The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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:
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.
It's as simple as "talk to IT pros" on any scale and look at their work processes. It's so common that most people you talk to will assume it is "just how IT works" and "how else could it be done." The only question is "what percentage of the industry is it" and all I can tell you is that in decades of working with tons of people in these positions, it's so insanely common that it's almost all you ever find.
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@dustinb3403 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
@scottalanmiller I didn't know your SAM-SD was using FreeNAS on detatched storage.
It wasn't, but lots of people used that. The original was CentOS. But FreeNAS was widely used by people doing their own SAM-SDs. And as you can see, lots of people found the whole concept very confusing and have associated a lot of things with it that never were.
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@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:
@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.
I know nothing of official limits to the subreddit. Perhaps there are. ML is "on your honour" but is for IT pros (or those trying to become them) only. It's not audited and there is no policing. But Reddit itself is not filtered even "on your honor" and if the subreddit is, I'm not aware.
As a general thing, though, that subreddit is not seen as being very technical or professional. That's pure opinion, but one I hear from a lot of places. I definitely don't spend time there as it's not a good place for peer review, conversation, or advice within IT. It's a very different culture than you'd expect in peer situations.
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You can take the situation and flip it around... how often can you find an SMB that is not doing this model, at least partially. They exist, to be sure, but they are decently hard to find, it turns out. Now loads, and loads of people will claim that they don't do this and say that they use an MSP. But pressure them or investigate the MSP and almost always you find that the MSP isn't actually an MSP, but a VAR. Calling VARs MSPs is an extremely common way to cover this process. Sometimes they even pay them in an MSP capacity which does more to make it hard to identify.
Pick some totally random companies, try not to filter by some known factor like "they are really good at their IT" as that could potentially throw things off. But just do some investigation where you can. Dollars to donuts, if you really dig and pay attention, you'll find sales people running the show, at least partially, essentially everywhere.
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The thing that people often miss about this system, is that it doesn't require any coordination, planning, intent, conspiracy, or anything else that people like to look for. It's just human nature, self preservation, and normal sales. It happens in nearly every industry, IT is just bigger, broader, and more complex than most making it an easier target.
If we take the things that people say about businesses, especially SMBs, from management to IT, and just ponder them - it turns out that this system is exactly what you'd expect. Nothing surprising. Owners and CEOs of SMBs are often untrained, busy, and like to make the excuse that IT is tech and ignore it. IT people are often underpaid and undertrained - pressured to do things that they are not well prepared to do. But they are scared for their jobs because someone is always willing to come along and do things cheaper. CEOs and CFOs in the SMB can rarely put the numbers together to evaluate IT value, so shifting money from salary to purchasing often makes IT look like heroes, even when wasting money, due to financial reporting sloppiness. Then add sales people with mouths to feed and jobs to do.... it's all just as natural as can be.
It's easy to be upset or blame individuals or feel like it must be coordinated between all of these parties. But it really isn't, not 99% of the time. It's a system that is always at the ready and easily accessible.
And if you talk about it in any group for any length of time, you'll find people who are so confident in it that they will defend it and regularly say things like "how can we be expected to do anything else."
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Here is a really common way to spot this effect going on.
I was talking to the IT guy or my friend in IT and he had this project to do, so he called up three [vendors, resellors, salesman friends] to get quotes.
That's how you engage this process - leading with "sell me stuff" instead of leading with "determine if we need to buy something." The goal in that engagement is to spend money, not to meet a business need.
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@scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
The goal in that engagement is to spend money, not to meet a business need.
and, via the nature of the process, have somebody do your job for you! Exactly like you've described above.
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@scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
Here is a really common way to spot this effect going on.
I was talking to the IT guy or my friend in IT and he had this project to do, so he called up three [vendors, resellors, salesman friends] to get quotes.
That's how you engage this process - leading with "sell me stuff" instead of leading with "determine if we need to buy something." The goal in that engagement is to spend money, not to meet a business need.
I would honestly say that in a case like this, the "IT guy" sees a need to purchase something (he may or may not know what he actually needs) and reaches out to his vendors to get pricing.
The case is subjective.
If my manager comes to me and says I want a new laptop, I can quickly lookup the age, model and other details of that laptop and then find a comparable but newer model to replace it.
