Is Most IT Really Corrupt?
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For the record, I'm not necessarily saying that SMBs are great and Enterprises are evil or anything absurd like that. I'm just more focused on the concept that operating SMBs well is difficult for a variety of reasons that are likely more complicated than just poor decision making (although that's definitely a much greater factor than in Enterprise, and probably the single biggest and easiest issue to point out). My take is essentially that everything about SMBs success or failure boils down to every decision having a far greater impact in SMB than it has in Enterprise, because the greater the scale, the more scale mitigates the impact of every decision. In my mind, it's a minor miracle when almost any SMB manages to successfully grow to Enterprise scale because it's immensely easier to fail as an SMB than it is to grow to out of the SMB space.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller I think what we're really pointing at is that SMBs settle when it comes to staffing, a LOT. Enterprises often don't settle until they feel they have to, because they can afford to do so while SMBs I believe more frequently cannot.
This is true to some degree. SMBs settle because they want to, however. SMBs have access to the MSP/ITSP market that Enterprises realistically do not. There are more resources available to the SMB market than the SMB market is willing to utilize - sure if all SMBs decided to hire well they'd be screwed, but they just don't bother leaving loads of good talent wasted whether individual or *SP oriented.
Enterprises rarely leave the good people on the market, someone snaps them up quickly. But SMBs decide to forego good hiring the majority of the time. Any SMB that wants good people can get them pretty easily. So while they might decide to settle, it's not because they have to.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
It's much easier to leave a position unfilled because of a specialized need when you have 2000 employees and we're talking 0.05% of your staffing unfilled in comparison to an SMB with 20 or 50 employees who is leaving between 2%-5% of their entire staffing empty. Scale mitigates the issues of leaving 0.05% of your workforce unoccupied, specialized need or not. Also, Enterprises will typically have the resources to pay someone else to do the job until they can fill it the way they prefer, or even still they may not even need it badly enough to do anything about it at all in a very immediate sense.
True, which is just a good way of saying that MSPs / ITSPs are critical in the SMB because they fix this problem there.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
I would argue that SMBs struggling to hire talent may or may not be due to a process problem, as I would point out that a great many SMBs have no HR or hiring department at all.
HR has no value in hiring processes. The CEO's job #1 is hiring good staff. No matter how many departments you have, you have a person whose role it is to hire the other people. No company is missing that. They might not do their job well, but there is no one to blame except for the CEO as that is their first and most critical job.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
I would argue that SMBs struggling to hire talent may or may not be due to a process problem, as I would point out that a great many SMBs have no HR or hiring department at all. They usually can't afford such a luxury unless they farm those things out to a contractor. Then once again, they are kind of at the mercy of the skill and talent of said contractor. I would posit that a big part of the problem is that it takes a talented individual to size up another talented individual well. Numerically, the odds are against SMBs having the personnel required to do such things well in most cases. Sure anyone can spot talent, but figuring out how much talent they have will likely require at least a similar level of talent. Would you agree?
I totally agree. And, again, though these are services that are specifically and naturally handled by your service provider. These are problems that only plague SMBs that have the hubris to think that they can take the IT department at an impossibly small scale and run it without internal IT expertise. The MSP / ITSP model solves all of these intrinsic problems in the SMB space. This is all explaining in detail why I say all SMBs need *SPs.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
For the record, I'm not necessarily saying that SMBs are great and Enterprises are evil or anything absurd like that. I'm just more focused on the concept that operating SMBs well is difficult for a variety of reasons that are likely more complicated than just poor decision making (although that's definitely a much greater factor than in Enterprise, and probably the single biggest and easiest issue to point out). My take is essentially that everything about SMBs success or failure boils down to every decision having a far greater impact in SMB than it has in Enterprise, because the greater the scale, the more scale mitigates the impact of every decision. In my mind, it's a minor miracle when almost any SMB manages to successfully grow to Enterprise scale because it's immensely easier to fail as an SMB than it is to grow to out of the SMB space.
I don't think that this is true. SMBs actually have it easy. That so many SMBs fail typically comes down to atrocious decision making for their business decisions. We see it every day, even decent SMBs do totally insane things that anyone on the outside looking in even casually can tell are bonkers. Spending way too much on one thing, never getting good advice, not following the most basic business principles, not spending money where it is obviously critical, etc. We look at SMBs every day and ask "how could any company making such bad decisions stay in business" and 80% of the time, they don't. But not because being an SMB was hard - we observed them being terrible at what they were doing and should have expected them to fail.
