Describe MSP life using only one sentence

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VNDMG@reddit

“I wish I was working in-house IT”

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

After getting layed if at my last MSP I’m moving to in house. Never again will I care about billable hours and worrying about 1000 different clients with vastly different setups and policies.

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In house has its own problems. Like, ego can be a thing you deal with in an msp, but you are viewed as harmless. In-house, you may have to watch yourself. You fix the thing noone else has been able to fix for five years and, suddenly, all the people you work with are convinced you did it on purpose to make them look bad, they think you are coming for their jobs, now. Just like msp, there are good and bad in house.

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Altruistic_Law_2346@reddit

At some point you don't give a fuck and start telling those people how it is, professionally of course.

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

I’m at that point. I don’t want your damn job just stop making my life harder.

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

Haha MSP work has made me an ego monster. Stubborn as hell and I require hard proof that I’m wrong. I already have the proof ready to go I’m right and you’re wrong haha. Like 75% of my job is proving the network is not the problem.

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Jadithslimrivven@reddit

I'm the same way, that sysadmin life right? Unfortunately, that's even more of a threat and more evidence you just want their job. It's basically insecurity that comes from incompetence. I could not imagine living like that, in constant fear someone will find you a fraud. That's why I continue to learn.

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TheJesusGuy@reddit

> suddenly, all the people you work with are convinced you did it on purpose to make them look bad, they think you are coming for their jobs Found the American worker.

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Jadithslimrivven@reddit

guilty, lol

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HailYurii@reddit

Worked as an in house role and was laid off after 1.5 years each time after rolling out successful major projects. Worked at my Msp for the last 5 years and have never had to worry about my job.

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

Yeah well I worked at mine for 7 and it was just after the 5 year mark when things started going down hill for the company. Sold to PE tried to grow too fast. I paid for it.

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United-Objective2149@reddit

I switched to in house government IT job and it was even worse than my MSP lol. Thankfully I found a much better one less than a year later.

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

Haha well government schools and hospitals are also over worked and under paid.

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links_revenge@reddit

Underpaid? Yeah probably compared to some private sector gigs, but the benefits and pension make up for a lot of it. Over worked? Nah, but I may have just lucked out there. Some districts are dumpster fires and mine (currently) is not. I'll bail after I'm fully vested if things go to shit.

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

I’ve done some work for local governments. Man is it bad like zero security until they get hacked. Then it’s like bare minimum and you gotta figure out how to get the stuff they still have from the 70s compliant because god forbid it not be supported.

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links_revenge@reddit

I feel like govt's are somehow worse than schools. You'd think they'd take dibs on budget for themselves, but so many patch jobs out there.

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psmgx@reddit

"the point is that you know and we don't have to know"

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AegorBlake@reddit

Fucked beyond repair

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StiffAssedBrit@reddit

No calls for ages until you arrange to be on a site all day, then your phone goes ballistic and everything blows up!

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bbqwatermelon@reddit

"Fuck your weekend"

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_haha_oh_wow_@reddit

"FFS, what now?"

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badaz06@reddit

My most frustrating one was when I was an ops manager over level 1 and 2 doing routers. The design engineer (lv 4) was using a routing protocol that wasn't working quite right, so the lv 3 engineer remapped the network with a different protocol that fixed the issue....however...that pissed off the level 4 guy who put it back to his way....then we got tickets and the lv 3 guy redid it.... Cust was obviously mad and understandably so. I was too. So I grabbed them both and made them talk. Neither side held anything back....it was brutal. A week later the lv 3 guy passed his CCIE, which the lv 4 had failed 3 times. The Lv 4 guy shut up, and we stuck to the lv3 engineers' design.

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Circumpunctilious@reddit

Interesting read. I was the underling in a similar story except we weren’t forced to talk to each other. I think the guy eventually alienated enough people that the next time he made a significant error they fired him. While I don’t think management was focused on “unsticking” my area, that was the outcome. I wish he’d been easier to work with because he \*was\* smart, but our problems were much easier to fix after he was gone.

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Leinheart@reddit

"Slavery has less stress and better benefits."

