How Long Were You in IT Support?

So I hit my three years of full time tech support in June (I did part time work for awhile, but that never seemed to get me anything so I just forget it). As I hit that milestone it reminded me how much I dislike doing it. The challenge is gone, I generally feel that I have little to no impact, and the university ties our hands on a lot of things so I am truly just a desk side support person. At what point were you able to make the jump to a better position? I realize there is support work in IT regardless of position, but I really want out of the "My printer won't print" and "update my Flash player". Plus I'm hoping for a salary bump....

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Comments

davidboy

I have been doing IT support for my university for nearly 6 months now. By the time I graduate and am let go from the job, it will be 14 months of IT support. I hope this experience along with my BS in MIS will get me a better position.

N2IT

Off and on my whole career.

Now I am not supporting but designing and transitioning a service, but anytime I am involved with operations and execution I always get put into support.

My goal is to always work projects and service transitions. They usually take 1-2 years and right when operations hit I am out. Of course I set those expectations prior to leaving.

Akaricloud

davidboy wrote: »

I have been doing IT support for my university for nearly 6 months now. By the time I graduate and am let go from the job, it will be 14 months of IT support. I hope this experience along with my BS in MIS will get me a better position.

What kind of skill set do you have above the support level? Regardless of your experience if you don't have the knowledge to step into a better position you will likely have trouble doing so.

davidboy

Akaricloud wrote: »

What kind of skill set do you have above the support level? Regardless of your experience if you don't have the knowledge to step into a better position you will likely have trouble doing so.

It's basically tier 1 support. I mainly do desktop deployment with WDS but I do a lot of the troubleshooting work. Nothing advanced really.

kurosaki00

6 months
although some of my Sys Admin work do Include support (Our IT DPT consist of Network and SysAdmin only, no support so we do that too)
So maybe around a year?

The thing is that even though Im a Sys Admin I moved to US and for what Ive Seen here my experience is not enough to land a Network or Sys Admin job, so Ill probably end up in Support again
On the good side, Support positions here pay as much as how much I make a sys admin

Psoasman

I've been on Help Desk / Desktop support for about 4.5 years now. I am very well paid for what I do and have plenty of time for studying. I've was able to finish up several certs, my AAS degree and hopefully soon, my B.S. in IT. Once my B.S. is done, then I'm going to start looking for higher level positions.

To maintain my knowledge current, I keep a test lab going.

neotesla

I've been in a similar (almost the same) situation for little under 2 years. Essentially a glorified lost-password changer. And the printer paper filler! It was also at a university, which left me with a similar feelling the_Grinch describes. Myself I left and now I'm "freelancing" (a nice way of saying that I'm a casual on-call field technical support, thankfully dealing more with computers than with customers).

The good things I can now see (perhaps better than before) in the university IT support role are: free training, a decent salary (at least compared to uncertain casual hours), and that's about it. I must add that I've seen some people progress nicely starting from support roles in the same environment, but it takes a particular sort of person (that I don't think I am). But more people I knew were not satisfied and have left (with variable fortunes thereafter).

UnixGuy

4 months internship right after college. Out of the 4 months, I survived for one month only. Then I started tutoring part-time and I simply didn't show up for the rest of the 3 months.

dontstop

5 years part-time Desktop Technician at a local computer store, Just on Weekends for Pocket money
4 months part-time in Level 1 - Help Desk Support
6 months part-time in Level 1 - Help Desk Support
10 months now as a Junior Unix Administrator, soon getting a promotion to Senior
Thinking about spending 2-5 years in that role then moving onto maybe Network Engineers? HPC Engineer? Who knows