Mastodawn

Pablo Jun 13, 2023

The Taggart Institute

A lot of people starting out in #IT view Helpdesk/Desktop Support as a slog to endure before making it to "real" jobs.

This is not a very useful perspective.

While Helpdesk is a common entrypoint to the industry, it is also the clearest connection between technology and people. This is its greatest challenge, and its greatest value to anyone starting their career.

It's easy and lazy to be frustrated by users who "don't know better." Sure, many requests can be shockingly banal or outlandish. But every time someone needs _your_ help with technology, you have the opportunity to use your skills to make someone else's life better.

Ironically, it's not your technical skill your users will ultimately remember. They will remember whether you treated them with kindness, patience, and empathy. These are your greatest assets in the role—and all others in technology and life.

It's about service. I don't mean in the corpo "customer service" sort of way. However you slice it, Helpdesk is an opportunity to be of service to someone else. You can do with that as you wish, but I encourage you to take that chance to exercise those three assets: kindness, patience, and empathy.

Dan Sugalski Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute Argh! No! I hold that *everyone* in our field should spend at least six months with a tech support phone on their desk. There are very few things more motivating to someone writing code for users than making sure they never have to call you for help.

Alun Jones Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute It's the perfect way to find the ways in which your customers _really_ use your software, and the edge cases they run up against.
The only thing you miss are those small things that bug your users just enough to be annoying, but not enough to pick up the phone.
Every software developer should spend a little time on tech support for their product.

H. A. Kirsch Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I did desktop support in college for the housing admin people and honestly I really liked it. I got to go all over the place and figure out weird problems.

Enkiusz🇺🇦Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute it is a useful perspective if you want to earn more. Helpdesk/Support IT jobs are usually the bottom of the hierarchy.

IT-Awareness, Fabian Lucchi

@thetaggartinstitute So much truth in each sentence, it’s deafening. Thank you for this wonderful deep view of this so important job 😍 #helpdesk #empathy #help #it

keefer Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute agreed. I honed a lot of soft-skills working at a helpdesk for three years. All of the times I received kudos from customers stemmed from a genuine desire to want to help them with a problem.

There was often a clash between call metrics and helping people, though. There were times when it would take an extra two minutes to solve a problem, which would help this specific customer, but hurt my own metrics. I generally tried to help people in spite of the metrics, but not everyone felt the same way.

Andrew at MysticBearPaw Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute All very true and worthy of consideration. However, the IVR often puts callers on edge before they ever reach a human. Despite the incessant begging to visit "our website" I know of no organization that regularly uses help desk data to develop web content. If I could find it on your web, I wouldn't be calling 😉 https://andrewminko.com/waking-up-in-abandoned-hospital-customer-support-line/

Waking Up in Abandoned Hospital? Customer Support Line? – Andrew Minko

joel b Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute As a holder of a bachelors degree in CS and a career of nearly 15 years in software development one could argue I have a ‘real’ job.

Even I need Helpdesk to do my job(s). When I do I stand in line with everyone else who needs help. (Although I can call up the director if I feel it’s that important)

Stefen Auris 🖖Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute when I started working in a devops position I didn't expect to be answering so many tickets. I actually kind of enjoy it because the problem is usually fairly well defined, with the exception of a few tickets that come in with "it no workie"

Jerry Morrison Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I love this attitude. I have had an almost 20 year career in IT starting from a tech and now working as a manager and senior contributor. I am a firm believer in the fact that my career has advanced because of my commitment to kindness and empathy. Technical skills have been secondary. People remember how kind you were, not how clever.

Ossian Puhakka Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute My first full-time job was a helpdesk one. We handled software updates and "yearly services" packages via remote connection. This was in 2011.

Ossian Puhakka Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute One of the tasks I distinctly remember was updating a 3.5mb accounting software for a client in north-east Finland. Physical location was a small cafeteria/restaurant, and given its remote location they didn't have optic fibre nor was wireless an option due to difficult geography. So... 33k modem. Took me 1.5 hours, and as such we just... talked. Chatted.

It was far removed from the hectic day-to-day of inbound calls and such. I missed my lunch break, but gained a memory.

Ossian Puhakka Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute Suppose what I'm trying to share here is that I absolutely advocate for Helpdesk as both an important stepping stone as well as a job that can help one understand the perspective of others. I didn't last beyond half a year there for reasons mostly related to myself and inconsistent sleep schedule, so while it's hardly a shining star on my CV, there's things I absolutely remember a decade later, some more vividly than others.

Remember the human.

Mike Plemmons Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I think I was lucky but, overall, I enjoyed my time on helpdesk. It was a great way to get to know them and build a relationship.

If we were able to solve their problem, I hoped I taught them how they could solve it themselves without me. If they can solve their problem on their own, they don't have to wait for me and they can get back to their work faster.

nepi Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute My first two tech jobs had fielding helpdesk tickets as a part of the job. I kind of loathed it at the time, but now I’m 100% convinced it’s made me a better developer. Talking with people and getting their perspective changes how you think about software, and the people skills you can build are super underrated.

