Does anyone have any experience at a small business MSP?

vaguemedia

Does anyone have any experience at a small business MSP?

I "may" have an opportunity to make a change from my contract desktop support position in a very large environment. I'm interested in making a move because of the lack of opportunities to learn as a desktop tech working in a large enterprise. It seems like in the larger environments, lower level support positions never have a chance at touching infrastructure or get any systems experience.
I've read all the horror stories about working for a MSP. I seriously doubt the work environment there is anything close to the rants that I read recently on this forum. I visited today, I was impressed with the owner and how he presented his business model.
This may be a good opportunity to learn. It's also a permanent position, no shady recruiter and agency to deal with. What do you think?

ImThe0ne

The truth of the matter, is this, if the company is run how an MSP should be run, you will enjoy your work and learn a ton in a very short amount of time. However, if it is run like the vast majority of the other MSPs in the US, it will be a very similar situation to all of the rants and horror stories you see here. I have been there twice, one small and one medium-ish and they were literally the exact same, with the exception of one I was salaried at and the smaller one I worked by "Billable hours". Even the one I was salaried at, I was expected to keep up with everything I did at every hr so they could bill the client accordingly.

The second truth is this, some people LOVE the MSP life style. Always constantly going from one place to another, changing from working on a phone system to a POS to a Citrix environment. It really is a lot in a small amount of time. Some people love it, others hate it and would rather be siloed off.

The pit falls with most MSPs are customer irritation as well. You get the brunt force of their frustration when their crap doesn't work. And a large amount of the MSPs that are on the small-to-medium side, utilize everyone as a helpdesk tech as well. Even if you really were hired to worked in a DC environment and virtualizing servers, you might end up being in the helpdesk rotation call. It sucked. I will keep my specified role and will only ever go back to an MSP if necessary and the money is outstandingly good.

The best advice I can give, is if the money is decent and you think it is a good company, then give it a shot. But make sure you have a backup plan for if it starts sucking.

networker050184

I think MSPs get generalized as bad around here, but it's really like anything else. Every company is different. Make an informed decision.

bigdogz

Yes, YMMV.

It depends on the culture of the company. You will learn a great deal and if you work with a great team, that will make a difference.
Some customers that you deal with may be ignorant of how things work. If they are told what the expectations are and informed on SLA's, you should be OK.
Occasionally when a customer makes a request that will cause an outage or some other problem someone at the MSP would advise them on how and when to make the changes.

Good luck!!!

techfiend

Having not worked an MSP but interviewed with a few. I think the employee attitude can be a good first impression of the environment. Employees at every MSP I've been to had employees that looked down and wiped out in the middle of the day, they were probably heavily overworked. If the employees are happy with a lot of energy it's probably not a bad place to work.

bgold87

I'm currently working at a small MSP, I'll start by saying this is not the most cush job I have ever had, but I'm challenged every single day to up my skills. I can't imagine making a career here unless you went into management, or PM side. My take on it is that I've learned more here in one year than I probably would in 5 years in a corporate environment. It's really rounded out my skills. I'm primarily a System Engineer but also do networking, firewalls, cloud services, etc so it's made me a better overall engineer. Also, you're usually thrown to the fire to find the answer or come up with a solution, so your confidence in yourself really goes up when you are pushed to see what you can really do. All in all probably one of the best career moves I've made as I've recently accepted a new position doing more what I want to do, and the salary that comes with it.

CCIE Wanna Be

I guess I'm out of the loop, but I see "MSP" splattered all over this forum and I have no clue what it stands for...could someone please fill me in?

bgold87

Manged Service Provider, basically outsourced IT.

You'll also see them call themselves VAR's (Value Added Re-seller)

InfoTech92

Dude, regardless where you work, stuff will suck. some will be better than others. Regardless if it's an MSP or not. What I can tell you is at an MSP you will learn A LOT.

