Working In IT Support

A helpful guide to a job which has more ups and downs than a heroin addict.

The Basics

Your department will invariably have different sections to it. The main support functions will generally be separated as:

• First Line Support. This generally means the poor souls who answer the phone, and take details of other people's computer problems, and maybe try to fix it over the phone or by email if that's at all possible. Usually, there'll be a designated Helpdesk phone number and email address, where everybody dumps their problems.
• Second Line Support. When the Helpdesk people haven't had any luck fixing a problem, it gets sent to the second line team. These people are sometimes known as floorwalkers, as they, er.. walk around the floor, allegedly to fix problems with people's computer equipment. Generally, you can't just grab a floorwalker as he or she is wandering about, as most IT departments will insist that all calls come via the central Helpdesk. If, of course, you are the Managing Director and your printer is jammed, nobody is likely to complain.
• Third Line Support. If your friendly floorwalker can't fix things, then who ya gonna call? Third Line! These people are the boffins/geeks/nerds who probably read Slashdot and argue about Star Trek a little more often than is psychologically healthy. Third Line work can often be interesting, as it's never a case of using the same old fix for the same old problem for the 114_th time this week. The downside, however, is that sometimes there really isn't a solution until whoever wrote the software in the first place is able to bring out a fix for it themselves