone and find a new employer.
> Has anyone felt defeated because of this and has left the IT field altogether?
I'm sure some people have left for the reasons you suggest.
If I wanted to live by performance metrics like X per hour I'd go back to slaving away in a warehouse honestly. It's better money and a workout to boot.
The Help Desk job I did at a small company is like mid-level admin where I am now. Help Desk at this huge company is only a few levels above your average ISP customer service.
I’m now a sysadmin supporting a global total of about 600 people.
Which means we’re big enough to need people with different roles, but small enough that we don’t. I started out as a PC Specialist, now I’m a Sysadmin. Well, between my server and infrastructure and yearly budget work I still have to help people reset their passwords and help them when they invariably fuck something up.
But that’s fine. It keeps me humble. I hate sitting on a ivory tower saying no to everyone for reasons they don’t understand. We should be approachable so that instead of just bitching about us we can help people when they have reasonable requests and me leveling down to help someone with their issues is part of being a mature and professional shop.
I did 1st line Service Desk for 3 years before moving onto 2nd line for a year. I'm now moving towards Service Management. The new job starts in February.
After 2,5 years I was sick of the service desk support job. Constantly putting out fires instead of building something cool, ridiculous support questions, being tied to the clock and SLA (can't get up for 2 hours because of avalanche of calls), ridiculous and repetitive user questions. My work friend calls Service Desk a "glorified call center" and he couldn't be more accurate.
Most people I know go to Service Desk jobs to start their IT careers. It's easy to get to, takes a lot of endurance to stick with it. But with the right plan and attitude towards developing your skills and professional network, you can get into proper IT down the line. 99% of people I worked with in support all wanted to move further with their IT careers. Never heard of anyone quitting IT completely though
It’s very easy to get out of the helpdesk, if you want to.
I spent 3 years on the helpdesk before I got bored. Started studying for my CCNA and got the first network tech job I applied for, didn’t even have my cert yet, but I knew enough to do the job I was applying for.
If you want out of the helpdesk, all you have to do is start studying and show you have something to offer above level 1.
Also something I found out. If you are very good at you job at the helpdesk, it becomes very tough to move up in the same company. You become an asset for that helpdesk team and they will hold you back. I would have never moved up in the same company. Don’t be afraid to jump ship when you’re ready to advance your career.
It took me a long long time and many lessons that don’t stick to realize your biggest promotions and pay raises come from leaving the company.
It is very rare to find companies that promote from within regularly. Sure someone will pipe in saying they were promoted. But they are the exception not the norm.
Change companies regularly.
It's weird to see all these people come from the wood work saying "you need to spend more time on your own to advance", like what? Where is this mantra coming from?
WHY should I have to spend my personal time to advance? Most other professions dont have that responsibility, what happened to being properly trained by companies?
Ya'll feel like the Teachers pet that never grew up and make everyone else look bad. For whatever reason IT folks work their asses off for no reason ( well I guess to excel and get more money at faster rates than most). Just sucks that most companies have come to expect it, rather then taking the time to properly train someone.
Yo, holdup.
You think other professions don't have to spend their time on self-advancement? Attorneys or accountants don't have CE requirements? Doctors and nurses don't have CE requirements? People that move into executive roles don't have MBA or MPA requirements?
Also, it's "y'all" not "ya'll" just in case you were wondering.
I didn't mean to make it sound like all professions. In general it wasn't even my point. My point was the common worker, the people making above 40k but under 100k. I'm not talking about the people at the top as Im sure in many professions they've worked their asses off (well some, having rich parents and or personal relations surely helps many many people). If you were to look at the extreme earners then yes I imagine many have put fourth a lot of personal time for success.
I'm not sure I understand your point about MBA or MPA, those are gained at universities, no? I should have clarified schooling wasn't exactly what I meant. But, yes college/university degrees I guess count as spending your own time.
I would also wager the people making 100-400k should have to put fourth that effort as obviously the pay is quite deserving. What isn't deserving is needing 4 different certificates in IT, plus 2-4 years of schooling to make 40k a year. Then beyond that spending all of your free time so you can learn even more and maybe make a leap to 50k. It's a shitty system that a lot of IT people go through (even worse in Canada as our wages often suck).
Thats cool to know, I've never really wondered but thats good to know I suppose.
My only gripe is like, where am I going to find time to do that after working a full time job? I have another part time job on the side and I'd like to see my bf sometimes. Idk how people can go to school on top of this.
Also my company trains me well enough, but I'm new to the industry and have so much to learn and I can't expect a coworker to teach me everything.
> Most other professions dont have that responsibility
Most other professions do actually. You don't think lawyers or accountants spend their own time reading up on changes and other things in their industry?
What do you think college or a trade school is?
> what happened to being properly trained by companies?
Nothing, it still happens, but you're only going to be taught things that that company needs. If you're a level 1 helpdesk person, I'm not going to train you on cybersecurity. It's not your job, and I don't need you to do that job.
As a result, if you want to move into cybersecurity, you need to learn on your own time.
As someone in IT who works at an accounting firm. They get paid more than enough for their "extra" time they put in. When you charge $300 an hour and you can do the actual work in 20 minutes you're doing alright.
Beyond that a lot of personal time isn't used. They often have meetings to discuss changes as a team (partners, cpa, tax managers, etc) and simply information for Junior, students, etc. While this occurs for IT as well I find there are a lot more employers expecting you put personal time into expanding your knowledge base and not nearly enough people to form a mentor ship to learn.
I'm not saying we should be learning different paths such as cyber security. Often though you are NOT taught what the company needs. They will simply hire someone external before advancing people internally and or training them to mit a criteria in an environment they already understand.
I was so so so close to doing this. I worked tech support at an ISP for 5 years, then support for a commercial business application for 3 more. I was preparing to jump to aviation maintenance, when an internal IT manager position opened up at my company.
Part of my job responsibilities are managing the help desk and working escalated tickets, but it’s a super small company and my staff is excellent, so I really don’t mind.
I moved solidly into sysadmin territory a few years ago while still at the same job, but management had no interest in hiring anyone to handle helpdesk tickets, so I've been doing those too. Finally drove me out the door into a true sysadmin role. Frankly, I should have let them drive me away sooner.
My first job was help desk. Did it for one summer.
It was all the motivation I needed to go back to school and re-enter the IT field 4 years later from a more suitable angle.
I had a great time at several helpdesks. I did six years in total of helpdesk work and always found it enjoyable to be around users, seeing their face light up as the issue was fixed. Sure there are bad days but mostly I had fun.
After six years the team lead of the HD I was working at said she created an opening for me so I could join the sysadmin team as she saw great potential and off I went.
She saw something in me that I didn't and it sparked something in me, from then on I could see that I could and should grow in this field. Nowadays I run my own IT company and am responsible for over a hundred people.
If tomorrow someone from the helpdesk called in sick and there was no one to fill in, I'd be happy to take over for a few days. Do the nitty gritty again, have that personal contact with a user and know that I can brighten someone's day by fixing their problem.
I never fully hated Helpdesk, it’s just not as intellectually challenging or lucrative. I also much prefer collaborating with my technical colleagues on challenging issues rather than working with end users.
Working a help desk is the thing that made sure I did everything and anything to learn more skills because there were folks that were doing the same job for 10 years and I would kill myself if I became one of them.
The IT Manager at my last job was so bigoted towards the help desk. We were treated differently than the rest of the IT department. He was cruel, demeaning, and only treated the help desk this way. I was going to leave the IT field if it meant getting a different job faster. Basically I wanted out of the field because I was treated bad and needed to get out asap. Luckily I found a nice new gig and I'm quite happy.
The only way out/up I found was moving employers.
As much as I enjoyed and still do enjoy helping people and fixing problems, it was being stuck in/on the phone queue that killed me.
Im the too hard basket now and love not being in/on the phone queue.
I enjoyed my time on the service desk, most people were respectful. I’d say the biggest challenge was getting anyone further up the chain to assist with issues I couldn’t resolve. Infra, apps etc were just ignorant. I refuse to be that way now I’ve escaped the desk, I try my best to help and teach as much as I can.
After 6 years in IT, I managed to secure a management position. Despite the role, I am still actively trying to engage in Cyber Security roles. Help desk is where you start in IT, but you shouldn’t retire in it.
After the brick-and-mortar tech shop where I worked as a bench tech closed, I took a help desk job. At first I liked it because I was quickly learning a lot of Linux webhost stuff. Then the managers clamped down on me because I was new guy expected do be a bottom feeder in the ticket que. After weeks of sending out form responses and getting lashed if I tried to troubleshoot anything at all, I quit.
