Someone with twice your salary might have another million and one things to try and remember, rather than the thing they only need to do once or twice a year.
Yep. Especially when you’ve been using computers for 40 years, as I have. Do you know how many times MS (or any tech company) has moved each and every button? Do you have any idea how many times something as simple as saving a document has changed since I started my career? Over the years, I have saved documents to at least six different types of physical media including the local hard drive. Then I had to start saving to a network drive, then a different network drive, then a cloud drive, then a different cloud drive. I have worked with Linux, Windows, Mac. Techniques and keyboard shortcuts I learned in the 80s and used for decades get changed/dropped/redesigned. I have had to go back and alter little programs I wrote years ago because the corporate file system was redesigned for the 25th time and now all my file paths have to have forward slashes instead of backslashes for the code to run… When I ask a less experienced colleague where to find the screen share button, it is because I know they have only had to relearn its location 1-3 times, so their memories won’t be all jumbled yet.
To me it’s more to do with mentality. Most of the people earning that much are completely full of themselves, “I’m a problem solver I get things DONE” kinds of people. To have them come to someone they probably don’t see as such for a task that is imminently solvable by just looking at the screen for 30 seconds, or typing a quick search is at best off-putting.
The other day some IT loser nerd called for a plumber because he couldn’t replace the fill valve on his toilet. Fucking idiot tool didn’t even know how to shut off the water. The fucker makes more money than I do and he just sends emails all day.
Do you pay people to change your car’s oil? Do you call in an HVAC tech when your air conditioner’s capacitor dies? Do you bring your computer into a shop to have the storage upgraded?
These are all fairly easy things to do. I make good money replacing and upgrading storage in laptops, desktops, and other devices like Steam Decks, a few hundred a month from that alone. It’s nearly trivial in difficulty, like replacing the fill valve or the chain that connects it to the handle, but people pay and I’m not about to tell them not to.
It’s like you people can’t read in-between the lines and are incapable of understanding satire.
It’s not obvious at all bro. I see unironic shit like that posted on here all the time. I live and breathe IT so I am all too aware some IT folks are fucking assholes about this.
That said I really do think the bar needs to be raised a bit. People struggling to setup meetings in Outlook in 2024 is not ok.
Your fellow workers are not your enemy. The wealthy owning class who underpay you are your enemy.
Yes, networking skills are more valuable than service desk. It’s amazing how many service desk folks have a chip on their shoulder because they never moved on.
networking skills are more valuable than service desk
Only true until you drop your laptop. Then the value of that service desk work skyrockets.
Would be very cool and good if IT folks weren’t constantly in a dick-measuring contest and could see the forest for the trees. Maybe we’re all getting underpaid, relative to the suits six floors up, and we’d do well to stand by each other instead of bickering over who works the hardest.
I dunno, having worked both sides of the fence i would say whilst network skills are more valuable because the barrier for entry is higher, in that you need apecialist knowledge, the general knowledge a service desk tech is not to be underestimated (im talking those techs that actually fix and attend jobs as opposed to those on the phones)
The number of problems a tech can fix and the amount of work they get through can be astounding. sure, it’s something anyone can be trained to do, but to say it has inherently less value, i dont agree. i do networks in a hospital, and the number of people who appreciated the work i did when i worked the desk is vastly larger than the number of people that even know i exist now.
It felt alot better getting a bit of software working or replacing hardware, or recovering someones emails etc that got a doctor or a nurse working again and lowered their stress levels and made them smile than it does to upgrade cisco call manager from version 1 to version 1.1…
I agree to an extent that its not harder to work the service desk, but i dont think you should look down upon them. We all have an important role to play…
Except execs… they can fuck off.
I had basically the same experience at my last job. I worked my way up on the service desk and after a few years basically everyone in the IT side of things new my name. I probably had more general knowledge of how to get things done in that place than just about anyone. Obviously I didn’t have access to do a lot beyond general troubleshooting myself but I’d assisted with enough issues to know who to talk to and what info they’d need. Eventually I moved to an app support team and I hated it because it was more meetings and talking to vendors and trying to coordinate shit with other teams. I went from basically a constant stream of doing shit for people and getting their gratitude in return to waiting weeks on end to even get simple tasks through. My self esteem nose dived because I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything and all I got from others was requests for updates on things I was waiting on other people to do.
This hurts how accurate it is.
I am constantly worried i am not doing enough whilst simultaneously getting mad that i have to wait for vendors and review/approval meetings to make the tiniest change.
When im most of the way through something and i just need someone in apps to make a small change, I’ve got all this steam and im almost done with the task but my priority is not their priority so it stops. And a user ibwas helping is now left hanging. And i can’t do anything.
If the pay was better i would go back to the desk.
Open and admin window in on windows and do a deltree on C:\windows\system32
Profit
Sorry if you need to learn this, but compensation has little to do with ability or merit in a lot of place that need to screen share.
Also, ability to screen-share has little to do with the competencies that pay the bills on most places.
And screen-share knowledge is not some skill that is short in supply and high in demand. Every year tons of people graduate to fill those low level IT jobs. It’s simple economics, jobs that are easily filled are the ones that pay the least.
People here are delusional. They have been fed white lies by their parents and teachers that if they are smart and just work hard they get rewarded abundantly. It’s not how the world works.
And screen-share knowledge is not some skill that is short in supply and high in demand.
That one, it kind of is. But people have an irrational cap on how much they will pay, so the demand is extremely elastic.
What means that if you manage to be extremely productive, you will be rewarded disproportionately. But if you don’t, you’ll lack rewards disproportionately too.
