How many IT support needed for 200 user org?
Posted by imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 400 comments
I've been given a task to identify how many IT staffs (support) we would need for our org to move away from 3rd party support in future (not now but may be after like a couple of years in future as the business is growing).
I suggested 1 for 50 staffs as it sounds reasonable. so 4 for 200 staffs.
2 L1.
1 L2
1 L3. would this be a good plan?
could you help me with the best plan?
I don't want us to be short staffed and struggling because of me.
br,
bionic_cmdo@reddit
I was a sole IT guy for 200 employees company. It kept me busy.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Yeah I don't wanna do that. 🥲
squuiidy@reddit
Fair enough, but 2 is totally doable, and 3 is a luxury maximum.
ThatLocalPondGuy@reddit
What do these people do? 200 data scientists or 200 plumbers?
zkareface@reddit
One part time guy can probably havdle all support for 200 users. They might got days or weeks without a single ticket.
ZoneEmbarrassed7697@reddit
How much PTO did you take ?
bionic_cmdo@reddit
Not enough. I keep having to carry over the max amount each year. The times that I do take off, I'm having to worry about what I will come back to.
LongAd2475@reddit
My company has 1500 people 500 on site and only 2 IT people support it desktop support wise. Are you hiring. I'm a systems administrator. I once handled 1500 people by myself because all my coworkers quit. ( During pandemic) I'm good with heuristics and debugging, I also know how to STIG machines and script automate. Familiar with multiple ticketing systems, and Linux, windows and Mac. Let it be noted I worked with engineers. So I can handle complex problems, but can also handle finance people problems.
sudz3@reddit
Wow this guy just went for it! lol.
ReliefSoggy526@reddit
Depending on how the I.T infra, documentation, onboarding, automation ..etc for this company was done? if it was planned correctly then you need only 2 -- even for 500 users but if the infra was crap even 10 is not enough for a 100 users
MysteriousScar2525@reddit
Everyone hit the mark here. Try for 1 per 50 and see how that goes, its really about the value you and the team are providing the organization. Unfortunately they look at us as a cost center so value is hard to convince those that think like that.
mcpingvin@reddit
Extremely dependent on the users. Are we talking 200 IT professionals, 200 accountants, 200 lawyers, 200 doctors...
FleshSphereOfGoat@reddit
For 200 software developers you will need 400 IT supporters.
mcpingvin@reddit
And 50 PMs to ask about status updates :)
8agienny@reddit
Or 1 trained parrot.
Dear-Supermarket3611@reddit
Even a Dead parrot can work it out with developers
dubl1nThunder@reddit
or even a recording of a parrot saying, "hello, how are you, what's your status." rewind, play again, rewind, play again.
wintermute023@reddit
“Any blockers? Good, see you on the stand up. By the way, the client has changed the scope, cut the budget, and commercial have committed to delivering it yesterday. Bye!”
indvs3@reddit
Please refrain from AI-generating parrots. Thanks!
PrncessVespa@reddit
As a PM....accurate.
cyberman0@reddit
As much as I hate to say it, an ai that could burp out a ticket status would be useful.
scytob@reddit
As a PM i find scrums interminable - like we should have tools that update status, asking people is a zero-value exercise
scrums should be 'how can i unblock you / help' no more no less
make work should be done outside of that
mcpingvin@reddit
I'm just making a funny - I'm sure we all had good and bad PMs in our line of work. I miss our good one, he'd go trough the tech part in the first 20 minutes of the meeting and let us IT people go while they drill about the business logic part.
scytob@reddit
oh i know, but jokes always have some basis is reality
and i, as a PM, agree PMs do hold pointless score card meetings - confusing activity as outcome
for me i make everyone fill out the ontrack / oftrack (red / green - no yellow or orange allowed) before hand and then we focus on just the red items and any prioritzation changes needed
stupidic@reddit
Time to resurrect the Professional Superhero
Kawasakison@reddit
I love this!
Casty_McBoozer@reddit
omg why do developers need so much support?
Arudinne@reddit
Because Devs stopped being "computer people" once some would-be MBA bros learned there was good money and less competition (at the time) in coding.
Most Devs these days don't actually know shit about computers and it shows.
FreeK200@reddit
It's the same with cyber security. There's a lot of people who don't know the first thing about computers who end up in GRC roles. This wouldn't be such an issue, except that the people serving in these roles tend to be have the final say over operations.
From a zero trust perspective, sure. It's my job to ensure my machines are in compliance. Organizationally, it makes a lot of sense. The reality, however, is that I'm made to participate in meetings with people who deny the existence of back ported patches and instead take the results of the Nessus as the word of God.
And no, it's not that the concept hasn't been explained to them (on a weekly basis). It's that the version is lower than the patched version, and that's a finding.
Nevermind that the finding details say that it's only relying on the self reported version number. Nevermind that I have documentation from the vendor stating that CVE such and such is patched beginning with application version xyz (and we're on xyz+1).
Cybersecurity is immensely important and I respect the people who are good at it, but the overwhelming number of GRC roles being filled by non-technical people is astounding. I don't care if it's gatekeeping. With the rare exception, you don't belong in GRC without an operational background. Full stop.
flurfdooker@reddit
I'm going to give you an overwhelming second on this. I've worked on a few ZTA papers/projects and the "dashboard" addiction is mind-blowing. It tends to make security seem far simpler than it actually is.
When threats come out, the people I know who are scared the most almost always came up from a systems/ops/admin background, because they KNOW. Non-systems people who started in Security have an idea, but they don't KNOW.
I guess it's like being in a car crash. You can read about it, but until you're in one, you don't have the experience.
SirLoremIpsum@reddit
Because they do things.
10 accountants using a cloud based accounting package need a PC + "office" stuff.
10 developers require a dev / qa / test environment. The product you're making probably requires a Production environment for your customers - so web servers, load balancers, firewalls, database servers.
Developers need lots more tools, they need "more". Even if they dont need it, they want it.
chuckmilam@reddit
Usually because they lack systems thinking, have a narrowly-focused skillset, and then somehow demand and are granted local admin so they can run this really cool IDE plugin (that is totally not a malware ingress point) they saw on YouTube last night.
FriedAds@reddit
Wow, I feel heard. Thank you fellow internet stranger!
ApolloWasMurdered@reddit
Microsoft Defender needs to do much better with malware protection for devs - it’s either so overprotective you can’t do your job, or it’s completely disabled. Even basic stuff like Platformio in VSCode gets the block hammer - that’s an official plugin in a piece of Microsoft software.
Mrhiddenlotus@reddit
If you're talking about defender for endpoint, adding exclusions is pretty simple.
ApolloWasMurdered@reddit
You can add an exclusion. But every time it updates the signature changes, and because the executable has the ability to run arbitrary code, it needs to be added to the exclusions list again. And it’s updated about once per fortnight. And apparently you cant just whitelist an executable by filename without relaxing the whole organisations security settings, which our MSP strongly warns management against.
(The workaround is a powershell script which I can run, that re-adds the exception. So after it fails to start after an update, I rerun the script to readd the exception. But it shouldn’t need to be a hacky mess like that.)
RobKFC@reddit
So glad i rarely deal with devs now.
aeroverra@reddit
This is the unfortunate truth for most.. but there are some of us who grew up learning basic computer systems administration.
I'll never forget my first rat when I was 13 and had to wipe my whole PC to remove it.
Sh1rvallah@reddit
This hits home so hard
Stonewalled9999@reddit
my devs: I can spend 2 days making my code not suck, or I can toss it on the fence and make that team waste 2 weeks cuz I call myself fulls tack but I lack basic OS and network knowledge.
wintermute023@reddit
Because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Not half so bad as a lot of ignorance though. Devs seem to combine both in one handy package.
Bright_Arm8782@reddit
They are the definition of enough knowledge to be dangerous. They can easily figure out how to do something without understanding why not, for example:
I was off for a day and one of them swiped a Windows 2012 server cd from my desk and installed it on his laptop.
When I came back I asked the usual array of questions.
License?
AV?
Management tools?
Why the hell didn't they just ask for a server, we've got compute to spare if you just ask.
soundwave_sc@reddit
Checks sub, we’re not in r/programmerhumor.
Chetrippohhh2@reddit
How is it possible that software devs lack basic computer skills
FleshSphereOfGoat@reddit
The way they work is completely different from IT staff. IT needs to make sure that everything they do follows the rules of sustainability and maintainability. Everything we implement may be the next bis ticket creation machine if we do not consider the impact that might go beyond the users benefit.
Devs often have strict timelines they need to follow and there’s never enough time. So of course they are constantly looking for tools that makes live easier for them and help saving time. Understandable.
But a lot of them do not understand (or don’t care) that something that makes life easier for them will eat up IT resources 10 times more. Review, security, licensing, updating, compliance… that’s things IT has to take care of. So working with developers consists of constantly defending a working IT infrastructure against the decomposing forces of „I need this tool, I need admin permissions, I need my own certificates“…
HerbOverstanding@reddit
Haha can’t tell you how often I’m googling their own tools to figure out a function for them
wellz24@reddit
I’m cracking up here🤣
lccreed@reddit
Best I can do is 3.
Yes, that was how it was... Luckily the best we could do was actually 5. And now there is a real devops team who takes the load off.
Colink98@reddit
Amen
Lazy_Owl987@reddit
Were running into that right now. MSP logic says 1:300 for end users so we have two help desk staff. Of our user base we have 40 data engineers, 20 audio visual engineers, and the staff to support those engineers. Talk about getting run ragged.
Lethbridge_Stewart@reddit
That's 5 to run your IT and 395 to undo all of the "No worries, I've fixed it myself."
Pure_Fox9415@reddit
Hahaha, it's really close to my expirience.
Chunkycarl@reddit
“Look we know there’s a process but have you seen our (self created) super tight deadlines!”
RobKFC@reddit
Don’t forget they have to have root access in order to accomplish all their tasks, switching profiles won’t work.
Embarrassed-Gur7301@reddit
This guy bangs
RobKFC@reddit
1:1 to fix issues and 1:1 to verify they aren’t breaking infrastructure. Sounds about right
saffash@reddit
And some pellet guns. Nerf guns for the better days.
blow_slogan@reddit
Yeah, this. For 100 lawyers, you’ll need 6 or 7 technically capable IT staff. They are needy as hell.
RobKFC@reddit
When I worked at an MSP that solely supported law firms I always had to explain to new hires that the lawyers get paid to argue for a living and to tread lightly. They were not only needy they were spiteful and had no issues running things up the chain of command because you wouldn’t allow their password to be 4 characters all numeric even though they signed off on the policy….
True-Kangaroo532@reddit
HBR, keno kozie, K2 was it them. hahaha was it!
stackjr@reddit
I worked IT in a hospital and was astound by how dumb some of the nurses and doctors were. I was also terrified because of how many of them were anti-vaxxers (I took the job in December of 2020, during COVID, and there were a surprising amount of nurses and doctors that told us "COVID is fake" even though we had a COVID unit in the hospital).
codyturntrout@reddit
Supporting nurses and medical staff can be rough. Been doing it for 10 years. Many don't know and don't care anything about computers or IT processes etc.
Inevitable_Use3885@reddit
I strongly feel like it's not the late 90's or early 00's any longer. If you haven't learned how to use a computer and been part of the workforce for the last couple of decades, you're really just refusing to learn your to do your job.
You don't have to know how to use every program or understand how to work with the OS settings. Honestly, though, are you telling me your have learn by rote or learn basic concepts by exposure?
Hoggs@reddit
As they say - what do you call the guy who got the worst passing marks in medical school?
Doctor.
Inevitable_Use3885@reddit
Actually have a family member who went through a DPT school. You were allowed two C's per semester. A single grade lower than that or a third C and you were out of the program.
I was simultaneously impressed and terrified.
Inevitable_Use3885@reddit
Users run the gamut, always, but I've found over my 30 plus years that the worst user base to have is:
Educators hate learning with a passion. Highly trained/educated people seem to have an "I got through my education/training/residency/junior status" and they're loathe to get back into the "learning mindset."
