Help Desk: Dead end or good start?

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

I was pointed towards an interesting article in ComputerWorld: Your help desk career: Dead end or launching pad? The gist of the article is that there are 2 views on whether working help desk is good for your career: It's a dead end and you'll always be a HD tech, or it's a good way to go further in IT.

Having read the article, I tend to agree with the view that it's a launch pad. I started at my current place of employment as help desk. Within months, I was in charge of hardware repair and replacement. Eventually, I was offered a place on the Windows team. My team lead had a similar advancement path.

So, out of curiosity and Friday-spawned boredom, I put it to you my tech brethren and sisteren: Is HD a dead end street or a path to greater things?

Comments

[random-c.livejournal.com]

It's a dead-end if you're a dead-end person.

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

Excellent answer!! That is so true - life is what you make of it and if you think of your job as dead end, then that is what it will be.

I started out on a help desk (after several years as a legal secretary) and now I'm running the litigation support department for a huge international law firm.

Carpe diem.

[kageneko.livejournal.com]

That's a great way to put it! Help Desk can definitely be a way to get your foot into IT, but you have to really want to go beyond it. If you're complacent, you'll go nowhere.

[zhent.livejournal.com]

I've been a help desk tech twice.

The first time was to get my foot in the door at the great big hardware company that rhymes with Hell. The second was after a layoff from said company. Both times I rapidly applied myself to the organization and made my way off the desk and into other opportunities.

Help desk is what you make of it.

[technonick.livejournal.com]

I work in a high-end Help Desk, and I think it can be a career as long you work hard and keep your skills current (but that can be hard.) That said, it still doesn't pay enough for a lifetime career. Because I am comfortable in my job, I have gone back to school and I am actually getting a CIS degree in my spare time.
The HD affords me the luxury of slow times in which I can do some home work. Not a lot of skills to keep current, so I have time to attend school, and general flexibility.
That said, it can be pure drudgery. I am doing the same exact thing that I was doing 2 years ago. In fact, I believe that exactly 1 year ago I was sitting in exactly the same spot, at the same time, and was probably doing something similar to this 1 calendar year ago. While that may not seem too bad, everyday, the same thing, with the same exact complaints from customers for the last 4-5 years with no change can lead to burn out.

Sitting at a helpdesk now (literally, right now, at a help desk)

[cowchris.livejournal.com]

Large company help desk no less. If you show you can think for yourself and learn along the way, you will be 2nd tier quickly. If you still handle that, you get special projects left and right. While I'm still with the help desk, only about 50% of the time am I actually doing 2nd tier calls, the rest is on special projects and meetings.

[hemlock-martini.livejournal.com]

It's a dead end if you don't take advantage of your time and take classes and study for industry certificates, which will help with the "launch pad" part of the equation. Of course, tech support is stressful enough that you may not have the energy or time to do so...

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

well...

See now, I'm one of those weird people who LIKES HD duty. I can work perfectly happily dealing day to day with users. However, even I have evolved around it. I pretty much have always managed to migrate to a higher level - either a senior tech or a trainer. I'm now a dispatcher and am being threatened with managerial stuff.

I find that it actually helps sharpen skills by both exposure to new things and by exposure to what the users DO with the new things.

but that's me and I skew data curves all the time. *g*

[crm17.livejournal.com]

Me too. I have done lots of other things for periods and several of them could have been career moves but I like HD. I am damn good at it and I smile all day long working with a really fun skilled team. (OK,there are a few frowns with bad callers, but really not that many.)

I give my boss a lot of credit. She spends most of her time in our room (we are phone) and works a regular shift answering calls herself to keep her finger on the pulse. Makes her a great manager.

[devilkitty0.livejournal.com]

Help Desk is a dead end at my place because of the structure of the place. Not hiring and I find it impossible to get a job outside my department. The last job that was open went to an outsider lacking people skills, when there were several qualified internal applicants.

I'm at an underfunded state university that hasn't really increased its desktop/helpdesk department in years, even though the workload has tripled. Money's okay and the benefits are what keep most people here.

That said, the help desk has changed over the eight years that I was here, so it isn't the same as when I started.

But I agree with the article, help desk is what you make of it.

DK

[bitterfun.livejournal.com]

I read this article and loved it. I even sent it off some of my techs. I started off in call centers and helldesks in 1997/8. I've been working my way up ever since. There's no stopping you if you're armed with some drive, ambition, keen observation skills, and the willingness to learn. A little later today, I have an interview for a Director position. I'm not stopping until my title starts with a C and ends with an O (CxO) and I have a golden parachute.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

The can only be as good a career point as you are.


