I work for MYOB, the Australian company that makes the accounting software and here’s proof! However, I get the same questions about my job every time that I tell people so I thought I might as well write a post about it.

The things to get out of the way first:

• I’m not an accountant and I don’t know how to use the accounting software.
• I don’t provide technical support for it, nor do I program or code for it.
• I can’t get you a discount on the software – I have no connection to that side of the business at all.

So what is it that I do for MYOB? I work for a business division that provides web and email hosting services for small to medium-sized companies – the same kind of companies that would buy MYOB’s accounting software. What that means is that these companies come to us to host their website and business emails when managing and maintaining their own email and web servers is not logical, economically feasible, or is more hassle to them than it’s worth.

Plus, they don’t have the economies of scale to provide the backup, the redundancy and the up-time (99.99%) that we can.

The business division has three brands and they are essentially the same products but with different pricing and different levels of support:

• Ilisys – I started with this company on the day it was bought out by MYOB, March 2008.
• Smartyhost
• MYOB Business Web Hosting

My official title is “Webhosting Technical Support Specialist”. The support that my team mates and I provide does not include the design of websites – that is left to the customer or the web-designer that they’d contract the job out to. Our job is to help keep the sites running once they have been uploaded to our servers, and to ensure that customers can receive and retrieve their business emails. We also help with the registration and renewals of domain names (for example, mooiness.com is a domain name). And we provide basic support with setting up email software like Microsoft Outlook and web-design tools like Dreamweaver.

The tools of my trade include the Internet, woohoo! That means I’m constantly on the net all the time and I’ve got an excuse for it. And yes, that is why I seem to be on Facebook and MSN a lot. Being able to read and browse the Internet is also good for stress-relief because as you can imagine, customers only call or email when there’s a problem and sometimes it’s our fault. However, the occasional “thank you” from a happy customer is quite satisfying.

Oh and I shall leave you with two images to help you picture my job better. Most times, I look like Trinity in the Matrix, ie. I am not smiling and I frown a lot. Hah!

And the way we administer the servers and files makes it look like we are l33t haxx0rs but it’s nothing as impressive. But I do love doing things on the command line just because every non-IT person thinks it looks cool.