There’s worse jobs out there. I’m not sure of your development job (or maybe you’re freelance), but I am not sure I’d leave a pure development job for a pure support job. Development can be high pressure and hard, support can be high pressure and stupidly easy.
In the end, frontline customer-facing support for a public product at a support farm is the worst support job. A support farm sells ousourced support to someone else on a thin margin, and tries to keep the floor with the minimum number of idle workers that will get them to their service level goal. The more common the service, the more likely you are to be abused by a caller. But then again, all you have to remember is: that jerkwad doesn’t even know you, so how could they say a meaningful thing about you?*
Above that, there’s directly supporting a product that’s produced by the company that employs you. You get the best information and support in these environments, and usually have more room to get promoted if you’re looking for a technical path. They’re still public facing, and there’s still a chance forl a lot of abuse. A company that keeps it’s support in-house usually cares about their support, so there’s a better chance for of lots of idle time than at a server farm. But they’re still usually understaffed when the shit hits the fan. If you’re working for crooks, it can get particularly stressful. If’ you’re working at one of the support farms from the preceding paragraph, at least you can think “hey, it’s just a contract, maybe I can move to another support contract and get away from this awful product”. If you’re not working for crooks or at a support farm, you can usually move up pretty easily.
Internal helpdesk is probably the cushiest position, but you usually had better want to be management in order to get promoted far. The callcenter still needs to worry about the costs and availability, but they’ll usually err on the side of having too many people handy, even if it’s an outsourced provider**. Because if everyone’s waiting on hold, work’s not getting done. Internal helpdesk is usually way more strict than either of the above in what you can do with your computer and spare time. But, that will still depend on the company, and it often pays better than other frontline support jobs.
I’ve been doing some sort of tech support for nearly 20 years now. Even though I’m an “admin”, I’m still supporting someone. At my current job, I’m the whole shebang. I’m the only person answering the phone for most of my shift. At one point, if you called during my shift, your support tech was the CTO of the company***. Since then, they’ve gotten a real CTO, but even he answers support tickets occasionally. These days, I’m just development/admin/support, and not an officer. Thank god. When I was CTO, I’d check out of most meetings after half an hour saying “gonna go work tickets”. Weekly officer’s meetings are far worse than any support job.
Seriously, I’d rather listen to anyone yell at my alter-ego (I’m not using my real name on the phone, then they’ll know who they’re talking to!) about whatever service or product than listen to an argument over our proposed marketing strategy and why we can’t afford it.
- And in the end, the best (and even some of the worst) companies ban customers that are repeatedly abusive from calling support. It’s pretty enjoyable hanging up on those fools.
** Seriously, my brother works at an outsourced internal helpdesk, and he’s been paid to browse the internet on his phone for an entire shift just in case the phone system comes up.
*** Otherwise known as the admin who didn’t bother getting another job, and decided he’d just go down with the ship. Come to find out, it didn’t quite sink.