Am I Help Desk or Desktop Support

tjb122982

This may be an odd question. For clarification and career self-direction purposes, I am trying to determine if I am either desktop support or help desk.

I am currently working as a school district building tech. My official title is Building Technology Support Specialist. I am considered tier 1 support. I am based in a k-4 elementary (a lot of fun, by the way). The teachers and staff put tickets in and I come and help them. The hardware I deal with is pretty standard: Windows desktops, teacher MacBook’s, student and teachers iPads, Apple TV’s, projectors, and basic printer issues.

Our Tier 2 guy is actually considered the “help desk.” When someone calls the helpdesk, it goes to him. It makes sense because most of the time there is only one tech per building and it provides coverage if one of us is sick.

With that being said, am I more considered help desk or desktop support?

TechGromit

Generally Tier 1 calls is a call center that fields call and tries to resolve issues over the phone. If they can't solve it, they assign the ticket to desk side support. Depending on the company Desk site support could be considered Tier 2, or local Tier 1. We have a contractor at my site that's great at doing desk side support calls day in and out, the same problems over and over, but if you ask him to do anything he didn't do 50 times before he's clueless, he's definitely tier one.

If you visit the user, your desk side. If your the first to take the call, your Tier one. Just because users can only contact the "help desk" guy by phone doesn't make him tier one. Many of my issues are reported to me by phone and I'm Tier 3.

blargoe

You are desktop support.

p@r0tuXus

Help desk would be a call/email-queue with phone/email support. Desktop support would be an in-person position. This has been my experience.

Moldygr33nb3an

TechGromit wrote: »

Generally Tier 1 calls is a call center that fields call and tries to resolve issues over the phone. If they can't solve it, they assign the ticket to desk side support. Depending on the company Desk site support could be considered Tier 2, or local Tier 1. We have a contractor at my site that's great at doing desk side support calls day in and out, the same problems over and over, but if you ask him to do anything he didn't do 50 times before he's clueless, he's definitely tier one.

If you visit the user, your desk side. If your the first to take the call, your Tier one. Just because users can only contact the "help desk" guy by phone doesn't make him tier one. Many of my issues are reported to me by phone and I'm Tier 3.

Do you work for the gov?

The reason I ask is, my friend worked IT for SWBC (big insurance company) and it was the complete opposite. Tier 3 were first responders. Tier 2 were the system admins and Tier 1 were the engineers. I always scratched my head. I guess it depends on the organization.

NetworkNewb

tjb122982 wrote: »

For clarification and career self-direction purposes, I am trying to determine if I am either desktop support or help desk.

Not to downplay your question, but it really should have zero effect on your self-direction or impact on your future on whether your consider yourself desktop support or help desk. For what it is worth, your current title sounds better than referring to your job as either of those. All that matters is you are getting the experience you want that is going to help you advance to where you want to go.

PocketLumberjack

When I worked at the local Schools I started on the Help Desk and then moved to Desktop support. They were considered the same level but the pay and expectations were different. While on the Help Desk I was able to work on some of the basic stuff for our Tier 3 team during my downtime which gave me some good Server experience. As Desktop support it was very end user oriented and I didn't get much exposure to Servers, but I did get some hands experience with networking gear. Looking back funny enough the Help Desk position actually gave me better enterprise IT experience. But it is different everywhere, I would say the best person to ask would be your supervisor or boss as they should know how they're organization is structured.

beads

Don't get too hung up on titles. I have seen and meet security analysts making 150k a year and "security architects" making 90k, sometimes in the same organization. I did meet a young woman last week, probably 1-2 years out of college that proudly told me she was a "security architect" now after working help desk last year. OK she's probably never engineered a solution in her life, outside of building a sandwich but yeah you can call yourself anything you wish. The guy who prints up the business cards won't even blink an eye.

Oh and update yourself to something even more snazzy like: Support Desk. Sounds more up to date. Really titles are fairly meaningless.

- b/eads

cowill

You sound like Desktop Support.

I remember having that identity crisis when I first started. The issue prolly is that your end users call yall "Help Desk"....So you run with it...LOL