Note that I said "CAN" not "IS" in there. There are a lot of hell desk jobs that no matter how good you are, that's where you'll stay.

[emerald-embers.livejournal.com]

Launch pad for me - after finishing uni, tech support was the first job I could get without employment experience. Another seven months of this and I'm sorted for the mysterious one year of experience-with-computers every graduate-level job requested!

[batchfile.livejournal.com]

i don't see it so much as a springboard, but a valuable way to divide the wheat from the chaff.

i went to school with a fellow who thought he was brilliant and ready to rock the IT world. he worked on helpdesk for a local ISP. it showed him that he wasn't up to snuff for the job. not that he couldn't DO the job, but that he didn't LIKE the job. his attitude toward people totally sucked. and you know something? attached to every single broken computer is a human who needs to be dealt with.

i spent a summer working for the same college i was attending. while i wasn't on the phone end of support(hearing issues), i was on site fixing stuff. i liked it, and i got along well with the users.

i now work in a private firm building and fixing their workstations.

[azleaneo.livejournal.com]

It depends on who you are. In my company, there are only two people on help desk currently, myself and one other gentleman. I've been on the help desk for a little more than a year, and they've sent me to training so my title is now help desk/ phone system administrator. The guy next to me? Been on the help desk for more than 5 years and refuses to really learn anything more than the basics.

The two previous help desk people in my company, one is now jr network admin going to school and another handles web content and works with the programmers. Others have moved up and out to bigger companies.

So in my company, help desk is a launch pad, unless you are that one guy.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

It's a launch pad... because once you've worked the hell desk, you will take any other job!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much the only person I know who looked on the other side of the 'launching pad' equation and realised that a helpdesk person with ten years' experience can present themselves as the Second Coming to a company desperate for competent operators.

I can sort of understand it - many interviewees that a company might see for TS positions could be young'uns looking for a foot in the door of the IT industry, or the 'long-term unambitious/unlucky', so to speak. Having someone turn up who has decided that TS can be a full and rewarding career by itself, and who not only has front-line experience but also meta-experience (analysis of workflows, budgeting, staffing, schedules) and supervisory/managerial/mentoring time under their belt can often lead to fairly promising salary offers.

Of course, I did chuck it all in for a completely unrelated career later on (unplanned seachange), but the thought was there at the time. It wasn't unusual to have contracting companies fighting over me or trying to headhunt simply because I was nearly unique on their books for a given city.

I'd say that the majority of techsupport people I'd run into, though, were looking for more promising careers in IT, and simply using the TS job as a foot in the door. Then there were the ones doing it as a stopgap until they could find a 'real' job in their preferred field, and even some who were more interested in angling for management than in the work at hand. And, of course, the usual handful of plodders who seemed to troubleshoot by rote more than anything else, and who were about as technical as cheese.

Of course, what's almost as interesting is the range of jobs people had before becoming tech support. Ex-army seemed to be a source of many a rigid-minded script follower, for some reason. I do recall working with one newbie who was shockingly good - as in, two weeks after arriving she was better than 75% of the floor, including supervisors - and she'd been the sandwich bar attendant at the deli across the street for the last couple of years!

Just goes to show, you can't tell until you put someone in the hot seat.

[madjacktech.livejournal.com]

Depends on the kind of co you work for. If you're working an 'internal' (re: company employee support) help desk, you're a 'part' of the I.T. dept, and you have the same opportunities to apply for and gain other jobs within the company infrastructure that you really WANT, that will actually propel your career along the path you want it to follow.

On the other hand, if you hire on as a TSR for an outsourcer, you're classed as a script monkey, and the only potential for you there IS to climb the management ladder (provided you don't get laid off in the next wave of 'contractor' cutbacks or during a regime change or restructuring of your ACTUAL employer.
I.E. -- If you work for Hell's INTERNAL help desk, (NOT the Customer Support Queues), or Cox's, or any other major/big name/little name company, you can go wherever in the company you want, depending on your own inspiration, drive, and initiative.
If you're on the front lines, down in the trenches fending off the attacking customer hordes, on the other hand, you're not I.T.; and good luck to any of us who've been there; we still have to find our actual entry into I.T. to launch/relaunch our careers.
External customer techs are not considered I.T., and there's far too many of us facing 'out' on the battle lines to even think of letting any of us 'in' from the battlegrounds of what are 'SF Customers' (to us) and 'Script Monkeys' (to the I.T. staff and the SF).

[chrisbert.livejournal.com]

Um, why do banks think asking for the same information listed in, say, your facebook profile, would somehow SECURE your account? Even if it isn't listed somewhere publicly on the web somewhere, it's just a matter of a little social engineering, or simply knowing the intended victim.