Pros
The vast majority of people who I worked with at HTEC were a pleasure to be around. Many of them have also jumped ship. Casual dress. 4 days on, 4 days off. 4 days holiday = 12 days off. Free coffee, if the machine is working. Sometimes the "milk" floats though. Management do seem to be aware of the issues the support desk is facing. Not resolving them, but aware. Theoretically good career progression if you can do brown-nosing. The pay is just about passable.
Kontras
Middle management are more concerned about abandoned calls than they are about support analysts actually fixing problems. This led to us taking calls, logging them, doing nothing about them, and creating a feedback loop where more and more customers continually called in chasing issues they've already logged and had no update on because nobody has had a chance to look at them. Management did seem to recognize this issue at one point, but their "solution" was to have one or two people on the phones with 10 calls waiting while others worked on older tickets. I guess you could call them designated abuse takers. You get a 1 hour break in a 12 hour shift, and you'd better get used to working 9-10 hours before you get to take it. Alternatively you can take four 15 minute breaks (yippee). 99% of what you learn you will have to learn from the guy next to you. This means you're going to be asking the customer to wait on the line while you speak to your colleague who also has a customer to deal with, creating more and more delays in resolution and more and more angry customers. Disgruntled customers often say "you guys have no idea what you're doing." Said disgruntled customers are often correct. Management start getting jumpy if you're 1st line and have been on the phone more than 20 minutes and hound you to get off the call, but don't actually provide you with any help escalating or resolving the problem. Do you want me to just hang up on the customer? There is a certain product that literally one person on the help desk knows anything about. Did you buy that product? Do you have a problem with it? Good luck. There is another MAJOR product that very few people know much about, and even the most basic fixes for it usually require SQL, which 1st line techs aren't allowed to do. Got that same issue for the third time this week? Sorry, I know how to fix it, but I'm not allowed to and you're going to have to wait for a call back. You need to be in the clique to get promoted. Cozying up to middle management and the tech team will get you further than actually being a good technician will. You'll note the other reviews about certain senior staff members with less knowledge than certain 1st lines.