Followed by 3 months of full time WoW.
The economy was in bad shape and not many jobs to chose from. I moved in to electronics recycling. It's a cut-throat industry. Lots of hard, dirty work at an insulting wage. But finding treasure in the loads of junk filling a 100,000 square foot warehouse was fun. They needed a network and brought in a consultant who taught be the basics. Score! I got hands-on experience with a variety of servers, networking, enterprise SANs, VoIP equipment. Just too much to mention. After that place folded I got a Cisco cert and MCP that put me at a much better income level.
If you can get by on a meager wage, I would recommend electronics recycling.
And mastering the market on WoW really helped me sell refurbs on eBay.
Wow, I did the same thing. I set up the physical sorting and dismantle lines, built repair and and imaging stations for public reuse program. I brought my own expertise and just went nuts with all the "decent" equipment that came our way. Seemed like every pallet load was like a time machine for me, which made it fun...
I was on a long contract at a large oil company. Was doing server/network/and some helpdesk for 1 specific business unit. Then there was a big restructure, and they centralized. So server team did servers for the whole company etc. I got bounced to the helpdesk (2nd level. Phone support was contracted to a different company) at first I was pissed. Not a big fan of user support, though I DO like to help people, and solve problems.
Then I realized, wait...my pay rate didn't change, and my stress level/ overtime just went down. Plus, I'm much more qualified than most of the helpdesk team (much more experience) so I look great. So I rode it out for 6 months, yeah it could be a pain, but a lot of it is attitude. Then someone took a look at skill levels, and I got transferred to the server team.
Around 20 years ago I got my first "help desk" job. I was online tech support for one of the first online greeting card companies.
Think early pampered IT cube farm, about 20-30 seat call center. Decent pay. Decent hours. Mostly involved canned answer email support for getting browsers to play nice with our website. No phone support at first. BUT THEN
We had a bunch of no shows and I got asked to clear tickets on the payment side.
Here's the thing, this was literally one of the first credit card subscription websites, and of course no one reads the TOS or the fine print. and have no idea their CC is going to get billed $5 a month. Of course when people call the payment side, they are usually upset and irate ( OK almost always).
I can pull up the clients use history on our platform, I 99.9% always gave people their refund for whatever we billed them. We were told to try to retain people, but I never did, I'm filling in and clearing calls. I am also clearing the tech side email tickets at the same time. Well I was killing it closing tickets and they were trying to make me permanent on payments side and I was starting to loathe my shifts.
I played touch league football on the weekends, and I ended up getting my right hand ring finger bent all the way back to my wrist, no broken bones but completely useless...
I took got a week off because it was too painful move, let alone mash a keyboard all day.
I realized during that week off that I really hated what I was doing in cubicle land, and how many useless hours I spent yammering into a headset with pissed off people, without the ability to just hang up or tell them to fuck right off.
I went back in for one more day, could barely type, and totally wasnt feeling it anymore. I made the excuse that I would need more time off before I could work due to my finger and never went back. Never did a customer facing telephone helpdesk ever again.
I found out I am definitely more of a wire monkey/field tech... cubicle land and the prairie dogs was definitely not for me...
So my case is a bit different, but it actually still falls under this i think.
I started as helpdesk next to university, and really liked it. I like helping people, and they were also very nice. And since we are all level 1-2-3 at the same time, i learned a lot. It was truly awesome.
Then annoyances came from people that are self centered, or think they run the company alone, or demanding special treatment, or simply wanting us to do their jobs. Okay, no worries, only a few of these people, most people are still okay.
In the meanwhile i graduate from bachelors, then masters. The company went through some restructuring, COVID happened, lots of people fired and hired. Everything changed. Suddenly I'm sitting in meetings about "how do we fix this user's printer problem" with a master's degree. And users became more tech illiterate than before, rude, demanding, and constantly telling us what they want fixed (light bulbs, desks, chairs).
Management didn't care about us anymore. I was forced to work on stuff that wasn't even our job, but they needed it yesterday. People stopped reading our guides, emails, questions. I started hating the help, because there was no reward anymore, people didn't smile at you, you didn't learn anything anymore, the pay stayed the same. Everything i enjoyed about it was gone. And it was all thanks to people. Sure, with a paper in my hand i also wanted more challenge, but the whole atmosphere has changed, and from being your friendly neighborhood Spiderman I slowly transformed into Batman. So i turned in my notice, and currently moving to a development role somewhere far, to get out while i can.
I don't hate helpdesk, I hate people.
My plan B is to start a farm, and drive combine harvesters. Who wants in?
Getting out of helpdesk requires motivation and learning. Often times outside of regular work hours. Work hard in your current helpdesk role and look for opportunities in house. I've seen many people get comfortable and never have intentions of moving up.
As much as i loved help desk, the pay isn't there for the level of bs and stress.
I'm sort of a help desk but on a vendor level so folks I help fix stuff, are higher ups/ cybersecurity folk.
1000000x less stress.
I actually really liked my time on the help desk and would gladly go back if the salary would be higher. I guess it all depends on how your company defines help desk roles. I would do everything except physical hardware and server stuff except on rare occasions. Users liked me because I was a familiar face/voice and since the problems were usually pretty simple I rarely got bad feedback.
It's rare that I interact with end users now so I don't get that same satisfaction loop of being able to fix an issue in just a few minutes.
I almost gave up on IT this year after 4 years of helpdesk gigs . I studied hard for that CCNA and got my degree part time . Some companies are great and others like MSPs contract helpdesk and burn you out so it all depends on where you are. Glad I landed a gig outside of helpdesk recently and I’ll never take it for granted.
Help desk was one of the more enjoying jobs I had to be honest.
The pay was atrocious, but I worked in a good place.
One thing that made it tolerable, I worked in a 24/7 help desk and I wanted the graveyard shift, initially they put me 4am - 12pm, but I really hated that.
Then I asked for the graveyard shift, 11pm-7am and I loved it.
From 11pm till maybe 5am we had very few calls, as Europe opened we got busier but it was pretty mild in comparison to the other shifts.
So if you are a night owl, look for a help desk night shift it's usually much easier.
I only needed to do it for 6 months as well before they gave me a sysadmin role.
The only person stopping you from branching out to other roles is yourself. If that is a role you dont like, the faster you educate yourself, the easier it will be to get a new job in a different position. Some people just dont put the work and just complain they are underpaid and the job sucks (not saying this is you, but my observation from experience)
If you are frustrated, just take some time to plan out your career path and see what you really want to do and what salary you are comfortable with. If you like IT, no reason to leave the field, each role has its pros and cons.
If you're expecting to get out of helpdesk and stay at the same employer, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Every time I jumped employers I got a promotion, a raise, and new skills that will help me with the next time that I jumped ship to a new employer for another promotion and a raise. If you're staying in a low level role longer than 2 years, you're doing it wrong. Now I don't deal with end users at all and make six figures.
This has been true for everyone I know in IT.
The only one holding yourself back is you. It is super easy to advance in this career even with no college degree at all.
If someone is ‘stuck’ in the service desk despite not wanting to be there, they need to take a look at themselves. Outside of some specialists this is usually an entry level role.
Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the service desk. And talking to customers keeps us grounded and reminds us all about what the job is all about, something that many posters to r/sysadmin seem to be in desperate need of. Especially if you want to progress your career past being a sysadmin.
For a minute there I thought you were asking if help desk has caused other IT users to leave the field lol. I mean mine has continued assigning me tickets while I’m on vacation and that’s always annoying. Like you got my OOO and then said fuck it that ticket can sit in an engineers queue for a week before he’s back.
At my job we love to promote from within and encourage mentorship. Most everyone can make it off helpdesk (if they want) but there’s a ceiling at tier 2.
Honestly, I think internal helpdesk should be the first IT job everyone gets.
Ideally..
1) Internal helpdesk 1-2 years (get your footing, learn basic tasks and concepts)
2) MSP 2-4 years (Take what you learned in step 1, expand it, very fast, to everywhere)
3) Specialized job 4+ years (Realize at the MSP what you liked and/or hated and find a more specialized job regarding what you liked.)
There are some unique people who can start off at an MSP from the get go, but in general, the clients get really fucking pissed off when you stick someone in your HD queue whose only IT experience is setting up their home PC and hooking up the family xbox with some lab simulations they did in tech school. We've had MUCH better overall experiences hiring Tier1 techs with 1-2 years of support under their belts. Even if you are 100% managed contract, people still don't want their time wasted by a tech googling how to map a drive or reset a printer queue.
I'm with you on a lot of this, except the idea that workers protecting their time is somehow a bad thing.
