How many of you are still at a MSP & How many got out?

kohr-ah

I am just wondering I know (including myself) many people on here started at MSP to get their feet wet and then went onto other things.

So I am just wondering how many of you went from one MSP to another and are still working for one & how many of you went to the corporate side of things?

I was at a MSP for 4 years and am now at the corporate side. It is wierd and I still haven't adjusted to it because it is much calmer than I am used to. Almost kind of miss the chaos (but not the insane hours I worked).

BradleyHU

i'm at an MSP now, but dying to get back to internal support for a company...been here a year, but this isn't for me...they pay is good, but thats about it....

TylerBarrett

I'm currently at an MSP and have been for about a year and a half or so. Sometimes love the work, other times hate it. Good experience for making the transition to corporate eventually. Pay isn't quite what I'm seeing at other MSP's around but not terrible.

shodown

I did 18 months, best move I ever made. I stayed a few months to long, but other than that I learned a lot more than what I learned internal IT. I will never do Internal IT again after working for a MSP.

kohr-ah

shodown wrote: »

I did 18 months, best move I ever made. I stayed a few months to long, but other than that I learned a lot more than what I learned internal IT. I will never do Internal IT again after working for a MSP.

I wont argue that. I am very happy I did it. It honestly is what made me fall in love with networking and accelerated my career.

petedude

Between jobs, I spent 3 months working for one. Went back into the corporate world when offered a low-end management role.

SixtyCycle

What is the typical work at an MSP? Is it like a field tech where they send you to different places to fix different issues? I have a general idea of what a corporate IT help desk is but not an MSP. How is it different from a NOC? Which one will be a better environment in gaining and developing skills in Linux and Cisco gear?

kohr-ah

SixtyCycle wrote: »

What is the typical work at an MSP? Is it like a field tech where they send you to different places to fix different issues? I have a general idea of what a corporate IT help desk is but not an MSP. How is it different from a NOC? Which one will be a better environment in gaining and developing skills in Linux and Cisco gear?

It depends the company and the customers. The one I worked at I was assigned to 2 sites for over a year each then worked out of our corporate office where I did a lot of work remotely to customer equipment unless the customer requested someone on site to go fix it.

MSP the reason you learn so much is it isn't one company's data. It is a lot of companies constantly submitting tickets so you have exposure to lots of systems at once. While corporate IT you learn one company's systems and ways (that isn't bad at all).

The one I worked at Linux wasn't big but Cisco wad their bread and butter.

Others around me MS and virtualization is huge. It depends company to company.

Hypntick

As kohr-ah said, it depends on the MSP. Ours for example has guys that just answer the phone and create the ticket, no troubleshooting at all. Then we have the L1's who do the majority of the grunt work, unless it's something clearly out of their league they at least take a crack at it. L2's are there for overflow of L1 tickets and to work on project implementation, with some lite design work. L3's are there specifically for architecture and design, also implementation of large scale projects.

In addition to all of those you have your SME's who while they may be L2 or L3, are the go to person for a specific subject. One guy is solid on Exchange, another one is good with VMWare, one of the L3's knows a ton of networking, and anything security related gets routed to me. Now in all of that, the sky is the limit on what we support. I've been handed a piece of hardware i've never touched before and told that I need to learn it to deploy it in a couple of days.

All that being said, to answer the overall question, have done just over 3 years at 2 MSP's. Finally getting out as the pay isn't quite where I need it to be, and my skill set isn't being utilized quite as often as I would like. Nothing wrong with working at an MSP, you gain a ton in a very short amount of time, but the pace of the environment isn't something that I personally can keep up with for much longer. It's always hectic and last minute on a lot of things, will be nice to "relax" a bit for a while, and focus on what I really want to do.

the_Grinch

Very happy I left! I'll say that everyone should start at an MSP so you can learn a lot fast and how to deal with irate customers. I find a lot of new people lack that thick skin when they start, but at an MSP you'll get at least one nasty call or email a day. Makes dealing with internal people much easier once you move on. It was nice to have a slow and steady pace when I left because at an MSP it just never stops. Plus I had time to actually work through a problem instead of bandaiding a fix that might or might not hold. I keep a list of the good and bad things at an MSP:

Good:
Exposes you to a ton of technology - every customer has a different environment with a different setup so you'll touch a lot of things
Teaches you soft skills quickly - 95% of IT is people skills
Certs - Most MSP's need them to maintain partner status so you'll make out in that respect
Find your niche - You'll more then likely see all areas (voip, networking, servers, etc) and be able to at least see if not do what your interested in

Bad:
Little downtime - Where I was the phone didn't stop ringing
So-so Money - Where I was, if you weren't in sales or a partner you weren't making money...it took several people leaving (myself included) for them to give out much needed raises
JOAT - Jack of All Trades, good in the beginning, but eventually you get tired of doing everything
In-house/one off apps - We had a number of clients with either in-house or odd no one uses this app but us applications that you would be stuck supporting with no training - We had a client get sold on a web-based app without consulting us and changing to it without notice - We got tons of calls for things not working and were ripped by the customer and our sales team for not being ready when it was their in-house IT guy who didn't communicate the problem to us

All and all I wouldn't have changed working there if for nothing else then my coworkers. The skills you learn are definitely worth the punishment you'll get.

