When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Structure naturally impedes flexibility by design.
I don't agree there. You need structure to be able to do design. Lacking organization just makes for inefficiency.
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Experts = expensive in the minds of most businessmen I've ever met
No. The SMB expects you to be an expert anyway. They just won't pay you what you are worth. You see this anytime anything goes wrong at all.
They really don't. They rarely even expect competence.
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@scottalanmiller No, it is the job of experts in a field to teach businessmen who are not experts in the field of the value of their trades. You have that stated incorrectly.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Experts = expensive in the minds of most businessmen I've ever met
No. The SMB expects you to be an expert anyway. They just won't pay you what you are worth. You see this anytime anything goes wrong at all.
They really don't. They rarely even expect competence.
Every job I've ever had they expect me to know every aspect of everything, always.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller No, it is the job of experts in a field to teach businessmen who are not experts in the field of the value of their trades. You have that stated incorrectly.
The problem here isn't an MSP teaching a businessman the value of their trade. One, that's the job of a salesman. Two, any business person who gets advice from a salesperson is a freaking moron and has no place in business. Three, knowing business value is THE job of business people, needing the MSP, which is the IT company, to do the business work for the business people is totally wrong.
With that logic, IT must run the company and all non-IT people should be fired because only IT does anything.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller No, it is the job of experts in a field to teach businessmen who are not experts in the field of the value of their trades. You have that stated incorrectly.
Expert plumbers don't ever teach the value of hiring a plumber. Same with electricians. Same with lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc. No field of experts, anywhere, feels the need to do the job of core management and teach management skills before being hired except IT. This is very wrong.
Teaching the general principles of business to business people so that they can't not fall all apart is a pretty big red flag that our thinking isn't right.
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@scottalanmiller Perhaps the average SMB goes under where you are, but it's about 50% nationwide for almost all major industries, except ironically in the Information Industry. There's an inordinate amount of them in some parts of the United States that survive much longer than in others. Part of the reason is that enterprises run them roughshod with sheer size and monetary absorption power, meaning they must be creative, or fill niches that are not filled elsewhere.
The Northeast is pretty saturated because it's old and well established, the South and Midwest are not.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Structure naturally impedes flexibility by design. Not sure how you're getting that adding structure somehow increases flexibility when by the very nature of structure, it is by design intended to reduce flexibility by adding rigidity. That's not to say that some rigidity is good, but the larger a structure, the more rigidity becomes necessary to maintain efficiency, ultimately reducing the flexibility similarly.
Yes, but how do you associate this with MSPs? You are saying that things like scale, training, peer review, mentorship, career growth are rigidities that are so dramatic that SMBs are stifled by them?
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Perhaps the average SMB goes under where you are, but it's about 50% nationwide for almost all major industries, except ironically in the Information Industry. There's an inordinate amount of them in some parts of the United States that survive much longer than in others. Part of the reason is that enterprises run them roughshod with sheer size and monetary absorption power, meaning they must be creative, or fill niches that are not filled elsewhere.
The Northeast is pretty saturated because it's old and well established, the South and Midwest are not.
No, it's WAY above that. SMB failure rates are insane. It's like 80%. I'm in Texas, BTW.
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@scottalanmiller Plumbers don't have to teach the value, the value is obvious because the results are obvious. If pipes don't take sewage out of the house, well.. it's not hard to see the problem and why plumbers are valuable. Same for Electricians when the AC is out due to power issues and the heat index is 110 degrees outside. Lawyers, Doctors, and Accountants are in the same boat. Their trades by nature explain themselves to a large degree.
Which of those fields operates in a single location for long periods of time for the same customer?
None of those examples is comparable to IT, because they're all fields that are only utilized by their clientele when they are needed. IT is pretty much always necessary, so it's hardly comparable to compare contractors to permanent service providers. -
Failure rate is 20% in the first year which is hard to believe because how does a business fail in the first year? That's so fast, they couldn't possibly have had any idea what they were doing. My roommate has a totally insane business with zero business plan, zero income and no hope of any income ever yet has already lasted THAT long.
By five years, failure is passed the 50% mark. By fifteen years, it's closing in on 80%.
https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/05/03/what-percentage-of-businesses-fail-in-their-first.aspx
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Plumbers don't have to teach the value, the value is obvious because the results are obvious.
IT results are pretty obvious to real business people. That's why no IT people have to justify their expertise in the enterprise space.
That the results are not obvious suggests either the results aren't there or the business people are not doing their jobs.
