Hi All, So, painting all MSPs with the same brush is valid and OK, but that is a cheap shot? Personally, I don’t think either generalisation is fair to do. For the record, I’m in my early 30s and would fall into the millennial category.
I feel like I need to point out that this is about a L2 hire (hell even a good L1 with prior experience so we’re not starting at zero) we’re not talking about unicorns here with 10-20 years of experience. My only real gripe at the moment is we’re seeing lots of people asking for six figure salaries, but not even knowing the basics that I learned when I was in high school, nor do they show any real passion for tech, and like Jen said, really can’t back it up. So I’m not sure how we got here… Sure we need “unicorns” on staff, but that’s reserved for the more senior engineering staff, and the salary reflects that. For a L2 you’re not expecting them to “talk business” on any serious level unless they are looking to move up in their role, that’s for management to do ultimately – just have half decent customer service skills and care about doing a good job, instead of doing a poor job and leaving things broken for the customer and then I have to deal with complaints and risk losing the customer. It’s a service desk role, after all. But I agree, it can be hard to find a balance between tech and CS , but for a L2 role being an escalation point (and hopefully someone who has come up through a helpdesk role) I’d be more focused on technical ability than I would customer service. I don’t know that I agree it rises to the level of unicorn – to me that’s for your high level engineering roles, which are different salary brackets again. I feel a need to defend us after a lot of negative generalisations about MSPs – I’m sure that’s based on experience. I understand there’s lots of really small MSPs out there and you end up wearing a lot of hats, and I would even say where we were 8-10 years ago with 4-5 staff was probably similar and I dealt with similar as an employee myself at one point, but as you grow, that stops. Certainly the idea of just skipping annual reviews and not letting people take leave, or putting them in a position where they feel they can’t, is not OK. I don’t really want to be lumped in with companies that just leech their staff dry till they leave – we’ve worked hard to grow and to be a place where people want to work, and continue to work at it. As someone these days in charge of the overall direction of the company, losing good staff is too important, and for those that are performing well, I’d much rather have a frank discussion about what kind of salary a staff member wants to be on, then risk them deciding the only way to get a good raise is to job-hop and not even talk to me – and I would say all our staff right now are open about that sort of thing, and I encourage it. Staff retention is so valuable, the difficulty in finding the right people is high (obviously, given the situation I am in!) and it takes a good 6 months before even a good person can really start to know your customers and your systems. I feel sorry for the staff (and the companies) who don’t get to experience this attitude. On the other hand, I also want to work with staff that have a good attitude and care about doing good work, and have the skills to do it. I agree with the comments that removing all limits on salary range is the key – that’s what we did last time we hired a senior engineer (not helpdesk) role and it worked out great. At least then we can have a conversation. I think the only point of contention for me personally is, what skill level is worth a high salary. Where the problem comes in is that, sorry, I am not willing to pay a six figure salary for someone who doesn’t know even the basics, but thinks they’re automatically a senior because they’ve been a mediocre L1 for a number of years, but I wouldn’t even want to hire then as an L1. To me, you’d better be quite solid technically for small business IT systems, with good logical thinking skills, and you do need to be able to have some basic level of customer service skills if you’re doing service desk, but I’m not expecting anything too major, and eventually I’d want to move you onto the engineering team if you want that, anyway. Anyone who fits what we’re after, I want to talk to you, and I want to know what you think you’re worth as I ultimately just want to find the right person for our team. I really appreciate all the feedback, and we’ll certainly be making some adjustments to the ad based on this. I’m sorry if I’ve opened a can of worms, but I also think it’s a valuable discussion to have. Thanks! Rhys Hanrahan | General Manager / CTO m: 0414 83 83 43 | e: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> “Ask us about how our Channel Partnership and Referral Program can earn you passive income” [www.nexusone.com.au]<http://www.nexusone.com.au/> [signature_1237010360] <http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> NEXUS ONE | FUSION TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS p: 1800 NEXUS1 (1800 639 871) or 1800 565 845 | a: Suite 12.03 Level 12, 227 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000 www.nexusone.com.au<http://www.nexusone.com.au/> | www.fusiontech.com.au<http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> The information in this email and any accompanying attachments may contain; a. Confidential information of Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties; b. Legally privileged information of Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties; and or c. Copyright material Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd does not accept any responsibility for loss or damage arising from the use or distribution of this email. Please consider the environment before