It's super tough to relate to that from our perspective because we never really get out of the "having to learn a completely new thing under time pressure" mentality.
I remember working with one lady who would literally have anxiety attacks when people emailed her zip archives of photos of their receipts because her process was to lay the physical copies or on her desk and work with them.
Total mental shutdown and I had to come and open her email, unzip the file, and print them out for her. At one point she even asked if I could cut them to size for her. She actually wasn't trying to be mean or selfish as far as I could tell, it honestly just terrified her.
PowerShellGenius@reddit
Always heard people say it's a rough place to be in IT, but I've been loving it so far, going to be 3 years in a couple months. I even got MFA rolled out to high school students with relatively little pushback.
Ssakaa@reddit
My favorite is basing it on staff counts without considering the whole environment. Like "200 faculty and staff" in academia... because the ~3000 students that go with that definitely don't add workload...
PowerShellGenius@reddit
LOL yes. We have 15 people in IT, and the org is \~1,500 FT plus >500 PT staff........ plus 11,500 students with 1:1 devices
Inevitable_Use3885@reddit
K-12 also depends pretty heavily on your district and school administrators being supportive. I've worked in districts that were pretty great about letting IT manage the technology and dictate policies and also in districts that built a cult around educators being in charge. The experience is worlds apart.
I'm not a big fan of the concept in the medical field and education the you need to be a doctor or educator in order to understand the needs and to lead.
That's like saying you can't be the CEO of a shipyard unless you started out as a welder.
modernknight87@reddit
This. Oh summer refreshes, how I don’t miss you..
Tex-Rob@reddit
I agree and disagree. I was a part of the team supporting ShareFile before Citrix bought them, and their users were the most savvy of any client I dealt with. They needed almost no low level support, but because everyone was so tech focused they needed regular help with bigger projects, and spinning up ideas for testing and development. They in the end, even without low level support, required about four people on staff who were mid to high level, to source a lot of work to us because it was too much and they didn’t have the expertise in tier 2 and 3 issues and buildouts.
All of that said, for an average org I like your numbers OP. I worked for one of the national moving/storage companies before they were huge also, and that is what we had for a long time, with the addition of an IT director. There were DBAs and developers, but that was more or less unrelated to IT so I don’t count them. This org did have many remote sites, so for us that count was a bare minimum and we were overworked at times. For an org without many branch locations those numbers look great to me.
charliesk9unit@reddit
What about asshole judges? 1:1? /s
roboabomb@reddit
Doctors, Lawyers, Judges... 0 IT staff.
They already know better than any IT specialist anyway because their professions are so much harder.
DoctorSlipalot@reddit
200 end-users that try turning their computer on by pushing the power button on their monitor.
I_Blame_DevOps@reddit
Also highly dependent on the software used by the business. All cloud based platforms and devices are on MDM is much less overhead than a traditional on-prem environment with Active Directory and file server.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Would be like 60 sales 40 IT (but from my experience IT staffs are not really technical except their domain so I don't want to risk anything here)
Suck_my_nuts_Dave@reddit
Team of three for 250+ staff and 800+ pupils. And we do everything. Works fine for us. Just get the right people (not the "not in my job description" sort)
LavaTakes@reddit
Is that including your cybersecurity, GRC, networking, purchasing/cost management, end user training, systems administration, server management, plus the end user support? If so, do you have BYOD? Seems pretty light for that size.
Suck_my_nuts_Dave@reddit
Yep the whole stack sits on me and my team. Including cabling copper and fiber, AV installs. In education your either a jack of all trades or you fail
LavaTakes@reddit
Are you higher ed or primary?
Suck_my_nuts_Dave@reddit
Ages 3 - 18
TheJesusGuy@reddit
Ok but building desks and tidying the conference room really isn't in my job description.
Hebrewhammer8d8@reddit
What about 200 users for Aylo subsidiaries?
jimicus@reddit
It also depends on how much you're willing/able to automate.
We have a LOT fewer than this. But we automate the living daylights out of everything we can think of.
StructuralConfetti@reddit
Also depends on how many legacy systems have to be supported. My management took way too long to approve the equipment refresh, so we were running thin clients that were bare minimum specs when they were purchased 8 years beforehand. After they were replaced (and the initial kinks of the new machines were sorted out) we saw more than an 80% reduction in tickets. I've since moved teams, but as far as I can tell, of most of the tickets that still come in, most are for our legacy software (some of which haven't had any significant updates since before I was born). If you're running updated and supported software on decent machines it takes so much less manpower to support.
Specialist_Guard_330@reddit
Can you give some ideas as to what you have automated :o? What has had the biggest impact for you?
jimicus@reddit
Well, on a basic level, most IT requirements are self-service. If you need a specific piece of software installed, it’s available via Software Centre.
We have follow-me printing which means there’s no need to install printers. The central queue handles all that. (For extra “clever bastard” points, put card readers on your printers and integrate staff ID badges).
And there are products on the market that let you set up a sort-of “online shop” for things outside the scope of this. The shop then generates pre-populated tickets so all the pertinent information is already available.
danekan@reddit
It’s not even that, the ratio even before that is drastically different. A factory with 300 employees might need 1 It person, a sales operation with 300 will need 10. But even that can be industry specific
archiekane@reddit
3 IT for 350 staff in TV production. One of those is the IT director and he will still pick up L1 if needs be.
Everything is automated as much as possible.
DiscipleOfYeshua@reddit
Exactly.
Users, environment, device(s) per, infra / number of servers and services, and also — what will be through vendors vs what’s in-house? Security, hardware etc.
ShillyShallyTypist@reddit
42
tdressel@reddit
1 Manager, 1 Tech, and in summer 1 student to deploy 50 computers over 3 months.
True-Kangaroo532@reddit
we have 4 for 135 person law firm. we also sublet space that’s another 40 users across 3 locations. We provide them internet firewalls switches and phones. We had 5, 4 is fine gets a bit tight on pto days we manage
cpz_77@reddit
Totally depends on type of business, user needs and also complexity of the environment. Support-wise probably a small handful (maybe 3-4) but infrastructure is highly dependent on situation. I would think probably at least a net eng and a couple sysadmins, maybe also a DBA or data type engineer of some sort depending on need. But again these are very rough estimates; company needs can change this drastically.
DisastrousAd2335@reddit
Rotfl!!! We have 3 for 1,600 globally.
danile666@reddit
Honestly you need to also looks at your licensing cost. .SP get channel and scale discounts on stuff, and bake that into pricing. It is typically much more expensive to have in house IT than to outsource to an MSP.
BasicallyFake@reddit
this is entirely dependent on expectations. If you are resetting passwords and basic stuff, you could probably get away with 2 people. If you are actually running the infrastructure, hardware, user support, software support, not so much.
1randomzebra@reddit
depends on a few factors:
- industry
- is your headcount or business static, planning for growth, planning new projects? Do you have high trunover or losts of consultants/contractors that rotate through?
- do you have a stable, well run environment now - or do you need to put one in place
- are your staff IT educated, security aware, knowledgable about thier compute environment
- Is you management team involving you in businmess strategy and plans so that you can support the busienss goals
HidNLimits@reddit
Consider the situation of vacation days, sick days, if someone goes on LoA.
Another thing to consider is the skill set of the members. If you have 1 person thats really good at 1 skill and he or she leaves what happens?
On-call, are all 4 members going to be on call 3 months at a time? 1 month intervals, every 2 weeks?
mekkelrichards@reddit
No more than 60 users per 1 IT person (even that is too many if the 1 guys wants to take vacation). Anyone who thinks or says 'I manage 500 people on my own' is a bootlicker / neckbeard. Stick up for yourself/your team - the business can afford it.
blackdogbrowndog@reddit
2 guys. 1 main dude, 1 backup. we got around 250 users.
Muk_D@reddit
Sound like the wrong guy for the job... it's not a matter of how many... it's a matter of what engineers you need.
Elminst@reddit
And how much the MSP costs you per ticket or month/year. The company may not be willing to hire 4 people with salaries and benefits totaling $400-500K per year vs paying the MSP $100K.
RemoveGlass1782@reddit
Best in Class MSP is going to run upwards of 600K for an organization that size per year. Internal staffing is less costly without licensing costs for the stack. It's about equal in costs if you pay vendors and have proper security.
Elminst@reddit
I work for a small but rather capable MSP. we have plenty of customers of that size that we do work for that would certainly NOT pay $600K/year. municipal govts, school districts, etc.
I feel safe in assuming this company is not paying their MSP that much.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Appreciate the comment
skidleydee@reddit
Also have a 1:1 with each department head and whoever the problem solver on their team, promise them nothing other then an ear to listen to their problems. Often times issues go under or completely unreported. Then put together a road map with that and the ticket information and it will basically tell you who you need to hire what the skill set should be etc.
Effective-Ladder8321@reddit
Scrolled way too long for this comment.
Expensive-Rhubarb267@reddit
It depends on how high maintenance your user base is.
Manufacturing workers, transport workers - generally low maintenance
Office/admin staff, frontline workers (doctors, teachers, police officers), call centre staff - medium maintainence
Executives, finance staff, CAD/graphic design people - high maintenance
Developers - Very high maintenance
Personally I'd avoid having just 1 L3 person. They'll get sick of being the sole point of knowledge for everything.
Livelypower@reddit
Wondering why you consider Developers high maintenance, or what support Development employees require that’s higher effort than what IT services you provide for generic admin profiles?
Don’t want to come over as cross or anything, just genuinely curious.
USRed87@reddit
As a Network Engineer / Sysadmin turned Developer ( but still doing my old duties, yay for budget cuts and layoffs), Dev work often wants full unrestricted access to a system which is often at odds with IT and security requirements. For example, if I write an application in Rust or Go, simply running a debug to test code on a non-corporate device fires up in anywhere from 1 to 30 seconds depending on size of the code base. The same application, running a debug can take 1 to 10 minutes to compile and run, due to security software (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint in our case). In any given day of dev work, I can easily run a debug on my code at least a hundred times, which is crippling in ability to deliver products.
Our cyber security folks are not willing to give us exempt development machines or even exempt our development machine folders from scanning, but did give us Podman containers to compile with the caveat that the container has absolute isolation - it does let us debug faster but any time you need anything from a library on the internet or an update, you have to mount a volume to the container and manually push it, no using a language's build in tools like 'go get github.com....' or 'cargo install ..' etc.
dowhileuntil787@reddit
As a former dev now more IT, it's funny watching the others in this thread act like devs are the unreasonable ones.
Yeah devs can be prima donnas, but enterprise IT is designed to be actively hostile towards the development use case and often they're getting frustrated with constant road-blocks turning what should be a 5 minute job into something that takes two days.
Consider the Microsoft-recommended best practice of running as a non-admin user - various core bits of Microsoft's own Visual Studio IDE does not work properly under normal users accounts. Good luck running integration tests on a comprehensive piece of software without admin (e.g. tests that deploy services), or setting up remote debugging with an iPhone, attaching to IIS, or running any kernel debugging/observability...
One might assume it's just legacy stuff, but then Microsoft keep introducing new features that don't work properly when developing as a non-admin. Last time I checked, it's not possible to elevate the Windows 10/11 settings app, but a number of the user-specific settings in there can't be changed without elevation. You can switch desktop and change them for the local admin, but those changes won't apply to your normal user profile.
The way to go IME is complete separation between development environment and enterprise IT. We give devs a separate powerful laptop and free reign.
bob8436@reddit
This. If IT and Dev aren't working well together it's usually a sign of insufficient creativity on the IT side + insufficient investment in dev tooling from the dev org. These problems are tractable.
Expensive-Rhubarb267@reddit
That's very true. Trying to develop things in an enterprise environment. Without just saying 'who know what, just use your personal device' is a real challenge.
Hence how Dev Ops/SRE/Platform engineering emerged.
goobered@reddit
It's because developers install stuff as admin and then don't patch.
