ML
    • Recent
    • Categories
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Groups
    • Register
    • Login

    The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors

    IT Discussion
    var kickback
    11
    50
    4.0k
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Emad RE
      Emad R @scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      @scottalanmiller

      This gets trickier when you add IT Outsourcing factor.

      I hope one day we all have cloud wages.

      JaredBuschJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JaredBuschJ
        JaredBusch @Emad R
        last edited by

        @emad-r said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

        @scottalanmiller

        This gets trickier when you add IT Outsourcing factor.

        I hope one day we all have cloud wages.

        Outsourcing your IT is the only right way for most SMB to get real IT.

        They cannot afford it otherwise..

        scottalanmillerS C 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller @JaredBusch
          last edited by

          @jaredbusch said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

          @emad-r said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

          @scottalanmiller

          This gets trickier when you add IT Outsourcing factor.

          I hope one day we all have cloud wages.

          Outsourcing your IT is the only right way for most SMB to get real IT.

          They cannot afford it otherwise..

          The thing that confuses a lot of people, is that they don't understand what this means and they think that outsourcing "is" the solution, rather than outsourcing being the only path to the solution.

          So many people outsource once, badly, and then think that that somehow shows that outsourcing itself is bad. Yet insource, have things just as bad, and don't make the same logical leap.

          It's like driving to the store. The answer is "use a car" but that doesn't mean that buying the wrong car or driving badly isn't still a problem.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • dave247D
            dave247
            last edited by dave247

            I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

            Not too many people agree with or like the post...

            BRRABillB scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • C
              Carnival Boy @JaredBusch
              last edited by

              @jaredbusch said in [The VAR Kickback System and How You

              Outsourcing your IT is the only right way for most SMB to get real IT.

              They cannot afford it otherwise..

              Why?

              scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • C
                Carnival Boy
                last edited by

                If anyone knows of a vacancy for an IT Manager where you don't actually have to do any work but still get a decent salary then please let me know, I'd love to apply!

                It's not a picture I recognise. Every IT manager I know or have met works pretty hard and are constantly having to justify their roles to prevent them being made redundant and/or outsourced. It's not an easy career. Maybe it's common in the US, but if so, it's definitely a harsher environment in the UK.

                scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BRRABillB
                  BRRABill @dave247
                  last edited by

                  @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                  I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                  Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                  Hey @scottalanmiller ... now people on Reddit are discussing you, too. LOL.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • scottalanmillerS
                    scottalanmiller @dave247
                    last edited by

                    @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                    I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                    Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                    Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                    C dave247D 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • scottalanmillerS
                      scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                      last edited by

                      @carnival-boy said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                      @jaredbusch said in [The VAR Kickback System and How You

                      Outsourcing your IT is the only right way for most SMB to get real IT.

                      They cannot afford it otherwise..

                      Why?

                      Because you HAVE to either pay way too much, get way too little, or the IT person is just donating their time.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • scottalanmillerS
                        scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                        last edited by

                        @carnival-boy said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                        If anyone knows of a vacancy for an IT Manager where you don't actually have to do any work but still get a decent salary then please let me know, I'd love to apply!

                        Those don't tend to stay vacant long. I knew of one paying $150K, if you consider that good, recently. But as you can imagine, people lined up to fill it. Zero technical responsibilities and the old guy was fired for having stolen many hundreds of thousands of dollars and it eventually got "too obvious" to keep him.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • scottalanmillerS
                          scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                          last edited by

                          @carnival-boy said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                          It's not a picture I recognise. Every IT manager I know or have met works pretty hard and are constantly having to justify their roles to prevent them being made redundant and/or outsourced. It's not an easy career. Maybe it's common in the US, but if so, it's definitely a harsher environment in the UK.

                          That's a different effect. And to some degree, you are seeing roles that we generally say shouldn't exist that need to defend themselves. That's unrelated to doing a good job or a bad one or the VAR issue or whatever, that's the "a role that doesn't make sense in an SMB problem."

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • C
                            Carnival Boy @scottalanmiller
                            last edited by

                            @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                            @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                            I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                            Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                            Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                            MSP says "SMBs should employ MSPs", internal IT says "SMBs should employ internal IT". There's no point being proven either way, just different viewpoints and lots of confirmation bias from both sides.

                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                              last edited by scottalanmiller

                              @carnival-boy said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                              @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                              @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                              I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                              Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                              Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                              MSP says "SMBs should employ MSPs", internal IT says "SMBs should employ internal IT". There's no point being proven either way, just different viewpoints and lots of confirmation bias from both sides.

                              Yes, but one has simple math and logic. The other has nothing. There is no benefit to internal IT. It's costly and risky. MSPs can do anything internal IT can do, at the same price, but has more options. It's literally impossible to come up with any potential benefit to internal IT.