printing this email. From: AusNOG <[email protected]> on behalf of Brad Peczka <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, 16 March 2024 at 8:25 pm To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] AusNOG Digest, Vol 145, Issue 3 It's shame that an otherwise perfectly valid reply felt the need to lower itself with a cheap shot at anyone born after 1981 - most of whom are now well into middle age and packing 15-20+ years of experience on the tools. Regardless - I agree with your last paragraph. Unicorns do exist, and most come up through MSPs, however they are now more likely to be found working as contractors in the high end, high dollar space with a very servicable day rate, or in a large enterprise where other perks make up for the difference in cash. Either way, they're not cheap and the good ones who can talk both business and tech are very, very rare. Regards, -Brad. On Sat, 16 Mar 2024, at 2:58 PM, David McIntosh wrote: Unfortunately there are a lot of candidates out there that just think they can be an L2. These candidates are people are typically Millennials (or worse) that have some sort of IT knowledge without any practical application. As someone who specialised in Exchange/ AD for 10+ years, I found that everyone who had M365 experience, believed they could manage Exchange / AD too, surprise surprise, they couldn't when push came to shove. I do agree, as someone that has been in Gov, Corp and in MSP's, that the culture is different. The thing that I learnt about being in an MSPs for over 10 year is that, as much as the skill and experience diversity is worth, you are never remunerated fairly. I saw contracts saying "review after 12 months", which never happened, doing 60+ hour weeks with TOIL that you could never take or the expectation that because you were highly paid you would always be available, no matter what. It's unfortunate to say, but the majority of MSPs don't treat their staff well, so it's little wonder why MSP's are finding it challenging to find good candidates, even in the smaller MSP world in SYD is not unheard of for a good L2 candidate to command $120K. However I do think, if you widened your field i.e not stating a position, not stating salary and doing more of a 'catch all' advertisement, you will likely find the right candidate if you are prepared to negotiate salary to their skillset, who knows you might even find the awesome L1 or L3 candidate you didn't expect... Good luck! David McIntosh Principal Solutions Architect | ICITA -----Original Message----- From: AusNOG <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 16 March 2024 2:12 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: AusNOG Digest, Vol 145, Issue 3 Send AusNOG mailing list submissions to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of AusNOG digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Looking for a senior service desk / L2+ support person (Rhys Hanrahan) 2. Re: Looking for a senior service desk / L2+ support person (Jennifer Sims) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2024 02:51:56 +0000 From: Rhys Hanrahan <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: Elliott Willink <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Looking for a senior service desk / L2+ support person Message-ID: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Hi Elliot, Thanks for the feedback! I didn?t post the job ad myself, but I?m surprised it?s being filtered in that way as I thought we?d left things more open ended than that ? we?ve said ?put your preferred salary? and had multiple applications requesting even well over 120K ? all of them with very low skill/experience to be honest. Do you really deserve 100-120K+ when you can?t explain clearly what a router vs a switch is (typically a L1 question for us)? And don?t know what type of NBN you have at home? Or can?t explain what a 169.x.x.x IP address is and what it means when you see it? These are the kinds of candidates asking for 100-120K+ and expect to be called senior techs. Is this really where the job market is at? I?m sure you?re right and we?ve hopefully messed something up with the Seek posting (I hope!). Suffice it to say we?re happy to look at higher salaries for the right person. But maybe there?s something wrong with how the ad has been posted that we?re somehow attracting lower quality candidates that still expect high salaries. I am going to review this! Perhaps we need to adjust the wording as I wouldn?t ever expect someone to have experience in _all_ those areas (they were listed as desirable and not essential) ? but want someone who is willing to learn, and has experience in a few of those areas. So perhaps the expectation level is coming across as too high. Really we just want someone reasonably well rounded who can handle small business IT, do site visits, help with escalations, etc. Really appreciate the feedback on this, it?s super helpful. The 4 years experience I understand, it?s getting up there (where did you see 5+ as we need to remove that?) ? it?s interesting because when we last hired someone from an existing MSP with 3 years, it seems all they knew fairly well was Office 365, and not much else so I was left wondering if 3 years is enough these days. I wonder if this was not representative of a typical 3 years of experience ? but I was surprised at how low the fundamentals were. E.g. Having to explain that with structured cabling there is a patch panel involved when re-patching ethernet cables, or what a UPS does ? pretty basic stuff. Maybe we just haven?t been finding the right people recently (we have got lots of great very capable people on the team, to be clear), but it?s surprising the skill levels we?ve seen when interviewing recently with even multiple years of MSP or IT experience. Certainly