Anybody work for a managed service provider?

bababooey1

Where you remote in and/or go to different companies (large and small) to provide technical services.
Was it a good experience?
I am so used to working in an IT department "in-house"

shodown

PRO's

You make money for the company so its much harder to get let go if you are on top of your job as they loose a revenu stream.
You will always be on the latest and greatest as when the new versions come out you will be setting up and working in those enviorments.

Con's

You are there to make the company money so if you are not working a customer you aren't making them money so its in there intrest to have you working 75 percent of your day and the other 25 admin, training.

Training is sometimes lacking for gear your suppose to be working they just expect you to know it.

pham0329

Working with MSPs gives you access to a lot of technologies, which is always a plus, but depending on the type of client's your working it, generally, the only time you get calls are when things go wrong. This kind of sucks especially when you have a lot of big clients with complex network, unless you have superb documentations, it's kind of hard to troubleshoot over the phone when someone says something isn't working.

Also, in my experience, when you're at an MSP, every minute of your time better be billable...you don't really have time to be browsing TE, like I am now!

bababooey1

Thanks for your responses.
It was eluded to me that if you were in their office, you weren't making the company money. So different from what I have now as there are days when I have hours of downtime
But, as you all say, it's a good place to learn.

the_Grinch

As far as billing every minute, that really depends on the MSP (sounds like yours does this). My company isn't nearly as strict with the accounting for every minute. The MSP world is very interesting and has a lot of pluses, but also a lot of minuses:

Pros:

You'll work with all types of technology - I've found customers running close to the bleeding edge and then there are those who have been limping along for years

Training/certifications - Training really depends on the company, but as certs goes the more you have/get the better. Most MSPs are trying to maintain their partner status and thus need to have a certain amount of certified people. Also, especially on the helpdesk, you may end up doing server work way above what a normal helpdesk would so you need some way to prepare for it.

Specialization - Most MSPs have teams and you'll be able to specialize. My company has a NOC, Helpdesk, Network Team, and Field Engineering. In theory you should be able to move to those higher teams and further specialize (Servers, Virtualization, etc).

Job Stability - We've had continual growth and the economic downturn was a huge boost to that. IT Departments are usually the first to go and MSP's have been filling that gap.

Cons

You'll work with all types of technology - Yes this is a pro and a con. If I had a dollar for every time I got stuck with a ticket for a piece of software that no one had ever seen before but that I had to fix, I'd be a millionaire. Generally, there is no I do not know, there is only I will figure it out.

Might be treated like crap - Be prepared to be treated like crap by some customers. We have a lot of customers who look at us as nothing. Since you aren't at least part of the company and really have no one on the inside advocating for you, users will abuse you. Some customers we can approach about abuses, but most don't want to hear about it.

Knowing lots of environments/documentation - I came from small IT departments and the culture shock of an MSP can kill you. You'll be expected to know a lot of environments very well and at least at my company, the documentation is crap. Also, there is generally some random application/device that someone uses but no one knows about.

Customers are cheap - Most customers do not like to spend money to do a job properly. There will be band aid fixes and when they go, it is your fault. Along those lines, you'll have customers who will do things on their own or with outside help and when things go horribly wrong come to you. Suddenly it will be you have to fix this it is mission critical! Yet it wasn't so mission critical as to at least keep your "IT Department" in the loop when you did it.

No say - Last thing, a lot of customers will give you no say in what they want done. We've had customers say we want this done, we've advised against it (or offered a better method), and are still told no. In the small IT Departments I was with, we were asked "can we do this and how", where as now it is "we are doing this".

Please don't take my large number of cons as a reason not to work for them. In the two years that I have been with an MSP, I like it/hate it no differently then any other IT Department I have been with. I have worked on more technology that I ever thought I would and I am pretty amazed that I know about 90 environments very well. Obviously not as well as if I had just one, but still fairly impressed. Hopefully where you are going offers training, certifications, and most of all mentoring. One thing my company lacked was mentoring and driving you in a direction. Hopefully yours will be driving you in a direction (with your input) and let you truly grow. Good luck!

ptilsen

I'm pretty much going to repeat Pham, shodown, and the_grinch, but here's my input.

I work for a small, growing MSP. These are two qualities that may significantly impact my experience.

Pros:
You work with a lot of different technologies. You get to be deeply involved with these technologies. There is no AD guy, no Exchange guy, no firewall guy, no Vmware guy -- you're that guy (or girl), or you're the guy who hopes to be that guy.

You get to design entire solutions. I've engineered small WAN solutions, small to large clusters, new AD implementations. In just over a year, I've put together 15 or 20 project plans for migrations and new implementations. I can't overstate the value and fulfillment this level of experience provides.