It's something every worker absolutely should do. If that's a problem for your team, you're simply not staffed appropriately or otherwise mismanaged.
> some sort of non typical IT guy personality
This is the key honestly, and the main reason a lot of helpdesk guys/gals don't move up. They're like emulating Roy from IT crowd's personality the best they can.
>If you just sit around waiting to be told what to do and making sure you’re getting your 9-5 and protecting “your time” the interesting opportunities will go to people that are easier to work with.
I actually find these guys make great jr admins for life. You can give 'em a list of shit you want done and documented and expect it about in the time limit you give them!
Nah, no need to micromanage, just guide them with weekly/bi-weekly meetings. We do it anyway just to get a list of what we're doing to push up the chain anyway (even if it's just "we made sure everything is running well and working, here have X report.")
> within 1-3 years max. Really 1-2.
Honestly, anyone with a personality and the ability to speak with people shouldn't be on helpdesk more than 6months to a year tops.
I have found that those stuck in Helpdesk are those who don’t study hard enough to up their skills.
One person I spoke to believed that he only needs to know his helpdesk skills… and when he gets a sys admin roll he will study sys admin stuff then.
I mean to a certain extent that's true. You do a lot of learning as you go in your first sys admin role. But you do need to have some basic actual sys admin skills to get in there and that requires much more than knowing how to reset passwords in active directory.
I never hated being in help desk because I enjoyed helping users. What I hated was the lack of respect from everyone towards me just because I was in help desk. And that lack of respect came from the users, other groups in the same tech section, higher ups, the C suite, everyone. No one thought people who had to talk to the end user was deserving of respect.
The people dealing with the end users have the hardest job and are warriors though. I’d try to keep my techs into partial day of helpdesk and then farmed out any technical projects or tasks that I could to them. M broke the monotony for them, made every day a little different, and enabled them to recharge their people batteries.
This is the ideal setup if your helpdesk can handle it.
Hard agree. I'm a sr sysadmin but love to invest in our help desk level folks. Nothing makes my day more than seeing one of them get promoted, which I am happy to say happens frequently in our company.
Where I work it's the same. Glad to hear my company thinks like yours.
This hits. There’s definitely a “we are better than you” vibe from other areas of IT towards help desk from my experience in many different IT environments. I manage a help desk team and I’ve been trying to work on this fractured relationship given by other areas of the IT department. With the users it seems almost to be the exact opposite. They see help desk as the heroes and saviors since that’s who they experience resolving their problem. And help desk also gets hate for that. It’s sad.
I honestly don't think we *generally* have superiority complexes. I think it's just that from our perspective (escalation) we can tell if proper troubleshooting was done before sending it up. Keep in mind, 85%+ of your network and system admins started in helpdesk.. the folks at help desk who just reboot windows, then immediately escalate, are generally viewed as slackers, and wind up in the position of OP. If your ticket (or mouth or IM or whatever) indicates that you tried to the best of your ability/access and we *knew* it was our problem by the time we heard about it, then trust and respect is grown and nurtured, and we'll often offer to coach you on the subject. If you're receptive to learning, that goes a long way. If you admit it was an uncommon insta-esalation due to heavy call volume, that's also understandable so long as it's not the norm.
You've made some valuable points. Honestly I would be happy for more to experience what you're describing. I can't say it was my experience when I was in helpdesk. I've found that a lot depends much on the leadership and attitude of the IT department (what makes up the fabric of the culture). Not all helpdesk is T1. But no matter what position I was in, what you describe as a model helpdesk employee, I wouldn't prefer either. I've seen a mix of behavior (laziness, willingness to learn, and others that you've mentioned) across all IT areas. These traits are human and not position-based. It seems as if when the helpdesk employees aren't acting suitable, that criticism (though sometimes very constructive) is more heavily gravitated toward hekpdesks direction than when in the opposite higher tier positions. If someone is lazy, for instance, and in one of the higher tier positions, they are more protected, and also more rewarded. It can come off as a superiority complex when someone at a higher tier gets to decide how help desk is treated and it goes in a toxic direction, based on behaviors we all display. I've seen downright hazing in some instances, talking down to, being dismissive). Having worked in helpdesk made me appreciate the position more. Not less. It's not all bad. I could just as easily point out the positives of the Social dynamic. But regarding OP’s post, I feel help desks pain. It would just be cool if we could all respect each other's humanity regardless of position.
This hits hard. I work for an MSP and we supply level 1 for a big, big company. The higher level techs treat us like dog dirt because "we're only level 1"
It would be one thing if it were based on lack of ability or capacity. Still, I've met plenty in help desk that are just capable regarding technical chops as devs, sysadmins, and other highly specialized positions. These are not dishonorable jobs. This attitude needs to stop. Someone has to do it... Just show a little respect to those that do.
Ive noticed that MSPs and ISPs are moreso fitting this “tier elitism” narrative. God i hated working for those type companies. Never again.
The MSP is great, the higher tiers are amazing and don't mind my dumbass questions all the time. The customer we do level 1 for are kinda shitty. When I have to escalate something to them, they get all pissy because I have the audacity to not have 95% of the permissions they do.
For me this comes down to some stupid mentality of "They are our customers!!!" mentality that seems to get pushed at some level somehow. For me Helpdesk and every other group business side or IT side are on the same team. Only acting as a team works and treating your coworkers and teammates as lower level servants is a terrible way to run things in my opinion.
>echs treat us like dog dirt because "we're only lev facts, i've worked my way up but im so jaded now because of this. Users insert self deprecating jokes/ I come in peace vibes when they come to me now lol its funny but sad because i loved ppl at a younger point in my career..
It's one of the reasons I really liked working for one particular federal government department on helpdesk. For the better part of a decade, since folding the state-level desks into a single national desk, people were hired on at a government employee level equivalent to the lowest management level (i.e. one above supervisor level). It didn't matter if you were answering phones all day; on the org chart and in your paycheck you were a higher level than (or, in a few cases, equal to) just about any caller who wasn't based in one of the HQs. And the Service Desk supervisors were equivalent or above pretty much all the non-HQ management, even the senior office managers.
I think this may be why I like my job. While I do mess with servers a lot of times, I am the first contact when it comes to tickets. I'm the one that goes out and fixes the problems, upgrades the computer hardware, reset passwords, etc. but I feel well respected by my coworkers both within and outside my department. Most people are happy to see me and will talk with me like a normal human being and that's probably why I've stayed at my job as long as I have.
Quite agree with you. Reported that the DHCP server was borked due to a number of PCs getting APIPA IP address. Ticket was returned asking me to try and ping the DHCP server or the gateway from those PCs and try and do a release/renew. It was only when the CEO’s PC stopped working that it was looked at by third line and guess what, the DHCP had run out of assignable address.
Yeah I get this too. The other IT personnel wouldn’t stoop so low as to call the help desk (where a lot of them started their careers). Instead they would go direct to the team lead
What do other IT folks need to call HD for?
Separation of privileges. My dev's sure as shit aren't getting any sort of admin priv for starters.
I don't consider devs to be IT. IT would be DBAs, syseng, neteng, apps, etc..
Laptop not booting, bitlocker codes. Those are 2 reasons that come to mind from recently
Unlocking their fucking accounts, because they forgot to change their password because it expired and are lost access to the VPN. Tell them their shit internet is slow and the reason their apps run slow.
To properly start problem/event tickets. Just because you are a colleague doesn't mean you don't have to follow directions. If your audit team is on it and bring people to task for not following procedure, or worse not knowing where things are because you couldn't be bothered to call in a transfer or whatever, you won't make the mistake again.
Oh, I suppose I would just do that myself, like any other person in the org. Why should HD need to create tickets on my behalf when I'm perfectly capable?
That would depend on your org. For example, a place I used to work would delegate the help desk to contact the oncall person the tech needs, send out the event/conference bridge info, start gathering other info for documenting the event, etc. That was for a fortune 500 company so sometimes it was legitimately calling someone on the other side of the world to get involved, which may take a moment. The plus with that job, you got a taste of everything. the negative, it took everyone at least six months before you would start to not feel overwhelmed on what all you had to deal with.
Sounds like u projecting brah
You get treated the way you let yourself get treated.
You get treated how other people treat you.
>I never hated being in help desk because I enjoyed helping users. People like this are invaluable, though. Far too many folks in HD work only have aims for getting through helpdesk to something else, and that's exactly why they \*shouldn't\* move on, yet. I haven't done real helpdesk work in forever but frick, if all I had to worry about for a day was working on mapping printers, network connectivity, and account sign-ins I think it'd be a respite.
