Anyone ever work for a MSP?

Johnjones

Managed Service Provider. Please let me hear your thoughts/opinions.

antielvis

Oh boy. Oh boy. I could write 10,000 words on this but I will make it quick. It can be a great place to touch a ton of technology and you'll leave the corporate guys in the dust. Now, depending on the clients and, more importantly, the owner, it can be the best time of your life. Or it can be the most hellish job you'll ever do.

I recommend it, just ask a ton of questions before you say "yes".

kohr-ah

antielvis wrote: »

Oh boy. Oh boy. I could write 10,000 words on this but I will make it quick. It can be a great place to touch a ton of technology and you'll leave the corporate guys in the dust. Now, depending on the clients and, more importantly, the owner, it can be the best time of your life. Or it can be the most hellish job you'll ever do.

I recommend it, just ask a ton of questions before you say "yes".

This summarizes it best.

I worked for a MSP as my first job. It by no means was a bad job and is how I fell in love with networking.

You will get to touch a lot of technology and there is always work coming in so the days go by fast. It is a great way to learn. I would even do it again for the right company.

However, as above said I went to different departments and had different bosses and the shift in management my life quickly went to hell and the company was making super poor decisions causing a lot of clients to not enjoy their decisions and made things go sour for a lot of them.

Definitely ask a lot of questions before you start but it by no means is a bad job and there is room usually to move up.

jamthat

In my interview, I was asked 'How do you handle chaos?'

That sums it up.

sizeon

I did for 2 years.

Pros: Their desktop guys get their hands on servers, network gear and even SAN devices.
Con: They work you like a slave and pay is low.

Johnjones

Thanks for replies. Would it matter at all if the company is small (around 13 total staff) or large (50+)? The owner seems like a great guy...

elderkai

If the company is small, you're probably much more likely to bend over for the customer even if you technically don't support something.

MSP work can be great, though. Especially for experience.

markulous

I've got a final interview for one tomorrow. It seems like a great place to earn experience and move up the help desk ladder. If it's great, then awesome, if it's not, then I should get a ton of good experience I can take to an even better job.

sizeon

Smaller MSP is more of a "jack of all trades" type of gig. They had our desktop guys work on advance task on win server and exchange.

SteveO86

Worked for an MSP for over a year.. It was a lot of work, but I learned so much.

Managing over a dozen accounts bouncing between network from network working on issues, it was a busy place but one of my favorite jobs. I only left because the pay was not the greatest.

I could go on and on trust me, all I can say is go for it grab the experience and run. (especially if they work you like a dog)

NetworkingStudent

I currently work at an MSP, and everyday is a learning experience. The goals for the company and yourself are set very high. There is never a boring day, I can guarantee that much.

LittleBIT

I currently work at an MSP - All the replies are pretty spot on. I have done everything from Hardware install to OS imaging, to Server ad/exchange, to entry level Network troubleshooting, disaster recovery and business onboarding. I owe a lot to this company and how fast they developed me (although a lot of it was internal drive on my part). You learn a hell of a lot at an MSP, but, the pay can be terrible. I was making 28K starting, 1.5 years later or 2 years I'm at 40K and hoping to add another 5K onto that since I am bringing more skill to the table.

petedude

sizeon wrote: »

Pros: Their desktop guys get their hands on servers, network gear and even SAN devices.
Con: They work you like a slave and pay is low.

Sizeon nails it. MSPs are great places to work, but expectations are high.

WafflesAndRootbeer

It really depends on the MSP. Often MSPs will take a contract covering lots of things and the workers only end up doing a portion of that - some of which they shouldn't be touching to begin with - while outsourcing the rest to third-parties to cut costs or because they know they simply don't have the manpower and can't invest the resources. Every single time I've worked for an MSP with local contracts, it's almost always been third-party contract to hire - with nobody ever really getting hired by the MSP in the end - and they insisted that we do whatever they threw at us even if the workers weren't qualified and had no experience in doing whatever they got a contract to do and the company didn't have the resources to actually do the job. If something went wrong or they couldn't deliver on their promises, the axe always fell on us and the companies would never take responsibility for any of their screw ups as they were only interested in chasing any support contract they could underbid on.

Dryst999

I'm a System Admin for a MSP that specializes in healthcare for almost 5 years now. On a daily basis i'm a DBA, Network admin, Server admin, SQL developer, VMware/Citrix farm admin, HL7 developer, SAN admin, Exchange/VOIP etc. I work on a 2 person admin team that manages over 250+ servers + all other infrastructure.

It can be absolutely exhausting. I still thing it's an amazing place to learn, but I find that you become decent at a lot of things, without ever becoming an expert in one thing. At most MSP's I've seen, you're stretched so thin that you can never dedicate yourself to a particular technology and become THE expert, like you can in bigger corporations.

I love it and am grateful for the experience, but i'm definitely looking forward to a more specialized role at my next gig.

