New Job, don't know anything, how should I deal with this?

geekoncall · July 2013

I have worked over almost 7 years as Tech Support level 1. I have just completed my Bachelor at WGU. I luckily just quit my horrible call center job and got a new Job. Today is me 4th day at job, but I am feeling I won't able to make it at all. My Manager told me in interview that I will just do basic Active Directory stuff but I can see that almost all calls need deep expertise in Server environment.

To be honest, I am listening call and feeling that customer know more then what I know about server stuff, don't know what to do. I don't want to lose this Job too, pay is 50% more than what I was making before, not crazy calls ( I was doing like 35-40 calls in my previous Job), but I don't feel good at all as I don't know the work. I told my Manager and who said you got 5 years experience, you will pick up everything but to be honest, I don't even know VMware, Virtual Disks, backup fails, can't access network, printers sharing on WAN, VPNS not working, Sonic Firewalls, Servers, Exchange and stuff, I have no idea at all. I have done tech support to home base users in my entire career.

What you guys advise me, should I give some days more and see what's going on, or should I quit and try to find a different Job? I have enough stress from my last job, worked over a year and got my half head turned white, don't want that type of stress again. Please help.

gregorio323 · July 2013

Don't overstress it. I've been there a few times myself. How about you invite one of your colleagues to lunch and just pick their brains get some insight.

Honestly thought you will be just fine give it a few weeks.

pamccabe · July 2013

Your 4th day?? I would give it some time. lol I understand how you feel though, I think we all have had times that we felt overwhelmed. I had an interview the other day for a data center job and the guy who interviewed me said he gives new hires 2 years time before he feels like they are up to speed on everything. Two years. Perhaps not every job is like that, but the point is that you were brought on board and are getting exposure to a lot of different technologies. It is going to take some time. They brought you on board for a reason though. They liked something you brought to the table so keep your head up and stick with it. You can't possibly know it all right away. It is a learning experience. I'd give it at least 6 months before making any hasty decisions.

sambuca69 · July 2013

Trial by fire, my man. Don't do something silly and quit. why not read up on what you think you are lacking each night, lunch, breaks, etc.

NetworkVeteran · July 2013

gregorio wrote:

invite one of your colleagues to lunch and just pick their brains get some insight.

Bingo! In addition, when you're done for the day, study up on what you didn't understand. People are used to calling for support and getting someone clueless. Escalate the most important/demanding customers to someone more knowledgeable. A few weeks of intense study, and you'll hopefully get you where you need to be.

gbdavidx · July 2013

7 years to spend at the same job? that seems like an awful long time!

Mike-Mike · July 2013

gregorio323 wrote: »

How about you invite one of your colleagues to lunch and just pick their brains get some insight.

bingo, just find someone you are kind of cool with, and say, "hey, I'll make you a deal, I'll buy you lunch, and you teach me what I need to know"

ThePrimetimer · August 2013

I can feel where you are coming from. You're not going to know every piece of IT right off the bat. I've been with my new job in an MSP for 6 months and still get nervous with new Service Orders that come in on technology I've heard of, but never got exposed to. You can give it your best shot, but if you don't feel comfortable, just ask for help. Remember that you're part of a team and the end result is providing service to customers. You'll pick it up as you go. Go into work everyday and show them that you want to become the master of your position.

Stick with it and you'll reap the benefits in time.

TechZilla · August 2013

To me it sounds like a great opportunity for you to really grow your knowledge and experience. I would do as others said and ask your colleagues for help. Research some on your off time with what you feel the weakest. I definitely wouldn't quit as this could be a huge stepping stone to your career. After a few years doing this you will never have to go back to Tech Support.

Stick it out, don't give up.

networker050184 · August 2013

Sounds like it's time for you to start studying and learning. There was a point when every expert knew nothing.

puertorico1985 · August 2013

As everyone has stated, give it some time. 4 days is an extremely short amount of time to begin to think that this stuff is over your head. Calm down, relax and tackle one problem at a time. When I first started working in IT, I was on an internal Helpdesk, and the problems were very easy. Unfortunately, it took me close to six months to begin to understand exactly what I was doing, and I felt completely useless during that time. At that point, I began to question if I had made the right decision to enter into IT. Fast forward a few years, and I am glad that I stuck it out. There are still things that I do not know, but I sure as heck have learned a lot. Keep at it, dont stress out, and give it some time. You will do great!

