IT after hours: Tech pros donate time to help the computer-clueless

Computerworld - All week long, these IT professionals are under constant pressure at work, troubleshooting downed networks, fixing dead hardware, patching security holes and updating buggy software.

So what do they do after work? They head home and spend hours doing the same thing -- for free -- by volunteering on tech support Web sites to help home and business users solve perplexing computer problems.

On sites like Protonic.com, Techguy.org, BleepingComputer.com and GeeksToGo.com, anguished computer users post messages seeking answers to problems with hardware and software from volunteers -- many of whom are self-taught home computer users. But the group also includes IT pros who work in the corporate trenches every day and then give away their expertise at night and on weekends.

They say they gain far more from the effort than what they put in.

"It gives me an opportunity to at least get better in explaining things to users back at work," said Brian Beard, a systems administrator at a stock trading company in Chicago who has volunteered at Protonic.com since June 2001. "The research I do to find the answers for others on protonic.com leads me down the path that I normally don't take in my day-to-day activities. It's through this path that I absorb more information on other possible solutions to problems. There is usually some similarity that I see with issues I resolve for Protonic.com people and for my end users [at work]. Also, since e-mail communication is difficult [as a means] to present answers to people, it leads me to be very precise and detailed in my answers to ensure success. I learn something every time.

"I like to hear the feedback from people when they find that this free site out there gave them great support and they solved what sometimes would be deemed 'unsolveable' problems," said Beard, who has worked in IT for almost 10 years. "It's a good feeling that you helped someone who either can't afford help or is too embarrassed to present the problem to a techie in person."

Jim Buckley Barrett, director of IT at Satcom Technology Ltd., a Solihull, U.K.-based security and fleet management software company, said that by volunteering on Protonic.com, he improves his IT work skills. "I have learned a lot. I'm now able to trace my own and clients problems at work and come up with a solution extremely quickly," he said. "As I've said to my support team, you don't need to know everything, just where and how to find it. ... I am now very good at doing that."

He's gained a diversity of experience since answering his first technical question on the site in November 2000. "It's the pleasure of knowing that you just helped out some person in Canada with their VisualBasic problem and a guy in Peru with his database problem. Where else could you do that?"