Staying in the help desk for TOO LONG?

Bchen22

If you been in desktop support or help desk for 10 years how does this affect your career.
You guys ever known someone whos make a career in help desk or desktop support?

hurricane1091

When I was working with a company as a contractor at a major hospital chain earlier this year, they had guys there who were doing the desktop support for years. They had strictly help desk people, desktop people, network people, security people. Desktop support started at $40k there and they never had to worry about any of the server stuff or printers or anything like that. So in the right environment, I can see it happening.

markulous

Do you mean staying long at a single position (e.g. entry-level position) or just in a help desk evironment? If it's the latter, then I see no problems with it. Certain companies have a lot of room for advancement. The place I work has people that get paid pretty decent. If you've been at the same position for 10 years and it's a low-level position, it'd be a tough hole to dig out of.

Danielm7

markulous wrote: »

If you've been at the same position for 10 years and it's a low-level position, it'd be a tough hole to dig out of.

Exactly. If the job you've been at forever ends for whatever reason you have to explain to other places why you were never promoted or never advanced. I knew of a lot of people like that when I worked at an offshoot branch of local government 10+ years ago. There are still guys there doing the exact same jobs with no desire to learn anything new or move forward.

Even if you really like desktop type work there is a progression path. At my current job we have a number of Sr level desktop engineers, they get paid pretty well. But, they aren't doing break/fix or even supporting end users at that point they are deploying software and handling waves up upgrades and patch management.

tahjzhuan

I've been doing 2nd level support close to 10 years after working system admin in the Air Force. I enjoy the job and have been promoted and turned down positions doing things I may not have enjoyed so much. Just starting to get back on my grind, but I'm not worried about job prospects. I just mastered the position that I was in.

gbdavidx

Sounds like my hospotal

hurricane1091 wrote: »

When I was working with a company as a contractor at a major hospital chain earlier this year, they had guys there who were doing the desktop support for years. They had strictly help desk people, desktop people, network people, security people. Desktop support started at $40k there and they never had to worry about any of the server stuff or printers or anything like that. So in the right environment, I can see it happening.