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If you are going to make a significant amount of money doing some side gigs be sure to form some kind of LLC first and keep separate books on the money you receive. Failing to do that will cause you all kinds of problems in the future. When I started a business 50 years ago, I kept my incomes from that business in my personal checkbook. My income increased significantly, and things got screwed up. Eventually I earned an audit by the IRS and ended up paying some extra taxes and fines. An accountant was hired, and I separated all my business finances from my personal ones. That’s the real downside of all the side gigs people have. There’s nothing wrong with doing that and indicates all kinds of good things in people but if the finances are not handled in a professional manner there can be some significant accounting (and IRS) problems down the road. Take this from a boomer who has personally made these mistakes and ended up paying for them.
All I can say is thanks for doing what you're doing. I know the primary objective is side-gig cash, but me for being in a big city and having such awesome delivery options with the likes of door dash, it's been a godsend. And all the dashers I meet are super nice and cool. I've had a few orders screwed up in the past year+ but I know to take it up with the restaurant and not with the dasher.
And I'm super glad to read that you guys are told upfront what you get for a gig. And not get penalized for passing.
I'm sure you'll have more stories from your quests. Keep 'em coming.
Looks like I'm off to the Gay Area in June. I just need a Prius and 10 turtlenecks of the same color.
Apple?
MSPs are generally shithouses. You can actually learn a lot (by yourself if you are driven) due to the diverse nature of businesses you may provide support for, but you will likely lack guidance from someone who knows what they are doing. Usually, billable hours are the name of the game.
Work for a tech company if you want to do the "bleeding edge" stuff, work for the government if you want to coast, work for a mid-size business (as internal IT, preferably sysadmin or equivalent) if you want something in between.
Fucking nerds at this place trying to talk about how much they know about IT. The English guy is quiet and hardly says anything unless someone bothers him for help. There's a super autistic guy there who stutters and mumbles constantly who is really nice. Everyone else is a dickhead who is always trying to one-up whoever they're talking to. This one lady won't shut the hell up about Log4j whenever she talks to the manager, like she's some kind of security hotshot. She always announces to everyone that she's "in the firewall poking around". Later in the day, I saw her trying to use PowerShell with red text all over the damn place. I tried to start a conversation with this little Chinese guy the other day about all the services AWS has and how powerful it is, and he goes on a rant about how physical servers will always be better because you can see them and touch them. So, I just sat in my corner for the rest of the day and helped the autistic guy pull hard drives out of old PCs. Kill me.
Welcome to IT Hell, level 3.
There are two level 3 remote workers from Pakistan, probably being paid $5 an hour for way more advanced work. They manage all of the ESXi machines in the office.
They took mah job!!!
Anytime I have call for support on any computer, application, or software platform, I know the guy answering the phone is 3 or 4 levels below the guy I need to talk to.
Taking Security + in a couple of weeks... I'll be qualified for some $10 an hour Pakistani job.
Outstanding!
As for why anyone would work there and not in the UK: could be any number of reasons, but most help desks are being replaced by India. So... FYI.
What kind of work are you looking for in the long term, Fortuna?
So, help desk sucks. How long do I have to do this?Depending on the company, you may be able to progress internally. That's how I started my career — I did a year of helpdesk, then about two more years of level 2 support (which also sucks, but you get to deal with more interesting problems) before I moved on to bigger and better things.
If you want to take that route, what worked for me is to just do some of the tasks you want to be doing. I only got promoted to level 2 support after people noticed I was already taking on support tickets above my pay grade. Again, this likely varies a lot from one company to another, so consider what is relevant to your position and goals.
]Tier 2 should be helpdesk, but someone who knows their shit.
Their Tier 2 "IT Engineer" role is just a glorified help desk and that one "requires" 7 years of experience lol.
Tier 1 is "read a script and search KB Articles."
Tier 2 is "know what you're doing, know how to google what and fix it."
Tier 3 is "oh shit, this isn't a problem with a pc, its an issues with the system/software being used."
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