I’ve started working a new position as a system administrator at a company that values the idea of work from home but still has a lot of comradery and a healthy assortment of sodas and snacks in the kitchen area that is up for grabs when caffeine is required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It might be the new job energy talking, but I have a feeling that this is a great step forward for me. It’s not my first system administrator role, but the company I’m working at now has a lot more people dedicated to working the same number of clients that I had at my last job and, most importantly, no live calls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will admit to a bit of autism and neurodivergence which, boiled down to it’s most component parts, means I get internally anxious when I have to deal with a never-ending tide of calls and complaints and people who want their problems solved immediately. I’ve been able to deal with this anxiety, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had over two decades of customer service\/technical support experience under my belt, but it’s still kind of there and it makes work less fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, when it’s a situation where I am not being hit with a phone call the very instant I get off the last one and instead can get everything in place before calling the client back, I am much more at ease. If it’s an issue I am unfamiliar with, I can look up articles explaining a solution or discuss it with team-mates. If it looks like I’ll need to remote into their desktop or the server to make a change, I can call up their company password lists and remote monitoring software. Then, once I’m ready, I can call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This honestly doesn’t sound like much, but what it does for me is it builds up all the tools and foundation I need for success without having a person hemming and hawing in my ear wanting to know why their issue isn’t fixed yet. That means so much to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I discovered this when I was working chat support at Datto. Even though I was helping multiple users at the same time (effectively doubling the workload), not having to hear them pepper me with questions when I was trying to focus or hearing grunts of impatience was a literal god-send.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, unfortunately, my last system administration position was 100% live calls requiring me to remain on the line with the client until the issue was fixed. And while the clients never seemed to have any issue with the support I gave (routinely got 10 out of 10 on quality surveys) I felt like I just didn’t have time to breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because of the little bit of space during and between tickets, I also get a chance to retain and learn processes I’m going through to solve problems that come my way. If I find that I’ve had to look up a procedure more than once, I take the extra time to write that process down or watch a video that goes through the process so I’ll remember it better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because, with my previous roles in several different companies, I had to switch so fast between issue A to issue B to issue C and so on, I wasn’t able to retain what I did that day. It became such a mindless blur that at the end of a shift, if you asked me to describe literally any issue, I would just look at you blankly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But not now. I feel like a lot of this job is going to be a learning opportunity for me, letting me cut my teeth on a lot of different resources that I’ve dealt with in the past, but never had the opportunity to deep dive beyond the initial issue at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I am definitely going to continue working on a number of my creative projects and programming, there’s now going to be more than a little bit of time dedicated towards my self-improvement. Optimistic, I know, but I’m seeing good things in the future now. Maybe a certification or two is in my future!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So stay curious and stay active! Have a great weekend, everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve started working a new position as a system administrator at a company that values the idea of work from home but still…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/serioustangents.com\/SeriousBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}