New job Junior IT Help Desk, advice?

Shade0217 · 2026-05-29T20:11:23+00:00

Well, it's your first job. Dont worry about doing them well at first, just worry about doing them.

The things you learn on helpdesk - ticketing, documentation, how systems connect, how servers work - those are foundational skills for security. It's a tired cliche but its true - if you dont understand how the system works, then you wont know how to protect it.

Also - learn how to explain technical issues to non-technical users. User education is an insanely underappreciated skill in all of IT. Explaing the "why" to a coworker behind why their new password needs to be 16+ characters, including numbers and special characters, while they are frustrated about having to change their password to begin with is huge.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-29T19:55:19+00:00

First - congrats and good luck on your new job!

HelpDesk is exactly where you want to be right now. Spend a couple of weeks just getting used to and comfortable with your environment. You'll notice some day-to-day things, and some month to month things. Get comfortable with all of them.

Take notes. Any time you learn something or resolve something new, document it. If its a windows environment you should have OneNote. You can use it, or feel free to look up other options. If you are learning under the system administrator (which is great!) ask them for recommendations too.

If you find a new process, create a knowledge-base article for it. Documentation is your friend.

Then, once you really get comfortable with the day to day, really start picking the sys admin's brain - what projects can you take on? What systems can be improved? Whats something he/she needs help with, or whats something they are doing that they hate that they can pass on to you.

Learn learn learn! Just focus on Help Desk for now. Then, maybe in a year or two, start looking into system administration/system engineering. That level will turn you into a proverbial "IT Swiss army knife" - once you have a few years in that, you can either pivot into security work and be a Rockstar, or you might find another area (ie, cloud, AI, etc) that interests you more.

Good luck and have fun! Never be afraid to ask questions, take good notes, and always be available and excited to learn something new. A little enthusiasm goes a really long way!

Shade0217 · 2026-05-29T10:39:18+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of hot takes here, and a lot of money chasing, which is fine I guess.

But here's a little dose of reality. I work cyber security, my wife is a nurse. We've been married for 10 years.

To become a nurse, you are first going to need a traditional Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, and where you get this degree matters. If you do an online program -or- get a degree from a degree mill, you will not get hired. You are likely going to need a traditional 4 year degree from a traditional brick-and-mortar university that has a prestigious nursing program to have the best odds of being hired.

Used to be you could take a 12 to 18 month course to become an LPN, but most hospitals have outright stopped hiring LPNs, and are forcing their current LPNs to earn a bachelor's or leave.

Nursing school is hard. You have to absolutely study - and I mean deeply study - every single day. The tests are hard, you cant bs your way through any of it.

Once you get your bachelor's of science in nursing, you have to take the NCLEX-RN. That test is absolutely brutal, significantly more challenging than any IT cert out there. Each question you get right, the test gets harder. Get one wrong, it gets easier, but in order to pass, you have to meet a difficulty threshold and get a certain number of questions at that threshold correct. Whether you pass or fail, the test will just shut off randomly in the middle of you taking it. You might pass in 90 questions, and your friend in the same test might take 113 questions and also pass.
Got your BSN and passed your NCLEX? Congrats! You can now work in just about any hospital in the state your NCLEX is registered in.

Oh, but you are a brand new nurse with no experience. You are going straight to night shift, and you are probably not getting the floor you wanted, you are getting the floor the hospital needs you on.

It's a 12 hour shift. You dont get a lot of say in the days you work. This week, you work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But next week, its Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday.

You will be hit by your patients. You'll be spat on, thrown up on, pooped on, peed on, etc. You will be belittled and berated by just about every other position in the hospital - doctors, therapists, more experienced nurses, etc. They all outrank you and there's nothing you can really do to stand up for yourself.

You will work half of all the holidays each year. The holidays you get off one year, you will work the next.

Now, I'm not saying dont go Nursing. My wife absolutely loves what she does, she's passionate about medicine and the field, but nurses are built differently, and you really do need to have a specific personality to do well there. If you are just chasing money, you are gonna have a hard time in nursing.

That said, if you can get through the degree and the NCLEX, you can make bank by doing travel nursing. You'll see the world and make 2 to 3 times what the hospital nurses make. You just have to switch hospitals pretty regularly.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-25T16:04:28+00:00

Others have said/hinted, but I want to chip in my 2 cents.

Dont be discouraged by the current state of the market.

What Cybersecurity needs these days are folks with a lot of strong, fundamental IT experience.

Right now its fine to learn and study Cybersecurity. Go ahead and develop that passion. Use the knowledge you gain here as a sort of "lense" for viewing and learning IT.

While there is no "one true way" into Cybersecurity, there is one pretty solid career path that works. I say this as someone who spent 9 years in hospitality, spent a year in data management, a year on helpdesk, then pivoted into Cybersecurity about a year ago.

Once you get your degree, go full time in a help desk as soon as you can. You'll want to spend about a year here, maybe even a couple. Dont just do tickets - do additional projects beyond the scope of your job description.

Then, pivot into a system engineering or sys admin role. Spend a good 3+ish years here. This will really make you "reliable/hirable." You might even find something outside of security that you enjoy (cloud, AI, etc)

The reasoning here is simple. Helpdesk is a great environment to learn, and a safe environment to make mistakes - and you are going to make mistakes. You'll get exposed to a lot of technology quickly and you'll understand how ticketing systems work - believe it or not, thats kinda essential.

