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Life on the Other End of the Tech Support Line
Ant writes to mention a PC World article about life on the other end of the tech support line. From the article: "According to interviewees, entry-level jobs at U.S. tech support firms pay about $7 an hour. Workers for a third-party tech support firm in New Delhi, India, make less than half that. Akanksha Chaand, who holds an advanced degree in computer science and had a job fielding calls for Hewlett-Packard at Business Processing Outsourcing in New Delhi, India, made the equivalent of $13,000 a year working in tech support--significantly more money than many less fortunate people in India earn. In contrast, a tech support pro who now lives in Arizona says she was barely scraping by on her $7-an-hour salary with no benefits. The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas. She said she received two weeks of training before taking calls from the public. "
When everyone and their brother wants to fill a role they're not qualified imagine that, they get paid like shit.
It's like someone who studies to be a chef wondering why they don't make a lot of money at McDonalds.
There are L2 and L3 roles which pay better. I know a few L3 people at IBM and they're smart people earning decent bucks [way more than $7/hr].
So if these peeps are so damn smart don't apply for L1 support roles.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's a clever attempt by the Slashdot editors to take out the competition, Digg, with the Slashdot effect ;)
The difference in the cultures make in interesting. Akanksha has a computer science degree and holds what is probably a very respectable job in his peer's eyes. Here in the US, the job could be considered elementry. Are the standards for a computer science degree in India equivalent to those of a similar degree here in America?
Seems like a service desk role than genuine L2 or L3. L2/L3 are still paid good when compared to rest of the industry.
#include std_disclaimer.h
The main subject of the article is tech support, and that's fine (I guess death threats and lusers tend to be all alike all over the world) but examining the difference of income between outsourced and american employees involves taking account of differences in taxation, welfare, lifestyle...
It's a broad subject that in my opinion has little to do with TFA and might be better discussed relating to jobs in general, not tech support in particular.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
From my understanding, the industries' average pay for a tech support position isn't typically that low. In the area I'm in, you won't be paid less than 8 for customer support and 9 for technical support.
That said, they are still very crappy jobs with many centers having turnover rates that would make fast food places blush.
where it's painfully hard to get past that L1 moron asking "is your power cord plugged in
Most of the time it's useless asking this question, however most of the time it is the problem.
I can't compete with someone who only has to pay thirty bucks a month for rent, and who can feed his family in a nice restaraunt for a dollar.
Environmental laws too strict? Simple, just spew your damned poison in a country that doesn't have those laws.
"Minimum wage? Environment? Health care? BWAHAHA! We're the multinational corporation, we can do anything we damned well please and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it!"
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
So what about this is newsworthy? The U.S. job is entry-level and staffed with the bottom of the barrel. We're talking people whose last job was pizza delivery. Of course they're not paid much by the U.S. economy's standards.
The Indian with a BSCS degree will get a job that pays well in the economy in which she chooses to live.
1. If the Indian wants more, she should move to the U.S. where the demand for degrees and pay is higher. 2. If the U.S. former pizza driver wants more, a degree and experience is the answer. I've stopped visiting this site as often because of "relevent news" like this.
All too often you get some script reader on the other end of the line :
A customer brought a PC in for service. No symptoms were described.
We plugged it it and it flickered video on the test monitor for a few
seconds before it SMOKED.
Tech Support : I need you to turn the PC on and hit the F(whatever) key
and tell me your CMOS settings please.
Me : The PC us burning when power is applied.
Tech Support : I need you to turn the PC on and hit the F(whatever) key
and tell me your CMOS settings please.
Okay Habib, I get it, you are a script reader. I need level 2 support.
Transfered.
Hello, this is Patricia(yeah right) Pat Ri Cia , heavy Indian accent,
Haw can I hep you?
Me : This PC smokes when power is applied, no signs of spillage or anything
that may incicate abuse on the user's part.
Pat Ri Cia : Will you turn on the PC and press F(whatever) while booting to
get to CMOS please.
Habibette , trained to pretend she was an English speaker, reading the
same script. Hewlett Packard was the manufacturer. Needless to say, we
refunded the user's money. We shipped the defective unit back to HP under
the "cap" allowed for defective merchandise. Screw them outsourcing idiots.
I'd rather have a system where you say the problem and they actually look into helping instead of seeing where it falls in a script.
This doesn't mean paying L1 $50/hr. It means having L1 who actually know the product.
If I say I can't renew my DHCP lease it doesn't mean I have to power cycle my modem. It means the DHCP server hasn't released the previous lease or is refusing a new lease. But you think the average script monkey knows this?
I say pay them a decent proper wage [at least $20/hr] and expect them to either know the product or pass training based on it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Simply befriend a nerd. They are a common species of parasite and can be found in nearly all urban centres. They charge little for their advice or knowhow, and usually can be bartered with using goods such as 'Coca-cola' and 'Chocolate'.
As a rough of comparison, a loaf of bread which costs $2.50 in the US costs a little less than 25 Indian Rupees ($0.50). US $13000 is a little less than 600k INR which by all means is quite a _comfortable_ if not princely salary to get by in India.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Remember the days when you could call tech support and get someone on the line who had some semblance of a clue?
I'm not sure why this is linked via digg. Here's direct link.
On another note, no offense to the people in the article, but do we really call someone a computer support 'pro' after two hours of training and a pizza delivery job?