Expensive-Rhubarb267@reddit
Not worries!
Obviously I'm talking in broad generalisations here.
But from my experience -Devs always want more; more containers, more storage, more software to help with their new project etc.
They also need the freedom to 'do stuff'. Firewall rules blocking some open source repo or elevated admin permissions on devices so they can edit their PATH/change IP address/Launch Docker locally.
asmiggs@reddit
Developers do tend to need more support but one caveat is for IT organisations is whether you support the development specific stuff, I've worked in orgs that handed off dev support and infrastructure to a dedicated team leaving the IT organisation to handle the basics.
CowardyLurker@reddit
What do they call the other dedicated IT team?
asmiggs@reddit
These days everyone is a DevOps Engineer but they used be called Tooling Engineers.
CratesManager@reddit
They know enough to want specific things and are interested/invested.
Regular users often have broad requests/issues that you can solve with already established solutions. Setting up and more importantly, maintaining non-standard solutions is a lot more time consuming.
EVERGREEN619@reddit
I would argue Manufacturing work is generally people that don't care at all about computers. Yet they use the most complicated software in ERP's and the business typically doesn't get a proper budget for the ERP. So old legacy gear pretty much everywhere. Talking about DOS machines running custom built programs that convert analog to digital signals since 1991... Everywhere..
Also a lot of things Manufacturing run from multiple devices. Not just the one computer per user. It's more like 3 computers per employee at this place. With 5 or 10 workers sharing a logon.
We need both old grey beards and new cloud engineers from lack of investment over 25 years. But I outsource a MSP for limited support each month.
100-1 ratio right now.. it's fucking chaos. 4 layers deep in company acquisitions. 5 different bosses, none of them are on the same page. Send help please...
Expensive-Rhubarb267@reddit
Yeah manufacturing is notorious for running old software on some Windows Vista PC that hasn't been rebooted since the 08 Financial Crash
Sukosuna@reddit
We work with property management. Reminds me of a building automation system we didn’t know about that was running windows XP a few years ago. All of those systems became managed after that.
Bradddtheimpaler@reddit
I’m at an auto supplier and per our customer’s specs we need to keep an XP workstation running. We’ve tried all the workarounds I could think of and it just won’t run right virtualized or anything else. It’s infuriating.
DestinyForNone@reddit
Genuinely curious...
We haven't had anything like that from our customers...
Could be Stellantis tho... It's probably Stellantis
LGKyrros@reddit
Man auto manufacturers in general are awful with outdated tech.
I saw an article the other day that Ford's tech execs realized their infrastructure was so outdated and under invested in over decades that they'd never be able to compete with other modern EV manufacturers; not just on the manufacturing line, but in almost every facet of the company.
So they basically spun up an entirely new arm for EV development vs. taking the time and money to modernize their core business.
You'd think that would be a wake-up call, but I highly doubt it.
Bradddtheimpaler@reddit
I can neither confirm nor deny this lol
ScienceObjective7431@reddit
Windows Vista your lucky. I left manufacturing last year and we still had one PC running windows 95 that tested our product at the end of line. Without the test nothing could leave the factory. It was a ticking time bomb that nobody wanted to touch or replace. I high lighted the issue in my 1st year of employment and when I left 12 years later it was still going..
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
So
2 L2/L1 2 L3
Would that work?
Expensive-Rhubarb267@reddit
What are your users primarily doing?
If it's mostly office staff with a few execs & finance people then yeah that would work. Split your L3 into Ops/Networks & Security/Data governance
If you've got devs or CAD workers then that won't work. You need more people.
Mystery_Hat@reddit
Lmao if it’s my org, a director and sr engineer for all of IT and Security. 🤣
NewHyperFixation69@reddit
As everyone else has said, it's dependent on the environment. I'm in K12 education. There are two of us supporting 200 staff and 1,300 students in three local locations. We had 3 guys, but it was decided that we could get by with 2 when one retired. We reach out to an MSP occasionally when I'm in over my head on something.
223454@reddit
In addition to what others have said, keep the following in mind:
1) They'll pay for IT one way or another. For example, if they're stingy on hardware/software, they'll need more people for support. Decent hardware/software, replaced on a regular schedule, will mean less support and fewer people needed. A lot of places need to learn that the hard (and expensive) way.
2) It's not just about how many people. It's also about the skills, competency, qualifications, etc, of those people. Does your department need a project manager? Database admin? Network admin? Developer? Etc, etc, etc.
3) Turnover. If they don't take care of your people, they'll leave. High turnover means you're always short people. So you'll need extra to have coverage, same as vacations/sick leave.
5) Don't forget about pipelines. If you have a completely flat department, people can't move up.
Grouchy-Western-5757@reddit
1 IT employee and AI
I-Love-IT-MSP@reddit
Only 1 but probably 2 so each of you can take a vacation. I could handle easily 500.
GapGroundbreaking277@reddit
No you can‘t
I-Love-IT-MSP@reddit
I did for over 10 years. My environment was so rock solid some days I still wouldn't have shit to do
Assumeweknow@reddit
2 internal and a helpdesk of sorts 3rd party.
Humble-oatmeal@reddit
For a team of around 200 with a non-technical setup, your plan of 2 L1s and 1 each for L2 and L3 sounds pretty reasonable. You could also look at adding an MDM solution to cut down on repetitive IT tasks—things like pushing updates remotely, getting a centralized view of all assets, and creating groups to roll out updates team-wise.
It might be helpful to have someone with MDM experience on the team too, as it can make things smoother overall.
saracor@reddit
Also depends on how spread out the company is. I had 6 people at a 200 person company, plus 2 contractors because we were in 5 countries around the world. I needed one person in each region and then one higher level engineer. Contractors did specific work outside normal tickets.
probablymakingshitup@reddit
I was a sole support admin for about a decade for a site with approximately that much staff. Your support model seems overkill.
SiIverwolf@reddit
So, when I was actually quoting for MSP support once upon a time, we went back over the support time needed per headcount across 6 years of all our clients, and came out with a figure of 30 min, per user, per month.
So for a company with 200 staff, with a well operating team, you'll spend about 100 hrs on direct user support per month, or ~25 hrs a week.
Then on top of that you need to think about the tech stack the internal team will be supporting. How flat is the stack? How many disciplines do you need to cover? What kind of infrastructure are you supporting?
In a really basic stack with 200 users, you could probably get away with 2 good techs; an L1 smashing ~70% of requests, and a TL/SME who handles escalations, infrastructure maintenance, delivery for new stuff, and basic team management.
If it's a deeper stack with some niche skillets needed, then that's probably where you need to flesh that team out a bit more, with an eye for what specific skills you may need.
When you're running with MSP support, what you're really paying for is the fact they have a ton of techs with a broad set of skills who between them can cover off just about whatever help you need.
When that is brought back in house, that means ideally you need a high performing team that can cover a lot of bases with minimal headcount.
BOT_Solutions@reddit
I do not think your suggestion is unreasonable at all, especially with mostly non technical sales users. Those environments can generate a lot of hand holding, onboarding requests, password resets, device issues and just general noise. Four for 200 sounds much healthier than trying to be clever and running it with two and a half people until everyone burns out.
The part I would rethink is the neat L1, L2, L3 split. In a small team that often looks tidy on paper but messy in real life. You are usually better off with a couple of solid generalists, one stronger endpoint and user support person, and one senior admin or engineering type who can deal with Azure, AWS, security and escalation work. That gives you overlap, which matters far more than job titles when somebody is off or leaves.
Hemhaw87@reddit
Just something to point out, your contract with your MSP likely contains lots of guardrails to prohibit or monetize scope creeps. You mention "Might have to help out development team as well sometimes regarding Azure, AWS etc" but that is adding quite a bit of scope to these people's jobs it sounds like. That's fine, the beauty of in-house is you set the scope. Just keep in mind your MSP is working for the contract you have now (or not working), not for the system you might be envisioning. It's nowhere near a 1:1 conversion if you're changing the responsibilities involved.
Depending on your type of needs specifically, you may also want to consider hiring an engineer and at some point a big-picture-thinker like a CTO or director of IT. Or find good, reasonable consultants if you can for those roles. The engineer will be a godsend for bigger projects touching lots of systems, and the big-picture-thinker is just a smart thing to have on hand if you get the right person. Otherwise your 4 person team sounds like a reasonable place to start depending on the metrics your MSP gives you for your ticket history. Maybe cut out the level 2 if it's mostly fluffy tickets.
andyrl160@reddit
I would say it all depends on what your supporting if it is mainly microsoft plus some cloud apps you don't need too many. If you're installing autodesk CAD based products or supporting in-house software get more.
Dont forgot the cost of a ITSM system and the implementation cost for setting that up as well.
planedrop@reddit
4 should be plenty, could probably do it with 2 if I'm honest but it depends on competency level (both of the people you hire and of the other employees in the org, i.e. if there is lots of "I can't get my mouse to work" and it's batteries are dead, you might need more).
Bwuaaa@reddit
Just 1, and replace them just before the burnout starts
planedrop@reddit
It's a joke but it's sadly common practice.
mfarooqsubhani@reddit
You can do the analysis on your services requests sent to your MSP, you will know.
Around 4 should be enough, i believe.
Jaybirdinthahouse@reddit
We have 9 people for a school district of approximately 3,000 users spread across 16 different sites within the same city. 4 tier 1 field technicians, two tier 2 staff, 1 network specialist, 1 coordinator, and 1 director. We get along alright but summer break is pretty hectic.
Kuntmane@reddit
I worked for a big company where policy was that 200 users = 1 local IT support guy. They had 1 senior and 1 junior so that the senior could go to vacation and be sick and still have someone at IT.
gdc19742023@reddit
You only will get good depends...
Do you have any kpi?
Just quantity of users is not enough.
Opposite_Bag_7434@reddit
Depends on the company and the IT staff. I’ve personally supported a 2500 person nearly 100 location org by myself, before that there were 3 of us comfortably supporting them. Most employees did not need support and things were well enough maintained that the remainder were not too much of an issue.
I’ve also seen 1 persons for 25-30 with some pretty advanced needs and still needing more help.
boli99@reddit
you can always hire more people, but unhiring people is best avoided if possible
why not ask your MSP for a breakdown of all the tickets they responded to in the last 12 months
that way you'll know if the majority of issues are just 'steve forgot his password, again' or whatever
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
I have the data and it's mostly system slow, Outlook frozen, kinda issues.
TheThirdHippo@reddit
You just need a recording of “Please reboot”
odellrules1985@reddit
Or do like I do and force reboots one a week. Has stopped a lot of those kind of complaints.
TheThirdHippo@reddit
Our patch deployment system forces a reboot if it needs to. The user gets prompts, if they ignore or dismiss the third one it reboots anyway
SnooSprouts7609@reddit
Outlook freezing can often be mitigated through a simple Intune reminder script prompting users to reboot their device. Users should also be instructed to restart their computer at least every 7 days,
boli99@reddit
2 junior and 1 senior is probably enough to handle that, as long as you dont let them all book holiday at the same time.
kshot@reddit
Rule of thumb is one per 70 users.
redthrull@reddit
It's a good start but you also have to have some buffer for vacation time, sick leave, graveyard/on call(?). Even if they will only support people working 9-5, we know some tasks are best done before or after shift, unless you have another team covering that.
You already mentioned users are non-techies, but also consider what kind of tickets this new batch will be working on. Does your MSP send you a report on what type of tickets they handle for you every month? Might want to start there. Lastly, compare how many of them (MSP side) are actually engaged by your users, and see if you need to keep the same number or increase/decrease them.
fjlj@reddit
Although there are a ton of variables that come into play... A general is 1:100 ratio... Of course environment, location count and distance, tooling, workload, hardware and software needs okay a huge part... Shooting for 1:50 would be amazing and if you can get that many approved absolutely do it! Realistically likely going to come closer to 3 bodies rather than 4... 1:66ish (still great). Sometimes using specialization helps.. IT Admin, Sysadmin,network admin,security admin, tech I, tech II, tech III, etc....