As far as everyone being help desk, that depends. The first MSP I was at, it was like this. The one I'm at now has different departments. We have a SOC, NOC, Project department, Cyber Security department, Linux department, and Sysadmin department.

Fulcrum45

I've worked at a small MSP and I do mean SMALL; 3 people max. We had to leverage a lot of software to help us keep up but it wasn't too bad. I visited clients quite often and had to learn a lot of software/ hardware in a short period of time BUT I got to do more than just fix Windows. I got to design networks, build servers, everything. On the flip side being that we dealt with small to medium size businesses I had to contend with the "those who pay the least complain the most" situation quite often. There were clients who did not understand that their contract did not cover me coming in late at night to physically MOVE their PCs around a call center or that sometimes we had no contract in place at all and why I couldn't just drop everything and rush over to their office to fix a downed PC. You get all types. Part of surviving all of that is that you need to be able to log your time accurately, know the client contracts just as well (hopefully) as the client presumably does and not get sucked into the "While you're here could you..." situations.

mackenzae

I tried it once.. was there a week and half... it was sold as a Network/systems engineer type of role.. first day i found out i would litterally be sitting at a pc.. answering the phone and doing helpdesk.. they also wanted their techs to drive to their headquarters once every 2 weeks for team meetings.. their clients were all 2 hours away from their hq (middle of nowhere in PA - Customers were Philly, Baltimore, DC, etc..) and this was after working for 8 hours for the day at the client site.

techfiend

Sure you learn a lot at an MSP but is it a good way to climb the ladder?

As a system admin at a SMB I'm having trouble moving into anything beyond help desk at larger companies because I don't have the large scale experience. I'd think MSP experience would have the same sort of issue. I applied at an MSP yesterday mainly because it was looking for cisco certs. I'd rather avoid the stress but would this be a step in the right direction for someone pursuing networking and probably eventually security?

gc8dc95

I think it would be a good step for most people looking to move up.

I worked in a very large corporate environment in a desktop support II position. It was good work and usually was not too stressful, but everything was very departmentalized, so it was hard to get any real exposure to other equipment. Luckily, I worked myself into a couple projects to gain some good experience, but that was short lived.

I started looking around because there was not any positions available in the part of the country I wanted to be in. I found a small MSP, about 50 employees, looking for a system engineer. I was hesitant because of the things I have heard about many MSP's, but decided to give it a shot. They made me a good offer and I accepted it. It is the best decision I have made in my career so far. They pay for training and certifications. Most work is done remotely, so little travel, even work at home sometimes. It has enabled me to work on projects from start to finish and top to bottom. The exposure to technology such as SAN's, servers, networking, etc has been invaluable to the overall understanding and troubleshooting abilities.

The down side, in my opinion, is having to track hours closely and keep billable time in mind. Very fast paced at times and you have to figure it out, even if you have never heard of it. Occasionally, I have to do some break/fix calls, but our client team tries to allocate them to people who are strong in the particular area.

techfiend

Thanks for sharing, do you think it will help you obtain higher level networking positions like a network engineer?

My goal is to be a high level network engineer or architect in 5 years, financial goal is $100+. For that I'll have to seek either enterprise or a SMB that really values IT. I'm not sure MSP experience would translate well to enterprise environments. That's my biggest concern.

gc8dc95

I believe it can lead to the experience required for higher level positions, especially if they are willing to focus you on desired areas. The full scale enterprise environment would probably be tough to get with an MSP. I came to the MSP with that experience already, so I guess I never really thought about it. I can say that it should be a step closer than just a SMB admin.

techfiend

The current MSP position I'm pursuing now sounds like it would be a SMB admin/JOAT for a few clients, it's tiny in this area so no specialists. A lot like what I do now but independently and higher stress instead of in a small group with very little stress. It would probably expose me to different technologies, that would be a plus. It would pay more but if it's not advancing towards my goal I'd rather find something else that would and not just chase paper.