Slashdot Mirror
ISP's Slapping Techs For Lending A Hand
Mike writes "Broadband Reports is running a story about how several large ISP's have reprimanded, even fired techs who offer support in BBR's forums in their free time. BellSouth is the latest ISP to forbid any official tech support representation. Instead of sculpting PR guidelines for techs to follow, they're
scaring them into submission."
Bah, this is rediculous, they aren't on the clock, they aren't getting paid for it, they know this. So now anyone who works on open source software in their free time they're going to demand pay as well? No, i think not. If someone likes helping people, or writing software or solving problems (which is usually the case) they can do that in their free time and not get paid for it, why would they think that?
Kyle
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
The ISPs don't want the potential liability of having their employees giving out anything other than the "company line," whether in an official capacity or not. I can't really say as I blame them. What if ISPTechA is posting on BBR and the advice he gives leads someone to wreck their hard drive? What if ISPTechB makes an offhanded comment about how ISPTechA sucks goat nards?
.sigs about how "the opinions of this post are that of the author and not the employer." Some companies handle it that way, and some are a bit more draconian by forbidding non-official contact across the board. But it all boils down to liability.
You've probably seen plenty of usenet posts with long
You know, when when I first read some of the semi-near future cyberpunk stuff (like SnowCrash and Gibson's "bridge trilogy"), I thought the way the future was being portrayed was simply taking things to an absurd level with excessive litigation and examples of corporate bad-citizenship. Now everywhere I turn it seems like the predictions are spot on and the bleak realities that we read as fiction are slowly becoming truth. As much as I like SciFi that paints the future as full of Shiney Happy People, I think the reality is that we'll all end up living on a bridge or in subway tunnels someday...
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Free time during work time or when they go home?
The employees should be allowed to do pretty much anything they want when they go home. (apart from selling non-disclosure agreement secrets.) This is kinda like firing a doctor for curing someone without charging them. Seems kinda silly to me.
But then again, the tech market is in a slump, and they may need the money.
If this is during work though, it's somewhat understandable (note: I am not condoning it (IANCI).). Some offices prefer you work for them during work hours, and not work for free online.
As well, if these techies are giving out details that they aren't allowed to (due to some agreement or another). Then again, it is understablable (IANCI). Businesses have their "intellectual property" that they'd prefer to sell then give away.
Seem odd though for a company to do this and risk the bad press.
~ kjrose
Is the key and operative term used in the article. It makes perfect sense for these companies to want to have some control over what will get said by THEIR employees and hence as THEIR _Official_ representatives. There are lots of techs out there who are quick to say/write/post things that are offensive/incorrect - policy guidelines notwithstanding, and there's no good way for these companies to retract/correct them. How many times have _you_ dealt with a surly/incompetent/incoherent tech that reflects very poorly on their company ? Could you imagine the company having a policy that, say, only fluent English speakers are allowed to post, without that company being open to lawsuits ?
I don't blame these companies a bit for wanting to be able to control what their company says and how their company is portrayed. The article says nothing about the companies prohibiting the techs from posting in an unofficial capacity.
Techs who provide support in a non-authorised manner and therefore unsupervised manor should be prohibited from doing this.
I personally have seen incorrect information posted on BBSs. Yet if the poster IDs him/herself as an employee of company X and that incorrect information causes damage the company could be liable. The article says "So instead of spending twenty minutes drafting clear corporate policy on public forum relations protocol, some companies clamp down on such activities; sometimes brutally." No they took there 20 minutes and elimiated a potential legal loophole. Running a proper BBS forum would take a lot of resources and I can understand why a corportaion would want to clamp down on this.
This isn't the evil empire. This is CYOA. And considering the amount of stupid and incorrect information that can be found out there I don't blame them on bit!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
As long as they aren't representing themselves as employees of the company while doing it, sure.
Mod point free since 2001
The things they do in their spare time are not their own business if they do it in the name of the company they work for. By identifying themeselves as employees of said company, they are no longer acting as private individuals, but as representative agents of a corporation.
Kindness is one thing, good business practice is another.
For example: a licensed tech provides off-time support in a relatively unofficial capacity, which causes the user to do something that royally screws his connection/hardware/software/downloaded pr0n/etc. User calls official tech support and demands retribution, seeing as how one of the company's techs told user to do something that "broke his stuff."
I've been in this situation before, and it ain't pretty for anyone involved, no matter how good the tech's intentions were.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for kindness and helping others. But I also understand the corporate position of "no unofficial tech support by official tech supporters."
Moderation totals that amuse me for one of my posts: Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Underrated=1
"Anything they do in theyre spare time in theyre lives is theyre business,"
RTFA. The main complaint of these ISPs is that these people (in their free time) say "I'm a tech support person for XYZ ISP and..." Their free time doesn't seem so free any more if they seem to be acting in their official capability as XYZ tech support. And if the information is harmful, does the poster get blamed or the employer they all but claim to represent?
Maybe management didn't want you mixing your side business with your day job.
Generally speaking, most places dislike their employees generating business from their customers or doing business on their time.