Site_Efficient@reddit
Without more information about the nature of the business, existing app/infra landscape, specialist needs for your user base, and ambition around implementing improvements it'll be hard to say.
For example: Does 200 staff represent 50 factories across 3 continents? If so, 4 people can't deal with it because geography.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Support will have to be done from 1 office even though we have 4 offices (so remotely which is what 3rd party is already doing). Timezone is not an issue at present. Might consider hiring more in future. This is just the initial setup i was inquiring about.
vbpatel@reddit
Oof, remote support can be done remotely but it really adds 3-5x longer to how long it takes to fix any random thing. It cuts down on how many users one tech can support. I would look into a third L1/L2
Useful-Transition529@reddit
Currently in my work, we are 3 IT Staff and 1 IT manager for 500 Full Time Users + about 2000 Sub Contractors that have limited IT and Offices in 4 contries. We are constuction company so about 250 of these are office based and the rest are all onsite in those 4 contries in about 40 locations altogether at one time. We used to get on just fine, but can confirm its 100% more about the people you hire than the numbers. 2 of us more senior do everything L1 - L3 to IT Project Management to also Coding, networking and Sys Admin, then we have one fresh from collage but trained up to focus on L1 - L3 only but will try fix whatever is thrown at him untill he needs help from us. We did have a manager who started the IT Department here and he also did everything L2 and up ( only the simple stuff he would pass onto us like printers and onboarding ect) so it was like having another very experienced user with us aswell, But he recently left after 10 years and the new Manager they hired is more of a Manager and less of a worker, So does Pretty much no IT work and just manages us, Meaning Me and my other senior collauge have at least 1.5x our workload each and the other standard IT is pretty much busy none stop now. So now its work all day with only 20 min break for the day and work even after hours. Also the new manager wants change and one thing is people only going one at a time to the other offices in other contries and more often, excluding himself, it means there is weeks where there is only 2x people in the HQ while one of us is away trying to fix everything in an office for a week by ourselves instead of our old way of going 2 at a time over 3 days and not having to go back for 3 months. This is not even including trying to fit our holidays inbetween then.
We tried a few times to hire a L1 - L2 user but each time they see the workload they run, So its 100% based off who you get, Titles dont matter as much if they are not going to put in the work, If it was me I would get 1x Collage Gradute for L1-L2 , 2x Experienced for L1-L3 but not to experienced where they refuse to do stuff they think is beneth them, 1x Senior L3/ System admin / IT Project manager and 1x IT Manager that would be willing to at lest also do System admin / Project Management aswell and can understand that pleasing SLT isnt a prioty but a bonus. Otherwise the IT will get overan with only 4 users very fast.
rodeengel@reddit
You sound like your looking for the wrong quality of IT professional for your need. I have worked for a very similar company but electrical and not construction. Look not for a L1/2 but help desk. Don’t bother with a degree, if you’re in the states I know other countries are different for this, just find someone strong in help desk experience.
Also you should create some defined roles that have limits to what they do. You don’t want your help desk tech standing up servers or logging into your network controller. You also don’t want your L3 taking on help desk triage.
Make sure to respect the person you hire and the experience they are brining in don’t make them just do any work. If you expect them to do everything then hire a janitor.
krimsonmedic@reddit
4 would likely be plenty if they knew what they were doing. I did it with 2 and it was a stretch, but we did it. 2 end-user/desktop support, and engineer/decent sysadmin, and then another sysadmin/manager to corrale them/ buy hardware/software.
Fluent_Press2050@reddit
For 150 employees, myself (manager) and L1.5 got by for 2 1/2 years.
I finally was able to higher another L1 to help during days where we had more than a handful or so tickets come in that took more than our normal turn around time.
It also allowed me to work on more projects without interruptions.
We did 9 hour shifts though, with regular OT.
So for 200 employees, you’ll need at least 3 or 4 people.
If you can find a L2 that doesn’t mind doing L1 work every now and then, that would be ideal but most L2s barely want to touch tickets in my experience so I ended up with more L1s that are eager to learn. Just expect them to leave after 2 or 3 years.
I don’t blame the L2s, those are usually the ones that want to keep advancing. If you find a L1 after 5 years, they likely have zero desire to grow if they stay with you and that’s fine.
1stPeter3-15@reddit
Does your current third party support have data they can provide in relation to this?
Mysterious-Worth6529@reddit
I am the sole IT for 160 employees.
JangoBolls@reddit
I feel your pain. Im the solo admin + anything else they throw onto me for 500+ 🙃.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Are you okay
Palantir_Scraper@reddit
Just get a 12 month report of all tickets logged to MSP and what level of support/SLA they required. For what it's worth my first role was a 2 man team for \~280 users spread across 9-10 sites.
EmotionalVegetable48@reddit
1 Helpdesk 1 network admin 1 sysadmin
Senkyou@reddit
We're at 4 for about 300 full time users, but software is its own stack and we don't support them. I also don't do too much support for help desk, but handle most of our complex requests and projects. It feels barely manageable, but manageable. It bubbles up when someone takes time off, though.
Bl0ckTag@reddit
Like other have said, highly depends on the industry, user base, technology, and geography of the org. I've only ever been in small teams, but have supported 16 clinics and 2 data centers with a team of 3 + director supporting 150ish staff, and most recently 2 campuses and a district office with 2 techs + myself supporting 250 staff and 2k students.
emejia698@reddit
1 for every 350-400 is avg for the MSP space.
You are moving away from an MSP so I’ll give you my take.
Source : I own an MSP
I would say you need 2, 3 max.
Get a “ IT manager” or call it what you want.
This is an experienced jack of all trades that has some light exp managing IT forecasting hardware, maybe a little bit or planning. Knowledge about systems, networks, cloud, etc. Then they should have exp at various levels, maybe someone that was a tech, and engineer.
Then you need a L1 or L2 that reports to your first person.
Anything else is a bonus.. 4 or more, unless you have a specialized environment or a dev team or something that would be overkill. Although I don’t see more information about what needs to be maintained.
Alternative thought ( one of my favorite) go co-managed with the MSP.
Bring someone in to handle the quick support issues, let the MSP handle everything else.
Brand0_the_Mand0@reddit
I have 1000+ users and have 2SA, 1ISSO
Hefty-Possibility625@reddit
In a similar sized laboratory I worked for where we had an in-house LIMS/ERP system, we had 3 full time developers, 2 service desk, 1 systems engineer, and 1 systems architect, plus the non-technical manager for the team. We also invested heavily into redundancy and failover for all our critical systems and the architect ensured that our systems were following consistent patterns throughout our infrastructure. With firm standardization and a little automation we went from fighting daily fires to mostly just keeping things updated and managing lifecycles.
Silverfeyn@reddit
In my company, we are around 180 and is me(system administrator) and once IT support l1.
Need to say we have a 10 people engineer systems team, mostly for our external customers and around 30 more technical users. Add around 15 devs. Rest is sales, financial etc
FckLogicK@reddit
Atuo em uma empresa com 356 colaboradores, eu sou o n1 n2
Own_Error_007@reddit
At least 3. One senior and two juniors.
Jguan617@reddit
Original if ketchup
jeffrey_f@reddit
New support role for this place, 3 to do firefighting and legitimate help and another 3 on standby.
After most of the fires are taken care of, you should, for the next few weeks, walk the floors and talk to your users if you can. Open and close tickets as you go.
Get your ducks in a row and be proactive by ensuring all updates are applied and softwares updated. Get devices on management.
You should be able to then take care of the legitimate issues after that. My group just went through this with a prior, non-existent boots on the ground. The queue was full of tickets going back about 2 years. Those were cleaned up as mostly irrelevant. We are hovering at about 10 in each (8 of us) queue at most. I have 8 but I'm waiting on things/supplies to close them, but I will close another 15-20 per week. at a major hospital
Jguan617@reddit
It depends on the nature of the business. I am working for a north east fintech company that make trades following the sun 24/7, we have 500 employees with 200+ IT roles. Also I used to worked for a health care company with 10,000 employees and had also 200 IT roles.
KnaprigaKraakor@reddit
I would want some additional information in your position.
First, would be the range of coverage that the company requires. The staffing levels are going to be vastly different if you need coverage during local office hours, than if you need 24x7 coverage.
Second, the process for raising IT Support issues. If you have a full issue management system (such as Zendesk) and users have to raise a ticket through that IMS will need less manpower than, for example, users contacting the team via phone, email, walk-in, carrier pidgeon, or any which way they want to raise an issue, without any overarching tool to manage the workload.
Third, the volume of issues and their time distribution (this should be covered with a request to the current MSP, asking for the volume of issues they deal with, and the times of day when those issues typically come in). You should expect a response showing the daily/weekly/monthly averages, with a breakdown that will help you to identify things like "the sales guys call early in the morning because they are on site with a client, and cannot login", or "the accounting team call in a panic around the time when they do their month-end and invoice processing".
Fourth, the required response times. Break it down into Critical/High/Normal/Low severity, based on the scale of the issue (how many people are affected); and the immediacy of the problem (when is the REALISTIC deadline for this issue to be resolved). Then identify appropriate response times for each. Again, the MSP is a good place to start with this, because they are already providing service to certain deadlines, so grab a copy of their Service Level Agreement that they have with you, and then talk with your users about where you need to be faster than the MSP was, and where you can be slower.
Fifth, your company's vacation schedule. The coverage map will be radically different if your team is US-based with 1-2 weeks' vacation time per year, versus European with up to 6 weeks' vacation per year.
Sixth, your vendor escalation procedures and how that will affect your workflow.
3 people (2x1st line, 1x2nd line) would be the bare minimum that you probably need for most short-term coverage, with 4 or 5 (up to 4x1st line, still 1x2nd line, 1x2nd/3rd line also responsible for vendor/c-suite escalation) as a reasonable "normal minimum".
AegorBlake@reddit
You will want at least 2 L2 so that they can double check each other's work and cover for each other when out.
Danowolf@reddit
2026? 3
SnooSprouts7609@reddit
Automation should eliminate repetitive tasks such as password resets, account unlocks, onboarding processes, and device provisioning. This reduces workload, but it does not make demand predictable. Non-technical sales users will continue to generate inconsistent and often unclear support requests, so L1 capacity remains necessary.
The primary risk in your setup is not L1, but the lack of depth at L2 and L3. Having only one person at each level creates both a bottleneck and a single point of failure. When either is unavailable, escalations stall and critical knowledge becomes inaccessible.
In addition, your estimate does not account for onboarding spikes, internal improvements, or occasional cloud and development support. These activities require time and will become part of your responsibility once you replace the MSP.
While a structure of 2 L1, 1 L2, and 1 L3 may function initially, it is fragile under real conditions. A more stable approach is to maintain 2 L1 and ensure 2 people can operate at L2 level, with one of them handling L3 responsibilities. This removes bottlenecks and improves continuity without a major increase in headcount.
Consultants can help during transitions or peak demand, but relying on them structurally introduces cost and dependency. They should complement the team, not replace core capacity.
Automation improves efficiency, but adequate L2 coverage is what ensures stability.
DearJohnDeeres_deer@reddit
I'm currently soloing as a SysAdmin/Help Desk for a 180 person org. We have a Network Engineer who helps with a lot of the more advanced sys admin stuff but doesn't touch tickets. Don't do this, I like your plan better.
disconnected_tech@reddit
Depends on the IT person and how well funded they are. I would say 2 at least just to have coverage. 4 would be nice, but 3 better paid personnel would probably be a sweet spot. And then of course all the tools to keep up with everything if you don’t already have infrastructure in place.
Antique_Grapefruit_5@reddit
The better question is how much support does your 200 user organization need? Is leadership dissatisfied with the support that they are receiving? Is this strictly a cost thing?
