The next step from an ISP tier 1 role.

Dream_Cap

Hello,

To give you a background of me, I'm currently a tier 1 technical support agent for an ISP on the West Coast. I have the A+ and Network+ certs. I also have a BSBA in MIS from UNLV. I have been working for this ISP for almost 2 years now.

I really do not see myself doing this type of job in the long term. I support the telephone, internet, and video services for customers. A lot of the time, I just feel like a customer service agent. At this point with my position, I'm pretty good at what I do. I'm okay with dealing with people although I'm very introverted. However, I work in a fast-paced call center. At times, it can be a constant bombardment of customers with 50 to 100 people in the queue waiting to talk to me(and other agents of course.) It can be a constant stream of angry customers. We have to solve the problem on the phone with the customer or escalate to another group. Although I get paid a decent amount (around 40k a year which is probably almost too high for my type of position) for my first job outside of school, I feel unhappy. I don't wake up in the morning looking forward to what I do. I leave work feeling drained sometimes. I try hard to stay grateful for the benefits I get and what I make, but I still just don't feel satisfied.

I have been seeking and trying to plan for what the next step in my career should be. I have eyed the CCNA for a while, and even tried to study it for a couple of months, but lost interest in the material and gave up. What I want in a position is more autonomy(being able to call or receive a call from a customer and tell them I'll work on the problem and call them back at a later time.) If most jobs I look forward to in IT are in a fast paced call center environment, then I just don't want to do it. I do enjoy technology, but I don't think I'd enjoy it to the point of setting up a lab in my apartment just to play with it other than for the reason of getting a cert.

I've also thought about web development. I had a small 2-3 month internship at a small web development firm in town and I really liked it although I did mostly SEO(search engine optimization) work. I attempted to do some online courses through teamtreehouse.com which I thought were really cool. I did completed the big HTML and CSS portions, and gave up towards the end of the Javascript portions(don't know why.)

I guess I'm looking for direction here. In realistic terms, I can see myself being an IT guy for a small business or a department interacting with internal employees, doing break/fix tasks and maintaining a network. Do those exist? Can I be an IT guy who doesn't necessarily have insatiable desire for IT?

As I write this, I am having some lemonade-ritas after a long day at work. I may regret this post since I'm a little intoxicated, but for some reason, I've been having a pretty big desire to post on here about this for some time.

Thanks for reading my post.

techfiend

Desktop support (sometimes called help desk) is probably what you are looking for. You have to watch out with help desk titles though, many of them are over the phone work but some are local, dirty hands work, would be a good question to ask on first contact. You might be taking a small pay decrease but I think it's a pretty comfortable role. It's not usually very stressful and you get some good experience in. You never know what you're going to encounter on a day to day basis.

adam220891

OP,

Small offices use basic stuff like business class Internet, netgear routers, OfficeJet printers, etc. You will probably not get the skills needed for an enterprise environment dealing with that stuff. The pay will probably be low too.

IT is shifting to the cloud and processes are being virtualized and automated. Higher skill sets will be required for us all going forward, So cert up and get quality work experience.

Pick what you like. IT is very broad:

-Desktop Support - Dealing with viruses, crashes, minor network issues, etc. IMO this job sucks but some enjoy the user interaction

-Server Admin - Work with Group Policy, Exchange, Active Directory...setting up accounts, logs, application deployment, etc.

-Virtualization - Goes in hand with servers. Less and less servers being stood up will be physical

-Network Admin - Cisco/HP/Juniper switches/routers, firewalls, WAN connections - This stuff is deep and technical, it takes time to get into it

-Security - Permissions, firewalls, VPNs, pen testing, vulnerability scanning, etc.

-ERP - Business functions like AX and SAP are very relevant, but you will either do more business or more programming in these roles

In a midsize company, say 100-300 PCs, you will probably touch a bit of all these. You'll have vendors that manage some services/aspects of your infrastructure and you may have an MSP. This can build soft skills like project management and communication and will get your hands on a lot of technology and may help you dial in on what interests you.