Well, I was browsing through The Planet's website and I came across the "For Hire" page ( http://www.theplanet.com/company/employment.php )
Anyways, I was reading the NOC Technician Posting:

Looking for your first real tech job? The Planet is hiring 1st level NOC technicians. This position will give you real hands on experience. This position will answer inbound calls, process trouble tickets, load operating systems, reboot servers and assist in the installation of equipment in large datacenter environment (not a call center). Must have expertise in one of the following operating systems and be willing to learn all operating systems: Windows 2000/2003 server, Linux , BSD, and Unix. Knowledge of the following are a plus: apache, qmail, sendmail, IIS, IMail, SQL, Myself, FTP, SSH, terminal services, VNC, PCAnywhere, cPanel, Ensim, and other web related applications and/or utilities. General networking knowledge is needed. This is a great opportunity to progress into NOC engineer. Full or Part Time positions available on 1st, 2nd and 3rd shifts. Salary range starts at $10 per hour. Please send all resumes to jobs@theplanet.com

Now, Ive been reading things about some of you have been having problems with getting reboots etc. Now, look at the end of that posting, "Salary range starts at $10/ hour" (Though, it sounds like it increases from there)

That is what shocked me. They are paying people $10/hour to reboot servers and stuff like that. And if your wondering why your calling up support, and the person doesent know what they are talking about (I read about a few people saying that) then you may be interested the part about only really needing to know 1 OS (though learn more as you work)

Then, knowledge of apache, qmail, sendmail, cPanel etc is a PLUS???? That should be standard.


Now, I may be wrong about this all, but it just seems odd that they are employing people that just dont have a lot of knowledge. And also, this is just a general technician, so they may not need to have the greatest knowledge in the world. So anyways, please prove me wrong so I feel better about this :D

they are probably just encouraging the submission of applications and resumes so they have lots to choose from. of course, from there they will filter and verify people's abilities through interviews, etc. :)
this is just my guess.

I think the title should not be "NOC Technician" and more like "NOC Runner" :stickout:

They did say that you need to be an expertise in at least 1 of the mentioned operating system. They would probably trained them to handle the rest along the way. I am sure they will assign you to support the OS which you are familiar with and not to handle those which you are not.

Besides, they did say that part-time technican will be paid at $10/hr or more. I guess it means that they do not just pay $10 but that is the minimum for a part-timer. I believe the better you are, the higher you get. It is probably one of those scaled salary range which most companies uses.

They do have several levels of technicans and the basic issues would be handled by the 1st level technican and if they cannot handle it, it goes up to the next level and so on. That's why you see that certain postings get directed.

Not every issues require experts to handle it like reboots and adding DNS entries. They are better off assigned to the entry level technicans. With the skills they gather, they could be promoted to higher levels.

I don't see anything wrong with that.

well i think before you guys go a bit deeper here let us get a calculator here and do this 10 x 8 hours = 80

so $ 80 a day if he works 30 days then 80 x 30 = $2400 a month

and that is for a tech not a skilled engineer and you think that is bad.

let us do this in another way how many celaron should SM rent per month to cover his salary, will you all accept SM rent the servers for let us say P 4 2.4 512 ram 80 GB HD and 1000 Gb transfer for $400

if you accept this and you will not move to another NOC then here you go just send them an e-mail that you all welling to pay that amount with strickt contract that you cant leave for one year then sure they will get you silvester stalone to restart the server if it wont be Arnold

Originally posted by Boost
well i think before you guys go a bit deeper here let us get a calculator here and do this 10 x 8 hours = 80

so $ 80 a day if he works 30 days then 80 x 30 = $2400 a month It's -very- hard to work 30 days a month without taking break for a long period of time, plus you forget that they have to pay taxes.

So realisticly its: $10 x 8 [hours a day] x 21 [days a month] - taxes (~25%)= ~$1300 a month.

I'm moving to ev1servers :)

Rackshack offers $8 an hour and up

Well, im in areement with Sizzly with that they are probably just encouraging the submission of applications and resumes so they have lots to choose from. of course, from there they will filter and verify people's abilities through interviews, etc.

After the interview, they probably pick out the people with the most system knowledge etc. So they probably all know what they are doing, lol.

Also, its a salary, not a hourly wage. So, more secure in that perspective.

Just thought id point this thing out, but im quite sure that they have properly trained and skilled staff.

EDIT: Just about the wage thing, even this is not really realistic:
So realisticly its: $10 x 8 [hours a day] x 21 [days a month] - taxes (~25%)= ~$1300 a month.

Lunch breaks and such need to be thought of, and their not working even 8 hours a day because: "Full or Part Time positions available on 1st, 2nd and 3rd shifts."

I wouldnt say over $1000/month but again, I dont work there so I wouldnt know.

EDIT 2: Also, no need to start getting worried and switching providers etc, ;) lol. Again, like I said before, Im sure that they are all properly trained and skilled.

Originally posted by MN-Robert
Rackshack offers $8 an hour and up I might consider hosting at Burger King :)

It doesn't take a genius to reboot a server or ask you to put a ticket in. When they ask you to put a ticket in what do you think happens? It goes to someone who knows what they are doing. Their problem is not their level 1 NOC staff but the level 2 people who are actually fixing the real problems. Theres not enough of them and support ticket times suffer because of it.