Can you have the MSP provide a listing of tickets and durations of work? This would give you a strong baseline...
mittenhiker@reddit
Depends on the industry, the user base, and the applications/services being supported.
jake04-20@reddit
Am I jaded in thinking that a 200 user org does not have a tiered helpdesk? Lol. At a 200 user org, you are wearing all the IT hats. There is no degree of separation there IMO. Curious what others think?
EffectiveEquivalent@reddit
2 of us for 240. We handle everything including development work.Its busy but fun, you just have to always fix the root cause, be it software, hardware, or human. Managed to get a 0 NC ISO27001 result anyways.
Important_Ad_3602@reddit
We’re at 160 users. I started alone, which isn’t good for your health. Fixing a critical problem means stop answering the phone. Also, there is no vacation, you’re always standby. Not good for your mental health.
Couple of years ago we added one L1 helpdesk. Still a challenge. IT has evolved so much through the years and the pressure intensifies. Being lean and automating as much as possible is what kept us alive. Every decision you make you keep in mind how much work this will add to your daily, weekly and monthly schedule. Every opportunity you see to remove work from your agenda, you take.
In hindsight if i was starting i would go with one L1 helpdesk, and one IT-manager. Then one or two temporary contracts to help you get lean in the first 2 years.
unsat_marine@reddit
As the only working person at an MSP for the past 9 months, I would advise: one L1, two L2's, and one L3 like has been already stated. I would love to find something else and I feel your pain. I'm too old for this shit.
Stryker1-1@reddit
It also comes down to how many sites you manage as well.
Managing 200 users at 1 site vs 20 users at 10 sites is very different
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
Depends not only on the type of users you have (non-tech savvy sales people) but the systems you have in place and services you are providing.
A good RMM tool for end point management, Intune, ticketing system goes a long way.
For example, my shop is serving about 450 users at 8 different physical locations with 2 IT people and occasional help from outsourced IT contractors for big projects.
Rude_Strawberry@reddit
Who manages the infrastructure? Patching? DR Backup testing / recovery? Etc...
Everything that should be done by someone not doing 1st line support?
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
We do. We spend only about 15% of our time on 1st line support.
CeC-P@reddit
At large companies it's typically 1 support staff per 200-400 employees. I found that to be high if they're good enough but they rarely are.
I worked at a 260 with mostly field workers that had phones and no computers and we had CIO + support + administrator/engineer (me) and we barely kept up with tickets + projects.
Independent-Sir3234@reddit
For 200 mostly nontechnical users, I'd rather have 3 solid generalists than a neat L1/L2/L3 chart on paper. Small internal teams get crushed by onboarding, offboarding, and random executive issues, so the people who can automate and still jump on deskside fires matter more than titles. We were okay at that size with 4 only because one person was basically full-time on identity and device churn.
Ok-Purchase8490@reddit
I’m the only person that creates most of the accounts in our company roughly 300….
Gnomish8@reddit
As others have hinted at -- it depends. For a low maintenance userbase, and a high performing support team, I've found 1:100 to be the line where you can still be a bit proactive, but it really falls off from there. That means 1:100 is your ceiling, do not exceed if you want to get things done.
1:50 can work well if you have other tasks you can assign your support staff. If they're solely "Reset password/account unlock" level support, there's going to be a fair bit of thumb-twiddling time. But, if you find folks that you can task with proactive items, like documentation, automation, and QoL improvements, that "downtime" becomes really valuable to the org.
1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v@reddit
Depends upon a lot. What are you responsible for:
Infrastructure Operations Support Security Projects
What did your ticket, incident, and project volumes look like last year?
D3moknight@reddit
Every company is different, but I have personally been the solo IT guy for teams as small as 50, and I have also been on a team of 5 for 1200+ users.
loupgarou21@reddit
Like everyone here is saying, it really depends on your userbase and their needs.
Are you able to get any information from your MSP about how many support hours your company is using? Most decent MSPs will happily give you a nice shiny executive summary to help show off the value they're providing, and you can use that number of support hours to help you determine how many people are needed. Now keep in mind, that your own internal staff won't be doing 8 hours of support work per day, so you need to apply a multiplier, like 60%, so if you're using about 450 support hours a month, then that's about 4 people.
In my mind, it would take about 3-4 people in IT to support 200 employees, but it's also really going to depend heavily on what technology they would need to support. I, honestly, would probably start by hiring a level 2/3 person that you think you can ultimately promote into an IT manager, and keep the MSP. Have that level 2/3 person work alongside the MSP and help build out a plan on how many people will need to be hired to replace the MSP, and what that transition will look like.
An alternative would be to hire 2 level 1 techs, keep on the MSP to handle network/server requests and the level 1 techs can handle all of the initial user-level troubleshooting and escalate to the MSP when needed. The MSP will probably be more than happy to work with you on this because, having worked for an MSP, the server/network work is likely their bread and butter, and the user support is probably not very profitable to them.
Rude_Strawberry@reddit
2000 person company we have 14 IT staff
Tall-Geologist-1452@reddit
Staffing is entirely dependent on how your IT stack is set up and how much you’ve actually automated versus how many manual processes you're still stuck with. We support around 1,000 users with a pretty lean team: two Level 2s, one Level 3, two of us in infra, and a manager.
We’re in manufacturing with a main production site, two warehouses on each coast, a couple of out-of-state satellite offices, and remote workers all over the world. The only reason we can manage that is because it’s not about the user count, it’s about the workload. We focus heavily on standardization across all our sites and use centralized management so we can handle the remote guys without needing more head count. We also push self-service as much as possible to keep the noise down. The more you automate, the fewer bodies you need.
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
6 being "lean" for 1,000 users feels so sad to me, we could be at 2,000 users and I'd struggle to get them to hire another full time staff member
Tall-Geologist-1452@reddit
Document everything so that when it finally is time to increase the headcount, you actually have the data to back up the ask. Without those metrics, you’re just guessing. But when you can show exactly how much manual work is hitting the team versus what’s being automated, the conversation with leadership changes from a gut feeling to a business case based on real numbers.
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
Everything is a manual documentation indeed because nobody will pay for something that time tracks for me :)
Tall-Geologist-1452@reddit
Spiceworks is free...
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
No automation at present. Everything is manual onboarding off boarding but considering to automate it soon as well but not at present.
Tall-Geologist-1452@reddit
If I were you, I’d go with one Level 1, two Level 2s, and a System/Network Admin. You really want to hire with the specific goal of finding people who can handle the current manual grind while actively building out the automation for you.
Since you're stuck doing everything by hand right now, especially onboarding and offboarding, you need builders instead of just ticket takers. You want people who get annoyed by manual tasks and want to script them away. If you hire the right team now, they’ll build the foundation that lets you scale way up without you having to constantly add more bodies later.
saffash@reddit
Agree with everything you've said! This is great advice.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Thank you so much. This is gold.
Chemical___Imbalance@reddit
I'd say to NEVER have less than two people to support any size company. Someone is always going to get sick or need time off, and the company isn't going to be reasonable if you're the only guy in IT support.
zkareface@reddit
Support agents? One tbh. Usually you put 1000-2000 users per agent.
For all IT you need a lot more, probably 10+ if you don't outsource anything.
Rude_Strawberry@reddit
2000 users per agent? What the fk... If you want to kill someone's soul yeah go for it
teamnolegs@reddit
Srsly, one seasoned IT person can do the job. Trust me bro.
INSPECTOR99@reddit
1 L1, 1 L2, 1 L3, 1 Network engineer. Then one year later:
THEN: Find more L2/L3 and pay then good
Find people who can automate stuffs
3-4 would be sufficient after automation if one falls sick or leaves.
Surfin_Cow@reddit
We have roughly 220 users and \~500 endpoints. We have a team of 1 T1 1T2 1T3 a Jr. sys admin and me a net/sys admin II+ a CIO but he also heads other departments.
Turak64@reddit
I couid run that on my own, presuming it's 100% cloud, but having someone in as desktop / service desk would help
Anonymous1Ninja@reddit
then you can't do it by yourself
Turak64@reddit
Done it before, so yeah couid do.
Anonymous1Ninja@reddit
my dude, you said it had to have conditions.
xiamcs@reddit
We support roughly the same number of employees ourselves. Around 100 people work in our development and maintenance departments. The other 100 mainly work as system builders or in supporting roles such as purchasing and other overhead functions.
In practice, we usually need one L1 support engineer, and most of the time we also have an intern helping with support tasks. In addition, we have one person covering both L2 and L3 support, and someone from the development team who assists with migrations.
We have automated a large part of our processes. For example, when someone requests access rights to a specific folder, we can simply approve or deny the request with a click. Overall, we are managing quite well. If one person goes on holiday, one of our developers can step in and help out. Many of our developers also have experience in support, which makes the team flexible.
lega1988@reddit
4 for 200? Dude, hire me, pls.
We are currently running 1 per 400 employees.
zkareface@reddit
1 per 1000 is kinda standard. Even places with 1 per 2000 will have a lot of downtime.
lega1988@reddit
No way in hell one person can do a quality job supporting 2000 end users..
zkareface@reddit
Can be easy if the it stack isn't shit.
A friend's msp got 600+ client companies and they don't even get a call every day. Tens of thousands of users and endpoints.
Hyperion_Silenus@reddit
I support 200 plus lawyers. 1 is good enough
mimic751@reddit
Like... just 1
matroosoft@reddit
We do 100 staff with 1L1, 1L2, 1L3 + MSP backup for our company doing manufacturing, ERP, development, engineering, sales etc.
ProductAutomatic8968@reddit
Can you ask for all the tickets the external support team has closed? Use that to determine what’s L1 > 3. A LLM will answer this in one second.
LosLeprechaun@reddit
What do you need to go all out on automation on? With 200 users what's the turnover like? Onboarding/Offboarding a user isn't rocket science that needs a ton of time setup for automation. 2-3 competent people would be plenty for most SMB (>250) environments in my experience. You need to cover your day-to-day stuff, but also want someone looking at big picture/overview.
sharpied79@reddit
Also, what kind of operation? Mon-Friday 9-5 or 24/7
Your staffing has to also reflect such things as staff sickness, holidays, shift patterns, etc.
Could also be dependent on external factors too.
The data centre I used to work at many years ago had specific stipulation as to staff levels set by the main customer (I mean they were paying us £1.2million a year, so you know, they kind of called the shots somewhat)
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Mon-fri, 9-5 for now. Not 24*7 atleast not for now
MAlloc-1024@reddit
I manage a team of 3 (including myself) that handles 24/7 \~360 days a year, globally for almost 700 users and I am begging mgmt to let me hire another L3 and a security engineer. And we are already highly automated. For 200 users 9-5, minimum of 2 with an AI to write automations. I also recommend getting a MSP tool like Kaseya, Ninja One or Connectwise (no particular order) to manage remote workers. If the offices are not in driving distance, consider 1 per office.
PriorityNo6268@reddit
24/7 with 3 people is not even allowed by law here...
Powerful-Notice4397@reddit
Might be able to get metrics from your current MSP which may help guide you on how many L1,2,3 you need.
Nik_Tesla@reddit
If you have third party support, can you ask them for a report of monthly ticket counts, and what escalation they had to go up to in order to be solved? MSPs love metrics, and that would go a long way to showing what level of internal IT you need at what levels.
StarSlayerX@reddit
Last job we did 1 L1, 1L2, and 1L3 (which is me). I spent years developing automated workflows and AI augmented workflows to help deflect tickets. Some examples:
1) SSO with SCIM Provisioning to automate 3rd party application entitlements
2) Co-Pilot Chatbot with Help Desk Articles to help end users resolve simple issues
3) Built a portal using powserhell that calls on other scripts that end users can navigate through to resolve application issues
4) Provisioning Portals where HR and Manager can one touch provision licenses and request devices
One_Newspaper5652@reddit
thats the real goal of the l3 role. you automate the l1 and l2 work away.
WWGHIAFTC@reddit
Depends on everything.
Low needs office workers with MS365, Adobe, and a fully supprted Finance/Payroll/HR suite? Two skilled people could do it and be bored.