MeatCatalogue · August 2013

They released you to the queue by the 4th day? Sounds like a cheap, dumb company. Even if someone was a wizard I wouldn't put someone new on a queue for at least a week, ideally 3. Maybe i'm mishearing however, and you are still shadowing someone?

Biggest piece of advise is to go slow. Tell the customer to wait if you have to do this stuff in real time. Google it. If someone expects you to live configure a production sonic wall that you've never touched before, well then just step away. Tell us more about what the job is like...

mishy · August 2013

geekoncall wrote: »

What you guys advise me, should I give some days more and see what's going on, or should I quit and try to find a different Job? I have enough stress from my last job, worked over a year and got my half head turned white, don't want that type of stress again. Please help.

Ok. Lets say we all tell you to quit and the next job you walk into is maybe a Law Firm or Car industry using bespoke software. Are you also going to quit that? My point is, in this industry we are constantly going to be facing challenges we have never seen/heard of. My only biggest advice is try devise a way of keeping the customer confident of your knowledge whilst you gather more information, if you have an opportunity of calling back then take as much info as needed and tell the customer you will call back.

There is a lot I do not know in my current job and depending on the person on the other end of the phone I can tell them to hold on whilst I fix their problems but if they are rude and impatient then I deal with their questions first then put the phone down and work on their computers remotely. Most times its hard to fix a problem when you do not know and the person on the phone sounds like they know it all.

shodown · August 2013

Pick 1 or 2 things and work on them. I would pick the 2 most called about things, get a few books and possibly a home lab and some CBT's. This is where u will have to spend quite a bit of time a few months at least of learning all you can about those items. Eventually the other things will start to fall into place.

WGUGeekGirl · August 2013

networker050184 wrote: »

Sounds like it's time for you to start studying and learning. There was a point when every expert knew nothing.

I completely agree. Everybody has to start somewhere, and most people have felt that awful nervous feeling at some point when they are just starting out with something new and challenging. One thing I've learned is the importance of just not being afraid of asking for help, and studying what you don't know or don't understand. Like a few others have advised, find someone cool that you feel a little more comfortable with, and ask some questions. You might be pleasantly surprised about what you find out. Also, you might be able to find tons of videos on YouTube and other video sites that will visually show you step-by-step how to complete different tasks and even answer your questions if you ask. Not to forget all the great support and advice you already have here. Whatever you do, just don't give up, and don't quit!

milieu · August 2013

You're coming off a job where you were very familiar and comfortable after seven years. It's natural to feel awkward and, well, dumb.

Give it plenty of time. Your manager appears cool with your progress, so I wouldn't worry unless they seem concerned.

Good way to deal with it is to really hit the job hard, and learn. Read everything they have, ask lots of questions of other workers, and master it.

DigitalZeroOne · August 2013

Since you're making more money, I would immediately sign up for a trainsignal subscription, build a home lab, and start studying every day to catch up. We all have to learn on the fly, try not to stress, and start cramming.

Params7 · August 2013

OP, I'm in your position pretty much. Since last month I've been working as a NOC Support Engineer where suddenly I'm doing on-field support, responsible for servers and network. I only have experience with cisco routers and switches working as pure network support. And the server world is extremely new to me, I didn't even know what Active directory was when I started. Now I know how to navigate to it and reset passwords for users who are stuck lol. And since this is a small, private company, there pretty much is no formal training structure whatsoever.

It is stressful at time, and I'm even making mistakes, on field and in the office. But at least I'm learning. I learned to crimp network cables in a day and traveled alone to another company, and fixed their ethernet wiring issues. Coming to servers and helpdesk stuff, I have to ask for help when I'm dealing with it and they realize it, though its hard to pull them from the work they are doing. I feel like I don't know anything and all my peers are so overwhelmingly ahead of me. Though I know this is the kind of IT-work I've always wanted to learn, so this is giving me more motivation than ever to study for MS and Cisco certs and reach their level one day.

Hang on and fight through it, you'll thank yourself.

TheProf · August 2013

Here's the thing, you can definitely learn the stuff if you take the time to practice, lab, read, etc... You should also get some training from your colleagues.