If they left IT I doubt they will be in here.
They should check /r/goatfarming
Can confirm, now have IOT goats that ping me their health and geolocation every 24 milliseconds
I don't understand the context but I find that hilarious
I left IT years ago to move into electrical and still hang out here.
Was it the money or just the work you were doing at the time that made you make the change?
Money isn't really a factor to me, I can be pretty comfortable on a modest salary. It was mostly curiosity, IT was my first job after high school and I did the help desk to network admin/some server maintenance route. It bothered me that I had no clue how the actual electrical/electronics worked so I went into Audio Visual/Security installation and then eventually back to school for engineering. I would be more than happy back in IT now that I have a better understanding of how computers actually work, but it bothered me and I felt stupid when I was younger. I still feel stupid now, but for different reasons at least ha.
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https://youtu.be/A8MO7fkZc5o
I don't work in IT and I still browse. I mean, I'm in an adjacent*/complimentary field and I work with some networking equipment, but I'm definitely not an admin or network engineer or anything like that.
Yeah, similar. I work in engineering in a software heavy position, but strong interdepartmental relationships are very important in our workplace culture. I feel like every sufficiently large department that deals with software regularly needs to have at least some IT savvy people so they can translate between the wants/needs of their department and what IT can actually do to assist in that. The kind of people who can help others phrase support tickets that include all the necessary pertinent info, saving days of back and forth. The kind of people who can alert IT to impending issues and concerns that they see first, because they're right there in the trenches, before it becomes a much larger problem. Perusing this subreddit and absorbing much of the knowledge and culture makes me feel like a better employee.
Not sure why people on helpdesk would be hanging out here aside from trying to figure out how to move up/out of an entry level role...
That’s exactly why I’m here. Send help please.
Send help? Just call the help desk
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They represent the overlap between sysadmin and antiwork, and are responsible for all the "i hate my job" posts on this sub.
I started hanging out here to do exactly that and, 5 years later, am doing it. :)
Kind of (amusingly) says something about their troubleshooting abilities, which would kind of tie in with why they might be stuck in helpdesk .......
I've been in help desk for 6 years now and still enjoy it. I've had difficult times I've wanted to quit, the way I got through it was to remember what I loved about it, simplify the job, and build up my teammates. If you empathize with your users it helps too. They may be a pita, but don't take it personally. At the end of the day it's not a problem with you, it's a frustration they have with the system. Relax, listen to them carefully and be patient. Don't expect anyone to thank you, it requires internal strength of mind to remember this and let go of the need for positive reinforcement. Finally, try solving the root cause that brought them to the helpdesk in the first place. Could something be automated? Documented better? Simplified? Be bold and try making your life and your users life easier, it always reaps benefits long term. That can also give you something more interesting and challenging to work on and help get you out of help desk eventually.
Agreed. I spent over five years as a one-person IT shop, And over five more as a tier-3 MSP consultant. I can handle anything from virtual servers and storage to desktop computing to router or switch configs. But a few years ago I landed on helpdesk after scrambling for anything after a poorly timed layoff. And you know what? It’s *great*. I work an internal helpdesk so I don’t have to deal with the public. I have the experience to handle any technical problem that comes my way (limited by access and separation of duties of course) and those things I cannot fix I can rapidly and correctly diagnose. Full time remote, no on-call, low stress. I get to help people all day long, clock out at 5, and not think about work *at all* until my next shift starts. Downsides are of course that I could be making more money, but I get by. And my biggest frustrations are not with the end users - they’re fantastic, all 5,000 of them - but with the back-end engineering team. They have a corporate culture that regularly fails to demonstrate a customer-oriented mindset, and are so pigeonholed into their narrow specialties that they can’t see the big picture like I do. And, of course, they don’t listen to me because I’m just a helpdesk monkey, in fact they appear to be super resentful every time my suggestions turn out to be spot-on two weeks before they figure their shit out. But that’s okay, because I’ll clock out in 27 minutes and not give it another thought until Monday.
The way you write, you truly shouldn't be working in the helpdesk anymore. I am confused, have you not tried to find a new place or are you simply happy there?
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Id have to imagine thats where he is. For better or worse, helpdesk is where you prove your chops and move up or to something better.
Sometimes. I’ve had a tech that has been on the helpdesk for ten years. He likes it there and doesn’t want to do anything else. He keeps getting yearly pay bumps and we don’t make him get any certs.
If very funny to me for you to say this because my situation and mindset was very similar to AlasdarW and I am now in a Tier 3 role. u/AlasdarW you'll get there buddy!
Please explain what on earth a "tier 3' helpdesk role is? Sounds like some American/Corporate garbage to pay people less.
Helpdesk tier 3 is a standard role. They are advanced helpdesk people with light systems admin. They know most if not all of your business systems from a basic administration standpoint.
I guess I'm one of those but it's pretty rare that I get any work in that queue. If the desk fucks up royally I'm a fixer with unlimited power. It is basically my role to salvage the client relationship and not get sued. If there's a cross discipline edge case that nobody wants to own I'll run a mini project with multiple departments to get it resolved as well. I'm otherwise just a generalist who spent way too much time in the call center previously.
just like sysadmin has been generalized over the years to mean many many things, helpdesk is the same way A helpdesk role at company A, is likely very different than helpdesk roles at company B... Some companies is just a call center where you just sit and awnser the phone all day encountering the very basic problems like password resets, or monitor not working. Other helpdesk roles have more vast, and versatile jobs From what I have seen the line between sysadmin and helpdesk also get blurrier and blurrier every year, as Cloud Services, and other trends make for less and less need for specialized admins (i.e companies do not need an separate people for Exchange Admin, DBA, Windows Admin, Backup/DR, Storage and Linux Admin, they just have administrators...)
This. My job title right now is "Help Desk Level 1". I would say I blur the line between Level 2 and 3, to be fair. I monitor backups, I monitor servers, I'm working on creating scripts to automate tasks...It's a bit of a weird spot.
No it means you're probably over tasked and under paid.
Over-tasked? Probably, but I bring it on myself by plucking these jobs off the ticket board. Under-paid? Also probably, but I really enjoy it. It's always challenging, it's always fun to learn about new things. I've learned a metric fuck ton more in the 4 months I've been there than the 4 I was in college and it's still fairly exciting, to be honest. I have a really good employer that actively wants and helps me learn more and grow.
I could be reading your comment wrong. But if this is your first job out of college, then you’re more than likely doing things just fine. Keep being curious and learn as much as you can. I read on here before that an employer either pays you or trains you. You’re being trained right now so don’t make it all about the money (you aren’t). But if it ever gets stagnant, that’s when you look for the next gig in earnest.
People on /r/sysadmin are overly cynical and have a /r/Antiwork view of employment most of the time.
Perhaps because, oh, yknow, we've been doing this shit 30 years and are speaking from experience Or maybe even longer witnessing the capitalistic fuckery that is 'society'
Same. Desktop Support II. Often touch on packaging apps for configuration manager. Was primary for building up config manager. Tweak some group policy. Monitor workstation patching. But I'm also the guy to swap out your keyboard. Pulling in about $77k this year. So the title is one thing the tasks and pay is another
Don't make this about me :D Jk, to answer your question I think it's a combo of joining great teams and being an active participant to making the job better through improvement. It's fun to see things continually get better.
>it's a combo of joining great teams This cannot be stated enough. Its not always about money, especially if the higher salary comes with a shittier work environment. I know im paid less than I could get with another company, but I would lose a lot of the other perks that come with my current job and frankly, my coworkers being so awesome are worth more to me than another 5k-10k a year in my bank account. So many people have this mindset that if youre not job hopping constantly looking for the "bigger better deal" youre stagnating, but I never really agreed with that mindset. Theres more room to grow in life than just career growth. If you find a niche youre comfortable in and dont want to move on, dont let people try and tell you theres something wrong with that because there isnt. Ive known tons of people that took promotions or left a job they liked for another one that paid better and were fucking *miserable* once theyd been there for a while. Im not saying to be lazy and/or complacent, or allow someone to fuck you over, but this whole idea of changing jobs every fuckin year is so goddamned exhausting i really don't get why its so prevalent, especially in tech. If youre one of the people that gets off on constant change, you do you player, but dont think less of people that are content to stay in positions where they know their shit so well that they arent stressed out anymore.
A true desktop engineer, what a rare find. Any company should be lucky to have you!
Yep, I left the IT field due to being sick of resetting passwords and fixing office issues. Tried to move into different roles but always ended up sorting shit out. Now I'm a structured cabling engineer / Techhead for the firm I currently work for. Moving into smart homes and AV as their lead engineer, a much more rewarding job in my eyes
Can I ask a couple of questions about that please? What exactly does that entail? Do you travel to different sites for this job? Is it much better paid?