You get to -- have to -- troubleshoot and resolve complex, interesting problems on your own. After working with my employer for about six months, I actually realized that I had run into a disturbing number of parallel's between myself and Dr. House. I actually say, at least once a week, "interesting" in more or less the same context (and if you don't watch the show, just google "House interesting" without quotes and you'll get the point). Outside of the stress, this is extremely valuable experience, and to me, quite fun.

You get to make and see the difference effective IT management has on a business, both yours and the customer's. I don't know about others, but I find this incredibly fulfilling.

You have job security -- if you're good; your clients like you; your team likes you, and you get results, you're not likely to get fired or stop getting raises.

You're an engineer! DST? NOC? Deskside? What? No, at a small MSP, anyway, you are an engineer. Even if your experience and skillset would place you in a DST or helpdesk role at a medium, large, or enterprise organization, that makes you a junior to mid-level server admin in SMB/MSP world. But really, even if you probably shouldn't be allowed to touch servers or firewalls, you will be. A lot.

Cons:
Copypasta: "You work with a lot of different technologies. You get to be deeply involved with these technologies. There is no AD guy, no Exchange guy, no firewall guy, no Vmware guy -- you're that guy (or girl), or you're the guy who hopes to be that guy." Too much generalization means it's hard to truly be an expert in anything. If you're like me, you probably have a problem with that.

Your job is 10% terror, or extremely high-pressure. Your mistakes or lack thereof can make or break a client relationship, or even their entire business. I once spent three days without sleeping fixing an SBS server with a corrupted backup and corrupted drive array (to simplify the situation). I'm not kidding -- three days. My actions prevented the client from going out of business -- no amount of money would ever get me to do that again, but knowing other people's livelihood depend on you changes everything. That is the epitome of high-pressure IT work.

You're highly valued: This just means more of the above high-pressure situations. Expanding on the above anecdote, my employer had a SWOT provided by a "sister" MSP from another state the same day I finished that Exchange server. They asked me to come in to do an interview with a SWOT team. There were no threats or harsh words; they said I was valuable and it was critical that the SWOT team interview me. Many, many other high-pressure situations like this have contributed to my rapidly retreating hairline.

Copypasta: "Customers are cheap". This is so true. As you start consulting with clients and designing and implementing their systems, you will inevitably encounter rage as you fight over the correct solution because of stingy clients and stingy sales guys. Plus, you have to big projects and solutions to clients. Either you over-bid and risk losing the big (the more honorable bid, if you will), or under-bid and risk **** off everyone if the project goes wrong.

Enterprise, shmenterprise. Unless you are lucky enough to work for the big boys, MSP is a synonym for SMB. MCITP:EA? CCNP? Pff, you will never touch a multi-domain environment and you will probably never work on anything but a simple WAN or LAN. Half of the studying you did for your favorite vendor certifications is wholly impractical for SMBs.

You have to bill, bill, bill. The metric MSPs go after is typically "80%". Somehow, that 80% means you have to spend 20% doing productive internal things. The reality is you either drop the ball on the internal stuff, miss your billable numbers, or work 50-60 hours on a 40-hour salary.

Again, these are my experiences at a small, growing MSP seeking to become a mid-size, high-performance MSP. Not all MSPs manage SMB systems, and not all SMBs really even function the same at all. There are major growing pains at play for me and mine, so YMMV. In a larger organization, I would imagine some of both the pros and cons start to disappear.

Overall, I have enjoyed my time at my MSP, and I'm not planning on making any major changes in the near future. It is definitely a worthwhile industry to work in, and you will gain valuable experience in it.

Hypntick

I totally agree with the_grinch on this one. Every last thing he has said is true, every single bit of it. Although I will say this, i've only been there 9 months at this point, but already I don't know if I could go back to a corporate IT department. I am spoiled with the level of power you have, there's no permission needed, there's no sending it to another department, you have an issue and you have to fix it. I have spoken with most of my colleagues about this, they agree, there's no going back once you start down this road. Being confined to only 1 thing would bore me to tears at this point.

SteveO86

Yea I do as well.. As other's have said your MSP company is in business to make money so it's a slightly demanding. Not to mention to fact your customer's can be even more demanding, the key is to be confident, don't make promises you can't keep, and do your job well. Some customers will be great, others not so much. Some customers may also take time to build a relationship with. I've worked with a few customers that were really rough in the begining but after we worked out a few designs/outages/migrations were practically friends now. (So it's a great place to network and meet people)

At the MSP company I'm at, I work with anything from a single internet circuit to a well over 400+ node network (more so the large one's nowadays) I gotta admit it's fun just very demanding at times but mgmt is good and sometimes flat out tell me to leave the office and take time off

I find it a fun and creative environment, in the last 6 months of working for this MSP I've seen all kinds weird stuff and routing issues that just shouldn't be, not to mention the things I've had to do to make some customer requirements works.

