How many years working Help Desk before moving up in career?

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DarkDubzs

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 3, 2014
Messages
354
I imagine a Help Desk job would be the first real job in an IT career, which would be good to work as during college or when you graduate. So, if one wants to move up fast enough in the career, how long should one work as a Help Desk tech/specialist? Let me clarify, I was thinking, "I just want to stay at each job as shortly as possible so I can move up as fast as possible and make lots of money," but then I started thinking more... you need to be good at your job and career to stay in the career and keep moving up, or else you wont know what youre doing. I believe on the job experience is the best way to learn once you graduate, so you would also want to stay at your jobs longer to learn more, right? I guess what I'm trying to say is that there has to be a balance between staying at your job (like a Help Desk job in this case) long enough to really learn (not just get some lines of experience on your resume), and moving along jobs to work up the career totem pole. I hope that makes sense. So is there really any truth to this? If so, what would you say is the ideal amount of years, or months, to stay in a Help Desk job before really looking into, or actually changing jobs... hopefully to a better one?

Also, what job should one look for to move to if they already work in Help Desk? I imagine a Systems Admin, but i have no way to be sure, or what other options are entirely out there.

One last thing, if one ends up in a job that they dont know what theyre really doing in, or are just too confused, what should they do? Is that normal, I mean, for the first week or two it would make sense to be confused, but what if it continues? Do you stick and try to learn as you go and just hope you end up okay... or would you have to do yourself and the company a favor and resign (probably wont be a favor to your wallet):p? Have you been in a situation like this... details, if so?

P.S. I live in Southern California, USA, if that helps. Age: under 20.

Please leave any help, feedback, or anything remotely helpful. Thank you in advance!
 
The faster you can move the better. I, however spent three years there. But it worked out in the end. Learn as much as you can as quickly as you can and move on.
 
I believe learning is the fastest way to learn haha. Studying, reading, and practicing will advance your knowledge faster than job experience at a helpdesk. I'm not saying job experience isn't important but you have to actually put effort into what you want to become and not just slowly migrate there. The problem with helpdesk jobs is that you'll see the same issues day in and day out and you'll get really good at fixing those issues and every so often you'll learn something new by running into a new error.

If you want to move up as a Systems Admin then go get an MCSE, without cheating. Simply reading the books for the MCSE will teach you loads of information. Even if you don't remember all the details, you'll have a better understanding of what you're looking at and looking for. You'll start applying little things here and there in your job that you didn't know about previously. Don't expect to just absorb it all as you go along. That's a long process.
 
Tough question to answer, really. What are your long term career ambitions? Have you researched career arcs and job titles/responsibilities to see what you want to be doing 2, 5, maybe 10 years from now?
For me, I was in HelpDesk for about 1 year at one company, moved across the country, then in helpdesk for about 4 months at a 2nd company. It's been a steady pace of moving up the corporate ladder ever since - moving from Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 to "admin" to "engineer". I've been an engineer for about 3 years now, and am starting to get fed work and also doing a lot of independent learning on moving to an "architect" role.
Pretty much the entire time I've had my home lab setup though. Started off on physical servers running Server 2003, then 2008/R2, now 2012 R2, with various Unix/Linux flavors blended in. Around 2008 or so I ditched all the physical hardware, built a NAS and whitebox ESX host and virtualized everything. This opened a ton of doors for me as now I can run more things like system emulators (Cisco UCS is a nice one, so are the EMC VNX and NetApp ONTAP ones).
Another big thing was not hesitating to move companies or departments to advance myself. Like I mentioned before, I moved across the country as I had an awesome career path open up. Jumped in with both feet and it has paid off in spades. After moving here, I quickly moved up through various departments at one company, and when I hit my cap there, moved onto another. And another. And then finally ended up where I am today.
Finding a good company that won't pigeon hole you is pretty important as well. Having great work ethic, communication and ambition/agility also go a long way. Show up a bit early, stay late, work some evenings and weekends. Solve the on-call issues without engaging managers or co-workers. Have open and pointed discussions with whoever you report to about your career plans, and see if you can work out a way to get there from where you are.

Most of all, don't expect everything to be handed to you, to come easily, or to come quickly. You need to demonstrate that you can do, will do, and will go get what you want. You have to do something, lots of somethings, to stand out from the thousands of other helpdesk workers.
 
There's no set amount of time. If you want to minimize your time at hell desk ( and really, who doesn't? ), then you need to be aggressive. Research the problems you are exposed to, work towards understanding all the technology you are exposed to, and when you are comfortable, make recommendations as to how to permanently address some of the persistent issues you face.

Usually, because of your position, your suggestions will be looked down upon ( and they will probably be incorrect because you don't have the full dataset ), but it will get your name out there and mark you as someone who wants to fix bigger problems than a broken profile. Remain calm and professional about the rejections, and open to all additional information your environment provides.

Follow that, you should move up pretty quickly.
 
DarkDubzs said:
I imagine a Help Desk job would be the first real job in an IT career
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You are young, and in a good region geographically for jobs in technology. There are lots of good jobs available for people out of graduation. Why are you interested in an IT career?
 
You may not have to spend any time at a helpdesk - simply depends on the training and experience you can get as well as who you know. As others have said, an "IT career" is a very very broad thing. Its like you want to be a professional sports player... generally you've got to pick one sport and excel at it.

