"Some people use it as a launch pad, and other people make it a dead-end job," he says. The greatest opportunity for help desk technicians lies in their ability to learn about different facets of the business, "which makes them more valuable than a pure IT guy," says Rosen.
When Anthony McCloud graduated from Graceland University in 2000, he didn't have a smidgen of business experience. He didn't know the first thing about business processes, customer service, or the quirks and habits of business workers. https://www.fieldengineer.com/blogs/what-does-a-help-desk-technician-do
Now he knows all that and much more. McCloud has spent the past seven years working in help desk-related roles at four companies, including stints for a high-tech equipment maker and a small restaurant chain.
The experience he has gained from learning about different businesses and "intermixing" with various types and levels of business workers has been priceless in terms of strengthening his communication and relationship skills, McCloud says.
"From my experience, being on an IT help desk has been a huge, huge opportunity," says McCloud, who was hired by Mac Equipment Inc. in Kansas City in June 2007. In addition to his role as the company's lone help desk technician, McCloud has also helped out as a server analyst and has done application development work in SQL, Visual C Sharp and PHP.
On the money front, McCloud doubled his salary when he first left a two-person business to take a help desk job at Mac Equipment, and since then, he has watched his compensation steadily increase at each subsequent position.
As McCloud and others are discovering, many help desks have evolved beyond their ticket-taking roots -- offering expanded opportunities for help desk employees (see "What's in it for you?" for details).
But that doesn't stop some IT professionals from hewing to the "old school" party line that says a career stop on the help desk is a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
"If you're hired just to work on a help desk, that's all you will ever do," says Fred Wagner, a FileNet and Kofax systems specialist for the city of Long Beach, Calif.
In particular, help desk technicians who work in "stovepiped" IT organizations -- that is, companies where systems analysts, network managers and other IT professionals are segregated from one another -- can go 10 to 15 years without being promoted into IT infrastructure, business analyst, systems administrator or other types of roles, he says.
A new breed of IT pros begs to differ, maintaining that a job on an IT help desk can open doors to other IT career opportunities. Help desk technicians, these proponents say, gain valuable experience working with end users throughout the enterprise and learning what makes the business tick.
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