First day at the new job.
It’s interesting. I just made the switch from a MSP to internal IT, and it is very different. At the MSP, you have to be a jack-of-all trades, and when calls come in you have to figure out the problem and a way to attack it, usually while you’re having the customer breathing down your neck. And even if your role in support isn’t directly involved in revenue, it’s still looming over everything you do—you have to minimize your time spent, and maximize the benefit you provide the customer to keep them happy. This can be an utter nightmare if you happen to work in a toxic hellhole, but even in a supportive environment like the job I just left, it can be stressful.
With my new internal role, I’m providing services to the company itself; instead of being a revenue-generating unit, we’re just solving the problems. So the pressure is lower, and there’s less of a demand to account for time spent working an issue. The workforce is much larger and it’s more segmented; when I heard that I was going to be on a team of just three people supporting approximately 2/3rds as many endpoints as we did at the MSP, I was kind of worried. But I’m back in a situation where my role is more tightly defined, and tickets that are outside of our bailiwick get handed off.
I spent most of the morning virtually shadowing the other tech; I’d click on his tickets as they came in and go, “Okay, so I know how I’d start, first I’d—oh, he sent that to the infrastructure team. Okay, for this one the first thing I’d do is—nope, that one went to services.” So my experience at the MSP and my skillset is a little overkill for the role, at least at this level.
The good news is, this company is in crazy expansion mode, and there’s tons of opportunities for internal growth. For instance, I’m with another contract tech who got hired a few weeks ago; the two techs who were previously in these seats are now on the networking and cybersec teams. The company’s really big on allowing you to find a problem and build a new role around fixing it. Most of the people I spent time talking to today basically wrote their own job descriptions, in a way. So that’s a very interesting possibility.
The company has a few nice perks, too. There’s a drinks fridge in the break room they keep stocked, and one of the things they put in it is the Spindrift sparkling water I’ve just gotten myself absolutely hooked on. And they’ve got a really good coffee machine that does a variety of programmed drinks, which I relied on heavily today since A) I got like zero sleep last night and B) I forgot my tea. (They keep Earl Grey for the Keurig machine, but I’ve never been able to drink Earl Grey since I figured out what the flavor is. It’s bergamot, which is the citrusy fruit they use for the primary flavoring agent in Fruity Pebbles.)
One thing I’m definitely going to miss is my toolsets. At the MSP, we had a RMM suite that would allow us to monitor the health of devices and connect to them anytime they were online; we could remote in with the user with the push of a button, and easily take control and solve problems for them. We could even connect in in the background, and do minor tasks without disturbing their workflow. Here, though, we’re stuck with on-demand remote tools where we have to get them to go to a website and let us into the machine. It works for the kind of stuff we do, as far as I can tell, but if I was doing the same MSP work with this toolset I’d be clawing my eyes out.
Which means I might have an avenue to explore, suggesting a better way to manage the multitudes of endpoints in the system. I’ve already got a couple of basic ideas how we could improve workflow and visibility without drastic changes. So there’s potential here.
So anyway, I’m going to crash out and get some sleep early, because tomorrow I might actually get to do one or two things instead of reading KB articles and watching videos. And maybe start setting the groundwork for building a new niche for myself.