It’s come to the attention of probably not only myself, but many IT-savvy people out there that there are a lot of companies paying for “expertise” they don’t need. When faced with a minor HTML problem that’s been caused by a single letter out of place, they’ll likely call a web designer. RAM needs replacing in a server? Call an IT repair company.
It’s not worth it, and although this is a fun market to capitalise on, it’s probably not the engaging, stimulating work that most IT experts would rather be doing, although it pays the bills (and then some, in some cases). If you’ve ever sat down to figure out why your finance team’s computers have suddenly all gone offline, making that quick pay-the-bills visit to o2.co.uk a delayed process, only to notice that someone stepped on the ethernet cables, it’s okay to facepalm.
The main skill is learning how to use keywords to find what you’re looking for in Google, and not type in full sentence questions. If you don’t know why your DNS server is down, typing in “need help with 2009 model router DNS down”, you’ll get some results, but the likelihood of them being helpful or specific are low. However, typing in “DNS down” and the model of your router, not just the year, will yield far better results.
The thing with IT problems is that most issues you or your staff will run into have been dealt with countless times before, sometimes solved years ago. Yahoo answers, tech forums, blog posts on the solution – there is rarely a reason to actually call in the experts, although if you were Sony in 2011, calling in the security experts as soon as possible would’ve been a good idea, as doing the really important jobs as well as minor troubleshooting off the basis of that level of expertise has its flaws.
So here’s the bottom line – search for your answers. Don’t spam Twitter endlessly, don’t waste money on experts. Take an hour to troubleshoot, and you may learn IT skills that will last you for the years to come. Put the power back into your own hands.
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