[svandamme]

Rant mode enable=true

So i work in a small services company, and i'm the only one doing support, i also do remote management of servers..The other 2 are half programmer, half something else, basically i do 95% of all cases, and they pick up the phone when i happen to be already on the line with somebody.

We have 4 consultants, of which 2 (the dutch guys) are idiots.

They go onsite, make an inventory of the problem they collect log files, go home and send em to support. with a note "because you are better at reading log files"

So i get
- 800 MB of logs
- a vague problem description : "something with encryption keys when moving a user between servers".
- and a deadline "i told em they would have the report on tuesday"

And keep in mind, that they are titled "senior consultant", have been working with the products for at least 3 years before i ever have. And get bonus based on billable work, which i don't.
At the very least i want to see them try to look at the logs for a problem, then they would know that you can't just take 800 meg logs, without a user name, without a time of the problem, and magically find the problem.
It's the proverbial needle in a haystack, sure, it's possible to find it, but you'll waste enormous amounts of time doing so.

I'm fed up with that crap, and just sent their manager a piece of my mind. For better or for worse, because their manager as far as i have seen, ist just like em.
Dodging and delegating his own work.
I'm just glad he isn't my manager, or i would have left months ago.

Another beautiful story, is the consultants wanted a vmware server enviroment for testing and one for trainings. . They produced a proposal, we got to see it beforehand...it was 20 pages long, full of nonsensical white paper stuff he copy pasted off some webpages...

Within 5 seconds of seing it, we at the office stated " it's over complicated and they can't get it to work". Well guess what, 7-8 K hardware was ordered, they got the thing in a hosted collocation... Forgot that they would need some kind of ip connectivity in that hosted setup... they hadn't thought of that...So they get 20 full on IP adresses, and run the Vmwares straight up and unfirewalled... They spent a good 3-4 weeks setting up the vmware guests... And now all the machines got buggered by spam and botnet's... So the hosting company cut the lines again...

unfrigginbelievable.