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Adept_Strategy_9545@reddit

Hey now, this is racist and diminishes the lived experiences of those who were actually enslaved, as well as their descendants. Let’s not trivialize slavery.

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Leinheart@reddit

I fully understand what I said was entirely fucked up and wrong, but a decade an a half in this industry across three employers has destroyed my physical, mental, and emotional health at the ripe age of 35 in ways that I did not think to be feasibly possible. Between the high blood pressure, generalized anxiety, and waking up in a cold sweat once a week, I sincerely doubt I'll live another 15 and see 50. What I said wasn't correct, proper, empathetic or right. I don't mean to dimish what others have gone through, and are going through to this day. But, I am absolutely destroyed man. I wouldnt wish this sort of burnout on my worst enemy.

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Adept_Strategy_9545@reddit

I really suggest you educate yourself on what slavery was actually like.

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Leinheart@reddit

Okay, sorry to have upset you so badly.

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nekimbej@reddit

Hey man, I totally get what you were trying to say. There's no need to be an ass like him, you're saying something that is true for a lot of people and you have some pretty tough personal experience to back it up. He may not have liked your analogy but the very high cost and impact of this modern stress is no joke. I hope you can improve your health and life sir.

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Leinheart@reddit

Thanks, I'm actually seeing my doctor about the high blood pressure later today.

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sublimeprince32@reddit

I believe you just had a cow. Sir, this is a Wendy's.

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elpollodiablox@reddit

I see you are immune to hyperbole.

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myISPsuck@reddit

Pussy

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Eastern-Macaron-6622@reddit

"I hate Line of Business apps!"

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tenormore@reddit

Please complete your timesheets

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Top_Hedgehog_1880@reddit

Can't, I'm on-call.

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Eastern-Macaron-6622@reddit

oh lord I miss using that as an excuse when I worked at a MSP

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

The true MSP lifestyle.

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HailYurii@reddit

Glad I’m only on call two weeks out of the year.

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Wabbyyyyy@reddit

I’m on call one full week every month. 24/7. Shit blows

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HailYurii@reddit

Yeah my msp isn’t 24-7 that must be rough.

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RestartRebootRetire@reddit

"Greed made me like Webroot."

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EasyTangent@reddit

Sisyphean torture.

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purplemonkeymad@reddit

Everything is on fire, but I'm still a bit chilly so can you help me start some more fires?

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whatsforsupa@reddit

“We charge HOW MUCH for 30 minutes of my time?”

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timbotheny26@reddit

Depending on the client I feel like that could potentially be good or bad.

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WayneH_nz@reddit

1/3 for worker, 1/3 for business expenses and growth 1/3 for tax and profit. Is how companies i have worked for justified it.

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bbbbbthatsfivebees@reddit

With what we charge hourly... Yeah this is actually an accurate and fair assessment, and I'm actually OK with it. For once I'm actually getting pair fairly for what the company charges for my labor.

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samon33@reddit

A multiple of 3 is a pretty standard ratio for most professional services firms (accountants, lawyers, MSPs, etc). Most employees greatly underestimate how much it costs to actually employ someone (expenses/overheads), so they see their chargeout rate and assume the owners must be just swimming in cash, but that's rarely reality.

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pabl083@reddit

“When you have a second”

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FreeShat@reddit

Friday 4:47pm

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timbotheny26@reddit

Nah that's too generous, it's probably more like: Friday 4:58 PM

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Those six words are always followed by chaos.

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DialsMavis_TheReal@reddit

Is the sixth word here in the room with us?

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TheJesusGuy@reddit

In my experience. I email our MSP on a Tuesday about an urgent matter on a project they're doing for us and don't hear back until 9 days later. "When you have a week"?

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Parlett316@reddit

"I hate my life and want to die"

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Computer-Nerd_@reddit

What do you mean? This directory was full if installation cruft left over from the original install by HP! I was running out of inodes on the root volume so I ran 'rm -rf' to clean it up. None of my people here use anything in /dev anyway. Now, stop with the bullshit and tell me why your system isn't booting!

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Computer-Nerd_@reddit

"No I didn't change anything, it just started flaking out..."