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@scottalanmiller By 15 years, a good entrepreneur can easily make enough money to retire. Many can do it in 10, and sometimes less. Do the statistics account for that at all to your knowledge? I haven't checked so I'm uncertain.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
None of those examples is comparable to IT, because they're all fields that are only utilized by their clientele when they are needed. IT is pretty much always necessary, so it's hardly comparable to compare contractors to permanent service providers.
Except for doctors, lawyers, accountants, electricians, HR, etc. All are used regularly by the business and are often on staff departments. They are all permanent and exactly like IT. And, just like IT, most of the time should be outsourced unless you are in the enterprise.
Like IT in every way. Experts, obvious results, should be outsourced way more often than they should, requires no explanation to anyone qualified.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
IT is pretty much always necessary, so it's hardly comparable to compare contractors to permanent service providers.
Is it? Why? What about IT makes it need to be there all the time moreso than, say, accountants? Both are needed with regularity, neither is needed enough in the SMB to be needed full time. Hence the explanation for why the MSP model is so important.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Clearly there are not enough MSPs of the type you describe, because they simply don't exist within about a thousand mile radius of where I am.
There is no populated place on earth like this. Given that I know some that operate globally, this is simply untrue. You can have a good MSP today. That you choose not to accept one or look for one is a totally different matter. There is no business that can't have a good MSP. Lots of businesses can't figure out how to search for one or worse, how to identify one, that's yet another matter, but the same thing can be said about good IT people. If you can't find a good MSP, you have no more ability to look for good IT staff. The ability to search and identify each is shared.
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@scottalanmiller By enterprises yes, which is not remotely similar to SMBs which is what we're talking about. Big entities can hire their entire infrastructure and ecosystems for efficiency, which is also why they can't do much quickly or with much flexibility in most cases. IBM has historically been an exception to that rule. Disney is an exception to that rule as well.
Even large enterprises struggle with bad management, because most managers are bad too. Again, the problem throughout every industry at ever size and scale in every business in every country on earth is an issue of having the wrong people in the wrong roles at the wrong times more often than not. Leaving only a handful doing what they will excel at, in a role that suits them. It's not a scale thing. Scale just tries to compensate for the wrong people in the wrong place problem with some success, but it varies and is not as universal as you're saying imo.
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@scottalanmiller Getting a good MSP, and getting a good MSP that can provide services as required by the organization for a price that they can, or are willing to pay are very different things though.
I'm not saying that there aren't good MSPs that could be contracted, but just that they won't contract with a lot of businesses in ways that are agreeable, so the businesses look elsewhere. Because the good MSPs opt to demand X amount of resources for their services, they created the opportunity for less-good MSPs and internal IT to fill that void. Just because there are good MSPs out there doesn't mean that everyone else agrees that they're worth what they believe they are. Some organizations may simply decide that their scale is too much for their needs, so their cost does not justify the value they perceive, so they leave the MSPs offer on the table because they failed to offer an agreeable solution. It's just capitalism on display.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller By enterprises yes, which is not remotely similar to SMBs which is what we're talking about. Big entities can hire their entire infrastructure and ecosystems for efficiency, which is also why they can't do much quickly or with much flexibility in most cases. IBM has historically been an exception to that rule. Disney is an exception to that rule as well.
Actually Disney is famous for having the worst IT ever. Disney is the best example of your rule, rather than an exception.
But exceptions, to me, seem to be the norm. Find me any enterprise OTHER than Disney with these problems. It can't be simply that every enterprise I've worked for or with is the exception, that seems to always be everyone's answer. Big entities have the resources to dance and the management that knows why that is important. What real enterprise (not Dashrender's one weird small example) has these problems? They exist, but I don't know of one.
But what SMB doesn't? I talk to SMBs every day and consistently an answer I get is that they are way too rigid, lack the resources and structure to be flexible. Their management can't handle change and their IT can't handle it - either through lack of skills, support, resources, exposure, peer assistance, ability to pivot due to being alone, etc.
All things that MSPs can fix.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Getting a good MSP, and getting a good MSP that can provide services as required by the organization for a price that they can, or are willing to pay are very different things though.
Willing to pay is the piece. All this means is that the SMB is dumb. Nothing more. It doesn't mean that the MSP isn't cheaper or better. Or that internal IT makes sense. You've just make "SMBs make bad decisions and screw themselves" the available reason, and I agree. For all intents and purposes, every SMB that doesn't use an MSP does so because they aren't willing to do what is right for their business because business results are not what are driving their decisions.
I agree 100%. An MSP can always come in cheaper than internal staff. But many SMBs simple burn money to flaunt that they can waste it. It's fun for them. It's hubris. Owners of SMBs commonly show off how much money they can waste, it's a thing. And not just in IT. In all kinds of ways.
