Are MSP jobs that terrible?

pusher

What percentage of people here work for MSP? Is it me or what, but I think it's a terrible environment to work at. I'm currently working for one (1 month) and so was my last employer (1 year). I'm doing 2nd/3rd tier system support even though I'm at the senior level with over 10 years of experience ( couple of mcts and vcp5 cert). I deal with tickets all day long and it makes me feel like working at a sweat shop. At my last msp employer, I dealt with EVERYTHING, but at least I got to do some project work, deploying and migrating systems.

Most jobs availability seems to be MSP jobs with very few in-house positions. Enterprise jobs are even harder to find. This is the Vancouver B.C. market. There are some senior system engineer and admin MSP jobs opening, but I don't know if they are worth it to apply to. These jobs description says one would plan and deploy systems with some support, but I am at point where I hate MSP so much...

drkat

I work for a Var but yeah primarily tickets... it doesnt feel like a sweat shop but not my long term goal - 8yr exp here

Hypntick

I work for one. Do everything from general support calls to project implementation and even on-call rotation. All of this while being the support desk supervisor. Personally I don't think it's terrible, I much prefer it to being silo'd into one spot in a corp environment. While I may not bring home as much money as I probably should at this level, i'm increasing my skill level at a pace i'd never see elsewhere. When the time comes when I feel the need to make a break, i'll be much better equipped to do so. Just my opinion.

bigdogz

I have to say that Hypntik is right that you do learn a great deal.
I have been working for a MSP for over 13 years. I started working internal IT working within an entire entire enterprise. One day I had to go to onsite to troubleshoot a customer's network and servers because everyone else was onsite and I had all of my projects completed. Soon after I was moved to the Professional Services group and also work in the data center. I manage multiple environments, servers, SAN, firewalls, and routers. I am always on call. Every once in a while I have to work 24 hours straight. I have turned into a light sleeper but my boss is fair about giving me comp time for those days/nights when I come in and work. YMMV

networker050184

I think any job where you work support tickets all day starts to suck after a while.

Iristheangel

Ditto what Hypntick said. I'm at a MSP/Cloud provider right now and I'm getting my hands into EVERYTHING (project management, servers, networking, firewalls, security, policy, virtualization, etc). If you want to increase your skills at an AMAZING pace, you'd do something like this

4_lom

I work at an MSP primarily supporting tickets. It's not too bad though. I get to leave the cave every now-and-then to work onsite. It can get really boring during less busy times, but that just gives me more time to study and be on techexams

ptilsen

Yeah, lots of experience. I'd suggest working at one to gain experience, but not for "permanent" or "long-term" (e.g. more than five years) employment. Eventually it will get boring, stressful, or otherwise undesirable. Lots of us are overworked and underpaid, and advancement (as with many organization) is often slow and in very small steps. But I wouldn't lump all MSPs together, necessarily. Some can be a great environment that never gets boring or tedious. It really depends on what the company does, what you do, and what you're looking to do.

For MSPs who basically provide all infrastructure support to primarily SMBs or even SOHOs, you almost certainly will grow to hate the job within a few years. Again, it's great experience, but probably not where you want to be permanently.

RomBUS

So far my experiences with MSP positions have not been terrible, its been some of my better...infact I was upset when I was let go from two of them... I believe some of my best learning experiences came from these type of experiences and I have met some of the most interesting people along the way with different kinds of backgrounds and soaked a lot of information (as much as I can anyways). Like everyone said I and my teammates dealt with more than just level 1 calls we had our hands on all types of technologies and issues that came up....even though we were called the helpdesk personel but when it came to involve more hands, we were involved. I guess it was that collaborative effort is what I liked the most. I agree at times the volume can get a little ridiculous though. I strive to be in a type of position one day because I feel like you can kind of branch of to a specialty and can be a go-to guy for certain clients requiring your expertise. One day maybe....but we all know we cant always get what we want

N2IT

Agree with Networking. My last job no support tickets, while stressful a great learning experience (MSP). I'm back to having to work support tickets, sucks to say the least. In fact I won't take another job that requires >5%.

It depends on your role in the MSP. If you are 100% support or close to it, that has got to be pretty freaking brutal.

I'm in a corporate environment doing 80% support and after 1 year of this nonsense I am out. Bottom line for me is the support piece. MSP or Corporate it's more contingent on the support %.

WafflesAndRootbeer

MSP can mean anything from network management to break/fix to anything and everything that beeps and bloops on a client's property. If you can get in with a quality MSP, great, but a lot of MSPs will wear you down and put tremendous pressure on you because their only business priniciple is to do as much as they can to bring in a profit for as little cost to them as possible and it's not unheard of to have them try to force you to sign a waiver to void overtime, even though it's against the law in a lot of states as far as IT work goes.