What's actually amazing is how many survive considering the kinds of decisions being bad over and over again.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller I think what we're really pointing at is that SMBs settle when it comes to staffing, a LOT. Enterprises often don't settle until they feel they have to, because they can afford to do so while SMBs I believe more frequently cannot.
This is true to some degree. SMBs settle because they want to, however. SMBs have access to the MSP/ITSP market that Enterprises realistically do not. There are more resources available to the SMB market than the SMB market is willing to utilize - sure if all SMBs decided to hire well they'd be screwed, but they just don't bother leaving loads of good talent wasted whether individual or *SP oriented.
Enterprises rarely leave the good people on the market, someone snaps them up quickly. But SMBs decide to forego good hiring the majority of the time. Any SMB that wants good people can get them pretty easily. So while they might decide to settle, it's not because they have to.
I assume that Scott specifically means to terms of compensation - if the SMB wanted a good highly qualified person, they'd simply have to offer the compensation to make someone want to work there.
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@scottalanmiller I'm not arguing that SMBs don't make poor decisions, but that poor decisions have immensely greater impact in SMBs than they do in Enterprises. I don't think it's necessarily too outrageous to claim that many Enterprises make colossal blunders too, but most survive many such blunders and generally make less of them, in part due to the mitigating effects of scale that simply don't exist for SMBs. Enterprises naturally should and generally do make less poor decisions than SMBs, I completely agree! However part of the likely reason is once again because of scale. It's far easier to avoid lousy decisions with a lot more perspectives on a situation, a phenomenon that is relatively rare in the SMB space (I am referring to general terms, not IT-specific, as that's really just one of many examples where SMBs suffer from poor decisions).
In terms of compensation, I agree, SMBs tend to understand what the ownership/leadership understand. If role X isn't one of those things, they're probably going to make poor decisions in regards to hiring anyone for such things whether they opt for MSP, Internal-IT, or whatever else when we are talking about IT. How are SMBs whose problem is lacking good advice, supposed to be able to tell the difference between good and poor advice in fields they have no real practical knowledge in or of? How would you say good MSPs should be solving that problem, since any MSP can spout off numbers, point at satisfaction rates, and still be pretty terrible while looking impressive to the uninformed on such matters?
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@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller I think what we're really pointing at is that SMBs settle when it comes to staffing, a LOT. Enterprises often don't settle until they feel they have to, because they can afford to do so while SMBs I believe more frequently cannot.
This is true to some degree. SMBs settle because they want to, however. SMBs have access to the MSP/ITSP market that Enterprises realistically do not. There are more resources available to the SMB market than the SMB market is willing to utilize - sure if all SMBs decided to hire well they'd be screwed, but they just don't bother leaving loads of good talent wasted whether individual or *SP oriented.
Enterprises rarely leave the good people on the market, someone snaps them up quickly. But SMBs decide to forego good hiring the majority of the time. Any SMB that wants good people can get them pretty easily. So while they might decide to settle, it's not because they have to.
I assume that Scott specifically means to terms of compensation - if the SMB wanted a good highly qualified person, they'd simply have to offer the compensation to make someone want to work there.
Well maybe, but also soft benefits. Lots of SMBs struggle because of location. I know people making amazing salaries that will likely quit their jobs almost exclusively because of the location. Company is great, people are great, vacation plan is good, health benefits are good, money is great... but the location is... drab.
SMBs often struggle to offer desired locations and tend to fail to offer vacation, health and work from home benefits that enterprises often offer. And travel is nearly unheard of.
SMBs could do all these kinds of things and get anyone that they wanted out of the enterprise (almost). The one big barrier that they can't overcome is that they rarely offer interesting problems. SMBs tend to be extremely "cookie cutter" through no fault of their own and this can make them less enticing for people seeking a challenge.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
How would you say good MSPs should be solving that problem, since any MSP can spout off numbers, point at satisfaction rates, and still be pretty terrible while looking impressive to the uninformed on such matters?
