First Day in Help Desk Position Yesterday...

bugzy3188

I had my first day yesterday at my new Help Desk position which is my first IT position . All I can say at the moment is wow! First off this is a smaller consulting company with a fairly large workload, it is pretty much me, one other help desk guy, 2 field analysts and a senior analyst. Yesterday was more of an orientation than anything but because this company is so small, I am covering A LOT more than I had expected, which is a good thing, just overwhelming on the first day. I will be taking on the role of network admin, help desk, and just all around odd job guy. I have been given access to the server room and pretty much told that if there is a problem its up to me to fix it, again, these are all very good things...just a bit overwhelming at the moment, I'm sure once I get my groove I will be fine. I was sent an email from my boss today telling me that the job board is 60% full and half of it is mine...I think I'm being hazed...but hey, I'll take it!! I'm going to get more technical today so I will let you guys know how that goes.

I am not complaining by a long shot because I am aware of my current position, but at $12.25 an hour I do feel a bit underpaid given my responsibilities...is this feeling justified?

boredgamelad

If it's your first job in IT, don't concentrate on how much you're getting paid. It sounds like you're getting more experience than most help desk people do. Absorb and retain all the information you can, continue to develop your skills, and once you've got some years of experience under your belt you can start to work your way up the pay scale. Low pay comes with the territory when you're first starting out, but getting your foot in the door is the first step everyone has to take.

That being said, I don't think that's terrible for your area (I'm originally from The Cities myself) especially considering it's your first IT job. It's certainly more than the first IT job I worked, and I didn't start working in IT until I moved to California, where the cost of living is considerably higher.

Congrats on the new job! Sounds like an awesome opportunity.

bugzy3188

boredgamelad wrote: »

If it's your first job in IT, don't concentrate on how much you're getting paid. It sounds like you're getting more experience than most help desk people do. Absorb and retain all the information you can, continue to develop your skills, and once you've got some years of experience under your belt you can start to work your way up the pay scale. Low pay comes with the territory when you're first starting out, but getting your foot in the door is the first step everyone has to take.

That being said, I don't think that's terrible for your area (I'm originally from The Cities myself) especially considering it's your first IT job. It's certainly more than the first IT job I worked, and I didn't start working in IT until I moved to California, where the cost of living is considerably higher.

Congrats on the new job! Sounds like an awesome opportunity.

I was thinking the same thing, thanks for the reassurance, I am pumped for the experience!

JoJoCal19

To add on to what boredgamelad said, just keep knocking out certs while you're getting that experience. After a couple of years you'll have experience and certs to be able to move up into a much better and higher paying IT job. In my opinion IT is a career of ladder climbing. You keep building and building and you are really the only limit to how far you can go.

drkat

i had one of my first IT jobs at about that range. Focus on experience and learn all you can

Tackle

That's about what I started at 2 years ago. Btw, I'm an hour north of the Twin Cities. I'm in the same role as when I started, but make 10k more a year now.

Qord

Sounds like a great position to start in!! Especially if you're not sure exactly what you want to do in IT. Get exposure to and learn as much as possible.

N2IT

Sounds great welcome to the IT world professional.

parmarg

first of all congrats on the job and i think u r lucky getting hands on so much stuff in your first job and most of people are not lucky as you. iam still looking for the IT JOB.

Zartanasaurus

Gaining experience is more important than a bigger paycheck when you're first starting. Soak up everything you can.

blargoe

More than I made when I started my first gig. Congrats, by the way...

eten

bugzy3188 wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing, thanks for the reassurance, I am pumped for the experience!

Take a look on the other side, what potentially could you have gained or loss by negotiating your salary? Is it worth arguing to $15/hr (?) where they could have potentially retracted your offer?

Rack up the certs and take the initiative to tackle more challenging issues and you'd be in a good position.

Devilry

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and you are given a broad range of access. For your first IT don't worry about pay.

Take this approach:

Learn anything and everything you can, use the opportunity to use technologies and pass the relevant certification, study study study and get as much knowledge as possible. Figure out what specialty you enjoy the most, so that you can hone your skills in certs as much as possible. Then, once you run out of things to learn, put your resume out. When it all comes together you'll most likely be surprised at the offers you get

4_lom

I completely understand how you feel man. I started my first "helpdesk" job 2 months ago. But it's not a "traditional" helpdesk job. I'm working on workstations, servers, routers, switches, sans, firewalls, etc. I've been given level 3 clearance to our colo at the datacenter here in town. And there isn't really any form of "tiers" here. If my 2 coworkers and I don't know how to fix it, it goes straight to an engineer. They actually changed my title last month from "Service Desk Technician" to "Remote Operations Center" technician. I guess that makes more sense.

I do agree that you're probably not being paid enough. I make almost 2x that, with benefits...

bugzy3188

Second day yesterday and I am much more confident knowing that the guy training me who has far more technical knowledge than I do started only six months ago and in his own words knew quite a bit less than I do now when he started. The one thing that made me nervous was that I wasn't prepared for this in the technical knowledge department, but I am starting to see the big picture here. The most important thing that they are trying to imprint on me is not to get cocky and pretend like I know things and implement them without asking first..that and making sure the clients are satisfied.

NetworkingStudent

bugzy3188 wrote: »

Second day yesterday and I am much more confident knowing that the guy training me who has far more technical knowledge than I do started only six months ago and in his own words knew quite a bit less than I do now when he started. The one thing that made me nervous was that I wasn't prepared for this in the technical knowledge department, but I am starting to see the big picture here. The most important thing that they are trying to imprint on me is not to get cocky and pretend like I know things and implement them without asking first..that and making sure the clients are satisfied.

On a side note, we have a very strange password policy. First off, all new IT employees are given the keys to the ENTIRE network right off the bat, we are told the top tier password and told if we are cuaght writing it down that we will be instantly fired. The odd thing is, this password along with all other passwords on the network are handed out by us and never changed. From the owners perspective he is trying to balance convenience with security and said that password resets are a deal breaker. On the plus side I'm not resetting passwords all day, in fact most of our clients have on site IT people so when something gets to our desk its typically a pretty technical problem. What do you guys think of that security policy is this something that is typical of the smaller consulting companies?

Congrats on the new job. I’m still looking for my first IT job.
I think the password policy is little silly. I think passwords should be changed every 90 days(At least). I know at my work(non-IT job) follows this procedure, which is some sort of government requirement.

It sounds like you’re talking about mission critical devices, servers, and a network, then you are asking for trouble.
How come the passwords always stay the same? I just think it’s asking for trouble.
If you write the password down you are instantly fired, what happens if you memorize it?

I really think this ease of access can weaken security.
Paul dot com has a nice episode on the linked in hack and they have some good advice.

http://blip.tv/play/hr4jgvvAVgI.html