Learn from this article and all the comments HERE! (Score 1)

This article was excellent. I started a job right out of college as a support engineer. While the job did not sound like it was exactly what I wanted coming out of school, I took it anyway. I have to say that the article is dead on with the skills you acquire as a support engineer. While only supporting one particular line of products, you have the ability to learn more technologies than you ever dreamed up in order to fully understand a clients situation. For example, I have learned a great deal about every database vendor there is (as our products support most of them). Where else are you going to get exposure to all of that? If you're just working with one application in an organization that has chose to implement Oracle, all you're going to know is Oracle. I have been in my current role for 2 years. While I have been promoted to a team-lead role, I still recognize that I do need to get out, as it is very easy to get comfortable in a high paying support role. While many do not aspire to take new challenges, it is something that has to be done. The longer you stay in support, the less chances you have to "get out". I have seen people that have been in support roles for 30+ years, and I have seen people that have gone from support engineers, right to senior level management as a result of their knowledge and experience acquired in their support role. While the typical aspiration for a support engineer is to join their products development team as a developer, there are many other paths that can be taken (ie - technical sales lead, technical field rep, management, training personnel, business analyst, solutions architect, etc...). The vice president of our organization started out as a support engineer. Support is all about what you put in to it, and what you take from it. Learn from everything you do, challenge yourself even if your role is not challenging, and question everything you're not sure of! I completely agree that support is a great launchpad for success in the IT industry and would encourage those in support to take this article as gospel, as it is right on! If you decide to interview for a new job, and they're not impressed that you were in a support role, get up and walk out. They'll be out of business faster than you can get another job.