Prior to working at this company was part of small IT dept (over a dozen people) so it was a decent change from working on a single network everyday for years to jumping in multiple different networks a day. So I feel where you coming from.

--

Good place to learn is understatement, when you work on a single network you will typically be exposed to a single routing protocol (maybe 2) but at this place I've touched every routing protocol (except RIP so far), I've worked with TACACS & RADIUS, LANs (including STP migrations and different types of STP), WANs (OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, redistrbution , PBR), QoS, Routers, switches, ASA/PIX/VPN Concentrators,. It's interesting. It's something to look forward to in my opinion.

Hypntick wrote: »

i've only been there 9 months at this point, but already I don't know if I could go back to a corporate IT department. I am spoiled with the level of power you have, there's no permission needed, there's no sending it to another department, you have an issue and you have to fix it. I have spoken with most of my colleagues about this, they agree, there's no going back once you start down this road. Being confined to only 1 thing would bore me to tears at this point.

I think I agree with this.. I still have a great relationship with my old employer and I already admitted if I every went back I'd be bored out of my mind LOL... The power is something to keep in mind, I've found it useful to keep some type of change control documentation (Some customer's also love that kind that kind of thing, and even policies in place to enforce this)

mikedisd2

I work in managed services and I've never felt more like a number. Everything is break/fix and I have no authority over anything but take the blame when all goes bad. Lower level work seems to get shifted to me because I'm just seen as a worker bee. I've haven't really added value to my resume in the past 9 months because I'm not allowed to be part of projects.

I'd aching to get back to an in-house role but it's a tough market in my town ATM. It just depends on your preference; the guy next to me loves the MS role. Personally, I would rather 'own' my patch of real estate.

N2IT

mikedisd2 wrote: »

I work in managed services and I've never felt more like a number. Everything is break/fix and I have no authority over anything but take the blame when all goes bad.

+1

This is where I was 2 months ago. Not everything you posted I experienced, but the portion I quoted had experienced. It's a very challenging environment to get anything done. You have to leverage the sponsor each time or functional manager. It becomes rather old and frustrating quickly. I too would rather be staff augmented to another organization (1099-W2) or full time in-house employee.

the_Grinch

N2IT wrote: »

+1

This is where I was 2 months ago. Not everything you posted I experienced, but the portion I quoted had experienced. It's a very challenging environment to get anything done. You have to leverage the sponsor each time or functional manager. It becomes rather old and frustrating quickly. I too would rather be staff augmented to another organization (1099-W2) or full time in-house employee.

I feel the pain of what these guys have said, though given the size of the MSP I am at it is a little opposite. I've found that what tends to happen is management believes we are all the same. Besides the network engineers, they see no difference in any of us (sometimes they'll even send network engineers out when they shouldn't). Best example would be when people believe triplets are all the same, yes they look the same, but if you were to talk to them you would notice the difference. I've had projects tossed on my lap and basically told "You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out". This is all well and good, if the customer can wait for me to get up to speed. But when it's a fire, you're coming out burnt no doubt about it.

Size wise, most MSPs are looking to grow larger, so if they are small I doubt they will remain that way. In the two years I have been with my company, we have literally doubled our staff and tripled our client base. Revenue has grown tremendously and my management is very spot on with their projections thus I believe it will continue. That being said, very easy to shoot yourself in the foot if management refuses to hire to meet the growth.

One kink I've noticed is when taking on a new client, you work very hard for at least six months. You'd be amazed at the crap you inherit and how long it takes to iron things out. As others have said, it is very nice to see things get ironed out, and on a rare occasion you will hear it from the client. A law firm we took on about 10 months or so ago has begun to reach this point. They have a three person IT staff (I use IT very loosely) and no doubt about it we've been getting beat up. We've reached that threshold where things are operating at a normal baseline and we've been getting positive feedback. But as is standard in the MSP world, you fix one to inherit another.

You'll get a feel for all of this if/when you begin. It is truly a different world compared to the internal IT departments. I will say that my time with my MSP has shown me that I could probably do this type of work on my own and do fairly well. You'll become very good at customer service that is for sure. My best suggestion is to get into some form of meditation or philosophy. It may sound odd, but it will definitely make your life a lot easier. I've been reading a lot on Stoicism and had I read it two year ago, I think my outlook would have been vastly different. Don't sweat the small stuff and fight for what you think is right. You will be a customer advocate and while not trying to do the "I told you so", you will feel vastly better if you fought and lost rather then going with the flow. Good luck!

bababooey1

Thanks for all your responses. I think if I get a good offer I will take the position. The benefit of gaining all that experience is worth the negatives.