HP splitting off managed services

[wintermute000]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/hp-splits-again-as-hewlett-packard-enterprise-spins-off-it-services/

Even before the split, Whitman announced plans to replace 60 percent of its IT service staff from the US and Europe with cheaper workers in Costa Rica, the Philippines, Bulgaria, and India, in an effort to boost profitability. The division has seen its annual revenue decline for a number of years; it's currently around $20 billion, a $4 billion decrease from 2011.

sounds legit, just keep pedalling harder...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b97zJxKEqAk

How about a revolutionary idea: lets provide services with actually competent engineers who are given leeway to perform their tasks as best they see fit. And lets make sure we have people that are au-fait with this cloudy SDN stuff. And if people don't cut the mustard, we fire them. Also, lets not have 1 manager per worker bee, if we rock up at a technical meeting with more managers than engineers that's a bad look. And lets learn the lesson of the mythical man month - doesn't matter how many cheap level 1s you hire in Elbonia, there's going to be times where you just need to put the right engineer in the right place and give them the breathing room to get into the issue, throwing ten more clueless bodies into an incident is going to do absolutely nothing.
Who am I kidding, that's not management talk. Lets just party like its 2003!

Anyone want to kick off the 'how stupid can an HP engineer be' stories? I'll start with one that will be close to deanwebb's heart:

Me: I need a rule for SSH. From server X to server Y, port 22.
HP firewall engineer - you put the request wrong - you only asked for outbound port. You need to also request return port.
Me: Well the return port will be my source port which will be a random high port. Isn't your firewalll stateful?
HP firewall engineer - no, you don't understand, if you don't ask for the return port, it won't work.
<10 minutes later and several new forehead shaped indentations on the desk>
Me: ok fine, just put in the same rule for me but for return, KTHXBYE.

I poked around later and found out that the HP team had been rigorously putting FW rules in for the 'return port' for every single request since kingdom come (e.g. if I ask for X to Y on port 22, they will also put in Y to X on port 22).

That entire entity can go die in a fire along with all their overpaid 'account executives' or whatever title the armies of leeches that come with any large MSP give themselves these days. I should not be having to explain the difference between MST and Cisco proprietary RSTP+ to a 'network lead' (10 minutes into the conversation I realised that the entire concept of spanning tree was over his head, but true to cultural stereotypes, he would completely refuse to admit he had no f--kin clue). Of course this is in the wake of HP merrily plugging in MST ToR switches into Cisco RSTP+ running Dist/Core switches.... good times reading INE articles.

[Dieselboy]

I'm seeing more and more call centres moved to the Philippines. 99% of the time they don't understand me. It is probably my accent. But usually our conversations go something like this:

"hi Tony please could you tell me your problem"
"Hi, sure: I'm unable to apply a DNS SRV entry in cpanel"
"okay let me get this straight, you cannot log in to cpanel"
"erm no that isn't what I said. Why do you think I'm unable to log in to cpanel?"

[GeorgeS]

To be honest, is not long time ago that an opportunity has been given to me and i think a major reason was that my salary expectations were low that time. Hopefully, these times passed

I understand why the companies move to low cost centers, but for me the problem is not where they move or planning to move but the quality of people(majority) who are hiring.
I do not understand how they can rip off an established team of experienced network engineers  and move them in an X country  just for the costs. And then, they do not try to hire the best engineers in the X country but the cheapest ones, who in the most cases are really bad engineers(if can be considered engineers)
As result not only their customers are getting frustrated but even some of your few remaining good engineers are frustrated, guess what will happen, they will quit...  I do not even count the outages etc.
Good engineers are over the world but when a company establishes a bad reputation, automatically the possibilities for a good engineer to join the company are minimum. Same goes for a dissatisfied customer.

If you had an experience with a return acl then check once the acl for NAT and the NAT statements

[deanwebb]

The bigger problem is one of deflation and falling populations in the developed world... With deflation and declining populations, profits are vanishing quickly for many firms. To keep profitability positive, they hit the biggest number on the expense sheet, payroll. If an accountant can find 10 guys that knew how to dump a CCNA exam in a city with only one cell phone tower, they'll open up a call center there.

Should the locals get that second cell tower and start asking for a penny more per hour, it's off to the next town or country.

Then entire basis for Western Civilization is the notion that one can always find a way to increase productivity and profits, without end. We can reach for the stars and beyond, according to our way of looking at the world. Western Civ was born in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe and now lives in the ever-taller high-rises. Architecturally, they are all related. But what do we do when we hit the wall on opening up new markets? What do we do when there are fewer people to buy the stuff that we make with our supposedly unlimited resources? We turn to accounting tricks to keep the show going for a while, but it all eventually ends with a crash.

[Dieselboy]

Based on this thread then, I may very well advise the person whom I'm speaking with that they're in fact not only representing themselves when liaising with me but they are representing their entire team.
They should be mindful that phoning me at 5am (to inform me there is no update!), and repeatedly calling back when I cancel the call half-asleep is detrimental to their teams reputation.

I had a call from said call centre this morning at 7.45am to ask me if I had received a call today from them. 
As it's not an emergency I don't think I was unreasonable to advise they call back during normal working hours. Happy to be corrected if I was unreasonable.

[icecream-guy]

Based on this thread then, I may very well advise the person whom I'm speaking with that they're in fact not only representing themselves when liaising with me but they are representing their entire team.
They should be mindful that phoning me at 5am (to inform me there is no update!), and repeatedly calling back when I cancel the call half-asleep is detrimental to their teams reputation.

I had a call from said call centre this morning at 7.45am to ask me if I had received a call today from them. 
As it's not an emergency I don't think I was unreasonable to advise they call back during normal working hours. Happy to be corrected if I was unreasonable.

yes unreasonable    you should be simply happy that you have a _JOB_ no matter when they call you, there's a saying "24/7 forever"  so get in line and appreciate that they have confidence in your abilities enough to call YOU!



(inject much sarcasm in my response)

[GeorgeS]

Based on this thread then, I may very well advise the person whom I'm speaking with that they're in fact not only representing themselves when liaising with me but they are representing their entire team.
They should be mindful that phoning me at 5am (to inform me there is no update!), and repeatedly calling back when I cancel the call half-asleep is detrimental to their teams reputation.

I had a call from said call centre this morning at 7.45am to ask me if I had received a call today from them. 
As it's not an emergency I don't think I was unreasonable to advise they call back during normal working hours. Happy to be corrected if I was unreasonable.

based on my experience i would be happy that they even called. Usually they never call!!!! This is a great support i have to say, usually we call 1000 times to get an updated, do not remember a time that we have been called back!

[deanwebb]

I always call back and surprise the people that called me.

Except salesdrones. I don't call them back.