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butterbal1@reddit

I would rather slam my dick in a door repeatedly than work for one.

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jrwnetwork@reddit

Talking clients off the ledge after the sales guy lied to them.

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sroop1@reddit

That sales guy? The owner's nephew.

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jamblia@reddit

Where I am the head of sales is the son of the director.

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Chocolate_Bourbon@reddit

This. Our CEO eventually held an all-sales meeting and told them that the last big deal promised all sorts of things that didn’t exist. If anything like that happened again, he’d start firing people. It did happen again though, albeit perhaps not as publicly. And there were no firings that I was aware of.

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NeezDuts900@reddit

Back when I was on help desk at an MSP we had a humongous client that wanted to meet a bunch of people before signing on. I had been on help desk the longest there so they dragged me to the client site. I didn't really have to do anything except just sit there and look pretty I guess. The client was asking our sales guy all kinds of questions and the sales guy was lying right to his face. He asked things like how many people we had on the help desk and our sales guy said about 20. We had 8. It was only then that I realized what the problem was and why we were so overworked. It was this grimy fuck who was selling things and ideas that didn't exist in reality to every Tom Dick and Harry.

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vogelke@reddit

> how many people we had on the help desk... When he said 20, I would have innocently said "Wow, I've only met 8. Where are the other 12 sitting?"

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phungus1138@reddit

Our ceo would tell us they were always interviewing our potential replacements. It created a cutthroat environment with a crazy high turnover.

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Vinegarinmyeye@reddit

Absolutely maddening when you know that sales weasel got a juicy commission bonus lying through his teeth, and you end up being the sap that has to jury-rig some convoluted nonsense so it will actually kinda do the thing yon sales dickhead said it will do... I'm totally not bitter about it or anything...

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Wafflelisk@reddit

A tale as old as time

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Leinheart@reddit

I encourage them off that ledge. Make the sales guy lose his bonus. Fuck him.

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Agitated-Fly3564@reddit

Its always them man.

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sedition666@reddit

Most are gone before anything serious happens so why do they care

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

I’ve always been forced to somehow make the lie reality out of my ass and way over hour budget.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

The unofficial MSP superpower nobody asked for.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

And somehow engineering has to turn the sales pitch into reality.

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Agitated-Fly3564@reddit

Damn thats actually the best answer

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Key-Chemistry2022@reddit

"Never stop never stopping"

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Nakatomi2010@reddit

The constant fireman.

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Turbojelly@reddit

It was DNS all along.

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I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY@reddit

what do you mean, you're not an expert on this obscure app i found on google yesterday? it's critical to my business operations.

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clubfungus@reddit

Obscure app...that hasn't been updated since 1996, has to run as administrator, and saves it's database in c:\program files\shittyapp.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Bonus points if they need it fixed by tomorrow.

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Alaknar@reddit

If they needed it tomorrow, they would've come tomorrow, keep up!

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Loveangel1337@reddit

Tomorrow? Lucky you. Mine need it fixed by yesterday.

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Jesburger@reddit

Tomorrow is the most important day of the year

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B3392O@reddit

This royally irks me, but reminds me of the one exception I have A client is a fence company using custom software developed by one of their founders, specifically for their business. Has a really adorable fence-related name. Dev passed many years ago and there is 0 documentation or repos for it. It produces weird issues all the time, was a nightmare to get working on Windows 11, but it really is such an in-depth and well-written program that I go out of my way to support these folks with their weird app because it's cool and quirky and part of someone's legacy. Yes we have a contingency plan for 2-3 tools they could use to replace their all-in-one specialty fence software in case it just stops working and I can't fix it.

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I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY@reddit

yeah, i think that's a different situation. lots of companies have some piece of software that they've been using forever and it really is critical to their business. the one that kills me is when they haven't been using it forever. they just started using it, and they don't really know if it's going to work for them or not. and when it doeesn't work for them, instead of realizing that it doesn't work for them they call me and get frustrated with me that i can't make it work for them.

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rujopt@reddit

“Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything, I am an expert.” https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg

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03263@reddit

I saw this when it was new. After 12 years in the industry it really hits different.