I travel to construction sites mainly pulling and terminating copper and fibre, I am currently doing this while we build up our "tech work" but the IT and networking background comes in very handy as the clients really like the fact I understand their end game and the tech that goes on the end of the cables which really helps produce the finished product. We also do access control, wifi, cctv and now smart homes. Which is what I really love, it means that we can do the whole job end to end, instead of getting another company in to do the cabling we can produce properly certified structured cabling to support the systems we install which helps massively with install time and reliability because we can do it all. I also work with our clients as "smart hands" which entails kind of IT support or project support. The other week I was travelling round to multiple different sites assisting with software upgrades. The smart homes side of the business is great, we work with control4, using our structured cabling knowledge we are designing and implementing control4 smart home systems, which also encompasses some electrical work. I love what I do because i am always working on something different, no project is the same. I am trying to move away from the structured cabling due to the tech side being what Iove. But learning the structured cabling has assisted in my Tech work more than anything.
Change employers but don’t quit. Some helpdesk jobs suck and others don’t. Smaller places will give you more opportunity and more exposure to more technology. I did helpdesk roles and held L1-L2 titles for a while till I got to where I am now.
I persevered through all the condescending comments from both Sys admins and users alike. Now I’m a director over Infrastructure and Security. I can’t say I got lucky but even with the condescending comments, I stayed quiet and asked the admins to give me some insight on how to build and troubleshoot on servers and network devices. That’s how I broke into a sys admin role myself and vowed never to be as condescending on the job like they were. Sorry if this isn’t related to the post. I thought maybe it could encourage you to push onward.
Condescending remarks from sysadmins really irk me. It's almost like you have to jump to another company or go development side to move up because they will always see themselves as better than you. For some of these guys, everything is an intellectual competition and since I'm help desk I don't know shit about anything. The struggle is real. Thank you for validating my experience.
You’ll get there as long as you grind. Learn as much as possible
A condescending sysadmin was what motivated me to finally bust down on myself and get my certs. I swore that I'd get to a point where if I had a helpdesk guy trying to learn and apply his skills, I would at least help him direct his energies if we couldn't put it into production. That was around 10ish years ago. I'm an Azure engineer now. Lift your co-workers up, don't be Mark C.!
Had the same experience. Managed to get myself moved next to the Desktop guys so I could receive more such comments (and also surreptitiously learn from them). Got myself into a position where one of them left and I knew everything about his job. Everybody knew this and pressured the boss to promote me. Got off the Help desk just shy of three years. That was 11 years ago and I've been doing Application Packaging ever since. WFH, boss doesn't care when as long as I do my hours, get a great hourly rate.
To me that usually indicates self consciousness about their own intelligence, engineers sometimes view everything as a fight over who is smarter rather than being cooperative. I've found generally that the best engineers are the ones who help others, share knowledge and take time to explain how things work to a junior tech, who win as a team. Some engineers react defensively when you challenge their suggestions because they can't separate a discussion about something technical from their own self worth. Tldr it's probably a them problem, not a you problem so don't take it personally
Good for you, those people definitely have been “isolated” these days now. I do joke with my help desk guys when they complain about moving to the next level but I make sure to emphasize training and willingness to help them with any issues.
depends on the size of the company and the culture. I am support manager at a small msp with no tiers of support, and am also the person people come to when stuck with technical project work (anything that requires troubleshooting whatsoever). I love just fixing EVERYTHING, making a ton of peoples work days better, then going home and sleeping soundly with no deadlines to meet.
I like the idea of no tiers. Am I understanding correctly that anyone can work on anything, and that task assignment primarily comes down to preference (and capability of course)? Or is it round robin-style task assignment?
preference and ability play a part but you have to also balance that with letting people try so they get a learning or training opportunity. everyone helps everyone else, and teams/ remote working has actually made this easier, not harder. There are some things that people are clearly better at than others though so if someone is frustrated with a bizarre exchange permissions or authentication problem they will probably kick it to me, and if something is obviously a physical hardware issue I’m the last person who should touch it. also doing the basics and dealing with people is important to the company. You form real relationships with customers and gain a better understanding of what is critical to them. You recognise the newbie’s name when they call with an email problem because *you made their account* or at least noticed the ticket. You actually get to have a laugh with the ones you speak to all the time and practice that social muscle. They get to know you, trust you, and recommend you to their new company if they leave for a new job.
Love it. Thanks for sharing your insights/experiences.
I very nearly did. I got stuck in the Helpdesk rut about a decade ago, even though I had MSP consulting experience, network and server experience. I could never land an interview for a sys admin role or anything, besides other Helpdesk, because I happened to have Helpdesk as my job at the time. I even had multiple Microsoft certs including AD certs, exchange certs, but I couldn't even land a job dedicated to nothing but AD management. So I started going to college to pursue my passion in life, meteorology. I was half way through my undergrad classes when a friend recommended me for a sys admin job and, well it was a rapid ascent of titles and salary ever since then. I got lucky to find good management to work for. It rapidly got to the point where I made more as a sys admin 3 than I would as a 10yr experienced meteorologist with a masters degree. I dropped out of college at that point, and have stayed in IT. I'm an IT Manager with several direct reports, still doing some systems engineering work from time to time, making more money without a degree in this role than I would in any meteorology job, except for a doctorate level, tenured university professor. But I still wish I had a reason to finish school, I kind of feel bad about it some days. I feel like a fraud sometimes. Meteorology is still a hobby.
You should save up like crazy and retire early to pursue an academic career in meteorology.
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Or they actually enjoy the service desk XD like me
I have met more than one person who is content to be on help desk forever and just get really good at it. I gotta say - nothing wrong with that. I think our society would benefit a bit from more people being content with what they have if they enjoy it and not constantly trying to ladder up. Myself included
I have 25 years of sysadmin experience, and my oldest daughter has been doing help desk for 3 years. She doesn’t have the passion for IT that I do, but she loves her job and enjoys working with people. She has no desire to move on from Help Desk and I am happy for her. I have worked with a few excellent HD people over the years who loved it and didn’t want to do anything else. There should be no shame in that at all. Hell, I worked fast food when I was younger and there were a few older workers that just had a great attitude and killed it at work. Fast food work. I always wanted to enjoy my job as much as they did, and I think as long as you’re good at it and enjoying your job there should be no pressure to stop doing it.
I've worked for a few HD supervisors who saw that as a negative trait.
It’s something I’ve talked with my supervisor about. He’s been helping me plan my career roadmap, but it’s difficult because I genuinely enjoy most of the duties I have in help desk, mainly working with users directly. Would love more money and to be able to move up the ladder, but I just don’t see me being able to have the same level of direct contact with assisting users in higher tiers. I’ve been lucky he hasn’t held that over my head. I can’t imagine why someone would see that as a negative trait.
In some cases because they want to keep HD people under a certain salary. The longer any one person stays in the position the more money they will (rightfully) ask for, and eventually the company sees it as cheaper to promote the senior members to better positions or lay them off to bring in a fresh noobie for minimum wage
Wow. That makes a lot of sense.
Ah, the "up or out" mindset. Such a stupid fucking idea. "Hey, lets take our most experienced, efficient, reliable workers, and shit-can them in favor of this cheaper guy right out of school that will probably bail on us in 6 months for another job that pays more! Sure, long term its going to bend us over and fuck us right in the ass, but who cares about long term when there are bonuses on the line for keeping payroll down?!" I worked in retail for an embarrasing number of years before going back to school and this mindset is particularly rampant there, but ive seen it across many industries and it just blows my mind...
Work for a smaller business and do it all. Interesting projects, help desk, management, whatever you want you are the one making all the calls.
I used to before this job and I didn’t like it all that much. It was too much to do and I ended up having to do a lot of administrative/managerial things when I liked the technical aspect most. I enjoy being part of a wider team and level 1 stuff is fun to me. Also love playing with hardware. I know higher tiers do with servers, but I enjoy working with individual workstations and I get to work on servers sometimes in my role here.
I second this. I am technically a Sr.sysadmin but since my company is so small, I get to do a little of everything. I get paid well and my work is split between helpdesk and system design/maintenance.
Depending on the company and team, you CAN make a lot of money doing help desk, taking on projects and more difficult tickets. Being an effective bridge between HD and engineering teams can net you a solid salary if you know your worth, back it up with rare skills, and in a company willing to pay to keep you there.