I don't quite get the point of a 2 ring SLA if the person who answers the phone is going to ask you to put a ticket in or put you on hold while they answer the next person who called to keep up their 2 ring SLA. Theres a big different between pretending to support your clients and actually doing it.

I was happy with ThePlanet before they became ServerMatrix. This whole situation proves that you can't provide managed services for $99 a month. The whole idea of $99 a month servers only works because of large quantities of server and overselling of bandwidth. Unfortunately, you can't oversell support and managed services especially considering the flood of people who have no idea how to manage a server and think they can make it rich in the hosting industry.

I don't quite get the point of a 2 ring SLA if the person who answers the phone is going to ask you to put a ticket in or put you on hold while they answer the next person who called to keep up their 2 ring SLA.

There are some things which probably need to be documented and the support ticket gives you the audit trail of what is going on. Phone support allows you to talk to someone but if something happens, it is just like 'your words against their words'. Tickets give you that accountability and allows you to tag on comments on follow up or when the issue is assigned to someone higher up the support chain.

If you just call without a support ticket, there is no audit trail and if things don't get resolved or it needs to be pass on to the next level, it may get lost in the midst of the several thousand calls they can in the first place. Beings I always get this problem that when messages are past from one party to the next, things do get changed along the way. With tickets, you can always refer back.

Things are tons clearer on tickets since you can add IPs, error messages and all that information and things don't get misunderstood especially when accents are different and people use different terminology for different items.

I agree but it should not be your responsibility to put the ticket in. Generally if you call there is either a ticket in already, you can't put one in, or the issue is urgent. At that point the tech should submit the ticket for you. If you call in for a simple reboot request then no ticket should be required or one can be put in after the reboot was done. Its the idea of hearing "put in a ticket" as the first response to all issues which is wrong.

If their ticket times improved I doubt many people would be calling in the first place. It is well documented on WHT that the only way to get something done at TP/SM is to call them otherwise your ticket gets "lost".

Going back to their increased hiring of new staff. I would rather they have less people answering phones and more people working on tickets.

So, from what I've read & understood, a company is acknowledging they need to add more staff, specifically for NOC related positions, and offer a starting salary of X thus increasing the availability of their level 2 admins for better and faster support and this is a problem? No offence to anyone, but this is ridiculous. Nobody has ever asked me how much we pay our staff, nor would it be anything we or any other company would divulge. TP / SM had up until their recent growth, a stellar track record. Is it more than likely they've kept their same pay rates all along? RS advertised $8 for level 1 NOC admins, and people generally express speedy reboots from them (not comparing providers, just similar job functions for level 1 NOC admins). Anyone who's worked in a DC, knows the service level of admins, from NOC tech's, to senior network admins. The salaries vary, as do the responsibility. How difficult is it to answer a phone, log a reboot, and go reboot a server? 99% of the time, a reboot clears up the issue, and *if* diagnostics to another level is required, since you've taken away the strains put upon level 2's and above with lesser support requests, they now have the time / ability to go effectively work on the server.
If in fact the thread starter is concerned about the level of salary that a service they are using pays their employees, then I highly doubt you'd be purchasing any product ever again. How much are the people paid that work on your car, build your home, etc.? As long as the job provided is of a quality level, THAT is all that matters.

Thanks,

$10/hour for rebooting servers ain't too bad ;)

What are you people talking about?
I'm getting about 9$ as a software developer.

I may not have my degree yet, but none of that makes a real difference if you allready have 5 years experience with what you do.
*sigh*

Well, let's get realistic here.
You want the cheapest server right? Where exactly do you think those cuts come from? From within, of course.

You can't cut fiber costs, because then people will whine and complain about that.

You can't cut hardware costs, because then you just have to replace it every 2-3 months and that's not good business practice (ask the former United Colo about that, they seemed to loose hard drives every 2-3 months for clients).

You can't cut DC costs, because then you've got to worry about a whole different set of issues.

You're certainly not going to cut the BOSS's sallary. So, who's that leave? The peons, and yes, at the SM/TP and ev1 level, the techs are the peons.

$8-10 an hour is an insult for a tech working for someone. When you're doing your own thing, it's something completely different (you're responsible for sales, etc), but when working with a company, it's an insult to say the least.

The end result:
You get techs that don't have a clue what NTFS/FAT32 or ext2/ext3 are, have ZERO clue what CPanel is, or what an ISO image is, much less how to install a real OS.

Sadly, it's going to get worse before it gets better, simply because of places like WHT. Why? Because WHT encourages people to act like the world is their auction house with stuff like underbidding simply to get the job and more. If it didn't work, then people wouldn't be buying it at such low cost.

In other words:
If you want quality tech support, you're going to have to pay for it. Otherwise, you've got nothing left to complain about.

$10 seems about right... all you need is a kid who knows a bit about technology, the rest comes easily. CPanel experience a must? CPanel is simple... yeah, some screwy stuff can happen but you can't even really expect someone TRAINED in Cpanel to be able to fix some of that stuff...

These people escalate severe issues to level 2 anyway, so as pointed out they're running reboots, answering the phones... nothing major.

$10 seems completely fair. I did tech support for Hypermart while I was in school for $10 an hour, and all I had to do was reply to emails. They got a bargain, I got an easy job. And despite the "low" wages I was extremely qualified and an excellent worker. I rule.

I would say less than .25% of the job market even knows what CPanel is. You can't require that if you realistically want to hire someone who's not still in high school.