9 Nov
2000
9 Nov
'00
2:32 a.m.
From: Bill Pechter <pechter(a)pechter.dyndns.org>
Well, the problem was that the older support guys and managers felt
that the new guys couldn't handle the stuff -- and the customer
expectations in downtime and response escalated as the DEC stuff moved
The only problem with CSSE is they made it so easy
to work on the DEC
stuff Field Service management began hiring the clueless to work cheap
and they lost a lot of the clued folks to people who changed the board
with the RED led lit. One day they worked on VT220's the next they
were promoted to your VAX cluster!
Management... They took the work and tried to understand it. Field
Circus
management was a bunch of ex-bag carriers that felt they were the best
and the rest were dumb. The end result is that first you couldn't find
people that knew what a scope was and you still had to fix it due to
committed response time. The latter often led to get a body there,
NOW, I dont care who.
Allison from the scientific to commercial areas (except for the
DECsystem10
and DECsystem20 stuff).
Contracts required a definite response time... not a response of
qualified personnel time. Most of the time the DEC guys could work
on almost anything -- but sending me to a straight PDP8 at Fort Monmouth
(SN 209) was a waste of a good PDP11 and Vax trained guy.
If you want to deal with an ugly bad organization which just works to
meet the LETTER OF THE CONTRACT -- you should deal with IBM Global
Services on PC support... They'll leave some things broken a couple of
days to avoid letting some items go out of the contract specifications
on a regular basis -- because they lose $$$ if they miss the contract
window and can't make money if they hire enough personnel for the busy
periods.
"Oh -- you dual boot linux and Win98 on that PC -- we have to charge you
for support on two machines -- or it's out of scope of the contract..."
DEC really gave a damn about the customer... as do the real IBM Field
Service guys and the working folks at TSS (the IBM - Kodak spin off of the
smaller systems service group which handles RS6k's and AS/400's).
But the current and ex-IBM management is mainly focussed on income
rather than the customer satisfaction that drove DEC in the '80's to
have the best focussed field service group around.
Bill
--
bpechter(a)monmouth.com | FreeBSD since 1.0.2, Linux since 0.99.10
| Unix Sys Admin since Sys V/BSD 4.2
| Windows System Administration: "Magical Misery Tour"