Making a career in Desktop Support or as a IT Field Tech?

Bchen22

Does it make sense to make a career in the IT Desktop Support Field?
Would I make good money even with 5 years of experience, an IT University Degree, and certifications?:)
I would like to do this forever because I like dealing with End Users and walking around desks in person?:D

Verities

You could make career of it however I don't think you would make very much money, unless you start your own business doing that.

markulous

Verities wrote: »

You could make career of it however I don't think you would make very much money, unless you start your own business doing that.

You can make nice money in some organizations as a Level 3. Maybe not 100k but probably around 80k. That's a good salary depending where you're at. Although at that point you're not doing strictly desktop support, you're troubleshooting firewalls and various types of servers, VPNs, etc.

Jon_Cisco

There will always be jobs like this around. I'm not sure they are going to meet your needs in 10 years but I don't see any reason not to get started.

Microsoft has desktop support certifications but your best bet is to go online and do job searches for what your interested in. That will tell you the requirements.

Good Luck!

pinkydapimp

Serious question. How many folks over say 45 do you see in these types of roles?

I think its super risky making a career of it. There are plenty of other areas of IT where you can be in a customer facing role and problem solve that arent that desktop support.

Danielm7

You could do a jack of all trades sort of path in smaller shops. That way you'll still get hands on but get to work with everything else and expand your skill set too. Seems like the sort of position that might be more easily farmed to an MSP though unless you were bringing specific sorts of skills to the business that they wouldn't want to lose.

pinkydapimp

I think the risk is those positions (desktop and helpdesk) have seemed to pay less and less as more kids are growing up and are more technical. So people can find people to do these roles for less money. I feel like sysadmin roles are going to trend the same. As time goes on you will see them get paid less, especially if the organization is leaning on vendors for much of their support.

If you like interacting with people i strongly suggest roles where you are delivering services or field engineering type roles. You get that desktop support type of feel, but you are actually making your company money which means you likely are making more money yourself!

tkerber

pinkydapimp wrote: »

I think the risk is those positions (desktop and helpdesk) have seemed to pay less and less as more kids are growing up and are more technical. So people can find people to do these roles for less money. I feel like sysadmin roles are going to trend the same. As time goes on you will see them get paid less, especially if the organization is leaning on vendors for much of their support.

If you like interacting with people i strongly suggest roles where you are delivering services or field engineering type roles. You get that desktop support type of feel, but you are actually making your company money which means you likely are making more money yourself!

You know what I think is interesting is that even though technology is advancing and children are exposed to it at such a young age. There are still a lot of technically incompetent people. As time moves on a lot of my friends are graduating from Universities and entering the work world (non IT majors). It's astounding to me how a majority of them still struggle with technology.. Three years ago I was a Desktop Support Tech and even then I ran across several people in their early twenties that struggled on a daily basis.

Therefore I think the need for desktop support people will not go away as soon as we think it will. However, it would be wise to not base your life career on desktop support. It will mostly likely not be as challenging or financially rewarding as you'd like it to be. I was a Desktop Support Tech for a year and grew out of that role pretty fast--but everyone is different and being in Desktop Support is a really good way to get experience and jump to like a Systems / Network Administrator position.

Verities

markulous wrote: »

You can make nice money in some organizations as a Level 3. Maybe not 100k but probably around 80k. That's a good salary depending where you're at. Although at that point you're not doing strictly desktop support, you're troubleshooting firewalls and various types of servers, VPNs, etc.

Good point, I hadn't thought he would end up taking that path.

pinkydapimp wrote: »

I think the risk is those positions (desktop and helpdesk) have seemed to pay less and less as more kids are growing up and are more technical. So people can find people to do these roles for less money. I feel like sysadmin roles are going to trend the same. As time goes on you will see them get paid less, especially if the organization is leaning on vendors for much of their support.

