@scottalanmiller I guess my take is that it's a little naïve to suggest the idea that an organizational system designed for big businesses is a good idea for small ones. It's inefficient to have a zillion specialists to do generalist tasks. Sure, scripting helps with grunt work... but generalists can get a whole lot of the same scripts for free just as easily as the specialists can. Both are necessary at some level in some circumstances, but I feel like generalists consistently get the shaft by specialists who seem to think they're somehow superior because of their specialization. A generalist could also be a considered someone who specializes in knowing some things about a LOT of disparate things. If you're planning a build, I'de MUCH prefer consulting a generalist for much of the design, and then specialists for tweaking each area; versus consulting a bunch of specialists and finding out come post-deployment, every individual segment of the system rocks while the whole system is ultimately almost unworkable. (seen it happen too many times to want to remember)

It seems to me, that the biggest benefit to MSPs is just that they have the capacity to manage at greater scale and level of efficiency.. but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can or will manage small-scale organizations in large numbers any better, or any cheaper than internal IT can for them individually. In case that wording sucks, Just because in theory, an MSP should be able to manage lots of small environments very well doesn't mean they will actually do so better than an internal IT staff can do for potentially less cost. MSPs start losing efficiency just as Enterprises do, when you introduce increasing levels of complexity, which requires more specialists, which drives up costs for everyone. There may eventually come a point where it's just not cost effective for many SMBs at that point to employ the MSPs available to them, and so hire Internal IT instead. MSPs can and should do it all better and cheaper in theory, but I'm not so sure that bears out in reality, which is ultimately all that really matters, right?

Also, don't get me wrong, there are always exceptions to the rules. I also realize that we are both probably among them in many ways, which is totally fine.

@scottalanmiller I probably worded my statement poorly, and by the way I have worked in Enterprise. Enterprise might prize and value creativity, but it's because it's very difficult to effect in an Enterprise environment. When was a rollout at the Enterprise level anywhere remotely as fast or as simple as in an SMB? Value is directly related to scarcity. Practical creativity in the Enterprise is difficult to achieve, because it's increasingly more difficult to implement the larger the scale gets.

When SMBs don't value creativity, it's most often because either they already enact plenty of it, or they're just dumb (both are more likely in that space than in the Enterprise).

@scottalanmiller How do you advance from doing everything? This is literally the argument of how you advance from SMB IT to MSP IT. You cannot advance from doing everything, while as MSP IT, you will never do that, therefor there is a logical path for advancement.

@scottalanmiller MSPs do not provide great opportunity for advancement near as appealing as a solid SMB does for Internal IT. As you stated, and it is the same for Enterprise, both are very focused upon efficiency and staying active. Neither of those anywhere leaves much room for anything else but repetition. The argument is back-asswards, because Enterprise IT is concerned with efficiency and repeatability, not creativity. MSPs are concerned with efficiency and customer density, not creativity or versatility unless they are pretty explicitly to improve efficiency or density. Both are cold places for anyone who doesn't already know what they want to specialize in, because both are all about specialists, and people who like them only care about specializations. Enterprises suffer from their size, because while they might be efficient, they're very rarely particularly creative, because doing anything quickly or with a high amount of change is increasingly difficult the larger the scale becomes.

The problem is very similar to what my father often remarks about college degrees in the fields where they're actually important like engineering, and polymer science. The statement goes a bit like this: People with Bachelors Degrees know a little about a lot of things. People with Masters Degrees know a lot about a few things. People with PHD's know so much about one thing that they can hardly understand anything else. Specialization is generally at the expense of versatility, not in any way an automatic compliment. Generalists make better specialists than the inverse, because Generalists already know a broad variety of things. Specialists can do one thing very well, and the more specialized they are, the more they are likely to know about their specialty, and typically the less they know about what is outside of it unless they have to directly interact on a frequent basis. Take them outside of their specialty, and ask them to do something unrelated..... good luck, because the longer they operate in their specialty, the more likely they will forget more and more outside of it, no differently than IT generalists doing highly specialized work.

For task that span a variety of disciplines with IT takes one decent guy a few hours to do by themselves in an SMB, you may end up having to get multiple individuals to accomplish it through an MSP who has to share every single individual in the organization with multiple other organizations, which actually means that the whole process gets done far faster, for a lot less money, and arguably no less effectively by your generic SMB IT admin in many cases. Sure, the SMB Admin may have to spend more time researching before doing the job... but between Google, Youtube, and a handful of IT support sites, there's extremely little that an Admin for an SMB can't do just as well or better for their organization than an MSP can. The thing is, most SMBs don't need any great level of specialization to do what they need to do... so... why hire an industrial, high-voltage substation maintenance technician to wire up some regular old electrical outlets and light switches? Most SMBs don't need a specialist, which is why most SMBs don't hire them. MSPs are absolutely valuable, but it's arrogant to suggest that SMBs shouldn't hire their own IT or they're bad businesses where IT is concerned. Maybe you just don't understand their IT needs well enough to understand why your opinion is incorrect?