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NeezDuts900@reddit

You know who doesn't build reliable online applications? State government agencies. And my old MSP we had a client that had a lot of legal obligations to our state government and they had to submit a lot of paperwork through these portals on state agency websites. There was this absolute bitch of a user at this client who everyone absolutely hated to take calls from and she called one day complaining that one of the applications that she was trying to use was giving her errors. I remote in and she shows me that she is trying to sign in to this online portal from a state government website and it's giving some kind of esoteric error like "ERROR: {null} return, ref 0x8790876 allocation mismatch" I tried all the usual basic troubleshooting like clearing the cache, using a different browser, I had to try a different computer, nothing was working and she was getting the same error every single time she tried to sign into this portal. I told her that it was an application that we don't have any controlla or Providence over and she would therefore have to contact somebody from the state government agency to get it fixed because this is clearly an issue with the website. She lost her fucking mind man. She got so upset and she started doing that thing where when someone gets really mad they start talking really quickly. She had deadlines, this is not acceptable, we hire you guys to help us with computer problems, so on and so forth. I tried to explain to her very politely that this is something that we have no control over and we can't work on this portal because it's owned by the state. She hangs up without saying anything, and 30 minutes later my CEO calls me and said that he just got a very upset call from one of the VIPs over at the client and asked what was going on. This fucking bitch of a woman had called her manager who then called my CEO and said that I was refusing to help her with a technical issue with no further elaboration. I explained the situation and thankfully my CEO was understanding and he talked the manager down.

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Agitated-Fly3564@reddit

"You're not? Oh no!"

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git_und_slotermeyer@reddit

Killing my software with Windows

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FanaticalHelpParis@reddit

"I want the best servers, computers, apps, and licences, but I am only paying 20$"

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raptorshadow@reddit

My head hurts and it won't stop.

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pon_de_elf@reddit

‘Why can’t we make the windows home machine we brought from pc world, much cheaper than you can get them work?’

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AniBMagal@reddit

It's 458pm. I bet Craig calls to report an issue before 5.

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Phohammar@reddit

Thats why I always used to do the 7.30-4pm shift. Just be conveniently filling the dishwasher at 3:58pm and hey look, its 4pm - quitting time!

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HailYurii@reddit

Don’t answer problem solved

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boli99@reddit

Folk desperate to have a loooooooong phone call and a time-consuming site visit for something that could have been an email and a remote shell session.

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Mrpuddikin@reddit

Just a heads up this is just an ad for OPs subreddit btw

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tr3kilroy@reddit

Different day, same shit

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

I was busy, exhilarated, stressed, tired but I was never bored.

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dartheagleeye@reddit

Never-ending dumpster fire

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TeramindTeam@reddit

i remember getting a ticket for a total network outage just to find out someone unplugged the main switch to plug in a space heater. msp life is basically just playing detective for things that dont make any sense

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Waste_Monk@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDSZkZfrtI

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SandmanPC@reddit

Everything, everywhere, all at once.

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FromYoTown@reddit

IT sweat shops.

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bbbbbthatsfivebees@reddit

"Form trauma-bonds with your coworkers and frequently patronize the local liquor store".

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indvs3@reddit

"Continuously applying workarounds instead of permanent solutions is a valid business model!"

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sublimeprince32@reddit

Uuuuuuuugh. I've quit 2 different MSPs because of this. Sever 2008? Sure, we can support that.

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bbbbbthatsfivebees@reddit

I am SO HAPPY that I am at an MSP that is actively pushing all of our clients to supported environments. We're actively in the process of moving a client off of their current mixture of Ubuntu Server 16.04 and 18.04 to 26.04. In the very near future we're also completely re-doing a client's infrastructure to finally move them onto a vendor-supported Server 2026 setup. Our current policy is "If we make a recommendation and you deny it, it's billable if it breaks".

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DrunkenGolfer@reddit

The art of consulting: Where there is a problem, thee is money to be made prolonging it.

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Moontoya@reddit

Nothing endures quite like a temporary fix

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NecroAssssin@reddit

The most permanent fix in IT is the one that is only supposed to last for 2 weeks.