I get your point about the benefits of working for a big corporate ? to be honest, I agree ? we?re not a good fit for someone who wants to work for a big corporate, it?s a totally different culture and I understand a lot will prefer that. I guess all I can say is that the people that work here love that they get a wide range of exposure and mix things up regularly, vs a larger company where you would tend to get stuck in a narrower skillset. To me ? why would you want to get stuck in a very narrow area when you can get exposure to lots more and have influence on lots more things? I think there?s lots of like minded people out there, but appreciate not everyone wants to take this path. Each to their own for sure, and get your point that we are still competing with these companies when hiring, either way. Clearly I have some things to look at and think about. Really appreciate you taking the time to give some feedback, it helps a lot. Thanks! Rhys Hanrahan | General Manager / CTO m: 0414 83 83 43 | e: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> ?Ask us about how our Channel Partnership and Referral Program can earn you passive income? [www.nexusone.com.au<http://www.nexusone.com.au>]<http://www.nexusone.com.au/> [signature_1237010360] <http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> NEXUS ONE | FUSION TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS p: 1800 NEXUS1 (1800 639 871) or 1800 565 845 | a: Suite 12.03 Level 12, 227 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000 www.nexusone.com.au<http://www.nexusone.com.au><http://www.nexusone.com.au/> | www.fusiontech.com.au<http://www.fusiontech.com.au><http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> The information in this email and any accompanying attachments may contain; a. Confidential information of Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties; b. Legally privileged information of Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties; and or c. Copyright material Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd or third parties. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Fusion Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Nexus One Pty Ltd does not accept any responsibility for loss or damage arising from the use or distribution of this email. Please consider the environment before printing this email. From: Elliott Willink <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Friday, 15 March 2024 at 11:35 pm To: Rhys Hanrahan <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: Looking for a senior service desk / L2+ support person Doing a quick salary filter on Seek your mid-range salary is 80k & chasing someone with 5+ years experience sysadmin/AD/Exchange/M365/Cisco/Junos/VoIP/Linux/Hosting. We had a similar issue tracking down staff but a reality check for us was finding out Australian ISPs were paying close to $80k for L1 business support. Once we adjusted our expectations we found there were plenty of excellent people out there. It's hard as a small business to attract good techs, why would someone work for you (MSPs don't have a great rep) when they could make the same working for a big, well known corporate? As an absolute shot in the dark I'd say you're looking at $120k+ for someone good based on that JD. Anyone who disagrees please send me your resume :) Elliott ________________________________ From: AusNOG <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Rhys Hanrahan <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Friday, March 15, 2024 4:12:00 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [AusNOG] Looking for a senior service desk / L2+ support person Hi All, Sorry for the noise ? just wanted to post this as we?re not having much luck finding the right candidates for a role. I was hoping that some people on this list either might be interested or know someone who might be interested in the role. Of course appreciate any feedback on the job ad too ? We are looking for someone for a Senior service desk/L2+ role ? need to be comfortable acting as an escalation point for help desk and getting involved in Windows desktop support and helping guide the service desk team. Hoping to find someone who has a passion for technology and is quite well rounded across a variety of small business IT areas, and has solid troubleshooting skills and fundamentals. There is a massive opportunity for increasing your knowledge as we do a lot more than a typical MSP ? and of course there?s the ISP and engineering side of things - the person would be interfacing with our engineering team a lot, and there would be future ability to grow into an engineering role, as you?d be exposed to all areas of the business from the start. The job ad is here: https://www.seek.com.au/job/73897923. Anyone who is interested is welcome to send an email to myself or to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Thanks all! Have a great weekend. Rhys Hanrahan | General Manager / CTO m: 0414 83 83 43 | e: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> ?Ask us about how our Channel Partnership and Referral Program can earn you passive income? [www.nexusone.com.au<http://www.nexusone.com.au>]<http://www.nexusone.com.au/> [signature_1237010360] <http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> NEXUS ONE | FUSION TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS p: 1800 NEXUS1 (1800 639 871) or 1800 565 845 | a: Suite 12.03 Level 12, 227 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000 www.nexusone.com.au<http://www.nexusone.com.au><http://www.nexusone.com.au/> | www.fusiontech.com.au<http://www.fusiontech.com.au><http://www.fusiontech.com.au/> The information in this email and any accompanying attachments may contain; a. 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