N2IT

Waffles that is the case a lot of times. You have to watch out for what you just mentioned.

netsysllc

I am a manager at an MSP shop and it can be brutal. That being said it is a great learning experience and different challenges every day. It is hard if not impossible to be single focused working at an msp. You have to know networking, workstations, servers, applications and everything in between if you are going to do well. That being said most people are never experts at any one thing working an MSP envelopment.

unclerico

I recently interviewed at and recieved an offer from a local MSP. Let's just say that they wanted me to work 20% more and take a 15% pay cut not to mention the rest of the bennies were absolutely ridiculous (not in a good way). I ran as fast as I could from that shop...

petedude

Depends on the shop. Some have good family-oriented, collegial atmospheres that make working for them worthwhile-- almost regardless of what they pay you. Even if you work tickets, you can see enough variety in your day to make it go by quickly and usually avoid boredom.

Sad part is, even in good shops the owners view you as cannon fodder, and won't give you the time of day unless you're one of their senior managers they depend on to keep them making those $$. That plays into the low wages, too-- MSPs like to rake in high margins wherever they can get them.

Eildor

What does MSP stand for? :

WafflesAndRootbeer

Eildor wrote: »

What does MSP stand for? :

Managed Service Provider = MSP

Eildor

Aha, thanks!

drkat

I wouldnt know what to do with myself if I wasnt working tickets. Oh I'd probably pull an exec 9 on lunch and come into work late and leave early... damn I need a different position

the_Grinch

I worked at an MSP for almost two years, in that time I found a lot of positives and negatives. You will learn a lot and quickly that is for sure. On a single day I would do anything from a simple account creation to crafting a powershell script to pull every account off of 30 servers that a customer has. I had gotten to the point where direct management would no longer question what I did as they knew it was to solve a problem. That being said, MSP's can be a meat grinder and definitely not for the faint of heart. We had 100 clients and they all expected to know them as if they were the only girl in the room. Management also had that expectation and yet if you asked them something about the client they wouldn't know.

The place I was at had a funny way of working deals. There always seemed to be a tweaked contract that was created to get the client to sign. Suddenly you get reamed because they promised a response time outside of the normal ones used. I definitely would not do it as a long term move, but if you trying to learn a lot to find your path it is worth doing.

undomiel

I currently work for an MSP and I can confirm a lot of what is in this thread. It is great for building up a diverse skill set really fast. In the first 6 months I had my hands in Cisco switches and firewalls, Hyper-V clusters, Exchange 2003 and 2007 not to mention doing a ton of Exchange migration work. Unfortunately there was also a lot of spyware cleaning and desktop support mixed in as well. Also lots of long hours and you never really have time to yourself anymore. For instance just last week, I had the entire week off for my move to Seattle yet on Wednesday night I ended up working until 4 am due to a major client going down as well as scattered hours here and there, and of course constantly being on the phone answering questions from the other techs.

You can also pick up a lot of bad practices from these companies as well, especially the smaller ones. Small to mid sized businesses are always interested in cutting corners to save a few hundred, and you always have to question what you are learning from your coworkers since they don't always know what they are doing either. I've been working on beating out some of the more idiotic mistakes but I still run across DCs setup every now and then with an external DNS server configured and fixing clients that are getting flood with spam or blacklisted due to having an open relay.

ptilsen

undomiel wrote: »

You can also pick up a lot of bad practices from these companies as well, especially the smaller ones. Small to mid sized businesses are always interested in cutting corners to save a few hundred, and you always have to question what you are learning from your coworkers since they don't always know what they are doing either. I've been working on beating out some of the more idiotic mistakes but I still run across DCs setup every now and then with an external DNS server configured and fixing clients that are getting flood with spam or blacklisted due to having an open relay.

This. I'm still correcting ridiculous mistakes frequently, and I'm hoping I won't be bringing any of the bad practices into my new positions.

I really think the MSP can be done in such a way that it doesn't become a revolving door of clients and employees. With the right size and structure it could happen. But I have no idea how to make it happen, and two years of working for a small one and trying leads to major burn out.

techdudehere

Have known many people in MSPs. I myself have worked for 3rd parties which replaced internal support, so I guess that's almost an MSP. There is a common theme:
1) Turn over is high. It's entirely possible to be let go on a whim and have your resume soiled even after years of service.
2) Benefits are not very good.
3) Work load can lead to burn out, taking shortcuts, or implementing quick fixes without proper research and change management.
4) You will learn a little about many things quickly.
It strikes me as something that's OK for younger people with some desktop experience and that can learn quickly, but not somewhere to get too comfortable. Ultimately, I think you need to be somewhere with more stability and better benefits. The only way to stay at an MSP is to be one of the very top people in the organization. Otherwise, it's a job but not a career.

drsketch

I grew up in IT at an MSP. Learned a ton. Are they a terrible place to work? yes simply because typically quality of life and work/life balance ratio is low on the life end with not that great pay.