With war and hatred so predominant these days, it's hard to believe that during the Holiday season, people are actually discouraging kindness.
Okay, let's take a step back for a minute. First of all, this is DSL, not saving the whales. The terrorists haven't won just because these guys can't post.
The truth is, running a company is hard. Wouldn't you rather have your job for the "Holiday season" that some free webboard tech support?
Part of the problem here is that it can be dangerous to have your employees posting as a representative of your company without any standard of what can or cannot be communicated safely.
It appears from this article that that some companies are setting up a policy that forbids this sort action by their employees. In a large company, this can be necessary. How well do the managers know their employees? Are they just spouting off about how much they hate their employers? Are managers going to scour the web for these people's posts?
It's true, it would be nice if this were allowed to continue, but I certainly understand why for liability's sake most companies don't want to be involved. This certainly doesn't warrant front page slashdot news. I know we all hate corporations, but often times companies get big because their the best at what they do, or at least good at making money while doing it.
Some day you kids will go off to college, and then, you might even have to get a job at a corporation, too.
Jesus, people. This isn't microsoft sacrificing babies in the parking lot every morning.
The key part you're missing is that these techs ARE doing this in their free time. It's not that they're being asked to visit these forums while off the clock. The only reason the company caught up to them, is because they identified themselves on a public forum as company employees. The company is worried about being asked for a paycheck, it simply doesn't fit along the company line of using answers to technical questions that have been reviewed and OK'd by management.
Although I despise the current ISP mentality (let the customers burn to hell -- it's worse than getting sued), I partially understand their position.
The main problem is that some people just do not have the correct "attitude" and a disgruntled employee (rightfully or not) might cause severe damage to the "corporate" image.
OK, OK. You must be thinking now: "But not helping also damages their reputation!". And I couldn't agree more. I think they should "pre-screen" the employees that can do that, or employ some similar process.
I speak from past experience. In a previous job, we were in charge of fixing a broken Oracle Database (poor backup schemes and a disk failure -- you get the idea). The development team sent a programmer to "help us out". The management team on the branch office where the problem happened was already demanding answers (who? why? How can we avoid it?). We were kindly explaining everything to calm them down (a new backup policy, redundant hardware and all). Everything was going in the right direction.
Later on that day, in the middle of a big meeting to discuss the problem (with the aforementioned managers), Mr. Programmer does some quick queries to an yet to be fully restored database and says "Well, I say that this database is completely messed up -- I don't trust this data anymore...".
Needless to say we had to counter his false and invalid arguments with some facts. Took us some good hours and a lot of paperwork.
That is the danger of having someone without any tact representing the company or a group in a "delicate" situation.
It would be bad for the company reputation. Imagine, your support is so worthless that the few good technicians have to give advice to people while not at work because they can't on the job?
This is essentially what it's saying to the people in charge. Whether it's true or not is what they should be worried about.
It also a liability issue. What if a less-than-stellar tech goes online and starts spewing bad information - then people are angry at your company, and you've done nothing wrong.
As a former Prodigy Internet tech (it was acquired by Bell South...) I recall this was an issue for our call center. Tech support is practically a scripted job and while it attracts a variety of intelligent people, it gets plenty of random ones, too. We had plenty of people who would spin wild tales for people as to why they couldn't connect, and believe them themselves.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
this is the "radio shack" syndrome... companies run by idiots that know nothing about their own business.. and WANTING employees that also know nothing about what they sell or support.
it's very typical, and what we need to do is call the kettle black.. we all need to start publically humiliating CEO's, CFO's and espically CTO's at companies that do this kind of crap... call up and leave messages to these "leader" as to how stupid they are, be sure to spread the word about any company that does this, you'd be really suprised how a little of warning via word of mouth is more effective than $2,000,000.00 in advertising.
Basically.... WARN everyone you know about companies like what you worked for. fill them in, and let them know that XYZ isp is not what you want to use...
Hell I know cable guys that reccomend to people "can you get DSL?? I'd switch to that first and avoid cablemodem service unless you have no other choice. hell I also know cable guys that reccomend to their friends and relatives to get a dish instead of cable service in their town.
the way to flush these "morons with money" (tm) is to spread the word to everyone you know... it will put them out of business.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If your support is that worthless, then forbidding your employees from helping others in their spare time won't help. The only way to fix that problem is to fix your official support.
What makes you think this isn't going to happen while the tech is on the job? If a tech does that then they deserve to be reprimanded. While reprimanding an employee for what they say while not on the job treads dangerously on First Amendment rights, employers can probably get away with it these days.
Regardless, techs should be reprimanded for doing things that are bad for the company, not things that merely could be.
"Liability" has become the ubiquitous excuse for far too many of the evils in the world today.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I work in support for a large internet equipment manufacturer, and here is my take:
When on the job, I can represent myself as a technical support representative from my company, and when I am not on the job I cannot make that claim. Its that simple.
I can still offer support, assistance and advice, but there is no way I'd support anything outside of my work structure and still represent myself as doing official work (i.e. claiming I'm a support rep).