MSP infrastructure is only a benefit if the SMB's needs actually align with the MSPs configuration. A specialist by definition doesn't get variety lol, if they get variety, then they're not specialists.. so no, your statement about MSP specialists getting variety is absolutely false unless you're talking about the capacity to change specialties within the organization, which every IT Generalist in every SMB does already, so not a pro there. There's a variety of specializations available in an MSP, but no different than in an Enterprise.. there's absolutely zero guarantee you will ever get to switch out of the specialization you are in. As previously stated, Enterprises and MSPs are focused on efficiency, not what their staff want to do so much. If you're good at what you do, they are all going to weigh the loss of your good job at what you do, with what you might be able to accomplish in another role. Whether or not you are allowed to move isn't going to be much different either way, where in an SMB, there was never even a question there... the IT staff does it, period. So I'm not really certain how it is that MSP laborers somehow get to do more as specialists than SMB as generalists. A Specialist by definition will never see as much variety as a generalist.

It feels to me like the problem is a lack of appreciation for generalists. I'de point out, that most of the best folks in an organization aren't specialists, but generalists. They tend to know a little about a lot, which also includes knowing when to talk to specialists about specialized things. The two both have their places, which interestingly enough seem to be with generalists either being near the top of the totem pole, or near the bottom (with pay to match) while specialists fill in most everything in between.

@scottalanmiller I think steering back to IT is a bit of an unnecessary turn away from the actual problem, which is the people. If the problem isn't IT, but that bad people are attracted to the power inherent in IT, then wouldn't a sensible approach be to attempt to both address the problem of how to screen for undesirable types in such roles, as well as how or why people are that way, and proceed from there?

We may not be able to do much about the latter, but it's still going to be a fundamental problem regardless. That would mean that there is no truly effective way to screen a good liar except by trying to prevent them from being developed in the first place, right? Maybe far more philosophical than most such discussions go, but I feel like that failing to include that in the considerations is a bit of missing the forest for the trees to a degree.

I was reading a bit elsewhere where someone mentioned that SMB admins get paid for X task at 1X value and another task at X10 value, so their value is lesser. However, I would like to point out that the value is cumulative, and even enterprise specialists are a dime a dozen, while good SMB admins are not. The value is proportional to the business size, so a 10X value is not the same value to an organization with Y resources versus an enterprise with 1,000,000Y resources.

It's really not as simple as some have suggested it to be, because a million dollars is a crap-ton of money for someone who makes 50k/year, as that's 20 years worth of income if they someone managed to not spend a single penny. For someone who makes 100K/year, it's worth less than half that.. because all the extra resources allow for more investments, and other means through which to amass more resources. Just because Enterprises think something is worth X doesn't change that most SMBs will ascribe a VASTLY different value to that same thing. The two are practically incomparable without acknowledging that needs and value are totally and completely different, because it is a subjective ascription.

@wirestyle22 While this is true, the vast majority of SMBs may have no need for specialists except for infrequent project work, or for one very specific thing on a regular basis. That makes MSPs a sizable money sink versus on-site IT 99% of the time, because MSPs make money providing expertise. If no substantial level of expertise is required, why pay for what amounts to worthless expertise to the SMB in question?

Since SMBs are fighting most MSPs for the same talent.. what makes MSPs automatically superior to the SMBs they serve, especially since they don't have any more resources than the SMBs do to fight for said talent (perhaps even less)?

@scottalanmiller Since when aren't almost all MSPs SMBs too? Or are they silently excluded from that blanket statement?

I wasn't attempting to imply that IT doesn't get involved hiring other IT, just that that's very far from the norm in the real world as a general rule. It certainly happens, just not nearly as much as some seem to think it does. I've never once interviewed with IT anywhere from government agencies to Fortune 100 enterprises, or SMBs. Sure there must be many that do have IT hire IT, but it's the exception in places that understand how to not be dumb, which is sadly less common than it should be. That was more the point I was making.

I feel like part of what is lacking from this discussion is the acknowledgement that in most of the SMB market, there is no HR, and many times there is no formal IT (or very minimal). Most of this discussion is based around the false premise that people who know IT are hiring IT for most organizations. That's simply untrue. It's true that people in IT might understand IT.. but that pretty well rules out all but a tiny sliver of small businesses, and a whole lot of medium businesses too... or if I could summarize, the vast majority of the SMB world (at least in the US). Since SMBs make up around 95% of businesses in the country, the idea that IT is handling IT hiring when there often isn't even an IT department in the vast majority of those that even have on-staff IT is kind of weird.

Being good at business does not necessitate having good IT... adequate, or even sufficient IT is all that's required to be good at business even with IT needs. It's likely misinformed to suggest that most businesses and organizations are actually good at/with IT. Even organizations that are terrible at IT can thrive, even at IT, when everyone else around them is even worse. Sure, they will hit a wall at some point, but so long as the business is successful and the ownership is satisfied, what does that matter? Not all businesses are in business to make every possible penny they can right here, right now. Some simply want to do a thing, and so long as they're doing it successfully, they're content.