I've never seen this problem in the real world. Good and bad MSPs are pretty easy to tell apart. And not with technical knowledge, but with standard common sense and business knowledge. It's not perfect, but it's pretty effective. Knowing when MSPs present information well, don't sell solutions and hide being a vendor rep, have long term strategies, talk intelligently about the business needs, investigate business needs, act as a partner, etc. is really easy to see. If SMBs were filtering MSPs on these basic "anyone can do it, no tech needed" factors and still had issues finding MSPs, then we could talk about the difficulties of filtering further. But in the real world, it's pretty trivial to filter out the bad MSPs.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
...since any MSP can spout off numbers, point at satisfaction rates, and still be pretty terrible while looking impressive to the uninformed on such matters?
None of those things should be impressive. That's part of the trick
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@scottalanmiller I must have really lucked out with a killer good SMB then, as I get all of the above benefits you mentioned including some paid travel (once, maybe twice a year atm), excepting work from home benefits. That may materialize in the next year or so anyway when my organization may well absorb another organization that is essentially just like mine in a neighboring county that would require us to become a multi-location organization, thereby forcing some de-centralization to occur. My one big gripe with our current Executive is that the he is very anti-remote access for some reason.
I suppose one of the issues I've experienced with vetting MSPs is that I've not run into many SMBs that weren't technology-savvy who even knew what the difference between an MSP, a VAR, and a vendor rep were about as often as not. However, I will say that the acting as a partner versus a vendor, service provider, or a supplier has been very noticeable in the MSPs I've talked with, as most of the MSPs I've talked with seem to be all about what they can do for us instead of what we actually need or want them to do for instance. You know, marketing BS instead of just trying to do their jobs and sell us what we want/need, lol. It all sounded impressive to the others in management, as they didn't know enough to know why the marketing was just BS. We do have an MSP who while we really don't like the MSPs owner, we like the folks actually working there, as they have/do partner with us to back me up and offer real value.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
I suppose one of the issues I've experienced with vetting MSPs is that I've not run into many SMBs that weren't technology-savvy who even knew what the difference between an MSP, a VAR, and a vendor rep were about as often as not.
But none of those things have anything whatsoever to do with technology. If an SMB can't tell those apart they are not savvy, period. Technology knowledge wouldn't help them know the difference, only common sense and/or business knowledge. If they can't tell the difference, how do they tie their shoes or feed themselves? These are insanely trivial things to figure out unless your MSP is actively lying and that's a totally different issue and you have legal recourse for that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller I think what we're really pointing at is that SMBs settle when it comes to staffing, a LOT. Enterprises often don't settle until they feel they have to, because they can afford to do so while SMBs I believe more frequently cannot.
This is true to some degree. SMBs settle because they want to, however. SMBs have access to the MSP/ITSP market that Enterprises realistically do not. There are more resources available to the SMB market than the SMB market is willing to utilize - sure if all SMBs decided to hire well they'd be screwed, but they just don't bother leaving loads of good talent wasted whether individual or *SP oriented.
Enterprises rarely leave the good people on the market, someone snaps them up quickly. But SMBs decide to forego good hiring the majority of the time. Any SMB that wants good people can get them pretty easily. So while they might decide to settle, it's not because they have to.
I assume that Scott specifically means to terms of compensation - if the SMB wanted a good highly qualified person, they'd simply have to offer the compensation to make someone want to work there.
Well maybe, but also soft benefits. Lots of SMBs struggle because of location. I know people making amazing salaries that will likely quit their jobs almost exclusively because of the location. Company is great, people are great, vacation plan is good, health benefits are good, money is great... but the location is... drab.
SMBs often struggle to offer desired locations and tend to fail to offer vacation, health and work from home benefits that enterprises often offer. And travel is nearly unheard of.
SMBs could do all these kinds of things and get anyone that they wanted out of the enterprise (almost). The one big barrier that they can't overcome is that they rarely offer interesting problems. SMBs tend to be extremely "cookie cutter" through no fault of their own and this can make them less enticing for people seeking a challenge.
Here's my thoughts on the location, travel, problem scale...
Working for a SMB I had to drive to a part of town where you needed a gun to go to lunch. I know a MSP who actually made anyone who visited several SMB clients have CHL's for liability concerns. Meanwhile, enterprises in the area allow work from home, nice downtown offices with tunnel network access so you don't get sweaty going to lunch, and 30 floor window views for the IT staff. The MSP I worked for had a nice view lunch onsite, and tons of places to eat/drink after work.
Working for a SMB I had to take off work to go to Spiceworld, and the one conference I went to was tiny, in Florida, and I had to share a room with my boss. Working for a MSP I was encouraged to go and it was paid for with my own room. Working for an enterprise I can go to as many conferences as I want, including international ones, and I can book at the Shangrai La and no one makes a fuss.
