Manager of the Software Development Department for a Major Audit Firm. Also run my own web dev shack part time. No degree, but various diplomas and certifications.
I work as a first line IT technician. I love my job. I have a degree in creative music and sound technology and a couple of microsoft certifications - not full MSCE.
I dont get what you are getting at.... Essentially yes, but we are working as second line's really. As normally a first line would not carry out any fixes. I do anything from full system reprep's, virus/malware removal, repair corrupt registries, diagnosing software/hardware faults, manually remove corrupt software, healthchecks etc. etc. But we also repair laptops, so there is a lot of hardware work as well. When we have a few more clients we are going to be hiring a huge volume of first lines, and the small current team of first lines will move up to second line (job title: we already on second line salary) and the couple of second lines we have will move up to third lines. We also provide tech support for a huge number of handheld devices, which means we have a huge creative budget for buying in training materials (ie - any hand held devices). And I also run a team of agents that provide technical support for an international household name electronic's company (not sure on how bit-tech is for naming such company's). Japanese company, my guys deal with customer questions/queries/complaints for the UK sold products. Chance's are if you have ever written a complaint to this company, it would be my signature on the response, as I lead the consumer affairs team. Is there a problem with a call centre based position? They are putting me through full MCSE training, paying me an inflated salary as well as a monthly + annual performance based bonus... really i couldnt be any happier right now.
I managed tier two and tier three support for IBM for 6 years. Your description is better than the one I use in interviews! It can be a brutal experience when new model products/ operating systems/ hardware is brought on board. Well met john
Nothing against you. Just that I had attempted to try to get into the IT industry on the lowest point, which often meant 1st Line Support. I since found out that anything 1st Line Support was telephone based. My problem is I cannot work telephones as a full time job as I have a hearing probably that makes it quite stressful and quite uncomfortable to do as a full time basis. I wanted to get into 2nd or 3rd line positions, but the places I looked into working often asked for 1st Line experience....which was moot point when the 2nd and 3rd line didn't really need to know the 1st Line stuff at all! But from what it sounds like in your job, you are more actively fixing things and repairing stuff, rather than having to bother the customer about find out what was wrong from them in the first place. At the moment, I am currently unemployed. I've had a bit of a varied career...just not particularly long. Currently doing causal work as a swimming teacher(!)
sorry I just read my post and I sounded well hostile! that wasnt my intention! No we do all that nonsense - which is the less glamorous part of the job. and alot of our customers are quite slow - so its really frustrating sometimes. But its not too much on the phone, i try and get a connection and get onto web chat as fast as possible. because i can normally find out alot more by just having a look than asking them to explain! I would much prefer to do help desk for corporations rather than for joe public. Today i had a horrible fix. Wireless printer problem, and the customer had severe ms. If i was there in the room this would have probably taken 30 minutes, but as i wasnt, and i was relying on the customer pressing buttons on a printer i didnt have in front of me it was quite hard, and the fix ended up taking about 6 hours :/ But every day something new happens, or i learn something so i like that. What i dislike the most is when a customer has some nasty malware that isnt yet on any definitions. means loads of registry edits and is just long. EDIT: oh yeah, and the hours massively suck. 8am - 10pm 7 days a week lines are open, christmas day is the only day we shut. so is shift based. this week im on the 2-10 shift, which is complete nonsense. and i work about half the weekends a year.
Staff Trainer at McDonald's. I work about 35-40 hours a week over 5 days, usually starting my shifts at 5 in the afternoon and finishing anywhere between 1am and 4am. I do pretty much what a standard employee does, but with a slightly better wage and I have to train the new staff. Been working here since summer 2006, when I took the job as weekend work.
SCM Engineer at HP, stressful and challenging but very well compensated. Biggest barrier is the language for me haha.
What would SCM stand for, koola? Margo Baggins, you didn't sound hostile. It would be expected for that reply anyway, as I did not really explain why I made my initial comment until the next post in which I explained my reasoning. Sometimes I forget to expand on my words....
CCTV and network security technician. Doesn't pay huge cause it's only a small company but I enjoy the tech and variety of being on different jobs everyday...
I'd love to say I work in the industry but I don't. I flip burgers for a living (has it good days, sometimes) to pay the rent. Currently studying the A+ so one day (HOPEFULLY) I can do something I enjoy...
Currently working at McDonalds part time while I study. Can be hard work but I get nice short busy shifts so it doesn't kill my social life. My study does, however. Currently studying for a Bachelor of Engineering in computer systems. I'm in the second year out of four. I do need to get some practical work experience that is related to my study in order to graduate, so the McDonalds job is very temporary.
I work in a well known optical chain as a dogsbody. Starting my placement at Kainos for a year as a software developer this time next month
Student at uni but spent last summer/will be there again this summer as a lab assistant at a medical technology company. Last time was given a project working on developing one of their cancer treatment products and really enjoyed it, was nice to do some proper research and despite some setbacks got some good results by the end. First properly paid job as well, and looking forward to going back. Also in the UOTC, quite hard to fit in around uni work but provides some extra money and nice to be able to get away from work completely at the weekends, will hopefully be going for commissioning into the TA next year.
Official Job Title: Service Delivery Assistant I'm basically a person who assists the main customer facing IT team at the University I work for which is either 1st / 2nd / 3rd line IT support to IT training of staff & PGR's along with marketing & Publicity of IT services that the University offers across all 3 campuses. Not bad for a 3rd year placement student especially since I work for the University that I study at too (BA (Hons) Computing In Business) Quite an eye-opener to the inner workings of the back office side of the University especially from a student's point of view. Quite a strange feeling knowing that I was only employed here because I already had the CompTIA A+ qualification (which was out of date when I took it in 2007 at my 6th form school) Pay is crap (same 'bursary' wage is given to all placement students at the university, I don't pay tax cos it's a bursary) and I'm getting sick of commuting 2.5hours a day to work, especially on the packed trains to Manchester (which are usually full of idiots taking stupidly large suitcases to Manchester Airport, thank god I get off before Manchester) That's enough of me rambling on. Fantastic job, fantastic colleagues I can have a laugh with and it set's me in good stead for a good job when I graduate from Uni.
I'm a systems engineer/network admin for an IT distribution company. I love anything technical or IT related, so I quite enjoy my job most of the time. I don't have a degree but I do have some Microsoft certifications.