I disagree; there is a distinct difference between someone knowing how to navigate through a desktop system and someone knowing how to troubleshoot one. I believe the need for support will always be there, even with people growing up being immersed in computer technologies.

nathandrake

At my place of employment, the pay range for a senior desktop technician is 49k - 74k + bonuses. So while it's not great money once you hit the max range, it's not horrible either.

pinkydapimp

Verities wrote: »

I disagree; there is a distinct difference between someone knowing how to navigate through a desktop system and someone knowing how to troubleshoot one. I believe the need for support will always be there, even with people growing up being immersed in computer technologies.

I agree the need will always be there. I just think they will need less people to do it and will pay them less over time. Think about it. The more some stuff gets moved to the cloud, the more stable systems are, the more dummy proof we make things, the less people you need to do it. Plus more and more can be done remotely. When i was doing desktop like 11 years ago we had users setup so that nothing was stored locally. If an issue required more then 20 minutes to troubleshoot, we could reimage it in as little time and that would resolve 95% of the issues.

So i think as long as folks look it it as an entry level position, and not try to make a career out if it then your fine. Otherwise, i fear you will end up unemployed at some point and have a difficult time trying to get hired.

Verities

The only thing I will agree with you on is that desktop support will never pay as well as higher positions like sysadmin or network admin. When you mention the cloud, I'm assuming you mean VDI or hosted applications, when it comes to desktop support. If that's the case, there are still a ton of issues plaguing both implementations (I've seen them first hand). Even though there is remote support, it can only do so much, check out workmarket.com it's specifically designed to hire out on site tech support for companies that provide only remote support. 11 years ago, you weren't working with the same amount of data and applications available/required for the everyday work force, so the landscape was very different.

I'm not trying to come off as a jerk or anything, I'm just tired of people thinking tech jobs are going away because technology is moving to the cloud and becoming more user friendly (I really hope you're not basing this off of Win 8 Metro interface); I still see a sea of tech illiterate folks out there and I don't think it will change anytime soon.

nathandrake

Verities wrote: »

The only thing I will agree with you on is that desktop support will never pay as well as higher positions like sysadmin or network admin. When you mention the cloud, I'm assuming you mean VDI or hosted applications, when it comes to desktop support. If that's the case, there are still a ton of issues plaguing both implementations (I've seen them first hand). Even though there is remote support, it can only do so much, check out workmarket.com it's specifically designed to hire out on site tech support for companies that provide only remote support. 11 years ago, you weren't working with the same amount of data and applications available/required for the everyday work force, so the landscape was very different.

I'm not trying to come off as a jerk or anything, I'm just tired of people thinking tech jobs are going away because technology is moving to the cloud and becoming more user friendly (I really hope you're not basing this off of Win 8 Metro interface); I still see a sea of tech illiterate folks out there and I don't think it will change anytime soon.

I'm in agreement with you on the VDI support. I'm a senior desktop support at my company and I'm more involved supporting all of our offshore people using VDIs than I am for all the people onsite at my company. VDIs still need desktop support and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

pinkydapimp

Verities wrote: »

The only thing I will agree with you on is that desktop support will never pay as well as higher positions like sysadmin or network admin. When you mention the cloud, I'm assuming you mean VDI or hosted applications, when it comes to desktop support. If that's the case, there are still a ton of issues plaguing both implementations (I've seen them first hand). Even though there is remote support, it can only do so much, check out workmarket.com it's specifically designed to hire out on site tech support for companies that provide only remote support. 11 years ago, you weren't working with the same amount of data and applications available/required for the everyday work force, so the landscape was very different.

I'm not trying to come off as a jerk or anything, I'm just tired of people thinking tech jobs are going away because technology is moving to the cloud and becoming more user friendly (I really hope you're not basing this off of Win 8 Metro interface); I still see a sea of tech illiterate folks out there and I don't think it will change anytime soon.

Im not saying they will go away per se. I see them morphing into other roles. Im not basing this on one specific thing. It has nothing to do with VDI or hosted apps. Just basing this on what i have seen in IT in my travels and interactions with many many different organizations of many different sizes. But no one knows the future. I just think folks need to make sure to keep improving their skill sets and going with the flow to make sure they don't end up as a one trick pony or thinking desktop is a career that is sustainable.