Help me find a new career?
May 30, 2019 8:34 PM   Subscribe

I have done helpdesk tech support desktop support and so on for my entire career. I am burned out. I need something else.

Not by the work exactly but by my mental illnesses preventing me from being the best I can be at the job and from a terrible team that focuses on failures over successes

I don't have the wherewithal to get a degree right now and it would take a decade

What else can you do with 20 years of tech support except tech support?
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (13 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are you good at explaining things in writing? Is technical writing a possibility?
posted by yhlee at 8:35 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]


yep! Technical writing, training (internal or external), QA, business analysis, maybe product development?
posted by mochapickle at 8:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]


Ooh, maybe sales support?
posted by mochapickle at 8:53 PM on May 30, 2019


Tech support is a great entry point to many tech careers, and tech is one of the few fields where you can rise up without a university degree. Here are some potential positions for you to investigate, depending on your inclinations and abilities:

- Tech Writer: document things
- Business or Business systems analyst: talk to people, document things
- Product Manager: 'Mini ceo' for a product
- Quality Assurance: get paid to break things
- Sales Engineer: solve clients' problems using your company's tech
- Project Management: herd cats, get things done
- Change manager: make sure new things don't break old things

What do you like? What are you good at?
posted by sid at 9:35 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]


Where have you worked support? I know people who’ve moved into sales engineer roles.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:41 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'd agree with technical writing / sales engineer stuff.

But: if you're okay with freelance/contract work, and there are obvious local markets, and you are in a position to network/advertise, then you can do Support in a different, more proactive way: that is, consulting on Good Setups and Best Practices for professionals who are tech-literate but aren't fully clued about the specific tech requirements of their field. (For instance, healthcare sole private practitioners who need HIPAA-compliant stuff.) That's more likely to be onsite or locally-remote but it's going to be built upon ongoing client relationships and teaching in a way that metrics-driven helpdesk work isn't.
posted by holgate at 11:01 PM on May 30, 2019


You might consider applying for support positions at smaller software companies or startups. Especially ones targeting the enterprise (large business) market. The work is more interesting and challenging, and there's plenty of options for advancement. I've seen colleagues move from support to QA, product management (i.e. designing new features) and consultant positions (working with clients at a higher level, often on-site.)
posted by serathen at 3:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sounds like an IT role at a smaller company with some level of software development involved might fit the bill. You could do tech support, network support, testing, software evaluation, etc. And, as the company grows, you can grow with it in parallel.
posted by Jacob G at 6:43 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


Look for university IT careers in your area, usually much more relaxed and a better environment than the private sector. Over the past 20 years I’ve done higher ed help desk, desktop support, hardware repair and finally wound up as a campus web developer.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:59 AM on May 31, 2019


Came in to echo some answers above: technical writing, technical training, even a combination of both (writing/developing training materials). Your extensive experience in front-end support provides a perspective that writers and trainers usually don't have: in-depth and first-hand knowledge of what users want and how they actually use the product in real life.
posted by methroach at 7:40 AM on May 31, 2019


Also, Usability Evaluation could be a thing for you.
posted by Snowishberlin at 10:05 AM on May 31, 2019


I agree with a lot of the above (sales engineering, technical writing) but want to contribute the (reprehensibly euphemistic and jargony) the job areas "customer success" and "product evangelism". Customer success in particular seems to be a growth field right now, driven by the trend of software companies selling subscription access rather than perpetual licenses (e.g. Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription replacing their Creative Suite product). This creates a periodic renewal cycle where customers must actively decide to keep paying for a product, which in turn creates pressure on vendors to razzle-dazzle clients throughout the year (or maybe just shortly before their renewals if we're feeling cynical) in order to retain those customers and "reduce churn". People with tech support backgrounds are often well-suited to this work because it's often the same set of activities but just proactive rather than reactive. Good luck!
posted by The Minotaur at 10:47 AM on May 31, 2019


I'm a former help desk person who later transitioned into the following roles: software trainer, QA/QC tester, technical writer, business analyst. I've just started mentoring one of my organization's help desk reps in tech writing, actually, and turns out she's done a ton of that type of work already. She has a ton of great ideas since she's on the front line with the customers all day, every day (and is sooo ready for a change).

I work in state government IT, which I have found to be much more mellow than private sector, on the whole.
posted by medeine at 12:25 PM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


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