I don't do this for my company's sake, I do it for mine -- its called CYA... coverying your ass.
Have any of you actually gone to DSL reports and gotten help from message boards? You post a problem and you get 200 answers about "it's your CDROM drivers" and, "your MTU window size is too small!".
Most of these techs may be enthusiastic about their jobs and helping people, but they are also not very technically inclined to help the customers. How many of them are actually qualified to do anything on the ISPs systems? Does that tech know about ATM VPI/VCI addressing, am I supposed to be using 0/32 or something else? The difference between AAL3 and AAL5? What about PPP components and how laying PPP over Ethernet is such a bad idea? Can they tell you why they use PAP instead of CHAP authentication? Do they know half a DINK about RADIUS? Ask them what the frequency ranges are for CAP and DMT. Do they even know how IPv4 addressing works? Hell, ask them how many pairs DSL runs on and you may be surprised at the answers that you get. They couldn't lay out a static route on a Cisco if their jobs depended on it -- which is why they don't get exec, or even login access.
At first I was disappointed when I turned to DSL reports to see what their message boards looked like. Then I realized that it was a good thing. DSL Reports is a idiot magnet, keeping all of those screaming kids and adults away from... ME.
I am still against the big ISPs, telcos, and cable Internet providers. This was a good move but done in classic big-stupid teclo tradition. They are to blame for the fact that these customers need technical support in the first place. Your network operator is stupid from top to bottom.
go out of your way to help people. It will invariably turn and bite you in the ass. I used to work at Kinkos..and they reprimanded me for being too good..the reason being, if the customers started expecting the level of support that I gave them..they'd expect it all the time, and when I wasn't there, there wasn't a computer litterate person availible to help them and they'd get pissed..(more so than they would if they assumed that nobody knew enough to fix their problems)..but ending my rant, and getting back to the subject of liability, I can see the companies position..if the customers hard drive fails, while they're changing their IP address (even though the two events are completely unrelated) the customer may call up and blame the ISP for destroying their computer. Unless you (the employee) are doing everything acording to policy, you're going to be held responsible (they won't care if it's not your fault)
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
The quality of tech support was not in question, it is a matter of when an employee clocks out at the end of the day and acts as a private citizen X does the company get to govern his/her actions.
No one was saying these individuals were trying to act as agents of the company. All liability arguments are moot. This is simply a matter of control.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
You might want to make note of the fact that karma is not redeemable; it cannot be exchanged for valuable prizes. There is no reason to begrudge it of anyone.
Instead of trying to drag this guy down-- who, even if nothing else, is really entertaining-- why don't you try posting something insightful or funny yourself?
I write in my journal
That might have been OK 40 years ago, but not any more. There's safety regulations and things like public liability to worry about. If an 'informal' worker hurts themselves or another worker, or damages property (EG digs up fiber) that can cost the company millions. The company will be held responsible, but won't be covered by ACC or public liability insurance or whatever you have in your country.
The same applies to some extent for technical support. If I say I work for xyzzy (even if I don't!) then people are going to assume I know what I'm talking about at least as far as xyzzy's service is concerned, even if I explicitly say I'm not currently answering in an official capacity. I'm exploiting (and if I screw up, damaging..) xyzzy's reputation.
The simple answer (at least for web forums) is to log on under a pseudonym and don't say who you work for. Build your own reputation. The company won't know who you are so they can't gag you. The customer has no idea who you are IRL or who you work for, so they can't sue anyone. Everyone's happy.
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If the tech had to be that sneaky about it to avoid getting caught helping you, you should complain to upper management. Write a letter to the president of the company, or to the callcenter director maybe (not to the tech's supervisor or that supervisor's manager, it has to go higher than that). Let them know that you really appreciate what that tech wanted to do, and they were able to solve your problem, and if they hadn't been able to solve your problem, you would have taken your business elsewhere - but you think management's draconian policies about what the tech is and is not allowed to help you with are apalling, and you will not recommend their company to any of the clients you consult for unless you get some assurance that the environment will change. You were able to get help by being sneaky, but you can't expect other people to be sneaky like that, and you can't risk your reputation by recommending their company if things continue like this.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If that's true then mangement doesn't understand the business very well. I can't think of any tech people I know that don't do things on the side, whether for $$ or not, on behalf of their company or not. Even if it's just for family. Does a doctor just walk by an injured person on the street? Does a teacher sit silent when someone nearby asks a question they know the answer too? When you are skilled in an area, it's just human nature to present that side of yourself in your day-to-day life. A good manager would understand that and incorporate it into their business model. (And I also wonder if said management that goes so far as to fire tech ppl for helping has never asked for personal/home computing help from some of their hired tech people?)
What if these guys are identifying themselves as employees and they get out of line, or give advice that causes damage ? Granted the chances of that happening are slim, but that is how a corporate lawyer thinks. Another possibilty is a former employee with a score to settle posing as a support person....
It is really sad that it comes to this, when in reality I've gotten help from covad tech's on DSLREPORTS before, and several times I've gotten help with advanced router functions from some really sharp people there...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?