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The differences between technical assistants and technical support technicians can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 1-2 years to become both a technical assistant and a technical support technician. Additionally, a technical support technician has an average salary of $40,210, which is higher than the $34,159 average annual salary of a technical assistant.
The top three skills for a technical assistant include patients, customer service and patient care. The most important skills for a technical support technician are customer service, technical support, and patients.
| Technical Assistant | Technical Support Technician | |
| Yearly salary | $34,159 | $40,210 |
| Hourly rate | $16.42 | $19.33 |
| Growth rate | 10% | 10% |
| Number of jobs | 73,750 | 165,677 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 53% | Bachelor's Degree, 40% |
| Average age | 42 | 42 |
| Years of experience | 2 | 2 |
A technical assistant is responsible for supporting business operations by doing administrative and technical tasks under a direct supervisor or tenured staff. Duties of a technical assistant include creating meeting reports, scheduling events, responding to clients' inquiries through email and phone calls, monitoring office inventories, basic troubleshooting on defective equipment, providing recommendations on product development, and analyzing operations processes. Technical assistants require strong time-management and multi-tasking skills to perform tasks in a fast-paced environment and high-level operations.
Technical support technicians are skilled professionals who resolve computer or information technology-related concerns. They may do installations, repairs, or maintenance activities of various applications or computer hardware. They are sometimes assigned specific issues or concerns to resolve so that they will not be bombarded with various issues. This means that they can now specialize in a specific family of concerns. Technical support technicians may provide on-site support, going directly to the person who needs help and doing what needs to be done or troubleshoot the problem in person. They may also be offsite and would usually be manning helpdesk hotlines. Offsite technical support technicians walk the caller through the steps they should do to fix the issues. As such, when a technical support technician is offsite, they are expected to be good communicators and will be able to provide clear instructions.
Technical assistants and technical support technicians have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Technical Assistant | Technical Support Technician | |
| Average salary | $34,159 | $40,210 |
| Salary range | Between $22,000 And $51,000 | Between $24,000 And $64,000 |
| Highest paying City | Boston, MA | Philadelphia, PA |
| Highest paying state | Massachusetts | Pennsylvania |
| Best paying company | The American Musical and Dramatic Academy | Ropes & Gray |
| Best paying industry | Insurance | Finance |
There are a few differences between a technical assistant and a technical support technician in terms of educational background:
| Technical Assistant | Technical Support Technician | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 53% | Bachelor's Degree, 40% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Stanford University |
Here are the differences between technical assistants' and technical support technicians' demographics:
| Technical Assistant | Technical Support Technician | |
| Average age | 42 | 42 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 54.8% Female, 45.2% | Male, 66.7% Female, 33.3% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 11.1% Unknown, 5.4% Hispanic or Latino, 15.8% Asian, 11.9% White, 55.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4% | Black or African American, 10.6% Unknown, 5.4% Hispanic or Latino, 16.9% Asian, 10.6% White, 56.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 11% |