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Mostly__Relevant@reddit

Unfortunately not just specific to MSPs lol

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IngwiePhoenix@reddit

Not _exactly_ one sentence but: "Help, Outlook isn't opening anymore" posted as a ticket, 1h before service hours, as a high emergency ticket, by the customer.

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apple_tech_admin@reddit

“You gotta a second for a Teams call?”

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Renpsy@reddit

Why doesn't this thing work exactly the way I wanted it too, that you told me won't work the way I wanted it too, before I decided to do it anyway? Bonus point if "AI told me I could do it this way, just do it the way the AI says."

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HearthCore@reddit

Convincing management to get a consultant in our org involved with process fallacies because there’s no trust in their own peers?

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altodor@reddit

As the client: I don't care about you at all, you're just here to do my bitch work.

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Historical_Score_842@reddit

The vendor says it’s our fault but it’s clearly the vendors fault and the client is pissed at us and not the vendor

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dracotrapnet@reddit

Turn based denial game.

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MacrossX@reddit

You are indispensable and easily fired simultaneously

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halford2069@reddit

" You'll be visiting 5 different crazy clients with 5 different shit house underfunded setups today. "

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KidGriffey@reddit

Please schedule firmware upgrades after hours so you can also do tier 1 IT ad hoc

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thumper242@reddit

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary solution”

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zaphod777@reddit

"~~Trust but~~ verify"

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punkwalrus@reddit

"Need to speak to our tech person? That's Deborah. Yeah, she's even got a computer at her desk and everything. Like living in a Jetsons cartoon with Deborah." And Deborah is their 75 year old secretary who knows Wordperfect 5 for DOS. "So, Deborah. Your website SSL payment gate is being rejected by PayPal because the cert does not support 256 bit encryption, and PayPal has upped their requirements. The site is running Cold Fusion 4, which doesn't support TLS... Hello?"

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dadoftheclan@reddit

You're absolutely right, I'm so sorry about that.

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marklein@reddit

Life is easy.

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Endlesstrash1337@reddit

Fuck.

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terAREya@reddit

You do tasks for hours that you could do in minutes because....billable time

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sick2880@reddit

When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency.

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Quadling@reddit

You touched it, you own it.

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Kaffarov@reddit

Billable hours to track your utilization that management uses as their metrics against you.

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st0ut717@reddit

‘But did you update the ticket’

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Wynter_born@reddit

87 open tickets in queue.

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TaliesinWI@reddit

"You put out the fire, but the client says they won't pay for you to find the arsonist."

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AnonAqueous@reddit

They will however pay you to put out the same fire quarterly for the life of the equipment.

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TaliesinWI@reddit

Yup. Maddening.

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anonpf@reddit

Yuck

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Moontoya@reddit

Herculean, Sisyphean, Cassandrean.

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jfoust2@reddit

"We make more money by doing less."

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HailYurii@reddit

My Msp is good. Sorry yours all suck.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Sounds like you've found the unicorn MSP.

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WashedPinkBourbon@reddit

I also work for a unicorn MSP. Small company. Rare breed tbh.

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TylerJWhit@reddit

I want a fortune 500 network for the price of a ma and pa shop.

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WashedPinkBourbon@reddit

Fucking real

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Enterprise expectations, startup budgets.

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WashedPinkBourbon@reddit

“Hey, we’ve got a new employee starting today - can you get their accounts and laptop setup?”

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PurpleFlerpy@reddit

Incident response generates more billable hours than preventing incidents.

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CoolPickledDaikons@reddit

Imagine not having the support structure of a real company behind you

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gadget850@reddit

Pissing on the fire create by the previous MSP.

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MidgardDragon@reddit

Fuck.

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MonsterTruckCarpool@reddit

Sales hooks em, ops cooks em

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musiquededemain@reddit

Back in 2014, I worked for an MSP for several months. Never again. Managing multiple clients with radically different environments and missing documentation is just not how my brain works. Yes, I learned a lot but the stress was incredible and just not worth it.

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OkBrilliant8092@reddit

Technical sales guy says “I’ll circle back to you with an answer….”