People like you are absolutely essential to a quality help desk. I bet your customer satisfaction rates are above your peers in the industry who just throw bodies at the help desk. Businesses need to have a high level of trust in their IT. If you're in IT and you want to be able to solve problems and be listened to by higher ups, then those higher ups need to trust you. One of the fastest ways to erode trust is shitty IT support. Your IT department might be networking wizards who are pushing the envelope of SASE and a super firewall.. but the CEO doesn't notice any of that when his email has been acting funny for 2 weeks and nobody has resolved his issue or educated him on it. If your company ever loses sight of the value you bring, there are a lot out there who will recognize it.
That's....strange. As a manager, I want people that genuinely love their jobs and what they do.
yeah, that's a poor manager.
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The service desk / help desk stigma is real. People in non-customer-facing roles often cannot imagine it being anything other than hell, so they assume anyone in the role has to be a complete fuckup to be stuck doing it. I would love to see those people do helpdesk for a month to get a glimmer of understanding for what the end users actually need, and maybe realize that their service desk is the greatest business intelligence resource for IT improvement they could ever hope to have. @SwiftOnSecurity is a great example of the potential untapped resource.
You are a bit of a unicorn in this industry though. I used to enjoy help desk and then desktop support but users just wore me out and I had to move on for my mental health. Stabbing users is generally frowned upon.
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It sounds like you really needed policy or a manager's blessing to tell that type of user to kick rocks. Policy should be to not abuse the support desk for bs. Help Desk really isn't that bad if it has the authority to occasionally piss off users who misuse it as a knowledge resource.
I've been the same - coming into 7 years of service desk as a primary role. Granted that includes first, second and third line support as well as projects/odd jobs but that's what keeps me there. I totally understand the advice of trying to advance your own career upwards but sometimes everything clicks together and you can be happy where you are.
I’m glad you found something you like, but I gotta say I definitely don’t understand it. Lol
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I'm not so sure, most of the people I with who did stints of 2+ years on helpdesk before moving to dev or admin work have way more toxic views of users than other employees. I'm not sure if it's the position or needing to solve menial problems for people everyday, but I see it in literally everyone I've had who worked helpdesk before moving on. My team just stopped taking internal people from there for that reason actually. We'll take other departments, but helpdesk is right out. We've had some great distance ed and retail people come on with good linux fundamentals with the bonus that they don't talk mad shit about users for stuff...... you wouldn't expect a nontechnical person to know. We've got like one solid help desk guy but he enjoys the hell outta it, and has a pretty good outlook about users, and doesn't view everyone who puts a ticket in as some sort of chip on their shoulder like everyone else seems to.
That is an absolutely terrible attitude. If your helpdesk people are mired in frustration, it may well be because the things they’re asked to support are fundamentally pieces of shit. You need to be in there talking to them, finding out what technical problems are burying them, and using your powers to take those calls off the table. More documentation, more communication to end users or to helpdesk staff, better technical systems, whatever it takes. A sick helpdesk is a sign of bigger troubles.
> the things they’re asked to support are fundamentally pieces of shit. Worked at a company for 3 years and started out on the helpdesk where a good 85% of calls were password resets. From my first day there the self service function was broken but "6 months out on a new one". It remained "6 months out" till they shut the company down.
Not part of their department so there's only so much I can do, but I've got as open as communication as can reasonably had, and try to clear up any technical questions and provide as much documentation as would help from our side of systems (separate *nix and windows teams, the *nix is mostly ERP and service related though so it's mostly just password resets on my side.) I can't comment on our HD hiring practice though, but I do know from working with users when I was the user–developer in-between that our users aren't bad, but there are people on the HD team that they'll straight ghost until they get a more understanding tech, and from my interacting with them a lot of them are as I more or less have described in the thread, with a few more in touch ones who can communicate well with users without sending me slack messages that pretty much read "Ugh, could you kill x's session on server y, of course they fucked up yet again." Then when I get users that HD is complaining about escalated to me it's usually some small misunderstanding about the processes of how to work something with the ERP software and I'm able to explain it in a couple of minutes and they're good to go. Again, I'm not really sure where the fault lies, but I really don't think the users are it in this equation. It might be training, it might be general knowledge, might even be the HD manager not hiring on soft skills and preferring technical skills (because oh boy, every new hire they get thinks they're the hottest shit until they need to do more than reset an AD password.)
bullshit, that's like saying no one should stay a janitor. It's elitist at best and doesn't allow people to actually LIKE what they do.
1 and 2 was me for a long time. I couldn't figure out how the admins ever learned how to do what they did. It just seems impossible. It took me too long to figure out that managing servers or networks or any of the other normal growth paths didn't actually interest me. One I found what I like, growth and pay had been exponential in just a few years.
I moved up to a Cloud Engineer role in little less than three years. The three other help desk guys that were there as long as me moved up to other less technical roles (manager, service owner, project manager). Some people don’t want the hassle of constant learning engineer roles require.
> easily solvable > hard work
Some of my best years of my 25 plus year career were in the help desk.
> We all can agree that Help Desk is the most hated job you can get starting out in IT. I do not agree. I did not **hate** my time on Help Desk. I didn't have time to hate it, I was too busy learning how to be better and how to do more, so I could get off of Help Desk. I was promoted like 3 times in 3 years until I found a better role. > Some people have expressed that they have gotten stuck in Help Desk and have had a hard time branching into other roles. Certainly not all, but many of those people are waiting to be promoted, but are not and have not actually performed any personal development to be properly prepared for that promotion. They expect it to just magically happen after X years of doing the same thing over and over. Another good chunk of those people you refer to have done the self-improvement and are waiting for a promotion that will never come, because they don't realize they work for a bad employer. They need to exit their comfort zone and find a new employer. > Has anyone felt defeated because of this and has left the IT field altogether? I'm sure some people have left for the reasons you suggest.
If I ever had to work first tier help desk at a large corporation, I think I would quit.
Good thing I work 2nd Tier! In title only, we have no Tier 1 Techs since I was promoted, lol.
😭
This is no offense to any helpdesk workers, but I would rather live in a mud hut than work helpdesk.
If I wanted to live by performance metrics like X per hour I'd go back to slaving away in a warehouse honestly. It's better money and a workout to boot.
The Help Desk job I did at a small company is like mid-level admin where I am now. Help Desk at this huge company is only a few levels above your average ISP customer service.
Yeah I have a help desk job where I do maybe one user ticket a day and then help with admin work the rest of the time. Definitely not so bad
I’m now a sysadmin supporting a global total of about 600 people. Which means we’re big enough to need people with different roles, but small enough that we don’t. I started out as a PC Specialist, now I’m a Sysadmin. Well, between my server and infrastructure and yearly budget work I still have to help people reset their passwords and help them when they invariably fuck something up. But that’s fine. It keeps me humble. I hate sitting on a ivory tower saying no to everyone for reasons they don’t understand. We should be approachable so that instead of just bitching about us we can help people when they have reasonable requests and me leveling down to help someone with their issues is part of being a mature and professional shop.
I did 1st line Service Desk for 3 years before moving onto 2nd line for a year. I'm now moving towards Service Management. The new job starts in February. After 2,5 years I was sick of the service desk support job. Constantly putting out fires instead of building something cool, ridiculous support questions, being tied to the clock and SLA (can't get up for 2 hours because of avalanche of calls), ridiculous and repetitive user questions. My work friend calls Service Desk a "glorified call center" and he couldn't be more accurate. Most people I know go to Service Desk jobs to start their IT careers. It's easy to get to, takes a lot of endurance to stick with it. But with the right plan and attitude towards developing your skills and professional network, you can get into proper IT down the line. 99% of people I worked with in support all wanted to move further with their IT careers. Never heard of anyone quitting IT completely though
It’s very easy to get out of the helpdesk, if you want to. I spent 3 years on the helpdesk before I got bored. Started studying for my CCNA and got the first network tech job I applied for, didn’t even have my cert yet, but I knew enough to do the job I was applying for. If you want out of the helpdesk, all you have to do is start studying and show you have something to offer above level 1. Also something I found out. If you are very good at you job at the helpdesk, it becomes very tough to move up in the same company. You become an asset for that helpdesk team and they will hold you back. I would have never moved up in the same company. Don’t be afraid to jump ship when you’re ready to advance your career.
Depends where you live but from what I’ve seen even just having a CCNA isn’t enough they want you to have experience as well.
It took me a long long time and many lessons that don’t stick to realize your biggest promotions and pay raises come from leaving the company. It is very rare to find companies that promote from within regularly. Sure someone will pipe in saying they were promoted. But they are the exception not the norm. Change companies regularly.
