Vox Media’s Eric Working as IT Support

Handling a Work from Home staff isn’t easy, but it’s presumable.

It’s not wrong to say that no firm can exist today without having a knowledgeable IT support team. Whether you’re willing to run a website, create a solid technological structure, and keep things running even at the most stressful times. A knowledgeable IT support staff can assure things don’t become chaotic at the worst time. Or if it happens, then there is always somebody to manage it.

We asked Vox Media’s Eric Arredondo, IT administrator, to brief us a little about himself and his work.

 

 

What is Your Job at Vox Media?

Well, I am an IT administrator at Vox Media. I am responsible for supporting and managing the internal systems, hardware, and applications to keep the company running. My team’s duties cover a broad range of requirements to support our several departments and networks, from hardware asset management to employee email support or account creation. Generally, our job is to help every staff put their best work.

What Difficulties You Faced in Your Job During the Pandemic?

Our prime motive has remained almost the same, but supporting our company completely remote has introduced some challenges. We certainly ship much more than ever. Supporting company’s present work-from-home environment and putting our best to provide the same level of assistance as we would in the office. We try to arrange any equipment essential for employees to get their work done. Also, try to imitate the office experience at home as best as possible.

But, sometimes, the little tasks that used to take some minutes to do in person have proven to be the most challenging. For instance, in the office, I could just go to a user’s desk and help right away. But now it’s much more difficult, talking to a user and troubleshooting over Zoom or Slack. Plus, in the office, we can easily monitor the network that the staff connects to and uses. That is simpler than dealing with each user’s ISPs and router problems separately.

However, we have always been a quite remote-friendly firm, which helped us with the switch to entirely remote work. And it’s certainly made us more efficient than ever.

What Hardware Gears Do You and Your Team Use?

Essentially, everything we require to do can be done by our computers. Most of our administration work being done through SAAS (software as a service) apps o other software. I use an M1-equipped MacBook Air, and while I have a desk with a monitor, I can work from anywhere. I own a mechanical keyboard, a Keychron K2, that is placed at my desk with amazing lights and several key travels. It’s something I perhaps wouldn’t have put on my office desk, but at home. I’ll cozily type on a loud mechanical keyboard.

I also have an Apple Magic Trackpad 2, as I use it for an external mouse, and a Rain Design mStand360 to support my computer at my desk. I could probably sit on a more supportive desk chair, but I use a Supreme director’s chair in my WFH. It is because I like its design and its comfy nature.

I use a Dymo LabelWriter 4XL Printer. It has also been most useful during WFH in terms of the previously mentioned shipments.

Which Software Do You and Your Colleagues Use?

We use Slack as well as Gmail and other Google Workspace tools. Apart from using these tools ourselves, we, as admins, also support and guide the several users who use them.

We work on Zendesk for our ticketing service. We use it to handle all the requests received from the company. Also, we use JAMF, a hardware management tool installed on all company computers. It is useful for widespread asset management, pushing out policies and software, and installing our different security gears remotely.

If Someone Wants to Get into IT, Your Suggestions for Them?

I got my training, skills, and experience from my retail work. But there are a variety of online resources, such as ITPro.tv, that may help them out. They can get an idea of what companies currently expect from an IT executive. Also, learn what skills can be developed. They can opt for online learning centers to learn IT standards and certifications. Also, they can prefer tutorials on Lynda (LinkedIn learning) or even YouTube for concerned applications.

The work is quite equally distributed between technical knowledge and customer service. So, they also need to be good at communications, being able to support and guide with both confidence and empathy.

Meta Description

Today, almost every company runs with technology, so they always need a tech support staff to manage their IT work. Tech support is also vital during pandemics.

Source :- https://karenmintonwp.wordpress.com/2021/05/31/vox-medias-eric-working-as-it-support/

Alice Martin arrived on the cyber security scene in the early 2000s when virus and malware were still new and slowly evolving. Her longtime affair with writing with an interest in the cybersecurity industry, combined with her IT degree, has contributed to experience several aspects of security suite industry such as blogging at norton.com/setup or mcafee.com/activate or office.com/setup