Originally posted by BOFH:
I like my job, we have a great team of folks to work with, and my boss is pretty great....



You and I are on opposing ends of the same business, you being with Sun and me formerly being with IBM (now an IBM Business Partner).

I can't even BEGIN to tell you how similar your gripes are in comparison to mine, not to mention the issues with some of the wacko customers I support...

...don't get me wrong, though. I love customers as they are the one's that ultimately put food on my table. It's just some of really could use courses in remedial Admin Training 101, Anger Management 101, or Problem Management 101...

Then I've a couple that could use ALL three, complete with a full-time on-site consulting staff (which for some reason they think I qualify as and to which I respond with the question of "Where's my service contract?" )

You know you're a whipping post in an account when your competition thinks twice about engaging them, especially in today's economy.

Thankfully, those types of accounts only make up of perhaps 5% of my customer base.

As it is, I feel I'm quite fortunate in my current position. I've a boss who pretty much leaves me in charge of my own territory and customers, I work when I want (sometimes 20-30 hrs a week, sometimes 80-90 hrs a week; depends on the workload) and I run most of the aspects of the sales and technical efforts in our midrange group (Intel/UNIX/Linux and Enterprise Storage) within a 5-state region.

There are parts of my job I dislike, but overall I'll take this over what I used to do at IBM any freaking day of the YEAR.

Let's just say I'm not fond of politics and rules for the sole sake of them and at the expense of the customer...

[Thread Hijack]
We need an IT story-swapping thread. I've got some zingers that will have rolling and some that would have others cringing (customer names edited out for protection, of course). I've only been at this for around 10 years now, but some of the crap I've seen firsthand and had told to me secondhand would give most data center managers nightmares.

Let me set the stage:

Two guys on 3rd shift tape rotation at one of the top 10 largest data centers in the South.

Two hockey sticks.

One Magstar tape for a puck.

A couple acres of tapes in racks that aren't bolted down to the floor.

I'll just state that the data center in question now has stainless steel bolts that attach each and every tape rack in their data center securely to the floor now...

No sh!t, either. One of the techs got the Magstar tape in question bronzed and mounted. It sits at his desk to this day...


[/Thread Hijack]

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