200 spread across 6 healthcare clinics with mlutiple his/ris/lis vendors? You'll need 4 or 5 people easily.
russianturnipofdoom@reddit
Do you feel like there is going to be a difference between the amount you think you need vs the amount that will get approved ?
robotbeatrally@reddit
2 if its very standard/low needs and/or you are very focused on support and have support from management from sort of adjacent managerial things. 3 if the site is complicated, has needy users, and/or you have little support for the adjacent things outside of your team. Probably 3. I did a site that size myself for a while, but I didnt have to make any major changes or decisions, write policy, provide metrics or status updates, or even put in orders for stuff myself (I could just ask purchasing to order x and y). so for me it was very doable to service 200 people because all I was expected was to run around like an angry chicken keeping everything running.
argama87@reddit
Processing img xk30jqnxa7ug1...
benuntu@reddit
As others have said, highly dependent on the roles and services supported. My gut says 3 is almost overkill, but has good redundancy and coverage for PTO, Sick, or turnover. I'd go with 2x L1 techs with an IT Manager or Senior Sys Admin. Hopefully one of those L1s will grow into an L2 capability. but still be able to cover the other L1.
ilkhan2016@reddit
1 helpdesk per 100 staff per site
2-3 infrastructure admins, including rotating on call
poetsnakeguy@reddit
I would suggest the following: 1. 2 L1/L2 - for redundancy during vacations. Can train them up to L2 if currently only L1 2. 1 L2/L3 - managing the support team and handling escalations - needs to have good infra knowledge as well 3. 2 infra - to handle cloud environment and any infra escalations 4. 2-3 applications team - can be in-house front end application support + development + business analysts Most development happens with 3rd party suppliers but support provided in-house
Ballbag94@reddit
Surely it has to be a min 2 of each? Unless L2/L3 issues can wait for multiple weeks in the case of someone being on hols
poetsnakeguy@reddit
The infra team can also help with L2/3 support but the L1 should also be trained to handle L2
Ballbag94@reddit
That sounds like a recipe for pissing off both of those teams
poetsnakeguy@reddit
Well. I wouldn’t say that. The infra team will support with L2/L3 only in the absence of the support lead when they’re on leave. With the current tech direction and AI, having purely L1 experience is an obsolete skillset. Additionally, L1 itself I feel has already advanced more than just laptop and printer support to more into service delivery and digital workplace
Ballbag94@reddit
I can't see a world where the infra guys will be happy to take on extra work because a company has intentionally short staffed themselves or a world where the L1 guys will be happy to pitch in on L2 work for no extra cash, nor should either of those things happen
If a team needs other teams to cover for them when someone is off then they need more people and people shouldn't be expected to do a higher grade of work than what they're being paid to do
poetsnakeguy@reddit
Pay needs to be matched no doubt. Not saying pay them L1 and get L2 work also from them.
libben@reddit
You need to start look at your ticket volume at the MSP and all other vendors that is involved in all those tickets to get a grasp on what kind of support you need for in house.
If it is 200 end users and just entra joined devices and nothing special except MS E3 or E5 licens and simple support with some third party vendor and less then 600 tickets per month just hire 3 good decemt IT people with lvl 2 skills that can do it all and pay them a bit more so they can suck it out with end user support.
If we're talking about real skills and real infrastructure stuff then you probably need to have a few more guys and more skills. That aint cheap.
Start by figuring out what kind of engagement your organisation has with current MSP.
Ivy1974@reddit
If everything is automated and cloud based not much.
Ryanstodd@reddit
We have a roughly 20 location company and about 1,000 licensed users. We have
2 helpdesk
(hiring 1 sysadmin)
1 network admin
2 developers (1 assists with helpdesk)
myself (IT manager/t3)
director of IT
Calm-Show-9606@reddit
Last company i worked for 16 years, I was IT manager and had 2 employees under me. I had support for Basn ERP and Oracle. I worked at least 50 hours a week.
jdead121@reddit
We have two for 200 people which includes about 30 contractors.
My teammate and I share the regular support stuff which isn't even much and handle light security, identity and access management, email security etc. We have a infrastructure team of 3 people that handles the azure and AWS infrastructure for the saas product we sell. I created the rbac roles for this.
IKEtheIT@reddit
I think the industry standard for L1 is 1 associate per 100 employees, or at least was back when I was on a service desk.
in a perfect world I would try to get at least 3 bodies for front line support, and have all three be able to back eachother up on L1's and L2's incase someone is out sick for a week
and even with 3 people, trust me there will be days that 2 of them call out sick/PTO its important everyone knows how to do everything so end users dont get delayed support because "oh only johnny has the login for that or knows how to do that"
DirtRider29@reddit
Just to echo what others say it really depends on what you are supporting. I was supporting 200 employees and 13 locations with one other person. There were a few caveats, we only supported 80-100 windows devices, managed google workspace, a basic networking and a website plus various odds and ends. We were a jack of all trades master of none type duo but we made it work. Looking back it would have been preferred to have one more person.
Now I support close to 500 devices, but I am just over desktop support and utilize MDMs to automate most of manual tasks I used to do. I'm far less stressed, but that's due to how my team is structured and I get to just focus on my specific role rather than learning how to troubleshoot a networking issue half assed one day and then the next build a website all the while trying to help finance with their excel formulas that they keep deleting
SemiAutoAvocado@reddit
If you need more than one person for this you are doing something very wrong.
RaidZ3ro@reddit
I think the typical ratio is 1:25, automation might get you closer to 1:50. But considering you will have a learning curve as you take over, I'd overstaff initially and reduce headcount in a few years once fully stablized.
KAugsburger@reddit
1:25 would be a lot of techs unless the environment is complicated and/or you have users that require a lot of hand holding. 1:50 to 1:100 is much more typical unless your org has a large IT budget for its size.
kyle-the-brown@reddit
You are only thinking about the easiest role to fill once you move away from the MSP
Besides number of employees in different roles needed to support you need to get a run down of all the services and tools the MSP is using to support and secure your environment.
EDR / AV in use Office 365 MDR Anti-spam/ anti-Phishing filter Backup solution Licensing Mangement Network equipment Server equipment Are you AD, Azure/Intune, Workgroup Copier Info - scan to email specifically - the MSP is probably using a SMTP host service for all your scan to email and that will be disabled
Then there are other questions, are the server on prem, cloud, or data center? If data center is the hardware yours or just the VM's and to migrate them or move them can they be forked to a new location as is or would it be a project?
Is the network equipment owned or leased, many MSP models are hardware as a service and you all may not own the firewall, switches, access points. If you do own them can the management be migrated from the MSP
Now to the people to hire you need to make sure they know how to manage / troubleshoot the network equipment, servers and cloud tools.
ByeBach@reddit
Yo trabajo en soporte y somos 3 para 150 personas todos oficinistas
SecondOrigins@reddit
Healthcare call center - very high maintenance employees and 24/7. We do rough 1:75
RipErRiley@reddit
I work in a 350 user accounting firm…we have 2 person Tier 1 support, 1 Tier 2 support person, 1 sys admin, and 2 mgrs.
-King-K-Rool-@reddit
What industry is it? 200 warehouse workers arent going to need more than 1 or 2 IT, 200 doctors are going to need close to 200 IT, you need to figure out your ticket load and skill level of your non-IT employees. Is the average age of your non-IT emotes under 30? They statistically will need far less IT help than if the average age of your non-IT employees is over 50.
hevvypiano@reddit
You got me curious about my site. I'm responsible for about 125 immediate users who are in-person/on-site. Then a handful of outside contractors and remote employees, and I'm also a backup admin for two other sites.
My supervisor has support experience and can help as a backup now and then. But we are a super lean team.
Generico300@reddit
There are too many variables in your situation to give any prescriptive answer. To do this effectively you need ticket handling data from your MSP so you can judge how many tickets they're handling at each level per unit time.
Also, keep in mind that building automation tools takes time and focus. You won't be able to do that if your support is fully occupied by fire fighting tasks because you've employed the minimum number of people for that.
Jassokissa@reddit
It depends, I've been the only sysadmin/helpdesk for 250 users in 4 countries back in the day (private venture capital company, so mostly windows + ms Office stuff). But don't really know how it goes today.
At my current company. I think we got 5 people for 600+ workers (IT company).
JynxedByKnives@reddit
3 is L2 techs 2 L3 techs 1 helpdesk Manager 1 IT director Maybe 1 trainer depending on who your supporting.
MrManhoso@reddit
220 users, 5locations in the us, 1 in europe
Solo dolo
iamLisppy@reddit
About to be 4 people, including my manager, for a \~150 org. Scientists, executives, accountants, CAD users, and a good amount of people using Python and R.
shoafer0@reddit
I work for a local credit union and we have about 150 employees, almost a billion dollar asset credit union, about 45k members.
We have 11
4 - help desk (tier 1-3 + help desk supervisor)
4 - network team (cyber admin, cyber analyst, network admin, and sr network admin)
2 - data operations
1 - IT Manager
SirDerpingtonTheSlow@reddit
By your structure I do the job of 4 people, lol.
shoafer0@reddit
We were a team of 4 for a really really long time, I know where you’re coming from. We stay super busy though so, I agree you absolutely are.
CEO changed and we got buy in from the replacement. We are definitely lucky to have the support, just from what I hear from other institutions.
JedirShepard@reddit
I have like 90 judges and 110 other peeps. We are three IT Guys.
FloppyGhost0815@reddit
It depends on the environment and the users. Generally soeaking: Only one person per Level is a definite NoGo.
People get sick, take vacations, die or leave the company. If you don't have at least a second person you'll have a serious problem.
ncc74656m@reddit
We have around 40 FTE, and up to another \~10 PT/Guest Employees, I still have a team of 2. Simple math: 1 person is sick/out and you need a backup, and also one person working alone will always burn out. We're barely avoiding burnout now and it's among the easier support gigs I've had, just whiny execs make everything hard.
4 is the bare minimum I'd want for that, not necessarily including a good technical manager/leader who can step in as backup, but I'd probably want an extra L3 with the understanding that support is part of their job, too. They won't like it, but you'll find if you don't state that from the outset, they'll quickly fall into "not my job" responses. Lay it out from the outset and it's part of their job and if they don't leave, they can quit or be fired for cause.
Flabbergasted98@reddit
A simple google search would tell you the basic rule of thumb is you want one IT guy per 100 users.
the reality is going to fluctuate wildly depending on things like, number of endpoints, remote work, type of work, on call hours per week, etc etc.
but personally I wouldn't get too deep into the granular unless you think your organization is a special case for some reason.
Unable-Entrance3110@reddit
FWIW, we are \~150 engineers. We have an IT manager, help desk and sysadmin (me). We have a lot of down time at this user load.
Elensea@reddit
2 if everything is all set up and you are maintaining. 3 if not.
formerscooter@reddit
When I was at the Helpdesk we had an audit done, they said the helpdesk should be \~60:1, since they were actually dealing with end users. In an ideal world I would double what you have.
thenew3@reddit
We have 6 helpdesk techs. 4 tier 1, 2 tier 2. They assist 630 full time, 1100 part time employees and 250k students. Our infrastructure folks are kind of tier 3 and assist when necessary. We have 4 of those folks. But they take care of all the networking, servers, virtualization, backup, messaging, telephones, firewalls at 12 locations through the state.
llDemonll@reddit
Start with one helpdesk, one senior for projects, one junior who can flex between the two, and a manager who can handle budgets, project planning and coordination, and the admin side of things. See where you’re short and grow from there.
Eventually: two+ helpdesk depending on your workload, a junior who can move where needed, two seniors / experienced people to do actual projects, a PM to coordinate and keep things on track, and a manager/director who can handle all the roadmap, budgeting, managing the team, etc.
