Going from MSP to single site/company?

jam3s121

Is it really anything different?

I'm getting tired of dealing with so many personalities, custom solution software that I never get enough time to fully understand, every company having some different SLA, & micro management about which companies to help first due to those SLA's.



My certifications are A+, MSCA windows 7. I have some networking knowledge.. but i don't love networking. I know I should probably take net + but haven't pushed myself to try.

nascar_paul

jam3s121 wrote: »

My certifications are A+, MSCA windows 7. I have some networking knowledge.. but i don't love networking. I know I should probably take net + but haven't pushed myself to try.

You should. It will make you a better tech, even if you don't want to do networking ultimately. And it will make you more attractive to an employer offering permanent, full time work. I hear you on the MSP thing. The grind gets old, but take some time to invest in yourself. I think that the IT market is really starting to heat up, and you'll be where you want to be in months if you get to work now!

Fulcrum45

I went from an MSP to a single site company a little over a year ago. There are pros and cons to both:

MSP: I was touching everything! From wireless networks to backup software I was learning it all. I didn't get to know many of my clients because there was a good chance I'd never see them again. I did do a lot of driving if the remote software wasn't working but even then it was nice to get out and see the daylight The downside was that I was touching everything. Sometimes you could not work with a piece of hardware or software long enough to know it because it happened to be something obscure that only certain industries used. The learning curve was huge.

Internal IT: I see the same people every day and I consider it a good thing. I know what they're going to break before they even do it. The downside? We have network people. We have people who handle and configure the backup software. We have a compartment for everything including me. I do not get access to the things I used to see every day and it takes a toll on your learning. I have however become extremely proficient at obscure accounting software which could be considered a plus.

This has been my experience anyway- take it with a grain of salt.

ImThe0ne

I have worked for MSPs in the past. I would recommend internal IT any day of the week. Obviously, this would boil down to how both employers treated employees, etc. But from the 5 IT jobs I have had, 2 were MSP and 3 were internal. I left the second MSP after 3 days because I remembered why I left the first one.

My way of looking at it, is people on the internal side are a little more understanding than people on the MSP side of things. Why? Because on MSP they are paying for how long it may or may not take you to fix it. Most of the time, it may be quick fixes, but on that off chance that it's one of those wonky issues that takes a while, you better be prepared to hear it. That isn't necessarily the case on internal IT as you are getting paid the same (typically) if it takes you 30 minutes or if you are there until 2am fixing the issue.

Some people seem to be a bit more laid back on the internal side than on the external side of things. But again, it depends on the company you will be working for on both sides.

jam3s121

thanks for updates.

Some of the serious con's I dislike about MSP work currently at my company

1) Needing to log hours, its tedious and very time consuming if you don't keep up with it. I tend to do it as I go because my employer isn't paying me to do it while I'm sitting around at home and rarely is there an hour to two hours to catch up from the first to the end of the month if I didn't enter anything all day.

2) Partners abuse the hell out of the fact we are "salaried" asking us to do a lot of stuff after hours.

3) The partner at my MSP that handles payroll royally screwed me over, I had been driving 150-250 extra miles per week for work and submitted mileage expenses as just the cost of gas (via gasbuddy.com, i.e. 30 miles in my car is like 1 gallon of gas.. so like 2.95 per 30 miles!) He was giving the other technicians .69 cents per mile.. but for 7 months he never said a word to me.

4) Not truely "managing" anything. We are a MSP but we honestly run like a break fix, my job has gone from managing our RMM stuff to driving around CT like an ass fixing ill configured desktops lately.. I could do that at a internal it job and not have to get my car royally screwed over.


On the positive side of my msp job

I have experience with virtually every remote support program, logmein, teamviewer, screenconnect, rdp.

I have learned a lot about jr server administrator ( although I feel like we don't follow best practice, and because we inherited about 80% of our clients each one has a very different gpo setup which is very hard for me to understand.. for instance why each company must have a different method of mapping drives is beyond me.)

ImThe0ne

jam3s121 wrote: »

thanks for updates.
for instance why each company must have a different method of mapping drives is beyond me.

Same reason everyone seems to find a million different ways to do anything. There is the "recommended, best practice" way and then there are the multitude of ways that other people thought were "best". On the other hand, sometimes people are lazy and the "quick way" was implemented instead of the "correct way", so years later when the organization has expanded, the original, quick but wrong mapping schema is still in place.

I speak from experience, as we deal with this now. We are using a mapping script that pulls mapping locations from an excel file and distributes to AD groups.... Yes, an excel file... But this was the method used 10+ years ago and all the employees still around from when it was implemented are too terrified to let us change it.