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Modern professionalism and work ethic - Am I getting old or??

Sandy Johnson said:
I tell all my vendors right at the onset they'll need guys that can pass a background check. I don't want to waste my time reviewing stacks of proposals if they're not going to be able to work in the building. They're welcome to tack that onto the bill in the RFP if they like. I weight my selection process on skills and experience before lowest price if I'm the one making the call.
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You are ignoring the fact that you arent the sole party in hiring that contractor. YOU can be straight forward and truthful, I have no reason to believe otherwise. But that contractor has to meet all the other gov contracting bullcrap and your purchasing dept dopeheads. You arent signing the contracts and writing the checks for submitted invoices. ALL the structure above you is doing that. You are the poor sap trying to do your best, but are embedded in a dinosaur of headaches and bullchit.


Sandy Johnson said:
oh, and to be clear, we don't hire out for break fixes. We go out for bid on major installs and system designs, plus supporting what you build afterwards. We do all our own break-fixes in house.
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But you just pointed out a situation where you pay a couple thou a month for johnny on the spot equipment replacement service. Couple thou a month is not enough to carry a contract, much less be proactive in supporting it. IMHO. So a company willing to take that kind of obligation may not be a star provider.
 
clodhopper said:
You are ignoring the fact that you arent the sole party in hiring that contractor. YOU can be straight forward and truthful, I have no reason to believe otherwise. But that contractor has to meet all the other gov contracting bullcrap and your purchasing dept dopeheads. You arent signing the contracts and writing the checks for submitted invoices. ALL the structure above you is doing that. You are the poor sap trying to do your best, but are embedded in a dinosaur of headaches and bullchit.



But you just pointed out a situation where you pay a couple thou a month for johnny on the spot equipment replacement service. Couple thou a month is not enough to carry a contract, much less be proactive in supporting it. IMHO. So a company willing to take that kind of obligation may not be a star provider.
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My purchasing department is actually pretty chill. Probably because it's IT stuff and they don't understand how it all works, but they deffer to me for my vendors. Maybe things that fall under other departments get more scrutiny.


Not quite correct on who I pay how much and why: I pay a couple a thou per firewall per year to fortinet, the manufacturer of their firewalls, to stand behind their product when it fails. If it's still under a support contract with us, I expect them to replace it ASAP if critical hardware goes tits-up. In fact, I ended up getting the results I wanted there as well once I went around the crappy support engineer.

I don't know how much johnny on the spot firewall configuration and SIEM screen gazer company gets, but it's state-wide, so they should be getting plenty unless their sales guys threw them under the bus to get their foot in the door.

Either way, if you're getting paid to be the security services and main firewall toucher, it's your time to shine when a firewall and it's associated connections are down.
 
clodhopper said:
Dunno who that is or even what they do. Big companies are made up of good people and completely incompetent shitheads. Depends on who picks up the phone when you call. Company name doesnt mean that much to me, good or bad.
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Oh, and I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was bagging on the company itself for what I experienced. What I was really trying to highlight is that I'm encountering people no longer caring if their work is good or quality at an alarming rate.

In the IT world, having a P1 system down, or your entire connection down, etc has traditionally been a major emergency/all hands on deck type situation. When things are running right, we spend a lot of time not doing much, and when the SHTF, it's usually all hands on deck until the fire is out. Billable hours, sleep, food, family, etc. no longer matters, the only important thing is bringing back whatever is down.

I've encountered more and more people in my given industry that seem to not care about that. This person very likely making very solid 6 figures at a major tech company no longer giving any fawks startled me. I hadn't seen the apathy make it to that level yet.
 
Sandy Johnson said:
My purchasing department is actually pretty chill. Probably because it's IT stuff and they don't understand how it all works, but they deffer to me for my vendors. Maybe things that fall under other departments get more scrutiny.
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We can agree to disagree. I dont think you comprehend the differences between the purchasing systems you swim around in and what the private industry does. Your purch reps may be chill, like you said. Dealing with a chill dude doesnt easily balance out for the stupid ass hurdles a gov contract requires. Much of the expectation vs compensation on gov work doesnt pencil out.
 
clodhopper said:
We can agree to disagree. I dont think you comprehend the differences between the purchasing systems you swim around in and what the private industry does. Your purch reps may be chill, like you said. Dealing with a chill dude doesnt easily balance out for the stupid ass hurdles a gov contract requires. Much of the expectation vs compensation on gov work doesnt pencil out.
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Fair enough. I never really dealt with that part of the business even in the private sector. Just got paid to show up and fix chit while someone else handled the rest.
 
Sandy Johnson said:
I've encountered more and more people in my given industry that seem to not care about that. This person very likely making very solid 6 figures at a major tech company no longer giving any fawks startled me. I hadn't seen the apathy make it to that level yet.
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I am on board with that. Where I am, we are faced with too much work, and a significant lack of applicants. Those we interview, are underwhelming to say the least, and an increasing percentage have no work ethic. At times we face the question, is a warm body better than nobody? My experience is sometimes I can turn around a crapper employee, sometimes not. Our competitors face the same issue with staff and some have shut down because of it. Not hard to see a larger company trying to keep butts in seats hiring on someone with a poor attitude.

Our culture, general culture, is heavily influenced by what is seen on TV and internet. For a long while, the expectation of less work/more pay has been getting stronger and stronger. It is what many have just assimilated and walk around expecting from the world. Companies have to be Mummy/Daddy and take care of your every little need and the employee gets to set the work relationship. This is not something the small cadre of decent managers scattered around the economy are going to overcome. It is a downward spiral into idiocracy. Going to take some major reversals in what our society sees as goals and ethics.
 
Sandy Johnson said:
That assumption right there would tell anyone in the IT industry that you have no clue what you're talking about. I'm not in charge of people, except for a couple of junior sys admins. They're in charge of no one. We're basically technology janitors.
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On one hand he's a product of the public school system that IowaOffRoad raves about. :flipoff2:

On the other hand you're a fuckin fossil so you should have senior or lead or some shit like that in your job title by now. And depending on where you're working you may very well have direct reports despite being a "simple sysadmin".
 
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