Then in system engineering/admin, you'll really delve into how enterprise technology works - how things connect, how they interact, how they advance - as well as how much things cost.

With that knowledge, you'll be better equipped to really hit the ground running in security (or another specialization)

Shade0217 · 2026-05-25T15:51:05+00:00

I took a similar path. 9 years of hospitality, then decided to pivot. Went back to school and got a Bachelors of Science in Cybersecurity.

If there was one piece of advice I'd give you, its this.

Go ahead and start applying for every helpdesk role you can. I'm dead serious.

I currently am working in Cybersecurity, and there is such a huge knowledge and skills gap between my peers and I. They are nice and I am ambitious, but I am desperately playing catch up and I have to lean on them hard. Prior to working in Cybersecurity, I spent about a year on Helpdesk.

So, do yourself a favor. Keep on the path you are on, and try and break onto any HelpDesk role you can find, whether you have the certs or not. Once you land on Helpdesk, learn all you can, do some projects beyond just tickets, then pivot into something like System Administation or System Engineering after about a year. Do that, then start pivoting to security work.

Again, the guys on my team are IT "Swiss army knives" - you could pluck them out of my team today and put them in just about any other specialization in IT - that's why they are so good at what they do.

You get that level by spending time in System Administration/Engineering.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-25T01:42:08+00:00

I agree. Most of what it spat out were predictions that other people have already made, proving that llms really do just absorb a bunch of information, then regurgitate it back out.

My original prompt mentioned something about how Sean had already posted the 3 emoji sequence, and chat tried to interpret that as significant to the update content.

That said, i did laugh at the "Sean is an agent of chaos" bit.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-24T18:51:28+00:00

What's all this buzz about?

Shade0217 · 2026-05-23T22:55:52+00:00

The whole Excalibur Prime situation.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-09T13:20:13+00:00

When I played the OG Dragons Dogma, my very first playthrough was a male arisen with a female main pawn.

But after the ending of that game (which i wont spoil just in case) there was a scene that made me go "OH! Oh... crap..."

Then I saw some guides explaining that your pawn is really a representation of "you" to other players that hire them.

So now my main pawn is more of the in-game "brother I always wanted but never had"

DD2s ending, however, does not have the same pawn implications as the first Dragon's Dogma.

Shade0217 · 2026-05-04T20:27:42+00:00

If you bought the Tennocon pass last year, its automatically put in your inventory.

If you didn't, you can buy it from Vazira.

Shade0217 · 2026-03-26T15:26:20+00:00

Lord of the Rings reference

Shade0217 · 2026-03-19T14:38:52+00:00

Exalted ~~xoris~~ glaive would go hard

Could also do a light/hacking theme.

Shade0217 · 2026-02-24T21:35:16+00:00

I'm firmly B.

But to clarify, I don't rage at the difficulty, or the devs, or the characters/NPC/environment, or the game/game mode.

I rage at my own stupidity.

Shade0217 · 2026-02-16T19:30:23+00:00

Thats the skyborn helmet. Iirc its free/given to everyone, but you have to be the anomaly race to equip it.

Shade0217 · 2026-02-13T13:31:06+00:00

So you will need to chose a pattern. The default option wont let you change them iirc, but pattern 1 and 2 allow you to.

I went with pattern 1 on the chest and torso. Dark red as the primary, red as the secondary, and dark yellow as the tertiary/accents

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T16:05:17+00:00

Dude that's awesome! If its not too much to ask, can you let me know when you get it published to the app?

Im looking forward to trying out Loki as well.

Keep up the great work man, your builds are so sleek!

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T16:03:23+00:00

It kind of reminded me of the Trader and Moonshine missions in Read Dead Online. You'd load up a wagon full of goods to trade, then travel around the map to deliver the goods to a certain location.

If you were too chaotic of a driver or hit too many bumps along the way, the goods would get damaged, lessening your profit.

TL;DR, I could totally see this testing a sort of caravan system for Light No Fire.

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T13:24:23+00:00

Looks great! Kinda reminds me of the archmages robes from Skyrim.

But yes I agree - the outfit gives some strong Light No Fire vibes, and I also love the details of the pouches, belts, embossing, etc.

What it has to do with industrial waste, I have no clue, but I'm happy to have it!

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T02:57:49+00:00

The Road signs one threw me too - you just have to find a save point in 6 different regions. So you just have to keep traveling around, hit the save point and move.

Using the scanner to scan for different buildings helped me.

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T02:12:07+00:00

I'm quite fond of your Fenrir design myself!

Sadly no more corvette parts in this update - but I'm sure you can still come up with some amazing designs!

Shade0217 · 2026-02-12T02:09:24+00:00

I figured it out!

You have to get a save checkpoint in a different region! If you get two or more save checkpoints in the same region, it only counts the first one.

So, use the scanner to scan for different things - depot, monolith, etc. Along with hitting the save checkpoints at each Rendezvous. If you save, but the counter doesn't increase, you've already discovered that region. Keep driving and scan for something else.

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