Chapter 1

Embracing IT Help Desk Jobs

In This Chapter

Establishing a better understanding of how companies use the help desk

Developing an awareness of your options for positions

Understanding the tools you'll need to get work

It's time to get a job, and you're quite talented with technology, so where do you go? How do you find one? How do you verify that you know what you need to know in order to take a position? How do you understand what your potential pay will be? How do you determine your options? You go online and look at what the IT job industry offers and find an enormous selection of positions and little understanding about what most of the jobs entail. Now what do you do?

You start by reading this chapter. In this chapter, I break down a number of things like what a help desk is, how important the help desk is to industry, a look at the IT job market, and more. In short, the information in this chapter starts you on a path to discover whether a career in IT suits you. In general, if you have any technical aptitude at all, then it's likely an IT position will be a positive step forward for you. IT is a strong industry with lots of opportunity for advancement.

This chapter has an element of looking inside yourself, as if the content inside these pages is a looking glass for personal introspection. You discover more about the IT industry and likely more about yourself. It is also the aim to help you feel a sense of confidence in yourself as you recognize more and more information, learning that you are not alone in the way you think and that you probably know quite a bit more than you may think.

What Is a Help Desk?

Literally, the help desk is a desk people can go to for help. Yes, that definition isn't exactly helpful, but in general terms, the help desk is an organization inside of a corporation that is part of the IT department that is designed to assist users with their computer needs.

I use simple terminology throughout this book to describe the people who run the help desk as engineers and the people who do not as users. For example, the engineer installs a printer driver update for the user.

The overall scope of what is termed help desk is frequently wider than just engineers helping users, though this rule isn't strict. Some help desks are tightly controlled and have a very limited role. You will find these limited roles in larger organizations that either work on government contracts or must comply with various laws and regulations.

The core aspect of a help desk, however, is to provide users with the resources they need to use technology as tools to perform their work for the corporation. Yet, because you are living in the world of IT, even this core purpose is complicated. As in The Matrix, you can choose the Red Pill or the Blue Pill, each taking you on a different path.

Why Technical Support Matters

There is a long legacy of personal computing history that illustrates the growing need for technical support. Way back in 1976, on April 1 for that matter, a small company called Apple created what is widely regarded as the first Personal Computer, or PC.

Despite the fact that all computers used by people are technically Personal Computers, that's not how things worked out when it comes to terminology. When most people talk about a PC, they are referring to a computer running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The term PC was popularized by IBM, which produced the IBM PC line of computers that ran PC DOS to compete in the nascent personal computer market. To the contrary, if it's an Apple product, then it's a Mac. For sheer nerdliness, when discussing Linux, the popular open source operating system, the machines are usually called Linux Boxes.

A whole new world

The Apple I was popular among the technical people of the time, but Apple's market share really exploded with the Apple ][ line, which became popular in homes and in schools. IBM was more popular on the business end of the market, because companies knew and respected the IBM name. Apple, in turn, eschewed the strict business orientation of IBM's PC and pushed the development of easy-to-use computer software that was attractive. The late '70s and early '80s bore a vast number of different platforms, most popularly the Atari line, Radio Shack's own Tandy line, the ridiculously popular Commodore C64, Texas Instrument's TI 99/4a, and Sinclair's ZX line, all of which, except Apple and the IBM PC, were wiped out.

In 1984, Apple unleashed the Macintosh on the market. A radically different computer, the Mac used a mouse to move icons around a virtual desktop. Instead of typing cryptic commands, users pointed and clicked to make the computer act. In 1985, the Apple Writer hit the market and fostered a mass movement for desktop publishing. Due to its ease of use compared to the IBM PCs of the day, popular applications like Aldus's PageMaker, the new printer, and a graphical environment, Apple established the Macintosh as a computer for design and creative types.

In the meantime, IBM's PC compatibility standard was pushing all other competitors out of the marketplace. Manufacturers who were building computers to support other standards started getting in line with IBM as they saw the writing on the wall. Apple had already set its well-forged path and was strong enough to avoid getting on the IBM bandwagon, but the only maker of significant market share remaining was the plucky little Amiga. Sadly, Amiga was unable to continue pushing the envelope with technological advances and was pushed out of the market by 1996.

By 1997, however, Apple was in trouble, steadily losing market share to IBM and the clone makers Dell, HP, Compaq, Packard Bell, and many others. The clone market dramatically pushed down part costs through vigorous competition to produce the latest and greatest while remaining compatible with the PC standard. Apple was on the ropes with machines that were far more expensive and lacked compatibility with the IBM standard. It looked like IBM, with Microsoft Windows and IBM's own OS/2 (which lasted until 2001 with the release of OS/2 Warp 4.52) designed specifically for business and was compatible with Windows programs, was winning.

Apple's then CEO, Gil Amelio, turned to previously ousted Steve Jobs in an attempt to get his advanced NeXT operating system for a new generation of Apple Macintosh computers. In a twist best served by various biographies, Amelio was pushed out, Jobs was brought back in as iCEO, and NeXT was absorbed into Apple. Jobs then went on a spring cleaning event, clearing much of what he deemed useless from the projects roster, and pushed for Apple to renew its presence in the computer market. The result of his and others efforts was the iMac, released in 1998, a colorful little all-in-one that would mark an enormous shift in personal computing history.

Apple had, in one fell swoop, pronounced that beige was out, candy colors were in, and if you wanted to be cool, you would never go beige. The move from beige as default component color would not, however, really take hold until the release of Mac OS X in 2001 that would start the fundamental change at Apple, and thus in the rest of the PC industry. On the IBM PC front, however, it was business as usual, though competition for advancement wasn't lacking. Those changes, however, were more technical than esthetic. AMD, a former subcontractor for Intel, started out on its own and began marketing competing CPUs, the heart of any PC.

AMD had already started to make x86 CPU clones back in 1991, but in 1996, the company unveiled its K5 processor. The K stood for Kryptonite, the only substance that could harm Superman, which in this case was Intel. AMD was first to develop a mass-produced 64-bit CPU, but Intel quickly followed with its own, and the Intel Pentium was a hard product name to beat. AMD never did overtake Intel as CPU market leader, but it remains a staple of low-end systems and a favorite of so-called overclockers.

By the mid-2000s, most IBM PC clone makers had been absorbed into the big cloners, such as Dell and HP. Even HP took over Compaq, and Packard Bell went bust in the United States, mostly over very poor reliability and technical support issues. Japanese PC makers were also flooding the market with innovative new designs and lower price points, among them Sony, Acer, and Toshiba. By this time, Windows was considered the de facto desktop standard with the very popular Windows XP, and even IBM's OS/2 was now gone. It was no longer a fight for hardware, but the operating system, and the only two standing were now Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X.

Then something remarkable happened. While Intel and AMD were fighting it out on the PC side, Apple was fighting with IBM and Motorola over advancing development of the PowerPC CPU, the core of Apple's Macintosh computers. The PowerPC was running too hot and could be sufficiently cooled only in Apple's hot new PowerMac Pro towers, all aluminum towers packed with power for the creative types that loved Mac OS X's ease of use and designer-centric interface language. Apple wanted to put faster CPUs into its laptops and desktop systems, but it had no way to keep them from burning to a crisp.

It was at this point Apple decided that in order to stay in the market and not have to close shop, it would do something unheard of....