Tech support Engineer or Specialist ?

This one seems bit confising,

Position

Technical Support

Technical Support Specialist

Technical Support Engineer

we have couple of Tech Support Engineers without a degree, at least one cert and 10+ years of experience.

And Tech Support Specialists without much experience(less than 2 yrs), one M$ cert, but have uni degree(even non IT).

finaly, ordinary Tech Support guys with atleast one cert, more than 5 years exp and no degree.

so what do you think ?.

I think, Specialists should have 10+ yrs experience + expert level certs in the area of specilization + univ degree or diploma in IT.

Engineers, 4+ yrs, hardware, os and network certs.

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Comments

Smallguy

kindda confused at what ur gettng at but here are my thoughts

technical support--- reasonably intelligent person basic understanding of the info you need for you job. if it's windows knowing the OS and basic networking concepts.

Technical support specialist-- all the skills above along with a better understanding of the product BUT a through understanding of a specific area like networking or DNS, group policeis etc.

Technical Support Engineer ---should have all te skills of the pervious positions but undstand the entire picture extremely well.

personally I donlt think a Degree is nescessary for any of he positions or you must have 5 or 10 years exp I've met guys with 1 year exp who were amazing at what they did and I've met guys with 10 years exp who were idiots(were NT4 mcse but never up kept their skills).

it comes down to quality of knowledge and ability ot work under pressure not number of years or letters after your name IMO.

We all know certs can be forged( brandumped)

macwhizard

here are my thoughts,

Specialist - should have all the skills of Support and Engineer and indepth knowledge in the field. (someone like Dr. House

)

Smallguy wrote:

personally I donlt think a Degree is nescessary for any of he positions

Hmm, may be within 10yrs time a Degree will be mandatory. Would we go to any unqualified doctor ?. or let someone build a dam or a bridge who isn't qualified ?.

it comes down to quality of knowledge and ability ot work under pressure not number of years or letters after your name IMO.

We all know certs can be forged( brandumped)

absolutely true.

strauchr

These are all different types of positions which require different skills and personalities.

Someone with 20 years experience could be just a tech support guy because a little about a lot and prefers more customer/user interaction.

An engineer could be someone with 5 years experience who has dedicated themselves to learning a particular product or system and know it in depth. This person may prefer to tinker with systems than deal with people.

So I don't see positions as degrees, certs or experience I see them as skills and personailities, in other words who fits the job description best. Where degrees, certs and experience come in to play is when you are fine tuning a position or when your looking for an advantage over the other people who are going for the same position as you.

computerguy9355

Why does it matter whether you are a specialist, a technican or an engineer ?

As long as you are getting paid for what you love to do, you shouldn't worry too much about it.

Its not fair for a guy with no college degree to be an engineer while the other guy with a college degree is a specialist ?

Its very common here. Nowadays many people think a degree alone will get them an "engineering" job. The truth is the stuff they learned in college is mostly theory, non-practical stuff. See where I am trying to show here?

If you are an employeer and currently looking for an network engineer. Would you hire someone who just graduated with no experience or someone with no college degree but has 10+ years of experience?