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Ask HN: What do startups do for internal tech support?

7 points by tfitzgerald ↗ HN
I've been wondering this for a while. It mostly interests me because tech support is what I've been doing for the past 5+ years; it's what I'm good at.

While there doesn't seem to be a shortage of desktop support / sys admin jobs for established companies in the San Francisco bay area, most startups seem to be hiring programmers (which makes sense).

So, what do startups do for internal tech support? Do they just do it themselves? Outsource / hire contractors?

I'd be interesting in hearing any insight, as I'm working on a 1-year (hopefully) plan to move to the San Francisco bay area and would love to work for a startup.

8 comments

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staunch
Do it themselves. It's not exactly difficult to manage a few laptops and monitors.
tfitzgerald
What happens when they grow beyond a few laptops and monitors?
veb
It depends on your budget. If you have next to nothing, then you should also grow with the technical knowledge required.
RyanGWU82
At PBworks, when we had about 10 people, we added the position "Head of Operations & IT." 97% of that job is handling operations for our production cluster, keeping it up and running 24/7. The other 3% is typical internal office IT stuff -- networking, email, security, "the printer doesn't work," etc. The tasks aren't all that related, but at a small company, everyone wears many hats.
namank
What kind of IT needs does a startup have? Usually whoever pays for or picks up or accepts delivery for the equipment ends up setting it up...

Email servers? Google Apps.

And the most important point - hackers are notorious for wanting control over their entire workstation. Admin rights for everything. I know I do.

Most startups have atleast one person who you can consider a hacker. They`ll do everything technical without a second thought - sometimes at the expense of their actual job...oh well

gettinstarted
The other comments are pretty much right on. Between the brainpower, google, tenacity it takes to be an early employee of a startup and everyones' personal networks, IT is going to be handled internally.

I'm sure during a big expansion stage, IT gets provisioned funds.

JonLim
Check out Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com)

They have their support team in-house, and they get a lot of freedom to help their customers out and are generally the people who drive the culture you find within their offices.

Fantastic group of people, even better company because of them.