> From: Bill Pechter <pechter_at_pechter.dyndns.org>
> >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
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
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_at_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"
Received on Thu Nov 09 2000 - 07:32:21 GMT