MalletNGrease@reddit
Go 1:1, individualized support just to be sure.
peterswo@reddit
We have 1/22,5 as it staff per user quota. We have really old people as users(50+) that are unable to do anything different than yesterday. We got 5 office with sometimes multiple buildings per office. 5 places where servers are, 5 CEOs, although it's one company technically. I would guess you will need2-3 people for first level support and 2-3 sysadmins. Maybe 2 2nd level admins depending what kind of users and infrastructure you have
LuckHart02@reddit
1 to 50 is a kinda good baseline but with a non technical sales team you are going to get absolutely crushed by dms. those users will almost never use a traditional portal. we finally just leaned into that habit and used Siit.io for our internal tool requests so we wouldn't have to keep playing portal police. it basically just grabs those slack messages and turns requests into tickets automatically so the documentation actually happens without the team having to manually log everything. it honestly makes the lower headcount way more manageable when you aren't spending half your shift just being a human router in chat.
DefJeff702@reddit
I run an MSP and so the threshold is always a factor. The standard is between 200-250 users per tech. I would aim for 2 techs so you have a backup. This assumes you have budget for real tools and aren’t running around like it’s 2005. RMM, Intune licensed, AutoElevate, ticket system etc.
NeverLookBothWays@reddit
1 good professional can handle 400 easily. But always get at least 2 so they can take off and balance.
SirLoremIpsum@reddit
There is no rule like this.
And guessing based off that sure. It works but you're not basing it on anything.
If your company has 60 software devs and sales and hosting customer stuff? Inadequate.
If it's a warehouse and 3 retail store with 150 front line cashier's and shelf stockers? Overkill.
IT to staff # is a silly metric withoutc a deep dive into YOUR business. What # of your tech is vendor software? How many locations? How many users are 'power users' vs how many just need a login and ability to clock in / out.
"One per 50" is fine. But don't pretend it's a rule and don't pretend you weren't doing anything except guessing.
ms6615@reddit
We have about this many staff for 5,500 users lmaoooooooo
rose_gold_glitter@reddit
Based on my experience, less than 1.
Like, I'm not saying that's a good number - just the reality I've lived.
eighto2@reddit
We support 300 with myself and 2 other generalists none of L2/L3 nonsense.
We do all of our cable runs, camera installs, we have power tools and a bucket van.
I guess technically I'm the L3 if the other 2 can't figure it out.
klauskervin@reddit
We have 2 admins for a org of around 200 users. Mix of engineers and construction staff. It's fine if we're both working but it can get a bit overwhelming when one of us take time off.
AtarukA@reddit
Extremely dependent on the environment.
We have more L2 than L1, with a team of 9 L2, and a team of 5 L1 for 9K+ users.
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
I echo others here who say your userbase makes a big difference. A simple office style job where they work pretty flat 9-5, you may get away with two senior sysadmins who also take on support roles. But if you're 24/7, or even just wider hours or weekends, you need staff on call or rotation, which can add to additional staff to cover when TOIL is given.
However, the glaringly big issue here is you say "support" but do you mean "support" or "IT management"? The latter is a significantly different ballgame that constantly gets put within "IT support" as a category. You can't task a few senior support staff to manage IT systems, patching, compliance framework forms, writing policies, managing portals, configuring device deployment, deploying servers, communicating with suppliers. That's where you have an operations engineer(s) in place. In a typical 200 user org, you may find one person with a decent general IT knowledge can handle most of the work, with some lower level technical support staff who man the phones/service desk.
YourWorstFear53@reddit
Making me feel better about myself. I was one man vs a 250 user environment at one point and I miss those days.
RobKFC@reddit
Depends whose asking, IT person or C suite…
dracotrapnet@reddit
3 offices/fabrication shops, 1 HQ office, 2 colos, 250 ish users, 1 director, 5 techs, and 2 remote contractors for specialized applications.
Nobody is specifically L1 bound, contractors are L3 only. One person is mostly in house application development. 1 is mostly infrastructure.
Jeff-J777@reddit
I work for a distributor we have one HQ and 13 other locations. All locations are within a 2 hour drive or less. We have around 240 users. We are an IT staff of three. One L1, Me, and the director.
But our company is heave into tech so we have a lot of moving parts.
But we do everything in IT from desktops, software, server, So So So much M365. RF guns, barcodes, TVs, some programming, some app development, security systems, security cameras, and everything else.
Fabulously-humble@reddit
How many local vs remote?. remote support is always harder
LegRepresentative418@reddit
If this is your approach, I promise that you will struggle. Worry less about getting enough people, and worry more about getting the RIGHT people.
iPlayKeys@reddit
I would be curious the motivation for bringing IT in house. If it’s because they think the MSP is costing them too much, you might look at it like this…
Calculate the salaries of the four people you want to hire. If it’s more than what you’re paying the MSP, it’s probably either not going to fly, or they’re starting questioning you.
But if you really think about it, four people only doing support seems like a lot for an org that size. Doing some quick math, 4 support people @ 2000 hours = 8,000 hours / 200 people = 40 hours of support per year. Does each one of your users really need a full week of support every year?
Mitch5842@reddit
I worked in automotive and Aerospace at places that had the same number of users. Was about 1/3 Office people (engineers, PMs, HR, ect) and 2/3 people in the plant. Every job had 1 IT Support, 1 Systems Admin, and 1 IT manager. Wasn't too bad but at both jobs we worked well as a team.
Fragrant-Eye-9421@reddit
Well we have 2k (MSP) and most days it's just two service desk people... Yes we're stressed.
skydiveguy@reddit
Cooking the popcorn to watch the responses....
I work at a school with 1500 students and 300 staff... also hundreds of Macs, iPads, and PC lab devices...
We used to have the IT Director and 3 IT staff... one guy just quit and they arent going to hire to fill his position... so really its now 2 IT staff and the IT Driector... I have been very vocal about how we are understaffed and its pissing my boss off but Im not going to run around like a chicken with its head cut off so he can look like we dont need another person and get a raise while we get nothing but an inscreased workload.
PaoloFence@reddit
24/7 support?
How many tickets are generated daily?
How does your physic look like? Only one building or a whole country?
What do your users do? IT, handy workers?
oichie_uk@reddit
In my last IT job I was on my own with 170 seats. Luckily I could educate them, “don’t call me until you’ve restarted your pc/laptop/printer”, can the person next to you get in the internet” etc etc. if you can get 4 that’ll be a breeze.
Anonymous1Ninja@reddit
Entirely subjective to what you are doing as a business.
A company that generates data is going to have different needs than a company that can live in the cloud.
A company that uses software that is driven by group policies is going to have different needs than one that can survive on EntraID
Bubby_Mang@reddit
5 or 6 depending on how much of a pita your stack is and how big of a chad your best guy is.
techtornado@reddit
What kind of industry is the work?
Is it an office full of desktops running 365 apps or an agile workforce working remotely across 6 states and running a full stack of engineering and design apps?
Office desktops could get away with two L2’s, but the tech debt could increase exponentially if they don’t know firewalls or infosec
The more servers you have, the more powerful of a team you need
L1 for desktop support
L2 for AD + fixing L1
L3 flex between network and servers
SevaraB@reddit
I solo’ed 350 people in a call center at one point. Your question is missing so many factors:
robvas@reddit
1-5
VA_Network_Nerd@reddit
This is a canned response, because this question comes up so often:
There is no standard ratio of nerds to users.
The answer is business specific, and depends heavily on:
The business needs to define how quickly things need to be fixed or addressed, and then staffing or staff-training needs to be adjusted to meet those expectations.
Suggestion: Develop a matrix of support responsibilities.
New Spreadsheet.
Column "A" is a list of each support topic your team is responsible for.
Keep going. Giant list. If it's not 100 items deep you're not trying hard enough.
Column "B through D"
The names of each member of the IT support organization, including the manager.
Now you fill in two cells per row with the words "Primary" or "Secondary".
The Primary nerd owns that technology. They decide when to upgrade to the next version, or when to replace old hardware. They define configuration standards and documentation.
The Secondary nerd is responsible for simply understanding what the Primary decided and where everything is, and how to support it.
Tertiary nerds are always responsible for having enough knowledge to triage whatever the technology is to determine it really is broke, and knowing where to find the documentation on how to try to address it. They need to try before they escalate a ticket to the Primary.
Why this is helpful:
Lets the managers see if "John" is the Primary nerd for every damned thing. Now you can see how painful it would be if John leaves or catches COVID.
Lets "Jenny" know she can't ignore DHCP anymore. She actually needs to understand it, because she is the secondary to John.
This helps formulate training requirements and annual performance expectations.
Timmy, we know we made you the secondary for some technologies you are not trained or experienced with. In May we are going to send you to a bootcamp to help you better understand it all. But we want you to complete the certification by the end of the year.
Blah, Blah, Blah.
Kracus@reddit
It depends on the nature of the company you work for and what their needs are. I work for a company of 200 or so users and our IT dept consists of 18 people from developers to cyber security and helpdesk staff. If the work didn't involve so many tasks that require IT we wouldn't be so large but we manage applications and require high security compliance levels. Without knowing what your company does, the assets that need to be protected and how IT works with the rest of the organization it's impossible to give you an accurate number.
It could by anywhere from 4 people to 100.
biggdugg@reddit
One factor you need to consider is competency. IT staff should be hired by IT people, or at least vetted. Not HR, ever. Find someone you can trust in this field to sit in on interviews.
1 good staff, can do the work of 8 "my nephew is good with computers" and you won't have to pay to repair the damage afterwards
m_bt54@reddit
I had over 200 with just myself and was bored most of the time. Automate everything you can and you’ll be fine on your own. Honestly an outsourced model to a MSP would be less expensive and a better option for that small of an organization
myfreysa@reddit
Lol 4 staff, dream on
Capn_Yoaz@reddit
You need to cover the basics. Helpdesk, Network, Server and someone to lead/deal with the owners/management/c-suite..
Alstar45@reddit
Haha 4 people, we run a shop where currently I’m the only support for well over 200 needy users. I’m tired
Sin_of_the_Dark@reddit
Traditional ITIL recommendation is 75:1, but that can vary heavily depending on what field you're in.
Crazy-Rest5026@reddit
We are running 3 staff for 1200 users. So 1-2 is fine.
AdministrativeFile78@reddit
Hmm its pretty tight atm. Maybe just the 1
Shnikes@reddit
We have some needy users at our org. We are around 300.
We’ve been running with 3 of us as System Admins/Engineer and support all reporting to one manager.
Last year we added a cybersecurity analyst and a L1 helpdesk. We are adding a second L1 helpdesk so the rest if us can focus on projects/admin/engineering.
We have felt understaffed for a while.
Top_Boysenberry_7784@reddit
It can depend a little on what systems need to be supported you can do something like 2 people and rely on support for most higher level technical things.
Or you can try and cover all with 4 or 5. Even with 4 or 5 it can sometimes be a challenge to find the right people to properly manage all aspects. You may still need a 3rd party support system but very rarely and for niche reasons.
One of the biggest bonuses of having your own staff is ownership. When it's a third party they usually are great at knowing what they are doing but some companies miss a lot of minor things that add up later or just do things in unnecessary ways for your org just to bill more.
I went from large global org where I went from sys admin to network engineer. Left for a local company of 150. 4 person IT and sometimes it seems like too much and other times not enough. Since I have been here we have been doing a lot of work to advance security and infrastructure and eliminated a once heavily used 3rd party support that was allowed to make all major decisions.
Bucket81@reddit
Your Azure, AWS, and local datacenter footprint is way more important than the number of users.
coldazures@reddit
Depends on your needs and the level of expertise you hire. I know engineers who could handle a busy 200 user environment on their own.. or ones who would struggle in a quieter 100 user setup. Look at your current requests and requirements the hire carefully. In a typical setup I think you’re looking at 3/4 engineers who can handle tier 2 and 3 tickets. I doubt for a company of that size you’ll specialise so most staff will wear many hats.
CratesManager@reddit
For those scenarios it has to be said, your needs must be extremely uncritical if you think that's acceptable because everyone can get sick and most people need time off to function long term. It's not just workload that needs to be considered.
coldazures@reddit
100% it’s not viable long term, I’m saying I know for engineers who could do it day to day but yeah once you hit a bump in the road..