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derpman86@reddit

"While I've got you" Always happens when it was a quick knock off in 5 minutes job.

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suppaduppasleuth@reddit

I'll get to that tomorrow.

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flucayan@reddit

Tomorrow becomes 2 months from now when I'm onsite again if no one asks. New guys gl if you end up there before me.

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MortadellaKing@reddit

4:57pm, boss calls "insert pointless conversation that could be had tomorrow here"

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ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit

"Client's cheap and old infrastructure multiplied by a thousand clients"

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apathetic_admin@reddit

"Can you teach X how to do that so we only have to lean on you for bigger projects?" Every. Single. Request.

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purerddt2025@reddit

Oh I love this though. I'll write detailed instructions on adding a user or archiving a customer file. And they invariably mess it up. Or the person it was assigned to gets replaced and the new person is terrified of clicking on something. So the training process starts again. Getting paid to read my own instructions is annoying but billable.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

> is annoying but billable. Print that out and put it above the door, thats MSP life.

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purerddt2025@reddit

Dang. I didn't even realize. Good catch!

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Zeggitt@reddit

"We're gonna double your workload but theres no money for raises in the budget."

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igiveupmakinganame@reddit

from the other side of things they always say: “i’m going to close this ticket i didn’t resolve and open a new one”

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DeusFaeder@reddit

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

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Smasher_Devourer@reddit

Everything's on fire, all day every day...70+ clients...worst "IT" company I've ever worked for, including the desk manager...racist, misogynistic piece of shit. Half-assed stacks and networks with equipment/servers/VM's over 10 years old. On boarding new clients with ZERO documentation about their setups...yeah just figure it out when they call! Oh hey you're a Tier 1 and you're already working on 3 things for other clients, but this one special client, who's only like #20 on the money list emailed the owner, instead of you know, calling the desk or submitting a ticket, so I need somebody to call them NOW and fix their fucking Outlook. Well I see you have 12,000 unread emails, and your OST file is almost 60GB's...wonder what the problem is?? Oh yeah Mr. Tier 1, go ahead and hop on their firewall too and just make some changes.. Documentation? What's that? Oh the office has had the same chairs for 10 years, but if we get new chairs, it's coming out of your bonuses. Oh your laptop is 7 years old and failing? Sorry we can't replace it, even though we made 3 million dollars last year. Complete joke of a company, and is the first and only MSP I will ever work for. I got paid way more and did half the work in 2016 than I did at this place. I'd be a Tier 2 or 3/sysadmin at any other company with what I had to do every day. I gave everything I had to this place for almost 4 years, and got let go a month ago due to health issues, directly caused by the stress, and honestly, I've never been more relieved. I could go on and on, but those of you who have worked for a place like this understand. Sorry for the rant, definitely more than one sentence lmao. I know some of you work for "Unicorn" MSP's, and that's great, but my experience was pure freaking hell. Never again...

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WretchedMisteak@reddit

Having worked at MSPs for 25 years, the one line we always used, "sorry that's not in scope of the service, we can do it as a T&M engagement."

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AnarchyOctopus@reddit

A launch pad for a better life.

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Barbarian_818@reddit

"he's our top salesman and he needs admin privileges" Followed inevitably by : "Our top sales guy is complaining about slow internet"

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OvationUltraFan@reddit

Hurry up and wait as this is urgent.

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ItaJohnson@reddit

It is hell on earth.

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ledow@reddit

"Fix the symptoms and then run for the hills, leaving only an additional hourly bill if they want you to do more."

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Adam_Kearn@reddit

“I don’t have the time to let you connect to fix my outlook”. Then proceeds to complain to their manager that we have not fixed the issue dispute attempting 4 times and getting rejected.

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Trust_8067@reddit

It's 9am, I better check the overnight alerts before going back to sleep until noon.

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chedstrom@reddit

Murphy's law is the only playbook here.

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EvenGodsForget@reddit

Everything is on fire, and that’s the way it should be.

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hihcadore@reddit

Don’t bring this up at end of day it’ll just generate more work.

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Ermmahhhgerrrd@reddit

It's fucking brutal and I don't want to do it again.

