[150098] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Common operational misconceptions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Bonser)
Fri Feb 17 14:27:47 2012
From: George Bonser <gbonser@seven.com>
To: Jens Link <lists@quux.de>, "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:26:44 +0000
In-Reply-To: <87obsx9sgf.fsf@pc8.berlin.quux.de>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> > 3. Troubleshooting skills are limited to knowing the number of the
> vendor's help desk.
>=20
> There are no problems! Can't be. And if there are they hire external
> experts. BTDT. Those are well paid jobs.
I see that a lot and there is often an organizational reason for it. If a =
tech says "I have a ticket open with the vendor" and provides the ticket an=
d status updates on a regular basis, he's covered as far as the people high=
er up in the organization are concerned. If the C(X)O wants to know what's=
going on, the manager can shift the focus to the vendor and say we are wai=
ting for a fix from them.
A tech trying to troubleshoot it and fix it themselves is going to be hound=
ed every five minutes for status updates and won't be able to get any work =
done because every five minutes (I kid you not, I have worked where that is=
a requirement) he has to pull his head out of what he is doing and answer =
a bunch of questions from the PHBs. And you always get "how long is it goi=
ng to be" and you want to say "10 minutes longer than it would have been if=
you hadn't interrupted me" but you bite your tongue.