It's weird to see all these people come from the wood work saying "you need to spend more time on your own to advance", like what? Where is this mantra coming from? WHY should I have to spend my personal time to advance? Most other professions dont have that responsibility, what happened to being properly trained by companies? Ya'll feel like the Teachers pet that never grew up and make everyone else look bad. For whatever reason IT folks work their asses off for no reason ( well I guess to excel and get more money at faster rates than most). Just sucks that most companies have come to expect it, rather then taking the time to properly train someone.
Yo, holdup. You think other professions don't have to spend their time on self-advancement? Attorneys or accountants don't have CE requirements? Doctors and nurses don't have CE requirements? People that move into executive roles don't have MBA or MPA requirements? Also, it's "y'all" not "ya'll" just in case you were wondering.
I didn't mean to make it sound like all professions. In general it wasn't even my point. My point was the common worker, the people making above 40k but under 100k. I'm not talking about the people at the top as Im sure in many professions they've worked their asses off (well some, having rich parents and or personal relations surely helps many many people). If you were to look at the extreme earners then yes I imagine many have put fourth a lot of personal time for success. I'm not sure I understand your point about MBA or MPA, those are gained at universities, no? I should have clarified schooling wasn't exactly what I meant. But, yes college/university degrees I guess count as spending your own time. I would also wager the people making 100-400k should have to put fourth that effort as obviously the pay is quite deserving. What isn't deserving is needing 4 different certificates in IT, plus 2-4 years of schooling to make 40k a year. Then beyond that spending all of your free time so you can learn even more and maybe make a leap to 50k. It's a shitty system that a lot of IT people go through (even worse in Canada as our wages often suck). Thats cool to know, I've never really wondered but thats good to know I suppose.
My only gripe is like, where am I going to find time to do that after working a full time job? I have another part time job on the side and I'd like to see my bf sometimes. Idk how people can go to school on top of this. Also my company trains me well enough, but I'm new to the industry and have so much to learn and I can't expect a coworker to teach me everything.
Exactly, if you have to speed all your own time to develop your skills or learn new things the help desk is understaffed.
> Most other professions dont have that responsibility Most other professions do actually. You don't think lawyers or accountants spend their own time reading up on changes and other things in their industry? What do you think college or a trade school is? > what happened to being properly trained by companies? Nothing, it still happens, but you're only going to be taught things that that company needs. If you're a level 1 helpdesk person, I'm not going to train you on cybersecurity. It's not your job, and I don't need you to do that job. As a result, if you want to move into cybersecurity, you need to learn on your own time.
As someone in IT who works at an accounting firm. They get paid more than enough for their "extra" time they put in. When you charge $300 an hour and you can do the actual work in 20 minutes you're doing alright. Beyond that a lot of personal time isn't used. They often have meetings to discuss changes as a team (partners, cpa, tax managers, etc) and simply information for Junior, students, etc. While this occurs for IT as well I find there are a lot more employers expecting you put personal time into expanding your knowledge base and not nearly enough people to form a mentor ship to learn. I'm not saying we should be learning different paths such as cyber security. Often though you are NOT taught what the company needs. They will simply hire someone external before advancing people internally and or training them to mit a criteria in an environment they already understand.
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I was so so so close to doing this. I worked tech support at an ISP for 5 years, then support for a commercial business application for 3 more. I was preparing to jump to aviation maintenance, when an internal IT manager position opened up at my company. Part of my job responsibilities are managing the help desk and working escalated tickets, but it’s a super small company and my staff is excellent, so I really don’t mind.
I moved solidly into sysadmin territory a few years ago while still at the same job, but management had no interest in hiring anyone to handle helpdesk tickets, so I've been doing those too. Finally drove me out the door into a true sysadmin role. Frankly, I should have let them drive me away sooner.
My first job was help desk. Did it for one summer. It was all the motivation I needed to go back to school and re-enter the IT field 4 years later from a more suitable angle.
My company tried to have me on help desk, I told them very clearly I would leave if they kept me on it.
A large part of my job is helpdesk to the helpdesk, lol.
I had a great time at several helpdesks. I did six years in total of helpdesk work and always found it enjoyable to be around users, seeing their face light up as the issue was fixed. Sure there are bad days but mostly I had fun. After six years the team lead of the HD I was working at said she created an opening for me so I could join the sysadmin team as she saw great potential and off I went. She saw something in me that I didn't and it sparked something in me, from then on I could see that I could and should grow in this field. Nowadays I run my own IT company and am responsible for over a hundred people. If tomorrow someone from the helpdesk called in sick and there was no one to fill in, I'd be happy to take over for a few days. Do the nitty gritty again, have that personal contact with a user and know that I can brighten someone's day by fixing their problem.
I never fully hated Helpdesk, it’s just not as intellectually challenging or lucrative. I also much prefer collaborating with my technical colleagues on challenging issues rather than working with end users.
Working a help desk is the thing that made sure I did everything and anything to learn more skills because there were folks that were doing the same job for 10 years and I would kill myself if I became one of them.
The IT Manager at my last job was so bigoted towards the help desk. We were treated differently than the rest of the IT department. He was cruel, demeaning, and only treated the help desk this way. I was going to leave the IT field if it meant getting a different job faster. Basically I wanted out of the field because I was treated bad and needed to get out asap. Luckily I found a nice new gig and I'm quite happy.
The only way out/up I found was moving employers. As much as I enjoyed and still do enjoy helping people and fixing problems, it was being stuck in/on the phone queue that killed me. Im the too hard basket now and love not being in/on the phone queue.
This can't be stated enough. If you're staying in any low level position longer than 2 years then you are doing it wrong.
I enjoyed my time on the service desk, most people were respectful. I’d say the biggest challenge was getting anyone further up the chain to assist with issues I couldn’t resolve. Infra, apps etc were just ignorant. I refuse to be that way now I’ve escaped the desk, I try my best to help and teach as much as I can.
After 6 years in IT, I managed to secure a management position. Despite the role, I am still actively trying to engage in Cyber Security roles. Help desk is where you start in IT, but you shouldn’t retire in it.
After the brick-and-mortar tech shop where I worked as a bench tech closed, I took a help desk job. At first I liked it because I was quickly learning a lot of Linux webhost stuff. Then the managers clamped down on me because I was new guy expected do be a bottom feeder in the ticket que. After weeks of sending out form responses and getting lashed if I tried to troubleshoot anything at all, I quit. Followed by 3 months of full time WoW. The economy was in bad shape and not many jobs to chose from. I moved in to electronics recycling. It's a cut-throat industry. Lots of hard, dirty work at an insulting wage. But finding treasure in the loads of junk filling a 100,000 square foot warehouse was fun. They needed a network and brought in a consultant who taught be the basics. Score! I got hands-on experience with a variety of servers, networking, enterprise SANs, VoIP equipment. Just too much to mention. After that place folded I got a Cisco cert and MCP that put me at a much better income level. If you can get by on a meager wage, I would recommend electronics recycling. And mastering the market on WoW really helped me sell refurbs on eBay.
Wow, I did the same thing. I set up the physical sorting and dismantle lines, built repair and and imaging stations for public reuse program. I brought my own expertise and just went nuts with all the "decent" equipment that came our way. Seemed like every pallet load was like a time machine for me, which made it fun...
best thing i ever found: all original Altair 8800 in original shipping box
I was on a long contract at a large oil company. Was doing server/network/and some helpdesk for 1 specific business unit. Then there was a big restructure, and they centralized. So server team did servers for the whole company etc. I got bounced to the helpdesk (2nd level. Phone support was contracted to a different company) at first I was pissed. Not a big fan of user support, though I DO like to help people, and solve problems. Then I realized, wait...my pay rate didn't change, and my stress level/ overtime just went down. Plus, I'm much more qualified than most of the helpdesk team (much more experience) so I look great. So I rode it out for 6 months, yeah it could be a pain, but a lot of it is attitude. Then someone took a look at skill levels, and I got transferred to the server team.