TheProf

I think it also depends on the the role that you have at an MSP. For me, it's been the opposite, most of my career 8+ years have been working for internal IT with an 8 month stint at a very small MSP. However at the moment, I am very much interested in large MSPs, but in an Architecting roles, not operational roles.

ande0255

I have been at my MSP for about 5 months now, and it has been really good experience in everything networking, I touch Routers / Switches / Firewalls / Phone systems.

The downside is that I touch so many different types of issues, it's hard for any one particular area to really stick. One minute I am troubleshooting VPN issues for one customer, then get dragged onto an exchange server issue (when I have literally never even seen the exchange management interface), then hammer out the Cisco UC tickets as quickly as possible between outages.

I like it though, I think I work best under pressure, but I can see how this would burn someone out over the long run. I figure if I can stick this out for another year or so at very least and get some certifications under my belt with the technologies I work with, I'll be in very good shape for interviewing for just about any network position that may interest me.

infulfx

I went from Help Desk where i work for about 4 years and hated it to MSP. I've been there for 3 years now. I enjoy it. Every day is something new. Didn't have any server/networking experience but was hired at MSP for just level 1 task but after my first month, i was handling server/exchange/networking/voip issues for the business that i was assign to. At first it was overwhelming but glad it stuck with it and learn a lot. It just takes some time to get used to. Sitting at a computer all day when i work at a HD to moving around and driving from clients to clients.

pevangel

I work for an MSP but it's a little different from MSPs that I'm reading about here. We have different teams like a system's team, networking team, security team, voice team, etc. We even have a team that handles the network for just one big customer. So if you're in the networking team, then you're strictly networking. You don't deal with servers or voip issues.


I enjoy working here and have no plans on moving back to doing IT support for one company.

SixtyCycle

Thanks for the replies. I guess most of the job postings I see on CL in my area that for a Field Tech is for an MSP. I absolutely love the idea of getting exposed to different aspects of IT in a short amount of time. The only drawback for me is that most of the postings pay around $15-$18 (Tier1) while requiring you to use your own vehicle to go to client location. When things are financially better on my end I think I'll jump on it just for the experience. Do MSP companies typically cover gas and mileage for field techs?

ande0255

I believe my MSP has company vehicles you can use during work hours, and your own vehicle after hours, and I'm sure gas reimbursement is entirely dependent on the company. Where I work the Field Service guys seem to work 10-14 hours a day, and they are salary so they are not getting overtime (though I'm confident they receive a decent salary).

Physically installing stuff would be awesome experience though, I'd definitely grind it out for at least 6-12 months if it doesn't totally suck, and you don't mind long hours.

kohr-ah

SixtyCycle wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. I guess most of the job postings I see on CL in my area that for a Field Tech is for an MSP. I absolutely love the idea of getting exposed to different aspects of IT in a short amount of time. The only drawback for me is that most of the postings pay around $15-$18 (Tier1) while requiring you to use your own vehicle to go to client location. When things are financially better on my end I think I'll jump on it just for the experience. Do MSP companies typically cover gas and mileage for field techs?

The one I worked for if you went to a client site permanently you got $7 a day for gas or if you took the train they paid for your pass.

Otherwise they paid so many cents per mile if you drove to a client site.

@pevangel Our MSP was mostly like that. We had a R/S department, voice, cloud, MS, a NOC, and one department that was just for one client. Though a lot of times work bled over to different departments.

Not a bad place by any means minus the long hours many weeks.

blargoe

I'm thinking that MSP is a good way to start out in IT, and is a good place for a 3rd tier guy to go to stay on top of emerging techologies. Aside from that, I don't know that I would pick one over corporate job.

alan2308

2 years now and still loving every minute of it. It's fast paced, and something new and different every day. Yesterday I was dealing with the virtualization infrastructure and a router config change, today was a complex Exchange problem, some tweaking of the Alienvault and a little work on the website, and tomorrow I'll be wrapping up an ASA to deploy at a clients site. A lot of people do end up burned out and either just leave or get let go when they can't keep up any more though.

kohr-ah

blargoe wrote: »

I'm thinking that MSP is a good way to start out in IT, and is a good place for a 3rd tier guy to go to stay on top of emerging techologies. Aside from that, I don't know that I would pick one over corporate job.

I have to say this is a good way of looking at it. Honestly in time, I wouldn't mind going back to the MSP I was at as a Senior (their version of Tier 3) guy and staying there.

