mechanical engineer/fitter wanting to get into the IT world

[Semple]

Curious about this. What do you mean? Can you give any more detail about this?

I'm guessing that for many places in-house L1 is mostly dealing with Windows/account/various 3rd-party app "issues", and user "how do I?"s. I.e. supporting your own staff with their IT issues.

I guess in your case "L1" is referring to the support you offer your external customers having issues with your product(s)?

I'd be genuinely impressed if somebody managed to get AI to fix various Windows and 3rd-party app issues on a daily basis

You're correct. We have tens of thousands of L1 engineers situated globally, who's role will be to log a support call after the customer has phoned in. Depending on the issue (hardware or software) they will do some data collection and initial triage. If it's hardware related, such as a dead HDD or faulty mobo components, they can raise a warranty claim or arrange for a field engineer to go to the customers site.

L2 engineers, we also have thousands situated globally. They deal with less trivial hardware issues and focus more on software issues. Although most of the issues they resolve will be based on support guidance from the same issues seen before by other customers.

A huge amount of the above can be automated, or intelligence added to the product to essentially "repair" itself, or to arrange for hardware replacement/a field engineer to attend customer site. The idea then is that any issues AI cannot fix itself would automatically raise a case to perhaps an upper L2, or L3 level for further triage.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

A huge amount of the above can be automated, or intelligence added to the product to essentially "repair" itself, or to arrange for hardware replacement/a field engineer to attend customer site. The idea then is that any issues AI cannot fix itself would automatically raise a case to perhaps an upper L2, or L3 level for further triage.

Then the L2/L3 becomes the L1 for a while

 

[Semple]

Then the L2/L3 becomes the L1 for a while

yes I suppose in theory the L3 then becomes the first point of call.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Automation is good don’t get me wrong. I still think there’s a need for L1, L2s though as a whole.

So instead of paying an L2/L3 for their duties you pay a L3 to do a L1 job. That’s two L1s for the price of 2x L3s.

But on the flip side it just means you paying for 0x L1s and more L2s/L3s lol

L3s are going to hate been first port of call, they will tell you next that too much of their time is taken up on L1 calls ha ha

 

[Semple]

Automation is good don’t get me wrong. I still think there’s a need for L1, L2s though as a whole.

So instead of paying an L2/L3 for their duties you pay a L3 to do a L1 job. That’s two L1s for the price of 2x L3s.

But on the flip side it just means you paying for 0x L1s and more L2s/L3s lol

L3s are going to hate been first port of call, they will tell you next that too much of their time is taken up on L1 calls ha ha

If automation works as it should, then everything the L1/L2's do, won't be needed to be done by a human. It would also mean that whilst an L3 is then the first port of call, it won't be for petty things that the L1/L2 (automation) would have taken care of. There will be a support case with a clear description of the problem, and the necessary logs required to troubleshoot that problem.

An L1's basic role is to log a support case, and what i call script triage - as in they don't use their own knowledge/experience to troubleshoot a problem, but instead follow a script.

An L2's role may have slightly less of the "script triage", but will still only perform basic troubleshooting based on the training they've received.

L3 is where it switches to more of an engineering role, and our L3's are expected to be able to troubleshoot more advanced issues - things that would be very hard to automate.

 

[Burnsy2023]

The L1/L2/L3 model is starting to show it's age. If you look at SRE types of models where automation is engrained, then the need for people who can't just diagnose issues but also fix the issues is greatly diminished.