Second Level?

[Abby_Normal]

OK, I am interviewing for this job tomorrow. The want someone with a few years Linux/unix admin experience, which I have plenty of. The job is listed as "Second level support", and I'm not sure what that means.

This is from the info they sent me. What the hell am I supposed to be doing for this company?

Key Responsibilities
Interfaces with technical and in-house customer service personnel to determine
exact nature of problems and implements remedial procedures.
Prepares regular and special reports documenting customer problems/complaints
and procedures for correcting them.
Writes or revises training manuals and procedures. Develops training materials
such as exercises and visual displays. May conduct training sessions for less
experienced staff or in-house customer support on procedures and technical
information.
Participates in the planning and implementation of new and/or existing systems
and software for internal and external customers.
Coordinates and implements changes to the Data Center's production
environment.
Oversees staging and Quality Assurance testing of changes ensuring production
environment integrity.
Identify opportunities and implement solutions to improve availability,
reliability, efficiency, performance and overall service.

This sounds more like help desk monkey with some writing and administration thrown in.

What do you guys think? I can't afford to hold out for an admin job right now. :(

[Deviant Ollam]

OK, I am interviewing for this job tomorrow. ... The job is listed as "Second level support", and I'm not sure what that means.

in my experience and understanding, you're "forward deployed" so to speak with respect to user issues (instead of dictating policy and doing network oversight you're helping to fix problems that people introduce to the network) however you're not (to continue with a military analogy) on the front lines of the cluelss users vs. admin battle. most often, the first person with whom a user will have contat (via phone, email, etc) when they have a problem with their technology is "first level support" staff. typically, these individuals' computer training is limited to the fact that they know what a monitor is and can type on a keyboard. often working off of scripts, they give the users minimal support and serve as a way to weed out the "i'm a fucktard whose power strip is turned off" kind of issues.

This sounds more like help desk monkey with some writing and administration thrown in.

while it's often tied to help desk, i usually don't think of second level support as being a monkey position. while putting out fires and handling random crap is usually part of the job, most of the bonehead stuff doesn't cross your desk in a position like that. typically second-tier staff are a liaison between the sysadmins and the users. you get to have a lot of input into discussions about "what isn't working well / what could be improved" sort of matters... but a lot of the time you're fixing things that other people did wrong. having saind that...

What do you guys think? I can't afford to hold out for an admin job right now.

while sysadmin work is nice to have, being second or third tier level support can be a really kick ass holiday if the network is setup properly. if you have a nice IT department that runs well and knows what they're doing, most of the time your job will consist of finding innovative new ways to do things that users keep bugging sysadmins about. you won't be changing toner cartridges or helping people reset their email password (that's first level domain) and your time will roughly be split between coming up with clever hacks and reading posts on fark, somethingawful, slashdot, and the defcon forums. i say, be happy to have a semi-vacation that includes a paycheck.

of coruse, if the network is ass, then you'll be pulling your hair out and wishing you had the sysadmin job... rather easy to tell if this is the case in the fist month or so. if it is, stuff as many office supplies and unused bits of tech gear as you can down your pants everyday when you head home and look for a better job as soon as possible.

[AlxRogan]

Interfaces with technical and in-house customer service personnel to determine exact nature of problems and implements remedial procedures.

You called it, level 2 or maybe 3 support

Prepares regular and special reports documenting customer problems/complaints and procedures for correcting them.

Fill out what you did to solve the problem, probably in a ticketing system

Writes or revises training manuals and procedures. Develops training materials such as exercises and visual displays. May conduct training sessions for less experienced staff or in-house customer support on procedures and technical information.

Anything over and above you do, you will need to document to train less talented monkeys

Participates in the planning and implementation of new and/or existing systems and software for internal and external customers.

May be called upon to fix partner's systems, or help out when the other SysAdmin's are lost.

Coordinates and implements changes to the Data Center's production environment. Oversees staging and Quality Assurance testing of changes ensuring production environment integrity.

Time to test the patches, and patch the systems, plan on at least one overnight a month.

Identify opportunities and implement solutions to improve availability, reliability, efficiency, performance and overall service.

When stuff screws up, be prepared to figure out how to fix stuff, avoid being the scapegoat.

This sounds more like help desk monkey with some writing and administration thrown in.

You called it.

What do you guys think? I can't afford to hold out for an admin job right now. :(

I've worked lots of jobs where I wasn't really happy, just to pay the bills, all comes down to opportunity cost. Nothing says you can't keep looking for a job if you work this one. Good luck with whatever you choose.

[skroo]

This sounds more like help desk monkey with some writing and administration thrown in.

If this place you're interviewing at is anything like the one I've just left, this is exactly what it's going to be. Really, it sounds like a headset job with the ability to log into the servers.

[astcell]

Here is what I have found in my travels:

First tier tech support: Always foreign, usually Indian. Tell users to reboot and reinstall. If you solved their troubles it is usually because of their error like a virus or third party pop up blocker. Tech has never heard of Defcon.

Second tier tech support: Usually foreign unless the calls get backed up then it goes to somewhere that considers English a first language. Tells users to check things like IP addresses, firewall settings, service pack versions, and program customizations. if you solved their troubles it is usually because they tweaked something and forgot about it, or software requirements were not properly evaluated in the first place. Tech believes Defcon is an evil site as stated by the firewall software.

Third teir tech support: Usually on US or England's soil. Asks user for all the details. Program bugs found. Free upgrades offered. Download site for beta files given. Tech usually has to work over Defcon and missed two years in a row and hates it.