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DEADfishbot@reddit

Billable utilisation

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Beautiful_Ad_4813@reddit

“You got time to hop on a teams call?”

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neucjc@reddit

Ugh.

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doctorscurvy@reddit

You’re in a flow state with a complicated issue and the phone rings with another client which you’re not allowed to ignore because the other techs are already on calls.

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lithium2@reddit

I dont care if their whole phone system is down they don't pay us enough to talk to you for 2hrs

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barkode15@reddit

Incompetent owner following whatever slop Gary Pica/TruMethods was peddling at the time.

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pjtexas1@reddit

You were here 6 months ago, now x doesn't work.

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razaeru@reddit

Billable

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ItsNotUButItsNotNotU@reddit

I worked for an “MSP” like this, and it was total bullshit. We had to bill at least 35 hours per week, and had no leeway to make something non-billable for a client, even when we were fixing something that we broke. The worst was when a client would complain about hours billed to their account manager, and the account manager would go mark my hours as non-billable instead of issuing a credit to the client, which would then throw off my billable metrics. Now I work for a different MSP that showed me how great a *real* MSP can be to work for. The key is that things are *actually managed*. No trying to sell solutions to the client, no fighting over billable hours, no cheap shortcuts instead of actually fixing the problem. We’re expected to do the right thing, even if it takes longer or is more work, and the client has no objection because they’re not paying any extra. We generally don’t even have to ask permission, we just give an FYI to the client they were doing X because Y. I realize most MSPs aren’t this way, but damn do I feel lucky to have found somewhere good to work.

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Internet-of-cruft@reddit

My company was like that. We were incredibly small, but were incredibly profitable considering our size because the overarching theme was "Do what's right, make the client happy". This also came with "Be selective in what work you choose to do and be prepared to say no for scope creep". Then they got acquired and now they're squeezing blood from the stone. Any project, any size, whether we've done it or not. Customer asks "While you're doing X, can you look at Y?" Yes, every time, and bleed ourselves dry on doing unbilled work. Scopes are horrifically non-specific and expose ourselves unnecessarily. Risk is baked in, but it's basically a rounding error. I genuinely loved where I worked, the people I worked with (we truly treated each other like family, sans toxicity), the work I did, and the clients I worked with.

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heroik-red@reddit

Over promise, under deliver.

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crshovrd@reddit

“Quick question…”

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jjaAK3eG@reddit

You didn't meet your billable hours quota

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nihilogic@reddit

Charge as much as you can while providing little to no value.

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Brave_Candidate_6857@reddit

Drinking from a hose

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Ch4rl13_P3pp3r@reddit

I can describe it in one word - Hell

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clicker666@reddit

At least it's not retail.

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GlobalAd7103@reddit

Ill spend thousands on vacations- fuck my infrastructure it should just work.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Budget for vacations: approved. Budget for upgrades: denied.

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andrea_ci@reddit

Read this with Avasarala's voice: Those. Fucking. Users.

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Followed immediately by: "I didn't change anything."

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ilrosewood@reddit

Too damn cold in the winter.

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Adept_Strategy_9545@reddit

/r/lostredditors

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Glad to see so many MSPs sharing their experiences. We have similar discussions happening in r/MSPHub as well.

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N7Valor@reddit

"This is fine."

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

Every MSP engineer's daily mantra.

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PsychoholicSlag@reddit

Fuck!

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Osmondo@reddit

What fire shall I put out next

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Last-Salary-6012@reddit (OP)

The answer is always the one you just ignored

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Final_Tune3512@reddit

Here take this ticket.

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CollegeFootballGood@reddit

Had an old coworker who would end almost every shift saying “what a day” in our Teams group chat

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Agent_DekeShaw@reddit

Neverending and thankless.

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imightbetired@reddit

Can you quickly do "bla bla" because it's urgent, I'm going to lunch.

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MyThinkerThoughts@reddit

Everything, everywhere, all at once.

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delioroman@reddit

Sh*t show I like to say working for MSPs is like watching a bedroom fan at full speed and everyone throwing sh*t at it and everyone getting covered in it, and smiling. Some not.

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