Remontada_r7@reddit
Did Ronaldo rape your Mother?😂
Normal_Nobody_4618@reddit
Why not just hire level 1 internally and leave MSP in-place with reduced day to day tasks?
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Currently doing that. But I'm being asked to prepare for full IT in house within 2 years.
Normal_Nobody_4618@reddit
Ah interesting. I’d say another portion of this would be complexity of the network. Sometimes the MSP can bring a level of experience that will be hard to find for internal. You never want just “1 guy” to know anything because if they leave it’s a mess
Good luck!
DL05@reddit
This is dependent on users, the software, hardware, infrastructure being supported (more platforms = more resources to maintain).
manicalmonocle@reddit
We have 2 for about that many and we both handle everything from helpdesk to making business decisions and ERP Implementation. I don't recommend it.
TolkienCalvinist@reddit
I think what you’re asking seems reasonable. But you also have to take into account how many devices you’re supporting, not just users. Does you company provide cell phones? Are their desk phones? How many printers. 200 users can easily become nearly 1000 devices, so keep that in mind.
If you’re currently using third party support, I would ask for a report on ticket volume, so you can get a better measurement of your needs.
Fritener@reddit
1 really, depends on how many sites.
DaIubhasa@reddit
I work in logistics industry. Im L1 my boss is L2 and boss’ boss is L3. Around 200 ppl working in office nationwide and around 500 courier drivers. Same as you some SAAS + microsoft apps.
igiveupmakinganame@reddit
1 and an MSP
manda-rino@reddit
There is no general rule imo.
It’s more about the company, there are 200 workstation? 200 staff in a assembly line or just customer service?
The production line or the warehouse in our company requires more L1 and guys behind the sales require a lot of L2 or 3
ChataEye@reddit
You need to think of redudancy. if the 1 L3 guys dies what then. do 4,2,2
Doublestack00@reddit
Depends on the business and the system(s).
At my last company we had 4 full time and one part time IT (that includes the CIO) and we supported 6,500 users across two countries.
BabycatLloyd@reddit
According to my employer, not even one, and I should be grateful for it.
pjustmd@reddit
Tree fiddy
xSchizogenie@reddit
4 Admins + 3rd Level Team/infrastructure
squuiidy@reddit
3 is more than enough.
Spellbound55@reddit
I work for a 350~ org company and we have a cracked L2 lead and 3 L1’s we hired and he trained himself. They stay pretty busy. Thinking about hiring 1 more. Think they had somewhere around 300 tickets last month. Call center + office staff. I help them occasionally but they are a really solid team.
thech4irman@reddit
We had 2 L1/2 and 1 L3 for 200 users.
It was a design company with 25 designers and then 150 admin staff. I separate out the designers as they could be quite high maintenance.
This was 10 years ago however and the admin staff had a high turnover. With automation and a better run company I'd suspect you could function fine with less.
Heps_kukkuu@reddit
I manage IT (everything from smallest support questions to networks, servers and security cameras) by myself for a company of about 150 users and 10 locations with 3rd party fallback for my holidays. 3rd party gets only a handful of tickets per year.
wigsy554@reddit
While you’re figuring costs for head count make sure to consider the following -
It will take more time, expertise, and money to build this in house. So if the decision is being driven by budgeting I would make sure you’re factoring in all costs. You would expect to see <.5 tickets user per month, so 100ish tickets. I would look at existing ticket counts etc. also prepare for some roles being hard to fill, like networking for example. And last figure out hiring right away. Best to technically test, and someone needs to develop that too.
Definitely doable but nothing something I would consider unless and a strong business reason.
venom_dP@reddit
Highly dependent on the org and tech stack, but we don't have any dedicated support and we're nearly 300 users. We let the security team own IT and manage the tools, then support responsibilities are distributed among each org unit.
CarlsCarLOL@reddit
About tree fiddy
octahexxer@reddit
It depends on your users also make a wiki let l3 bad l2 fill it with guides and let l1 suggest guides. Trust me a wiki with guides will be a life saver.
macattackpro@reddit
We have 4 L1 for 1,200 spread across the state with a manager also acting as L2. Other support staff for various non-technical escalations if/when they happen. Any technical escalations usually get escalated to a developer via a user story if the team can’t figure it out.
TheKingOfSpite@reddit
Bro i work in an MSP with 3 other people and we support between 600-1000 people
Doctors, lawyers, accountants, all sorts
Unfortunately those are all of the worst customers lol
TheSiliconRoad@reddit
This is an extremely dependent on your job role. Are you doing networking, infrastructure, cloud management, and more or just support. I run projects, manage users at other sites, do onboarding, smart hands work networking team who are offsite, manage cell phones for a 9k+ company all by myself, and me and my director report on site with me handle an operations site with 1000 plus users.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
All networking is taken care of by ISP. For us it's just user creation, onboarding off boarding, windows and Mac issues.
TheSiliconRoad@reddit
But also if you give more info happy to pass on some suggestions. Had experience in small medium and very large orgs and learned a lot from each place. Biggest thing when hiring is hire someone who cares, wants to actually learn, look for people who say they homelab. If not homelab, have a clear passion and you’ll be golden
TheSiliconRoad@reddit
Well if turn over is high those can be a pain but depending on your systems user creation can be mostly automated unless it’s like 2 people a week. Highly highly highly suggest making a good set of role based access control groups while you’re small. Thank me later. If you’re not using intune for windows or jamf for Mac that def can be a harder time.
Suggest asking for those or some type of mdm to handle both in one. If hours are 9-5 i think 3 wouldn’t be too bad. If it’s say 8 midnight plus weekend definitely 4.
Also consider what their SLAs need to be like. If there are a lot of matters that need immediate assistance definitely more is better. If most things can be given a day to be fixed the less is needed.
bushman4@reddit
We have 3 for a company of about 280, 170 of them regular computer users (the rest manufacturing users who only really use ADP).
A PHB, infrastructure (me, 30 years here) and a L1.5 or thereabouts.
kukelkan@reddit
We are 3.5 total on the whole company of 700+ users. Help desk Sys admin Network admin Everything.
It sucks
Sunshine_onmy_window@reddit
I believe gartner publishes guidelines on this sort of thing.
Aggravating_Review10@reddit
The real issue is that, these days, you can’t expect your in-house staff to have all the necessary expertise. The size of your in-house team depends on the level of autonomy you want regarding specific skills and products, as well as the type of support and services you want to provide to users. So the number you’ve suggested might be sufficient for basic user support—the typical “turn it off and on again” kind of help—but when it comes to business management software, email, or specialized technical programs, that’s a different story.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
How would you begin if you were in my situation?
Aggravating_Review10@reddit
If you’ve just taken on this role, I’d leave things as they are for at least a year to see how the support vendors operate and how things are managed. From there, you’ll be able to assess the actual need and the financial impact of bringing those same resources in-house.
Chrostiph@reddit
(Law field) we are 4 IT guys for 200 people but we do everything ourselves and almost never use 3rd party or contractors, also we order everything the offices need and even change light bulbs, plus level 1 to 3. We are pretty busy these days.
StartAccomplished256@reddit
If you automate things, one senior is enough.
thatguyyoudontget@reddit
i would go with 3 L1/L2 and 1 L3
loowig@reddit
3
brispower@reddit
three max
Important-6015@reddit
Impossible to answer without knowing so much about your org that this question makes zero sense for a Reddit post
drangusmccrangus@reddit
We have about 600users, 320 managed devices across 20 managed locations. IT Team of 2 and we basically do everything.. You’ll find the processes and people that work out best for you but I wouldn’t stress too much on the specific L1 - L3.. Think about it more based off “skill sets” rather than levels of knowledge.
loweakkk@reddit
How much cost the MSP? How much can you hire with that budget? That should be your first limit. You said you want to get ride of MSP to be more fast in resolution not for cost reduction so first look at how much it cost and hiw many peopl it represents. If it's a team if 12, maybe go to 10 with one on site per office + what remains.
looney417@reddit
2 or 3 help desk.
but it depends. you got a lot of old shit that breaks all the time? a bunch of software? got a ton of processes? if yes to a lot of those, maybe lean on more hands needed.
whats your budget? $$$$, you like smart people that know what they're doing? skip t1. pay them well, they might stay longer,
you like cheap labor? $$, 1 of each, maybe skip t3 (you have other IT teams yea? like an sysadmin, network, security etc? you can escalate to) might be a revolving door.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Thank you so much. We are willing to pay enough for the good ones. So I'm thinking about going for L3 and L2 mostly.
RunningAtTheMouth@reddit
I had 2 people supporting 250 users at my last employer. Roughly 50 office folks and 50 lab folks, and 150 shop users. The company was tighter than 2 coats of paint, and buying things like replacement PCs at 5 years was a battle.
I'm now part of a 2-person dept supporting 30 office and 45 shop. We're a lot more open to spending as needed, and are instructed to investigate investments. I do just as much work, but I'm not stressed about it at all.
So, as another commenter mentioned, find out WHAT you have to support, and figure out what it will take to support it. If the MSP spends 50 hours/week on support, you need two people.
I suspect you should over-staff a bit to start, because you won't have the tribal knowledge that the MSP has, so you'll have to learn as you go. Let them self-select out when it's time to move on and you'll wind up with a right-sized staff that knows the job.
And might I add - let the MSP handle things like patching, monitoring, etc. They'll be more efficient and better at it. In-house should handle the stuff specific to your organization. You should focus on the stuff that makes your company unique.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the advice. Will be considering this for sure.
TheGenericUser0815@reddit
It depends. Usually in a typical mixed environment I'd say one admin per 35 users. In your case that would make six admins.
poizone68@reddit
You have to figure out a few things, like what are the hours of support, SLAs and request volume, the scope of support. This will then also determine how you handle things like holiday cover, sick leave and people quitting.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
This is a valuable information. Thanks for that. I need to think about it as well before i design.
amang_admin@reddit
2 Lv 1, 1 Lv 2 and 1 Lv 3.
babywhiz@reddit
We have 1 L2 and 2 L3 for 300 people, 4 locations, same time zone. All 3 of us handle L1 tasks. Manufacturing.
deadnerd51@reddit
It really depends on how technical the staff are, what kind of level of service they expect, how much can be done remotely through ticket system and calls vs in person support.
For example, we serve a law firm of 150 staff, with about 30 or so partners. Lawyers are some of the least patient and most demanding, and are also absolutely not technical in any way. We have our IT director, a network and infrastructure guy who is also tier 3, and then 2 tier 1 technicians (although one is really a tier 2), and we are currently looking to hire another tier 1.
Ostendenoare@reddit
You have 3rd party support? Start with the amount of tickets/time spent and whatever services they charge for that you would need to cover. This should give you an idea... adjust as needed to cover holidays, sick time, travel, etc.
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Pretty much like 3-4 tickets per day. Mostly because I end up fixing it for them so they don't create a ticket. Only creates a ticket when I'm busy with my tasks . I don't want to do that anymore as my role recently changed.
MeetJoan@reddit
You’re not off, but the 1:50 rule is kinda a “nice on paper” thing.
For \~200 users, 3–4 people is usually fine if your environment is pretty clean (mostly SaaS, not too many fires). If you’ve got on-prem, lots of onboarding, or noisy users… you’ll feel understaffed fast.
Your L1/L2/L3 split makes sense, but at that size people will end up wearing multiple hats anyway. I’d think more like:
Also depends a lot on ticket volume and how chaotic things are.
You’re thinking about it the right way though
imjustacuteguyuwu@reddit (OP)
Thank you for the response, it's all SaaS. And we use Microsoft for all. So pretty basic setup.
cyber_egg@reddit
Also depends on if you’re planning for just support, or ongoing projects for new software / replacement equipment, upgrades etc.
i11icit@reddit
General rule of thumb , 1 x Level 1 for 100 staff - but as others have said, context matters.