Help desk work teaches you empathy for users
Spending time resolving 300+ hardware and software support tickets taught me something a computer science degree doesn't: how confused, frustrated, or rushed real users actually are when something breaks. That shaped how I design interfaces today — assume the person using it is stressed, not patient.
The skills that transferred directly
Troubleshooting methodology — isolate variables, reproduce the issue, check the simplest explanation first — is identical whether you're fixing a printer or debugging a production API.
What I'd tell someone starting out
Don't wait for a "developer" title to start writing real code. Automate something at your current job, however small. That script I wrote to streamline printer installs at my help desk job was the first real software I shipped — long before my first developer role.