On the problem front, I went from dealing with how to "scale" a system from 30 users to 50, at a SMB to a MSP where I had to migrate 35 file servers and 25K users from Novel to Active Directory and new workstations in 2 weeks. At an enterprise, I have conversations with sizing a 5PB storage solution and think "this isn't that big really".
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
My one big gripe with our current Executive is that the he is very anti-remote access for some reason.
Emotions. SMBs will often punish their workers simply because they dislike people more than they like profits. Willing to sabotage the organization for some personal emotional benefit.
That's not to say that working remotely is best in all cases. But being against it emotionally instead of considering it as a business decision is actively not doing his job as an executive and exactly the kind of problem I see in the SMB - either hurting the company through incompetence or outright overt corruption.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
However, I will say that the acting as a partner versus a vendor, service provider, or a supplier has been very noticeable in the MSPs I've talked with, as most of the MSPs I've talked with seem to be all about what they can do for us instead of what we actually need or want them to do for instance. You know, marketing BS instead of just trying to do their jobs and sell us what we want/need, lol. It all sounded impressive to the others in management, as they didn't know enough to know why the marketing was just BS
To be fair, many in house IT staff don't get what the business needs are. (It's fairly common). I've seen many times where internal IT thought their goal was to cut costs (buying desktops or cheap heavy laptops for sales people) and missed out on what the business need was (Sales people who could work from anywhere and would benefit from SaaS Mobile apps, and high battery low weight ultrabooks). Don't conflate a recommendation to spend money on things you don't see value in, without things that DON"T actually have value to the business. Looking back to my time working in house at a SMB Dunning–Kruger effect was common in our department.
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@scottalanmiller Ironically, we're actually non-profit and he works from home. Only one director is allowed to work from home simply due to sheer workload requirements negating any other way to make all the things that need to happen, happen at times. I'm certain it's far more likely an emotional decision than a business one, because there's really no practical reason that for instance, I cannot work remotely as often as not.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
My one big gripe with our current Executive is that the he is very anti-remote access for some reason.
Emotions. SMBs will often punish their workers simply because they dislike people more than they like profits. Willing to sabotage the organization for some personal emotional benefit.
That's not to say that working remotely is best in all cases. But being against it emotionally instead of considering it as a business decision is actively not doing his job as an executive and exactly the kind of problem I see in the SMB - either hurting the company through incompetence or outright overt corruption.
had a hilarious meeting with a VP who was over an IT department at a SMB. He was explaining why he wanted to fire the department manager.
"Some days he comes in late and works from home. He sets an awful example for the younger staff! How can they ever expect to have any work ethic like that!"
Had to calmly explain that work from home and flex time is common in our industry, and if they wanted to make people work 8-5 always be on call and only have 1 week of vacation they needed to double their staff to absorb the on call, risk higher attrition or give everyone a 40% pay raise they wanted to keep. Being a consultant was fun some days.
Equity owners in SMB's often expect everyone to work like they have equity even when they don't is a common issue I see. the "We view our company like family" I often find translated to "We wish we could claim the labor exemptions for overtime and wages that farmers can for their 13 yr old kids!"
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
@scottalanmiller Ironically, we're actually non-profit and he works from home. Only one director is allowed to work from home simply due to sheer workload requirements negating any other way to make all the things that need to happen, happen at times. I'm certain it's far more likely an emotional decision than a business one, because there's really no practical reason that for instance, I cannot work remotely as often as not.
Non-profit IT is kinda a mess in how they do staffing. It tends to fall into....
- I'm going to hire my friends or people who know donors.
- People who will work for less and believe in the mission (which is strange, because they should just go work somewhere else and then volunteer on the side)
- People who were desperate to get that position/title and are underqualified to the point that they will work for the 30% less.
- The sadly rarer than they should non-profits who run like a corporation, pay market rates, and do the objective skill based hiring.
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@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:
However, I will say that the acting as a partner versus a vendor, service provider, or a supplier has been very noticeable in the MSPs I've talked with, as most of the MSPs I've talked with seem to be all about what they can do for us instead of what we actually need or want them to do for instance.
Well keep in mind that an MSP by definition means that you adapt to them. If you are choosing the MSP subset of the ITSP market, that's an up front expectation. ITSPs might be more flexible and be there to do whatever you need, rather than having a pre-packaged product that you conform to.
