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There is another pitfall in the layered support structure: how would you hire, train, or otherwise produce L2 support engineers? You cannot hire someone direct

There is another pitfall in the layered support structure: how would you hire, train, or otherwise produce L2 support engineers? You cannot hire someone directly as L2, as there is a learning curve for company- and product-specific issues, and a freshly hired "L2" would have to learn. However, they are shielded from the most frequent issues by a hoard of L1s and thus cannot learn about the typical problem areas or troubleshooting approaches. So they have to either graduate from L1s or accept a downgrade from being a developer.

Galanwe 2y ago
There are usually a number of people in L1 roles looking to transition to more development. You can have them be L2 by having 1/3 of their time spent contributing to bug fixes and small features of the software so they get to know it better. I dont think they would have to come from L1 from the same company / project though. Experience does allow one to learn faster, communicate more efficiently, etc. I think it's also good practice to have devs rotates on some small shifts of L1/2 so they don't get out of touch with the reality of maintaining their stack.
magicalhippo 2y ago
> You cannot hire someone directly as L2 We've managed to do that by recruiting from our customers. During support cases and such we'll notice someone is more technical, and then at some point approach them with an offer. This way they already know our software well and can get fairly straight into a L2 position. Of course in the start they'll get some more L1 stuff and such, but it significantly reduces the learning curve. Customers aren't too miffed as the alternative would almost always be that they'd go to a competitor.
cwbriscoe 2y ago
Business Analysts can fit the L2 role. Where I work, they are the interface between the end users and the developers. They usually come from the either the business side or the support center. And if they came from the support center, they usually have prior experience as an end user. However, I can see how that wouldn't work out for all industries.
crabbone 2y ago
To me, it looks, like this is contingent on the kind of product they need to support. For instance, in storage business, L2 support are often paid more than developers (and are very hard to find!) They usually come from the development side of things, attracted sometimes by being hired in a different capacity (eg. being a consultant running their own consultancy business rather than being a direct hire), some like to go on business trips (this kind of work often involves being on the customer's site, physically plugging and unplugging equipment etc.) In medical s/w development, L2 can be nurses or doctors, they might be attracted to this position due to relatively low load (compared to clinical medicine), flexible schedule etc. I don't think there is / possible a single answer to how to find these kinds of specialists.

Galanwe 2y ago

There are usually a number of people in L1 roles looking to transition to more development. You can have them be L2 by having 1/3 of their time spent contributing to bug fixes and small features of the software so they get to know it better. I dont think they would have to come from L1 from the same company / project though. Experience does allow one to learn faster, communicate more efficiently, etc. I think it's also good practice to have devs rotates on some small shifts of L1/2 so they don't get out of touch with the reality of maintaining their stack.

magicalhippo 2y ago

> You cannot hire someone directly as L2 We've managed to do that by recruiting from our customers. During support cases and such we'll notice someone is more technical, and then at some point approach them with an offer. This way they already know our software well and can get fairly straight into a L2 position. Of course in the start they'll get some more L1 stuff and such, but it significantly reduces the learning curve. Customers aren't too miffed as the alternative would almost always be that they'd go to a competitor.

cwbriscoe 2y ago

Business Analysts can fit the L2 role. Where I work, they are the interface between the end users and the developers. They usually come from the either the business side or the support center. And if they came from the support center, they usually have prior experience as an end user. However, I can see how that wouldn't work out for all industries.

crabbone 2y ago

To me, it looks, like this is contingent on the kind of product they need to support. For instance, in storage business, L2 support are often paid more than developers (and are very hard to find!) They usually come from the development side of things, attracted sometimes by being hired in a different capacity (eg. being a consultant running their own consultancy business rather than being a direct hire), some like to go on business trips (this kind of work often involves being on the customer's site, physically plugging and unplugging equipment etc.) In medical s/w development, L2 can be nurses or doctors, they might be attracted to this position due to relatively low load (compared to clinical medicine), flexible schedule etc. I don't think there is / possible a single answer to how to find these kinds of specialists.