N2IT

Dryst summed it up well. You become a super JOAT, but never master one thing, unless you are managing. They are very cutthroat as well (from my experience). If the billables aren't there they will easily **** you. (I've seen it done a lot for both level 1 techs all the way up to engineers). They look at resources as ways to make money, if that cash cow loses it's ability to make money one way or another you are gone eventually. Working directly for a company for me has been a WAY better experience. They seem to care more about your needs. As a consultant for an MSP there is always a us against them mentality. The company paying the MSP always feels like they are trying to take advantage of them and vice versa. Usually both parties are but always spew nonsense like we want to build a partnership when in reality the MSP is trying to gouge the company for $ while the company getting the service is trying to extort them for as much as they can. Usually holding the fact they have a huge company and if they continue to provide comps and concessions they will open more of the organization up to them.

The benefits have been terrible every time I work for a MSP. I've been encouraged to find my own benefits EVERY time I worked at an MSP. Usually working for a company the employees are at least content with the health care and comps and sometimes they really are excited like the company I currently work at. I don't pay a dime for insurance, my wife carries the kids on her plan.

Overall you can learn a lot, I've seen help desk techs asked to replace mission critical servers so the MSP could save money on hiring a external costly resource. So like others have mentioned you can get experience. I've also seen a desktop guy come in and within in a few weeks was expected to starting spinning up SQL servers on VM's. When he was unable to deliver they fired him. However on the flip side I have a very close friend who still works with them and he now makes a lot of money managing projects and 3 years ago he was on the help desk. You can move up very quickly, if you have the drive and aptitude.

These are just my experiences I wish the OP the best!

the_Grinch

Oh MSP's...you'll definitely learn a lot. Generally, especially at small MSPs, the pay is low and moving up isn't so easy to do. The MSP I was at had four teams: NOC, Help Desk, Systems Engineering, and Networking. As others have said, you basically do everything and sometimes hand it off to those above you (though in my experience they were out of the office working so you better figure it out). We were small so we would bend over backwards for clients and that is a good yet bad thing. To get the sale, the sales people would say "everything for this client is a P1". Can't print? P1. Keyboard doesn't work? P1. Then when real P1's came in the response time was very low.

Take the skills, any certifications/education, and then move to something more focused. It is definitely the best place to see what you want to do and if you are a self starter you will thrive big time. Know for the first two months you will be worthless because 95% of it is knowing the customer and the environment. We had over 100 clients and by the time I left I knew just about everything about each of them. I was on night shift and could tell you when an alert was standard (backup runs every night @ 2 AM thus C drive alerts for low space) and what wasn't. I wouldn't trade my time for the world as it really did make me the tech I am today. Plus now I can talk to just about anyone

ande0255

I have worked at my current MSP role for Unified Communications team for 2 months, but I do everything network related, and the experience has been amazing. I have learned more about IT in the last two months than I have in the last 4 years of IT jobs.

I'm not sure how the helpdesk / NOC positions are around here, but if you get in on the network side, it seems like you work every type of network related issue imaginable whether you have ever had exposure to it or not, which to me is beyond a pay scale.

dspielman

Working at an MSP and being a field tech means you normally miss lunch because you are so busy.

gorebrush

I work purely as a 2nd line engineer for an MSP, love it, but a lot of the stuff I deal with in particular often gets farmed out to 3rd parties because we only have basic access to some things.

However for the majority of the kit that is hosted locally we do get very involved, and often at night I am in charge of major telecoms incidents that can affect multi clients for several hours. High pressure environment and in general I enjoy it very much,

f0rgiv3n

My 9 month stint at a MSP was a whirlwind of an experience. I gained a lot of knowledge and stress during that time. I left after realizing I don't enjoy stress. I don't regret going there, it's just not something that I personally would do for an extended period of time.

In my experience, it's tough to stand out at a MSP because everyone's putting in a lot of hours. For me, if I left a 5PM to go home after my 8 hour day... I would have been one of the first to leave and gotten quite a few odd looks. Lots of hours. Lots of experience. Lots of stress. It has its benefits for sure, good way to move up.

ande0255

My MSP sounds completely different from most everyone elses experiences, as everyone here seems to make decent wages / gets promoted to higher Tier levels if they show they're worth it, and everyone generally goes home on time unless they volunteer to put in the extra hours.

I've done a couple 12 hour days just so I didn't have to walk into the issue the next morning, but aside from that I haven't had to do on-call rotations or anything like that. I must have landed at the holy grail of MSP's or something

markulous

Granted I haven't started yet, but during my 3-hour interview, the company seems the opposite of a lot of people's experiences.

Overtime is 100% optional, we get paid holidays, full benefits, M-F 6-2:30, plus it seems like there is a wide variety of issues. The pay seems higher than average. I'm assuming I'll be busy and get to learn a lot of stuff. The management seems nice too.

TylerBarrett

My experience so far at a MSP (currently employed at one and have been for 1.25 years now)

- long days (usually missing lunch)
- low pay compared to being employed at one specific company
- variety of different tasks each day
- learn lots about different aspects of IT not becoming too specialized in one area
- rotating oncall

Not a bad place to start, doubtfully staying there forever as the tech's normally get the short end of the stick in every issue that arises