Areas of employment in hardware/personal PCs?

I'm just curious as to what kind of jobs one can obtain by working on PCs in a business environment? Yes, I know an A+ would be essential for this, as well as probably some kind of Apple certification and Windows 7/Vista/XP/etc. certs. I know some "side" knowledge of servers and networking would be helpful, but for the most part I'm interested mainly in the hardware end of things - PCs, printers, scanners, wireless, etc. - putting them together, repairing them, installing them, etc. It's where my interest lies.

Second, it seems that networking is where the money is at (with all the Cisco certs), and perhaps Microsoft server technology. Unfortunately, it's not what I want to do, as I've been in networking for a bit now. From what I can tell from the outside looking in, it seems those with the extensive hardware knowledge of PCs get paid the least. But I would like to know what kind of salary range those people earn who do the type of work I'm talking about, and what that kind of work can lead to. I wouldn't want to have to feed my family based on what the Geek Squad pays, but I'm hopeful that extensive PC knowledge could lead to bigger and greater things.

Thanks.

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Comments

tpatt100

Back in the day when I was starting out the norm in my area doing desktop support if you had experience you could make in the 40's. Now a days I see ads offering in the 30's.

Back then the bigger the environment the more automated tools you had. Desktop support was getting phased out at the 13 floor facility I was doing help desk at. Reason why? Software was getting installed, uninstalled, reinstalled with msi packages via SMS. So I was doing that on the help desk, setting up push jobs in batches and monitoring succes/failure. Then Citrix was brought in and apps shortcuts for Citrix were pushed to their desktop and start menus, that launched the Citrix terminal. Only less used apps were installed on the desktop. And even then our package guy made packages for software if there were at least 5 installs lol. It got so bad with SMS that our Desktop guys never wanted to leave their desks they would bounce the ticket back to us to do....Then they wondered why their positions were not being back filled when people left.

I think today desktop support is more help desk or your a contractor that support a bunch of small/medium sized businesses. If you watch how IT is developing with VMware and software being a service desktop support might not be a career you can expect to retire with.

ssampier

What about desktop support that you find most interesting?

Servers are similar to desktops and have a lot more career potential there.

As for PC support, it seems to go in stages. First companies are all about providing gung-ho first line support. Then they realize the employees running ragged and/or you are spending lots of money on techs. Then you decide to implement virtual desktops, etc. When that works well, companies think, "Hey this American worker gets paid 10x what someone else overseas gets paid. Everything is virtual anyway. Let's off-shore."

Language difficulties and time difference eventually makes you go back to step 1.

BradleyHU

ssampier wrote: »

As for PC support, it seems to go in stages. First companies are all about providing gung-ho first line support. Then they realize the employees running ragged and/or you are spending lots of money on techs. Then you decide to implement virtual desktops, etc. When that works well, companies think, "Hey this American worker gets paid 10x what someone else overseas gets paid. Everything is virtual anyway. Let's off-shore."

Language difficulties and time difference eventually makes you go back to step 1.

so effin true!!! the creation of VMs has been both a blessing & a curse for desktop support techs here in the states. its made our job easier to handle alot of the issues, but then companies get hip to the idea, that since its virtual, we dont need techs on location, so lets off-shore it to india....speaking of which, why is india the country of choice to do the off-shoring by most companies???? the company i work @ off-shores to both india & romania...go figure.

ssampier

I think India is a favorite because they speak English and read/write English. That's a major bonus. Granted their accents can be quite thick. Second, India has large number of people and relatively high amount of college graduates.

I also think Asian stereotypes work in their favor, "They're Asian, they must be good at math (and by extension technology), right?"

Time differences can be a major pain, however. Many companies I interviewed use different support centers globally to "follow the sun" model, so to speak.

Edit:

Of course cultural differences can add strain. For example American idioms can really confuse foreigners.

Mojo_666

Field service engineer, but it isn't really IT IMO

laptop

Hey Dr_Atomic,

I will tell you the truth. Most computer hardware jobs out there don't pay you much. It's almost like working at BestBuy or Futureshop repairing laptops or computers. PC hardware jobs is only the beginning in IT. You have to think down the road in terms of what you see yourself doing.