Is Help Desk a Launchpad or a Dead End? 206
Tracy Mayor writes "Is a gig on an IT help desk really the career death it's always assumed to be? Not always, this Computerworld writer found out, just don't get comfy and stay too long. "
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.
Lessons learned .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every IT person should start at the helpdesk (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, the number one problem with IT is that the programmers and managers really don't have enough interaction with the end users to understand their side of things. Every time there's an outtage because someone kicked the cord out of a server, or every patch that breaks usability in the name of some wizzbang feature, it really falls on the helpdesk to manage and do damage control while you're out "on break".
To the rest of the company, the helpdesk is literally the face of the IT department. They're the ones who get to deal with irate customers, desperate password seekers, and the social manipulators.
On the help desk, you learn every quirk of every system your company supports. You learn all the "unofficial" tricks that get things done, regardless of policy or procedure. Most importantly, you learn who to call when situations arise you can't handle. You know *everyone*, so that when application Z is causing catastrophic system failures on your server farm you know exactly who to go to to make it stop.
Re:Who knows (Score:5, Insightful)
I did help desk for an ISP. I was never one of the youngest people there and by the time my job was outsourced, I was senior to most of the people in the company. I was still doing help desk, at top level, because I'd come to realize that I actually liked doing it. The trouble-shooting was a constant challenge because no matter how fool-proof you make your software, nature keeps coming up with fools who can manage to mess things up, and with the constantly-changing OS issues of Windows, there was always more to learn. For me, at least, it was a very satisfying job because every day I could go home knowing that there were at least twenty or so people who's days were a little better because I'd helped them. Not everybody can think that way, but if you can, the help desk doesn't have to become the hell desk.
Re:Help desks that push call times and scripts ove (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lessons learned .... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the best advice you can give for ANY job, not just IT. Nothing pisses me off faster than a worker who doesn't know how to do something and refuses to learn. A human being who is lazy and incurious is absolutely worthless.
Re:Don't think of it as just Help Desk (Score:2, Insightful)
See, users used to call you with problems. that's your first mistake. What they are really calling about is Incidents. After you Identify and Record the Incident, you send it off for Investigation and Diagnosis. Then if you're lucky, you can move it to Resolution and Recovery. If you can't fix the Incident, it becomes a Problem. After you identify the Problem, you can schedule a Change.
This explanation was all mixed up with some analogy about cars and car companies in the class I had, that confused me a little. And there was no demo of the software at the time because the QA environment kept crashing, and we couldn't log in, so when it went live no one had any idea what the fuck to do with it. And the user interface has more tabs in it than agent Mulder's filing cabinet, and they make about as much sense, and the program won't let you open a ticket unless they are all filled in correctly, but it doesn't really tell you what to fill in, it just keeps giving you incomprehensible error messages.
Re:Who knows (Score:2, Insightful)