Burned by Eschewing Best Practices
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@scottalanmiller said:
This just went in the IPOD thread as it is that too. But this guy also got burnt by having a salesman make his IT decisions. he did the "thinking he could get free IT work" thing and got screwed, but time. To the tune of tens of thousands of dollars and has a setup not nearly as good as something much cheaper. Napkin estimate says he overspent by $40K on a project that should not have cost more than $20K total!
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1392732-w00t-excited-for-this-project
I'm assuming you realize that probably something like 90% of IT is actually done this way (maybe even more in the SMB only market)?
That asked, how do we change it? Is it even possible to change it? I think you're trying to overcome human nature with this problem.
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@Dashrender said:
That asked, how do we change it? Is it even possible to change it? I think you're trying to overcome human nature with this problem.
Demand accountability. Hire better people. Take IT serious. Invoke oversight. Treat IT like any other department. Audit for incompetence. Use forums to verify BEFORE purchasing instead of using them for congratulations when no work was done.
What aspect do you feel is human nature, incompetence?
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@Dashrender said:
I'm assuming you realize that probably something like 90% of IT is actually done this way (maybe even more in the SMB only market)?
57% of adults buy lotto tickets too. We still try to fix that when we can. That most people don't bother being even slightly good at their jobs or caring at all is a problem, one that needs to be fixed from the business side by hiring fewer, better people rather than hiring low cost in bulk.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What aspect do you feel is human nature, incompetence?
yes.
pushing your work off on someone else - human nature. -
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
What aspect do you feel is human nature, incompetence?
yes.
pushing your work off on someone else - human nature.That's actually running a scam. That's not incompetence, that's actually a con job. That's the same as saying most people are unethical. Probably true. There is a simple solution. You fire them. In some cases, you sue them as well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
What aspect do you feel is human nature, incompetence?
yes.
pushing your work off on someone else - human nature.That's actually running a scam. That's not incompetence, that's actually a con job. That's the same as saying most people are unethical. Probably true. There is a simple solution. You fire them. In some cases, you sue them as well.
interesting, though I would say a con job would require fore thought of wrong doing (they knew they were doing the wrong thing). Most of those people (my friend who did exactly the same as your most recent post - sales person sold them a 1 server VMWare solution with a SAN - yes guys and gals you read that right.... A ONE server solution with a SAN. sigh!
But my friend didn't know any better. He's just always heard through conversations that when you virtualize you also use SAN. He's never been a forum user, so he didn't ask for any help.
He was also a helpdesk person who took over the reigns as the IT admin of a small school district only 3 months earlier... so it was a perfect storm of crap.
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He deleted his post.
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I just considered another problem here - in the works toward fixing the problem...
The businesses themselves (mostly SMB) don't want to spend money on consulting. I definitely have the problem here. The BOD has this broken idea that I work for them, that should be all they ever need. They shouldn't need to hire/pay for consultants because, hey, that's your (mine) job.
So those admins who find themselves fairly swamped taking care of the day to day cruft don't have the time to educate themselves, so they turn to the only resource they do have, the sales people.... who of course are more than willing to put together a quote for something they sell no matter how good or bad it is for you.
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@Dashrender said:
So those admins who find themselves fairly swamped taking care of the day to day cruft don't have the time to educate themselves, so they turn to the only resource they do have, the sales people.... who of course are more than willing to put together a quote for something they sell no matter how good or bad it is for you.
Ah but...sales people are NOT a resource. They just aren't. You don't run short of cashiers at the bank and turn to bank robbers to take over, right? Under no condition do you consider the "enemy" your resource.
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@Dashrender said:
I just considered another problem here - in the works toward fixing the problem...
The businesses themselves (mostly SMB) don't want to spend money on consulting. I definitely have the problem here. The BOD has this broken idea that I work for them, that should be all they ever need. They shouldn't need to hire/pay for consultants because, hey, that's your (mine) job.
So those admins who find themselves fairly swamped taking care of the day to day cruft don't have the time to educate themselves, so they turn to the only resource they do have, the sales people.... who of course are more than willing to put together a quote for something they sell no matter how good or bad it is for you.
But as soon as you (or whoever) thinks talking to the sales person is consulting, it's time to step away and hire an actual consultant. It's direct money out of your pocket either in the form of a higher bill for a hardware product, or in a time payment.
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Ha, someone locked the thread.
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Or more specifically, starts asking the sales person "what does <vendor> recommend" should you find someone who knows what they're talking about.
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And someone from Spiceworks completely deleted the thread.
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@DustinB3403 said:
And someone from Spiceworks completely deleted the thread.
Not surprised. That guy shouldn't be in an IT community. Having to talk to other IT pros is not something that is going to go well for him.
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My response thread is an honest one... should that community remain for IT pros to treat each other as pros, or should it be a circle jerk ego fest? It sounds bad, because of my wording, but honestly I think most people there are looking for the latter. Maybe all the IT people should duck out and ignore the questions and do the "it'll all be alright" thing and stop trying to care about each other. Because really, if the OPs don't care, should anyone else?
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Of course you both are correct... I'm just trying to see their mindset.
Scott says fire them and hire new. Well if management isn't willing to hire consultants when their IT says they need them.... Not likely they are going to hire someone better.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott says fire them and hire new. Well if management isn't willing to hire consultants when their IT says they need them.... Not likely they are going to hire someone better.
True, true. And everything is situational. But here are some thoughts that at least apply a lot of the time:
- We are talking about people with plenty of time to post pointless threads to show off their bad decisions and look for kudos, but lack time to post a question to find out what should be done?
- How long does posting a question in a forum or looking up other threads take?
- Are these people really requesting consultants?
- Instead of turning to sales people, why are they not simply adding the work to their workload like anything else? No matter how much work I am assigned, calling someone that doesn't work for us to see if they will do it for me would never even cross my mind. I would simply tell management that there is a backlog of work and that is that.
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FYI my account is now in moderation, because I'm being honest, trying to have a adult conversation about the topic at hand.