In a case like that I might "just call my rep to quote out X".
Now the case you're describing is the IT guy who has no idea what the business needs, and just farms it out. Which is where I think a lot of people have a bone to pick with this topic as a whole.
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@bnrstnr 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:
The goal in that engagement is to spend money, not to meet a business need.
and, via the nature of the process, have somebody do your job for you! Exactly like you've described above.
Yeah. It's not a big conscious thing in most cases. It's just someone offering you a free thing where they do a huge part of your job on your behalf, who wouldn't say yes to that! Oh wait, we shoudln't say yes to that. But "free stuff" is very, very hard to resist. Especially when you think (and are normally right) that nearly everyone is doing it.
That's what makes the system work so well, it's so common that you can use the excuse "it's just how things work."
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@dustinb3403 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
Now the case you're describing is the IT guy who has no idea what the business needs, and just farms it out. Which is where I think a lot of people have a bone to pick with this topic as a whole.
Why would people have a bone with that, though? I can see someone being shocked that this happens, but that's just a lack of exposure. And the people who do it will not like it being talked about, but, um, yeah, that's the idea. Where does anyone have a bone to pick with the system, though? And why pick the bone with me instead of with the entire industry set up this way?
I feel like the kid in the crowd pointing out that the emperor is naked. Except... the entire crowd is naked and they are mad that it was pointed out.
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@dustinb3403 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
I would honestly say that in a case like this, the "IT guy" sees a need to purchase something (he may or may not know what he actually needs) and reaches out to his vendors to get pricing.
Right, that's the issue. He "sees a need to purchase something" instead of "seeing a need to evaluate the business needs". I know what you are saying, but jumping over IT straight to buying is the problem.
It's easy to expose as a gap. If the business already knows that it needs to buy things, and the sales people sell things, what role does IT play if that's all that IT does - passing the "I want to buy" message to the "I want to sell" people? IT is a useless middleman in that scenario.
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@scottalanmiller but seeing a need to purchase something doesn't mean that he skipped the investigative stage, or that he knows the system is an aging or past end of life and needs to be replaced.
Now I can agree he shouldn't go out and say "what do I need to buy?" The conversation should be "I need a system that does XYZ, quote it."
But that isn't what is happening in your scenario. It is John the IT guy going out and saying "We need to use this software, what do I need to run it and check off these boxes?"
Which I totally agree is a flawed approach.
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@dustinb3403 said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
@scottalanmiller but seeing a need to purchase something doesn't mean that he skipped the investigative stage, or that he knows the system is an aging or past end of life and needs to be replaced.
Now I can agree he shouldn't go out and say "what do I need to buy?" The conversation should be "I need a system that does XYZ, quote it."
But that isn't what is happening in your scenario. It is John the IT guy going out and saying "We need to use this software, what do I need to run it and check off these boxes?"
Which I totally agree is a flawed approach.
Right, everyone has to "buy things", it's the skipping of the evaluation phase - which we can often see in asking for quotes on too broad of a range. Like "I need storage" instead of "I need this very precise item or very precise alternative."
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@scottalanmiller said in The VAR Kickback System and How You Can Make a Good Living from Vendors:
Like "I need storage" instead of "I need this very precise item or very precise alternative."
That kind request sounds like something an end user would say not an IT professional.
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@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:
@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.
I know nothing of official limits to the subreddit. Perhaps there are. ML is "on your honour" but is for IT pros (or those trying to become them) only. It's not audited and there is no policing. But Reddit itself is not filtered even "on your honor" and if the subreddit is, I'm not aware.
As a general thing, though, that subreddit is not seen as being very technical or professional. That's pure opinion, but one I hear from a lot of places. I definitely don't spend time there as it's not a good place for peer review, conversation, or advice within IT. It's a very different culture than you'd expect in peer situations.
It's just a bigger place, so there's going to be more of a variety over at reddit. Aside from that, there's not much difference between ML and the Sysadmin subreddit in terms of who can be a member.
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@black3dynamite 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:
Like "I need storage" instead of "I need this very precise item or very precise alternative."
That kind request sounds like something an end user would say not an IT professional.
Well that's why we often say "those aren't IT pros, those are IT buyers". End users that buy IT, but don't do IT themselves.