I did not spend time at the helpdesk. I went to college, did a programming internship, ended up at a big 4 accounting firm, then a few other large corporate America gigs, and now I own my own business (I graduated college just about 10 years ago now).
 
David_Schroth said:
You may not have to spend any time at a helpdesk -
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This is the way to do it. My first decent job was basically my boss and I were the IT department for a pretty decent-sized tire chain. Sure, we helped people with IT issues, but it was way more than that. I'm in a completely different industry now, but I did some other IT work that wasn't help desk either, so you can avoid it. I still help people at work from time to time, since our onsite IT guy is only here half the time, but it is minimal.
 
Thanks for all the replies and help guys. Im kinda short on time right now so I only skimmed through them, but later Ill come back and read each and reply to them. For now though, I want to ask what you guys think about self employment. I always knew self employment was an option, but I never did (and still kinda dont) consider it a real option for myself... I know it is most likely a good option, but I feel like I need a stable place to have guaranteed work. Yes you can get fired easily, but I think if youre freelancing, you may hit a period where you cant get any work and your wallet ends up empty, atleast with a job you know you got a salary coming. I guess they have their own pros and cons. So, what do you guys think about freelance working as something like a SysAdmin or a Network Engineer, of course having already years of experience to know what youre doing? People always seem to say that you can make more money being self employed, which would make sense, but does any of that have any truth? In general, what do you guys think about this option?

This guy is a self employed Systems Admin and talks about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wWpekSm_qs
 
DarkDubzs said:
Thanks for all the replies and help guys. Im kinda short on time right now so I only skimmed through them, but later Ill come back and read each and reply to them. For now though, I want to ask what you guys think about self employment. I always knew self employment was an option, but I never did (and still kinda dont) consider it a real option for myself... I know it is most likely a good option, but I feel like I need a stable place to have guaranteed work. Yes you can get fired easily, but I think if youre freelancing, you may hit a period where you cant get any work and your wallet ends up empty, atleast with a job you know you got a salary coming. I guess they have their own pros and cons. So, what do you guys think about freelance working as something like a SysAdmin or a Network Engineer, of course having already years of experience to know what youre doing? People always seem to say that you can make more money being self employed, which would make sense, but does any of that have any truth? In general, what do you guys think about this option?

This guy is a self employed Systems Admin and talks about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wWpekSm_qs
Click to expand...

Self employment is a calculated risk. If you manage it well, then it will reward you, if you don't, you're hosed. I've been self employed for over 2 years now, have one employee, will hire another one in the coming months and have made far more money than I could have if I was still working for the man. So, for me, it has worked out just fine.
 
As some have already said there is not real answer to this. Working for a small company I cant say I was ever hired directly for helpdesk. We never had enough employees to need an actual internal helpdesk. Though thats beginning to change. I was hired directly out of college to support and install software for our parent partner company. Some helpdesk is part of my job but its maybe 15% or so. Its not supporting employees but rather customers. Other times its working on projects and installs. My college education interestingly enough had very little to do with the software I support. They were just looking for a technical minded person who could learn it.

A very large portion of my job duties is to support and maintain our internal IT infrastructure as I'm the only "tech" that has formal education and experience doing so. We have hosted solutions in the works which is going to move this part of my job to 100%. Very soon, hopefully in the next year I'll never have to touch this piece of shit software that I was hired to support :D.

This is 4-5 years after college now. I'm still learning and finding that there is TONS I need to learn and/or refresh on. One of the challenges of working for a small company is that the IT person is a "jack of all trades" but hes not a master at anything. I support a wide range of things from open source firewalls/routers to Cisco switches to Microsoft domains, web servers, and mail servers. I wish I could specialize, but thats not going to be any time soon. Its ok though... working for a small company is much different and I feel alot more satisfying when you accomplish things.
 
XOR != OR said:
There's no set amount of time. If you want to minimize your time at hell desk ( and really, who doesn't? ), then you need to be aggressive. Research the problems you are exposed to, work towards understanding all the technology you are exposed to, and when you are comfortable, make recommendations as to how to permanently address some of the persistent issues you face.

Usually, because of your position, your suggestions will be looked down upon ( and they will probably be incorrect because you don't have the full dataset ), but it will get your name out there and mark you as someone who wants to fix bigger problems than a broken profile. Remain calm and professional about the rejections, and open to all additional information your environment provides.

Follow that, you should move up pretty quickly.
Click to expand...

If you want to move up from helpdesk FAST, follow this exact advice. I did it and moved up from helpdesk in 6 months, and that was 4 years ago. I'm into development now.

My manager at the time said that you should aim to be in helpdesk no more than 6 months. It is merely a stepping stone, nothing more.
 
If you're in college, make sure you get an internship working in the aspect of the IT field you want to work in. If programming, work as a developer, if InfoSec, work InfoSec. If you're going into infrastructure, I'd suggest doing a year of Helpdesk/Desktop just for the understanding it will give you. If not, an internship in the area you want to work in will help give you the work experience you need. I work for a huge health insurance company in InfoSec and I have 4 interns working for me. We're going to let them work for us for up to a year and if we have any openings, we're going to offer them jobs. No HellDesk required... ;)
 
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