                              All arguments for the Internet IT model at small scale come from misinformation about MSPs. Like claiming that all resources are shared, that mark up is high, that they are not on site, etc.

                              Every positive argument for internal IT equally applies to MSPs. but not every MSP benefit applies to internal IT.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • C
                                Carnival Boy
                                last edited by

                                @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                It's literally impossible to come up with any potential benefit to internal IT.

                                Er, ok.

                                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • dave247D
                                  dave247 @scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by dave247

                                  @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                  @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                  I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                                  Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                                  Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                                  Wow. "They"? Reddit is a community just like this one. Just because it's not Mangolassi.it doesn't mean it should just be dismissed. Yes, there are VARs lurking there, but there are also thousands of IT folks of all levels.

                                  scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • scottalanmillerS
                                    scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                                    last edited by

                                    @carnival-boy said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                    @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                    It's literally impossible to come up with any potential benefit to internal IT.

                                    Er, ok.

                                    It just is, because literally anything Internal IT can have as an "advantage" you can have with an MSP, too. There's no way for Internal IT to have some special feature.

                                    Remember, Internal IT is just an MSP on payroll to the company. Whether MSP or Internal IT, it's all "another organization" to the company.

                                    I've been talking about this for many years, and all points I've ever heard for internal IT are always based on total misconceptions about what an MSP is. Always assuming something that isn't true about them.

                                    http://www.smbitjournal.com/2017/03/all-it-is-external/

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • scottalanmillerS
                                      scottalanmiller @dave247
                                      last edited by scottalanmiller

                                      @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                      @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                      @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                      I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                                      Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                                      Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                                      Wow. "They"? Reddit is a community just like this one. Just because it's not Mangolassi.it doesn't mean it should just be dismissed. Yes, there are VARs lurking there, but there are also thousands of IT folks of all levels.

                                      I'm dismissing people who are reacting negatively to something that is really obvious and well known; not dismissing Reddit. That "most" people take offence to it is expected.

                                      But Reddit is not like ML, ML is a pro tech community, Reddit is an open forum.

                                      dave247D 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • scottalanmillerS
                                        scottalanmiller @dave247
                                        last edited by

                                        @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                        Yes, there are VARs lurking there, but there are also thousands of IT folks of all levels.

                                        It isn't the VARs that generally take offense, once in a while, but rarely. VARs operate in a world like this very openly most of the time. It's the customers of the VARs that are the ones that take offence. The ones at all levels. Remember, the point of the article wasn't just that this "can happen", we talked about how this is the norm. So by expectation going in, if you post in an open forum of IT workers, the point of the article was that most of them will be to some degree involved in this system. So you should expect that most people who will respond will be upset for getting called out on something that they likely either feel very badly about or are scared that someone will discover.

                                        I'm not stating anything after the fact, I'm pointing out what was to be expected from the beginning.

                                        dave247D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • dave247D
                                          dave247 @scottalanmiller
                                          last edited by

                                          @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                          @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                          @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                          @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                          I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

                                          Not too many people agree with or like the post...

                                          Well DUH, lol. They are the ones leveraging the system. Of course they will react passionately, that proves the point more than disproves it.

                                          Wow. "They"? Reddit is a community just like this one. Just because it's not Mangolassi.it doesn't mean it should just be dismissed. Yes, there are VARs lurking there, but there are also thousands of IT folks of all levels.

                                          I'm dismissing people who are reacting negatively to something that is really obvious and well known; not dismissing Reddit. That "most" people take offence to it is expected.

                                          But Reddit is not like ML, ML is a pro tech community, Reddit is an open forum.

                                          I thought ML was also an open forum too.. And I'm not talking about reddit as a whole, I'm talking about the sysadmin subreddit -- also a pro tech community.

                                          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • dave247D
                                            dave247 @scottalanmiller
                                            last edited by

                                            @scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                            @dave247 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:

                                            Yes, there are VARs lurking there, but there are also thousands of IT folks of all levels.

                                            It isn't the VARs that generally take offense, once in a while, but rarely. VARs operate in a world like this very openly most of the time. It's the customers of the VARs that are the ones that take offence. The ones at all levels. Remember, the point of the article wasn't just that this "can happen", we talked about how this is the norm. So by expectation going in, if you post in an open forum of IT workers, the point of the article was that most of them will be to some degree involved in this system. So you should expect that most people who will respond will be upset for getting called out on something that they likely either feel very badly about or are scared that someone will discover.

                                            I'm not stating anything after the fact, I'm pointing out what was to be expected from the beginning.

                                            Right, I get that this certainly could be the case if what you are claiming is indeed the norm. I guess what it comes down to is like anything else: you should provide proof to backup your claims. Right now it's more or less just anecdotal evidence.

                                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • 1
                                            • 2
                                            • 3
                                            • 1 / 3
                                            • First post
                                              Last post