Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 06:30:02 +0200 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Anti-Unix Site Runs Unix Message-ID: <007c01c1db91$63596b70$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <322A2C5F-477D-11D6-8361-003065B4E0E8@carrel.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
William writes: > The "premier support manager" manages a team > of "Technical Account Managers". Yes, I know. > These TAM's are the people that you actually > talk to about your "Premier" support problems. They provide the sales and logistic interface for Premier contracts; but they don't actually provide technical support themselves (although they are almost invariably qualified to do so, as they tend to be hired from the ranks of regular technical support technicians). > If you look at the job requirements for the > Technical Account Manager on the same page, > there is no mention of a need for any sort > of university degree. That means high-school (or > a GED or perhaps nothing at all) is good enough. Correct. Microsoft has never been very interested in credentials; the company tests prospective employees carefully with some thinly disguised IQ tests, and uses intelligence as a key hiring criterion. Smart people are hired; stupid people are not. And degrees and diplomas are largely ignored. > So hopefully you'll understand that I find > your claims difficult to believe. The problems you experienced are not due to any lack of qualification on the part of technical-support personnel; they are due to a total lack of internal documentation for the products being supported. Technical support at Microsoft, as at many other software vendors, is based on a trial-and-error, shotgun approach to problem identification and resolution, because none of Microsoft's products has ever been adequately documented, even internally, and so nobody really knows how they work except the developers, and even the developers know very little beyond the modules they personally maintain. In other words, technical support fails because it is not given the information to do the job, not because the technical-support people lack any qualifications. Unfortunately, this sort of situation is not at all unique to Microsoft; it is the norm, rather than the exception, in IT. > On FreeBSD on the other hand, I've found little > nitpicky bugs here and there, and generally had > prompt resolution once I actually got someone > to look at the PR. *wink wink* The people looking at the PR were probably people who also wrote or maintained the relevant code. At Microsoft and other large, commercial software vendors, the chances of the developer of any code actually looking at technical-support issues for that code are almost nil. Developers are kept busy writing code, not supporting it, in part because this is more cost-effective, and in part because developers who are forced to document or support their code often quit. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?007c01c1db91$63596b70$0a00000a>