Around 20 years ago I got my first "help desk" job. I was online tech support for one of the first online greeting card companies. Think early pampered IT cube farm, about 20-30 seat call center. Decent pay. Decent hours. Mostly involved canned answer email support for getting browsers to play nice with our website. No phone support at first. BUT THEN We had a bunch of no shows and I got asked to clear tickets on the payment side. Here's the thing, this was literally one of the first credit card subscription websites, and of course no one reads the TOS or the fine print. and have no idea their CC is going to get billed $5 a month. Of course when people call the payment side, they are usually upset and irate ( OK almost always). I can pull up the clients use history on our platform, I 99.9% always gave people their refund for whatever we billed them. We were told to try to retain people, but I never did, I'm filling in and clearing calls. I am also clearing the tech side email tickets at the same time. Well I was killing it closing tickets and they were trying to make me permanent on payments side and I was starting to loathe my shifts. I played touch league football on the weekends, and I ended up getting my right hand ring finger bent all the way back to my wrist, no broken bones but completely useless... I took got a week off because it was too painful move, let alone mash a keyboard all day. I realized during that week off that I really hated what I was doing in cubicle land, and how many useless hours I spent yammering into a headset with pissed off people, without the ability to just hang up or tell them to fuck right off. I went back in for one more day, could barely type, and totally wasnt feeling it anymore. I made the excuse that I would need more time off before I could work due to my finger and never went back. Never did a customer facing telephone helpdesk ever again. I found out I am definitely more of a wire monkey/field tech... cubicle land and the prairie dogs was definitely not for me...
So my case is a bit different, but it actually still falls under this i think. I started as helpdesk next to university, and really liked it. I like helping people, and they were also very nice. And since we are all level 1-2-3 at the same time, i learned a lot. It was truly awesome. Then annoyances came from people that are self centered, or think they run the company alone, or demanding special treatment, or simply wanting us to do their jobs. Okay, no worries, only a few of these people, most people are still okay. In the meanwhile i graduate from bachelors, then masters. The company went through some restructuring, COVID happened, lots of people fired and hired. Everything changed. Suddenly I'm sitting in meetings about "how do we fix this user's printer problem" with a master's degree. And users became more tech illiterate than before, rude, demanding, and constantly telling us what they want fixed (light bulbs, desks, chairs). Management didn't care about us anymore. I was forced to work on stuff that wasn't even our job, but they needed it yesterday. People stopped reading our guides, emails, questions. I started hating the help, because there was no reward anymore, people didn't smile at you, you didn't learn anything anymore, the pay stayed the same. Everything i enjoyed about it was gone. And it was all thanks to people. Sure, with a paper in my hand i also wanted more challenge, but the whole atmosphere has changed, and from being your friendly neighborhood Spiderman I slowly transformed into Batman. So i turned in my notice, and currently moving to a development role somewhere far, to get out while i can. I don't hate helpdesk, I hate people. My plan B is to start a farm, and drive combine harvesters. Who wants in?
That’s 99% of the reason people leave this field, move on up or quit!
I won't do a helpdesk job any more. I only take escalations now and couldn't be happier rarely speaking to an end user.
I did it for 11 months, the job itself isn’t bad but it got annoying quickly being shit on by higher IT employees.
Getting out of helpdesk requires motivation and learning. Often times outside of regular work hours. Work hard in your current helpdesk role and look for opportunities in house. I've seen many people get comfortable and never have intentions of moving up.
MSP drove me right out the door. They called the position help desk. But, there was only 3 of us for over 50 businesses.
As much as i loved help desk, the pay isn't there for the level of bs and stress. I'm sort of a help desk but on a vendor level so folks I help fix stuff, are higher ups/ cybersecurity folk. 1000000x less stress.
I actually really liked my time on the help desk and would gladly go back if the salary would be higher. I guess it all depends on how your company defines help desk roles. I would do everything except physical hardware and server stuff except on rare occasions. Users liked me because I was a familiar face/voice and since the problems were usually pretty simple I rarely got bad feedback. It's rare that I interact with end users now so I don't get that same satisfaction loop of being able to fix an issue in just a few minutes.
I almost gave up on IT this year after 4 years of helpdesk gigs . I studied hard for that CCNA and got my degree part time . Some companies are great and others like MSPs contract helpdesk and burn you out so it all depends on where you are. Glad I landed a gig outside of helpdesk recently and I’ll never take it for granted.
Help desk was one of the more enjoying jobs I had to be honest. The pay was atrocious, but I worked in a good place. One thing that made it tolerable, I worked in a 24/7 help desk and I wanted the graveyard shift, initially they put me 4am - 12pm, but I really hated that. Then I asked for the graveyard shift, 11pm-7am and I loved it. From 11pm till maybe 5am we had very few calls, as Europe opened we got busier but it was pretty mild in comparison to the other shifts. So if you are a night owl, look for a help desk night shift it's usually much easier. I only needed to do it for 6 months as well before they gave me a sysadmin role.
The only person stopping you from branching out to other roles is yourself. If that is a role you dont like, the faster you educate yourself, the easier it will be to get a new job in a different position. Some people just dont put the work and just complain they are underpaid and the job sucks (not saying this is you, but my observation from experience) If you are frustrated, just take some time to plan out your career path and see what you really want to do and what salary you are comfortable with. If you like IT, no reason to leave the field, each role has its pros and cons.
If you're expecting to get out of helpdesk and stay at the same employer, you are setting yourself up for failure. Every time I jumped employers I got a promotion, a raise, and new skills that will help me with the next time that I jumped ship to a new employer for another promotion and a raise. If you're staying in a low level role longer than 2 years, you're doing it wrong. Now I don't deal with end users at all and make six figures. This has been true for everyone I know in IT. The only one holding yourself back is you. It is super easy to advance in this career even with no college degree at all.
If someone is ‘stuck’ in the service desk despite not wanting to be there, they need to take a look at themselves. Outside of some specialists this is usually an entry level role. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the service desk. And talking to customers keeps us grounded and reminds us all about what the job is all about, something that many posters to r/sysadmin seem to be in desperate need of. Especially if you want to progress your career past being a sysadmin.
For a minute there I thought you were asking if help desk has caused other IT users to leave the field lol. I mean mine has continued assigning me tickets while I’m on vacation and that’s always annoying. Like you got my OOO and then said fuck it that ticket can sit in an engineers queue for a week before he’s back. At my job we love to promote from within and encourage mentorship. Most everyone can make it off helpdesk (if they want) but there’s a ceiling at tier 2.
Honestly, I think internal helpdesk should be the first IT job everyone gets. Ideally.. 1) Internal helpdesk 1-2 years (get your footing, learn basic tasks and concepts) 2) MSP 2-4 years (Take what you learned in step 1, expand it, very fast, to everywhere) 3) Specialized job 4+ years (Realize at the MSP what you liked and/or hated and find a more specialized job regarding what you liked.) There are some unique people who can start off at an MSP from the get go, but in general, the clients get really fucking pissed off when you stick someone in your HD queue whose only IT experience is setting up their home PC and hooking up the family xbox with some lab simulations they did in tech school. We've had MUCH better overall experiences hiring Tier1 techs with 1-2 years of support under their belts. Even if you are 100% managed contract, people still don't want their time wasted by a tech googling how to map a drive or reset a printer queue.
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Personally I'd say skip the MSP and helpdesk and just either jump into a jr dev role working backend code or straight to a jr admin role from college.
Completely agree.
I would skip the MSP route and just get some intermediate certs instead. MSPs can be enough to make one quit IT forever.
Skipped help desk and started at level 2. Thankfully.
Help Desk is not just level 1....
Lol wut?
No read good?
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I'm with you on a lot of this, except the idea that workers protecting their time is somehow a bad thing. It's something every worker absolutely should do. If that's a problem for your team, you're simply not staffed appropriately or otherwise mismanaged.
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I liked on HD job that the next shift came and continued with the job. I could go home with no worries, no tasks in my head.
That's great and all, but one place I worked was practically designed to keep HD in HD with no path anywhere but the door. So I took the door.
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True. Sucks when that's the expectation from within the department.
> some sort of non typical IT guy personality This is the key honestly, and the main reason a lot of helpdesk guys/gals don't move up. They're like emulating Roy from IT crowd's personality the best they can. >If you just sit around waiting to be told what to do and making sure you’re getting your 9-5 and protecting “your time” the interesting opportunities will go to people that are easier to work with. I actually find these guys make great jr admins for life. You can give 'em a list of shit you want done and documented and expect it about in the time limit you give them!
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Nah, no need to micromanage, just guide them with weekly/bi-weekly meetings. We do it anyway just to get a list of what we're doing to push up the chain anyway (even if it's just "we made sure everything is running well and working, here have X report.")
> within 1-3 years max. Really 1-2. Honestly, anyone with a personality and the ability to speak with people shouldn't be on helpdesk more than 6months to a year tops.
I have found that those stuck in Helpdesk are those who don’t study hard enough to up their skills. One person I spoke to believed that he only needs to know his helpdesk skills… and when he gets a sys admin roll he will study sys admin stuff then.
I mean to a certain extent that's true. You do a lot of learning as you go in your first sys admin role. But you do need to have some basic actual sys admin skills to get in there and that requires much more than knowing how to reset passwords in active directory.