Claymoore

My company has a managed services division, and although I work on the consulting side I have worked with them on a couple of projects. MSP and consulting are both IT as a profit center - rather than IT as a cost center as it is in internal IT - so they have similar demands. There never seems to be any down time. That busy week before your cutover or implementation goes live? That's every week as a consultant. That busy week where every thing seems to be breaking? That's every week at an MSP. When it's quiet at one client, it's busy at another so you have to get used to varying degrees of busy. If I'm not billing, I'm not making money for the company so they always try to keep my days filled. We have an overall utilization goal for the year - and they actually get worried when we are utilized above that level for fear of burnout - but that annual metric seems to get lost among all the short-term client demands. We're supposed to have a week or two of training a year. That hasn't worked out as planned for me either.

For-profit IT isn't for everyone. The pay is higher, but so are the expectations. You need to be the expert on a feature of a product that was released last week because you will be deploying it next week. I'm 'On' all day, usually working side-by-side with a client or leading a room full of people, so there is no down time during the day. Then there are still cutovers and after-hours work to be done in the evenings/weekends as well as catching up on documentation (project plans never seem to include enough - or any - billable time for documentation) or writing the next SOW. I send more emails and IMs after midnight than I should.

However, I couldn't go back to internal IT right now. Never mind the pay cut as my stay at home wife is about to deliver our second kid, I couldn't handle the crap internal IT has to deal with. Bad managers, too small budgets, and department politics. The best part about our projects is that, one way or another, they end and I move on. I also work with people who are the best of the best and will pitch in at a moment's notice to help you out. Dead weight, if it makes it past the interview process, doesn't last long in for-profit IT.

rsutton

I took the reverse path and put in 8 years in corporate IT & have spent the last 7 years working for various MSP's. In my opinion, one isn't better than the other; it really depends on the company you work for. That being said, a bad MSP is more difficult for me to handle than a bad corporate job.

I've been at my current MSP for three years and it is the best job I've ever had. The key to finding a good MSP is finding one that is mature and has good internal processes & management. Smaller MSP's expect everyone to be a jack of all trades, the larger MSP's do indeed have specialists & those are the gems you want to work for.

N2IT

Out!

Best day of my life, while the daily grind no matter where you are is challenging, something about the MSP lifestyle really puts black spots on my soul.

Working for 3 large MSP's I have enough exposure to know it's not for me.

However to each their own, if you like it do it.

Deathmage

I don't work for a MSP per say but the constant JOAT work reminds me of my last MSP job. There is much I don't touch.

My current job has a MSP manage our company but the problem is me being the JOAT I end up fixing all the problems since my skill sets are higher than the MSP. It's good experience I like it but sometimes I wish I had an assistant.

markulous

Does most people's MSP experience come from the field? I'm working remotely at one and I am still learning a lot.

the_Grinch

I was only in the field maybe 5 times in the 18 months I was with an MSP. Rest of the time I came to the office and worked from there.

kohr-ah

Most of mine came from working remotely when I was in the corporate office.

When I was in the field assigned assigned to sites to work, it was basically like working internal IT.
Learn their system, manage it, and nothing else.

WafflesAndRootbeer

markulous wrote: »

Does most people's MSP experience come from the field? I'm working remotely at one and I am still learning a lot.

Remote work usually involves more problem solving than field work. Every MSP I have worked for had field work being nothing more than straightforward part replacement and software setups/configs. There was no "What might be causing this problem?" bit of fun whenever there was a problem. If something wasn't made functional again by re-installing the software, you replaced the hardware outright or swapped specific components you had on hand until everything worked again. It was that simple. No fuss, no muss. No time for diagnostics or reading chicken entrails and tea leaves. That's one of the reasons why turnover is so high on field tech jobs and why staffing agencies tend to put any warm body they can find into those jobs.

N2IT

markulous wrote: »

Does most people's MSP experience come from the field? I'm working remotely at one and I am still learning a lot.

While I was working at multiple MSP's it was literally 50/50. One day you could build servers and get them prepped for deployment, the next day you would be onsite installing the hardware and testing. It really was whatever sale was made at the time. A profitable MSP never turns down money so the projects vary. I've actually was a technician one time, the other two times I was the service engagement lead, AKA PM and that was a lot better but still chaotic at times.

CloudKill9

I work remotely as a Network Engineer but this is my last week at an MSP. Been in this position for about 7 months. In those 7 months I have taught myself so much . This was my first networking gig and the people I have been interviewing for my replacement, can't seem to answer most of the questions regarding issues I handle every day - and some of these guys have 20 years and CCDE/CCIE. It's a great stepping stone and the knowledge you will gain will be great. I handle every aspect of networking from firewalls, F5s, Netscalers, and switching, across cisco, juniper, brocade and others. I also design and build the environments.

I have been very happy working for a MSP, truly a tremendous experience, if they only paid more.. there is lots to learn.

RouteMyPacket

Working for a VAR is where it's at.