Is a "support" position a career dead end?

Question

Our organization recently separated support and development, and it looks like I've landed on the "support" side, since the application I work on has been in production for some time, even though there are many enhancements planned for it. Our team also likely be taking over support for some other applications.

I am concerned that remaining in a position on the "support" side would be detrimental to my career (though probably less so than being a big crybaby about it).

As you can probably tell, I much prefer building software to supporting existing software, though I am capable of filling either position.

I'm aware of pat sayings like, "Any job is what you make of it," etc. I'm curious if others have faced a similar situation, and what the results were.

Answer 1

You certainly can get a programming job after being in a support position, but if you don't have some way to show a new employer that you kept up your skills during those months or years you may have trouble. My advice to you is that if you're being forced into a position that you're not comfortable with then you should start looking for a new position (assuming your current employer is not willing to be flexible about this.)

Answer 2

Some would say it's the time-honored tradition of paying your dues. It's also less stressful. I would let your desires be known to be on the other side of the fence and hope for the best. But if they're dangling you along, I would find something else. Nobody wants to see their tech skills slide unless they're in the sunset of their dev career.

Answer 3

Support can be just as challenging and rewarding as ongoing development -- as long as you're in the right company, maintaining the right system. It all depends on what you want to do with your career.

Look at it this way: the economy is going to crap now, right? What do you think companies are going to cut? Ongoing maintenance on their core system they've been using for 20 years? Or that new, expensive project that has yet to show any ROI? I'm guessing the latter, so these days support may be a lot more stable in the meantime.

However, if you want to stay on the cutting edge, play with new technologies, and stay current, then you might want to take the risk and try to get into the new development side. It's a tradeoff, like most things in life.

Answer 4

I was personally able to transition from a tech support role into a consulting/professional services role with my current employer. That has opened a lot of doors both with our customers, the different groups in the company, and with potential new employers.

Switching from support to another department in the same company will likely be the best route to go if you want to change careers. It makes you the "it" guy when it comes to finding out how other parts of the organization work.

Answer 5

I think it depends on how specific the separation is. If enhancements and even major refactoring fall under the development team's umbrella, then it may be difficult for you to do new things in your support role. Support can certainly be a good thing to have on your resume, particularly if you can document the impact that you had by fixing defects in the applications you support, but it won't look nearly as good if you're fixing them in 2 years the same way you fix them today.

If your team can use new tools and new development methods, then what you're doing doesn't have to be too different than what the other team is doing: you're just more likely to be interrupted in the middle of a project.

I definitely agree with jeffm. Give the new assignment a try, and after a month or two, take a look at the work you've done and at how much you think a new employer would value it. If you feel like you're stuck, then it might be time to look for a better opportunity.

Answer 6

At a previous job, the support programmers were often critical to big sales. A customer would come to us and say, "I'll continue on maintenance for another year if you fix this one bug or add this one feature." Fixing that one bug could result in a multi-million dollar support contract renewing or expiring. The same thing would happen with new sales -- they'd make a big sale if they added one feature.

Answer 7

I guess the questions I'd ask are:

1. How much of the day job is grind sustained engineering work, bug hunter while a specialized skill can sap the soul from folk over an extended period of time.
2. How much career development and investment can I make, think Google 20% time to compensate for the grind #1
3. What is the level of competancy of the customers you'd interact with - this is a make or break answer IMHO.

Answer 8

You technical learning opportunity is getting narrowed when you do support job. So try to learn things outside of your work at free time is the only way for a bright career.

Answer 9

There was a post recently on Slashdot regarding this exact topic: "The Stigma of a Tech Support Background"

An anonymous reader writes

"Since the last semester of college I've been working as a first line tech support agent. At first it was just a way to earn some extra money; then it became a way to scrape by until I could find myself a real job. By now (almost two years in), it's beginning to feel like a curse. The problem I'm having is that no matter how many jobs I apply for, and no matter how well-written my applications are, I can't seem to get further than the first interview. For some reason it seems a lot of employers will completely overlook my degree in computer engineering, the fact that I can show them several personal projects that I've worked on, and that I can show them that I clearly possess the skills they are looking for. I've had several employers tell me to my face, and in rejection letters, that my 'professional background' isn't what they're looking for even when they've clearly stated that they're looking for recent graduates. In fact, a few have even told me that they decided against hiring me simply because I've worked in tech support at a call center for the last two years. I'm wondering if others have experienced similar problems and if there are any good ways to get employers to realize that my experience from tech support is actually a good thing and not a sign of incompetence."

An interesting discussion follows.

Answer 10

I could see a few different avenues you could take possibly:

1) Administration -> Since you are already dealing with problems, why not add measuring how well is that production environment running among them? This may be useful in cases where the support side also is responsible for knowing what hardware is in production.