Grumph Jun 13, 2023

@nepi @thetaggartinstitute at one of my roles everyone did support tickets. Everyone. It was a distributed team where each staff member - regardless of position - had hours in during their work day dedicated to support.

It taught me the product.

It showed everyone customer pain points.

It highlighted what could be automated and product needs.

It just worked.

bsmaalders Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute
And of course you gain understanding of common usability issues, which you can use to write better, more approachable software.

Haegar Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute "clearest connection between technology and people" - I think this is also the problem, not few persons go into IT to "not have to deal with people", aka "if I would have wanted people I would have gone to sales".

The Taggart Institute Jun 12, 2023

@haegar They should, I'm not kidding, change that perspective or exit the industry as quickly as possible. We have more than enough toxic people who forget that all the electrons zipping through sand is for the benefit of people. That's the job. Always has been.

4emili4 Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute @haegar

There's a lot of perspectives that need to change about IT.

IT has always been about the people who use your infrastructure. You don't build an environment for no reason, you build it because someone has to use it. As a company, you don't have a IT department for no reason, you have an IT department because they maintain the tools you need to do your work.

Technology is a enabler, it enables us to do more than we could without it.

Byteshell Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute as a Helpdesk person my self I 100% agree with this

Space Cadet Jun 12, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I see this sentiment occasionally and it's always a little humbling. I've been working what is essentially a glorified HD for a few years now. I started it thinking I was too good for the job, and that I would quickly find something else, but that was clearly not the case 😂

HD *can* be simple work, and I've worked in shops where you're graded by how well you stick to the script and how many calls per hour you can take. Those shops were demeaning to work at.

HD can also be more, when your sysadmins teach and offload more advanced tasks off to you, when the devs ask you for the users' experiences, and when the job pays well enough that I can afford my rent.

Dan Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute The "Corpo" Customer Service isn't bad to learn though. If you ever might get into IT Sales, even as a Sales Engineer, the ability to read the room and focus on the customer is VERY helpful.

da4 Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute helpdesk - whether as an assigned member of a frontline team or as someone who has to fix problems, no matter whom what or where - also teaches the ability to change one’s frame of reference: what is in front of that user, what do they know how to do, what needs to happen. That alone is part of a communication skill set sorely missing in the industry at large.

You don’t have to know how to fix everything.

Mike (no not that one)Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I do like this take. I started on the help desk, and a lot of what I did in my admin time centered on what I saw in the wasted time on the help desk, both users and techs. Both having to wrestle with things that should have been automatic or transparent to them.
It still informs my security work. I've often thought good security should be mostly effortless to the users, but incredibly painful to the intruder. If it's the other way around people bypass it to get work done.

Gordon Fawks Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute I did support for years and still do. But it's the slog more for the bad hours, terrible pay, and miniscule respect from management.

Helpdesk is a shit job and will always be a stepping stone people are happy to get off until it's valued rather than denigrated.

simon gray Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute One of the reasons I’ve always hated the show The IT Crowd is because of the negative way in which it presents our industry. Another of the reasons I hate the show is because in too many cases that negative presentation is true.

simon gray Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute (The third reason of course is the show simply isn’t funny)

Neil Lawrence Jun 13, 2023

@simon OK, I'll let you off the first 2 posts, but this last one is just plain wrong

Buchling Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute this is so true!

David Sullivan Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute One of the best IT support guys from a previous job was a retired police officer, he'd clearly spent his whole life dealing with the public and it showed

Timothy Nibert Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute
I worked my way into being a programmer via support. Look, it was a slog, although I didn't get into it in the most ideal of circumstances. But yes, absolutely useful background to this day. Once you get good at it it is less slog. And support teams are fun vibes. Eventually as a developer I came to realize that if you are strong at producing root causes and bug fixes from field reported issues, you actually have a pretty advanced and moderately unique skill.

Jeff G Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute In a prior job we were expected to rotate and shadow tech support for a couple weeks every year, and voluntary extensions for up to 2 months were common depending on project load. I learned SO much in that opportunity and took it back to engineering. Later, after 20 years in software development I started my second career in customer support consulting.

Jay Rishel Jun 13, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute if the help desk is run right, it's also a great place to get a wide understanding of the company's products and tech stack that starting at a more drilled-in technical level won't give you.

verified_coffee

@thetaggartinstitute @SwiftOnSecurity and I argue this is true for ALL customer support. Not just Helpdesk.

Joel Pomales Jun 14, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute @mattberan

DonkSouls 🔜 Megaplex Jul 26, 2023

@thetaggartinstitute when I did support/help desk, the issue was more with boneheaded top down management decisions, absent leadership, aggressive cost cutting, multiple layers of subcontracting, and complete lack of upward mobility. I worked at a major hospital with no dedicated on site security, networking, or telecom staff whatsoever (All outsourced to India). Having to explain to users why the nvme hard drives in their PCs die after six months due to the five different endpoint monitoring/logging softwares using up their write cycles, or constantly running out of DHCP space was met with understandable grief and frustration from doctors and nurses that had enough to deal with already. So when they would call their Dell micro PC a "modem", I said screw it and started calling them modems too.