However, it's also important to know, that depending on the level of job you're doing, some places expect you to know things, other places will gladly teach you how to do something if you don't know. If you were honest with your employer about your skills, they can't expect you to do something right away if you've never done it before. What I am trying to say is; don't put yourself in a situation where you psych yourself out and hinder your performance. It is also normal to feel this way if it's your second job. You've been at your previous employer for quite some time, you got used to doing things their way and now at a new company, you need to learn new procedures and thus it makes it a little difficult, but it's a good experience to have for your future.

geekoncall · August 2013

Thanks a million to everybody for this great encouragement and helpful replies. I can't tell how relax I am after reading comments from all of you. I was very honest at interview, I told clearly that I just know how to add/remove users in AD, create email accounts and/or unlock accounts, that's all. But what I am seeing here, most calls come in as advnace technical stuff of networking server etc. For example, today there was a call that 3 out of 25 employees of a company would not able to access the exchange emails. Password being invalid. Same computers, if other employee login, everything work, but any one of those 3, can't access email and will get certificate errors. The technician whom I was shadowing, did everything, creating new profiles, importing certificates, host files and goodness, not sure what more that I don't have even idea and finally fixed the issue on a 1.5 hour long call.

Well, as suggested by everybody, I gonna give it all my best, until I learn or they say their selves "sorry"

. I will keep updating to motivate some one else in same situation, just to let everybody know that I am going to support server environment with 0 server knowledge, so let see how I end up. I am following all your advises and suggestion to learn and be confident.. Thanks again everybody ...... TheProf, Params7, DigitalZeroOne, milieu, WGUGeekGirl, mishy, MeatCatalogue, puertorico1985, networker050184, TechZilla, ThePrimetimer, Mike-Mike, gbdavidx, NetworkVeteran, sambuca69, pamccabe, gregorio323, yourhelp sincerely appreciated. This forum is great place of greatest people.

Moon Child · August 2013

This is very common, employers putting employee's into positions that is over their heads. They only have an interview and previous experience to rely on to guess how well an employee will fit into the job. From my experience this seems to happen a lot more in IT then any other field I have been employed in. IT is such a broad field that it is really hard to find that ideal candidate who will match the skills and experience so they can just throw the new employee in the fire without bothering to train them first. Not a great idea in my opinion, but it seems common practice these days. It use to be that employers would always train new employees, but employers seem to think it is cheaper to skip the training and just try a trial by fire to see if the new employee can survive. If he doesn't they have a pool of 20 others they can choose from. It could be a problem or a chance to learn new skills and grow depending how quickly you think you can learn the job. It really depends how you feel after the first few weeks. I wouldn't be concerned now, but if you still feel this way a few weeks from now then I would be worried.

CodeBlox · August 2013

It's happened to me and I'm sure everyone else. It's either sink or swim.

jibbajabba · August 2013

4 days is nothing ... I panicked for three months ...

atorven · August 2013

@jibbajabba - lol, how did you manage/disguise that for all that time?

@OP - listen to what others have said especially shodown, prioritize the most called about technologies and the focus on the basics (in terms of what is most often called about) about the other stuff. Remember that everyone started somewhere without knowing much, even the experienced guys.

And don't let people rush you into configuring stuff you're not familiar with, that most often doesn't end well.

ally_uk · August 2013

Been here myself dude best advice I can give? Stick with it get yourself a notebook identify key technologies both from a hardware and software perspective, list these technologies and work out how much of a importance they play in the environment. Work out how comfortable you feel with each technology for example Active Directory, Deployment, Exchange
And then devise a plan to better yourself, Ask your boss if there are opportunities to enhance your knowledge ( training, CBT subscription) the most important thing is to keep your head up don't feel disheartened! We have all come up with unfamiliar tech. It's all about the ability to adapt see it as a opportunity to better yourself. Start logging calls which are causing you the most difficulty break these calls down and ask yourself why? This is coming from a guy who didn't even know what Linux was I now am a command line ninja

I'm no guru but I have improved my knowledge greatly mainly through studying and breaking things outside of work, Everything I do gets documented even if its a simple command or procedure such as updating a system, it all gets documented for future reference.

Download Evernote and start taking notes on all aspects stuff you learn / difficulties and stuff you wish to learn.

Hang in there

bryguy · August 2013

Similar to most of the posts here, I was also in a similar situation. Most of my colleages were reluctant to share specific information, so I found the syslog server and TACACS servers, and I read the auditing logs and matched them up to previous tickets that were resolved based on the date and time stamp. By the time I was done, I knew what they were doing and how they were doing it... As it turned out, no one knew how to do it all, and they each had their own little nitch. One guy was doing the majority of the firewall tickets, another guy the load balancing stuff, another guy the VPN tasks, etc. Once I had an idea of who did what, I was able to ask specific questions when I came accross something I was unsure of. Within two years, I was promoted to senior engineer.

New Job, don't know anything, how should I deal with this?

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