2) Management -> I think most positions where there can be a hierarchy forming can have management potential as even in support, there has to be supervisors.

3) Scripting master -> This is where you'd write the scripts to do the deployment, assuming that is part of support and not development or another department. Sometimes knowing what a dozen lines of Windows Script Host or VBScript can do to test something can be surprising and useful in some cases to do a basic "smoke" test that some places have for their environments.

In a way it depends on what you want to work with in the end: The actual machines the company uses, being in charge of the people supporting the organization, or kind of a jack-of-all-trades as support can sometimes involving knowing oodles about the product as any kind of question can possibly come your way.

Answer 11

I manage a support team in the midst of developers, they support the tools the developers use. This is not seen at all as a dead end job by anyone in the company.

The reasons the developers had for choosing support were:

1. A wide exposure and appreciation of technologies. This expanded and developed their CVs
2. Triaging faults is seen as a real skill by both the users and the end developers- it also means the team become trained in 4 or 5 different developer teams ways of working at all ends of the development life cycle.
3. Any New Feature requests are also picked up by the team, and they do the first pass of requirement gathering. They start "Support Driven Development".
4. The career path options included moving into a developer team, moving into technical writing, and moving into an analyst role, as well as the standard development upwards within the support team. Making it a great "foot in the door" role.

Support isn't a dead end if the company gives the support activities and personnel the recognition they deserves.

Answer 12

I got started in the support industry in 1996 on a recommendation from a friend. He suggested using my keen geek brain and switching from the manual labor at UPS (i chose it for the benefits/hours, it's hard to beat as a first employer) to a position providing support for Windows (i'd never used it, I was a DOS user) connections on modems. I had already been programming for modem connections since I was 11, at that time 8 years. I'd programmed in BASIC, Pascal, 80386 assembler, C, AutoLISP, and DIESL. I'd had CS1 and CS2 in high school and my team placed 2nd in district at a programming competition (done on paper!) and multiple CS awards at "science fairs"... a proper geek.

I'm still doing support... I've managed first and second level. i've been the service manager for the CRM. i now answer the phone for corporate help desk as my primary duty.

My friends suggested some certifications to kind of show some progress, and yeah, good idea.. it may have helped here and there. i've definitely learned a lot, but i don't use it much. I got my Network+ just to see what it was like... having supported every network connection (ISDN, (A/S)DSL, Dial up, VPN, T1, Frame Relay, ATM) it went along with my experience. I got a $0.25 raise from the company and "promoted" to the "i'm too rich to be calling you" queue. I left at the first opportunity I could.

I went back to school a few years ago and got my AAS/CIT with honors.

Immediately afterwards, having a true passion and love for PHP, I got my Zend Certified Engineer status. That was two years ago.

About 10 years ago I had one contract position as a programmer on a team project that lasted about 4 months. That was the only time I was paid as a professional to program.

Recruiters have told me to go back to school for my bachelors... I guess I will. The AAS was pretty hard on my marriage, and I'm not looking forward to going through it again. I'm sure it'll be more difficult too. My employer will reimburse me, as many have been willing in the past, so I would be ashamed to make the mistake of not taking it. I'm close to getting my CCENT and then adding the CCNA, everyone tells me I'd make more money and that would be more satisfying (it's not programming, which is second only to women to me).

In my current position though, I'm a year away from pension benefits from my company... a year away from an extra week of vacation. I believe by that time I would make more than what I would somewhere else as a junior programmer. I probably already do if you include that they already contribute to my pension.

Here's some things I learned...

• success can be directly related to what you focus on and the effort you put into it
• while providing support, you're not creating anything... maybe documentation, but otherwise, you're helping someone with something that already exists.
• support work is EXACTLY like fast food or retail. The phone is like the check out counter or the fry station or the drive thru window. it is customer service at the roots. You have someone that expects deliverables filling the role of manager and you have customers that continuously come in and ask for something. While doing support, you are ALWAYS doing something for someone else... you're only putting out the current fire and your job is to do it to their satisfaction and be prepared for the next one.
• in support, the people you talk to are people... everyone... from the millionaire with 5 businesses wanting to make sure his databases are able to be accessed to the group of four drunk frat boys wanting to get online with windows 95a and their usb DSL modem so they can watch pr0n. they all have dads, mothers, sisters, friends, and they all have to deal with life too.
• always hire people smarter than you
• everything in life now requires a computer... stop fighting it
• follow what you love, you'll be much much much happier
• it isnt for everyone... it usually doesnt take long to figure out.
• what you're calling me about you are able to find on the inter/intra net, let me show you how