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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."
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?)