Anyone work in IT/Technical Support?

[SoundsGood]

I thoroughly recommend taking the CCNA to get a proper understanding of the underlying network infrastructure. It will help you again and again though your technical career. You *can* get the official cisco course with labs online if you look in the right places.. It's the same thing you get when you pay the Open Uni £2000 or whatever it was, except without tutor support (useless imo).

The benefit of doing a paid course however is it adds a serious motivator as to not waste your money. If I hadn't paid for my CCNA or Java courses I probably would've given up halfway.. just something to think about.

I'm currently working towards 'MCITP: Enterprise Administrator' (work have agreed to pay for all the exams, materials etc). After that I'll be looking to specialize somewhere, just not sure where yet.

Also one last thing; learn how to write scripts (PowerShell, batch, VB). If you repeat it, script it.
- This willl save you lots of time trust me

 

[dowie]

I did 1st line for a few years. Couldn't get promoted because it was a Christian IT company and atheists were stuck at the bottom.

???

Please tell more about this...

 

[Wryel]

My advice would be to find a small company at first. Even if you are at the bottom doing donkey work you will get so much more exposure to the more techincal stuff. It won't pay as good as a decent helpdesk job (oxymoron?) in a large company but you will get the experience to make a jump up.

I was stuck in desktop support for ages and there was a real ceiling in the IT company I worked for (they didn't have any 3rd line contracts really). So I took a pay cut and went to a really small IT company that trained me and gave me loads of experience.

 

[oddjob62]

My advice would be to find a small company at first. Even if you are at the bottom doing donkey work you will get so much more exposure to the more techincal stuff. It won't pay as good as a decent helpdesk job (oxymoron?) in a large company but you will get the experience to make a jump up.

I was stuck in desktop support for ages and there was a real ceiling in the IT company I worked for (they didn't have any 3rd line contracts really). So I took a pay cut and went to a really small IT company that trained me and gave me loads of experience.

Agreed. My first proper IT job was with a small oursourcing company, and i was building servers and going onsite to clients in my first month.