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Gamasutra had an interestng article about support desks for computergames a little while ago. You can read it here.
It gives an interesting list of what to do with which emails, when to press delete and when to press reply, what to do if somebody threatens to commit suicide and so on.
My freeware games
More to the point, if they are just following a script then why do they even need to be humans? A series of web forms that walked through the script would be enough. Then they could use the money they saved by abolishing human tier 1 (which, let's face it, is a waste of time) on a competent human tier 2.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is a global economy, right? Shoudln't the lowest paying jobs go to places where that money can bring up the economy? If people (en mass) somewhere in the U.S. want to work for $4.00 in a call center, I have no problem with it. Maybe highschool kids or others who are physically disabled and aren't educated well enough to do other jobs.
The cold fact of the matter is that the standard of living is too high for these jobs to all be filled in the U.S. without americans paying a lot more for software and such.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Paid eight what? Grecks? Beers? Shillings? Drachmas? Space Hookers?
It only took me 20 to write this when it could taken me 5, but that's the convenience of having a 1.2 vs an 800.
Ask anyone who does Tech Support and they will tell you they are underpaid. I used to work for a tech support sourcing company (Stream), doing level 2 support for @Home, cable modems before it disbanded into tthe seperate cable companies like Comcast, ATT, etc. I had three weeks of training, and got paid $10.50 an hour. It really wasn't bad pay for a kid just out of high school with no formal training. If you had asked me after doing it for 6 months I, and most everyone else working there, would have said we were underpaid. Tech support really can be stressing and frustrating. Tech support people tend to get this attitude of, "These people need me, I should get paid a lot more". But really, 10.50 was great pay for a kid in my situation. I wouldn't do it for 7 an hour, though. And you can live pretty well in india for under 5 bucks an hour.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
A "dollar" is what a dollar buys. It has no fixed value.
In third world economies a "dime" may well be "ten bucks," so long as you stick within the local economy for food, clothing and shelter. Living is actually quite cheap, which is why so many people from the first world choose to vacation/retire to the third. You may well find you can live, and live well, for a year for less than what it would cost you to spend two weeks at Disney/land/world/universe/whatever.
The rub is that things from outside the local economy, imports, are priced at what a "dollar" is worth where they are made, and can thus be beyond the means of someone who would otherwise be considered middle class. Things like a simple radio or portable television may require the investment of an entire community which otherwise lacks nothing needed for sustaining a good life.
One can see the same affect in the first world when comparing rural vs. urban living. I turned down $60k/yr in Manhatten awhile ago, because $60k in Manhatten cannot buy me what I could get working a cruddy retail job upstate.
When comparing disparate economies you cannot think in terms of dollars. You have think in terms of hours per pound of rice/place to sleep. When you do this you may find that lower wages are often greater wealth. Money is not wealth. It is an abstraction. What your money buys you is wealth. The "stuff" itself.
KFG
I have seen many people who work in tech support complain about the unearthly working hours. Especially if the call center caters to the US clients, then out of the 30 days a month, one has to work for atleast 20 days in the night shift. The pay is relatively good. But the burn out is higher. The employees are given training to talk like the americans using the american slang especially if the job involves accepting calls. It seems really surreal to see one of these guys talk. And the people stay at one place only for a couple of months and then move on.
So IMHO, irrespective of the pay, a call center job is not exactly a cushy job. One should not measure a job in terms of money alone. Job satisfaction also counts a lot.
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The blurb links to the Digg page for the story, not the actual article: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125537,0 0.asp
I went from tech support to delivering pizza. Pizza delivery actually pays pretty well. I averaged $12-15 an hour (with tips and gas factored in), as opposed to 10.50 an hour. Granted, this was when gas was $1-$1.25. It's funny, i remember all of us drivers standing around bitterly complaining about having to pay $1.35 for gas. Damn that was high ;)
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
For anyone who wants to enter the IT industry, a tech support job is a great start. If the company has it's own technical support group in-house, you get a chance to meet all the big honchoes of the company and you get to learn and understand their vision, even if you're not hired at the position you really wanted (ie: network or system admin). Level1 technical support is commonly used as a stepping-stone so one can create relationships with managers at the company and eventually maybe VIPs, which will help them get their future position. All of this is very obvious to employers, and so they take advantage of it. Although having a small turn-over rate at a company is a very good thing (you get to retain your employees longer, which become more and more familiar with their co-workers, which usually (I did say usually) should lead to a more calmer, better atmosphere at the office) it seems like some companies just don't care. In particular, those companies that are offering in the 7-9$/hr range. I once interviewed for a level1 support job for Microsoft in Toronto and they were actually offering me $2.00/hr less then my current position at a diff company (my current position was customer support, so I already wasn't making much money... For MS I was interviewing for tech support). Although working for Microsoft would of been a great opportunity/adventure, I just could'nt take the scale-back in pay. To me, it seemed like they were targetting young adults (possibly someone who just graduated from community college?) still living with mom and dad which means the young adult wouldn't pay any food or rent.
If you are being paid 7 an hour for "L1 tech support", you are probably deluded into thinking you are doing something hard. We L2 people used to laugh at the L1 people who called themselves "support". They were customer service, nothing more. All they did was have people unplug their modem, plug it back in, if that didn't work they sent them to us. It was customer service, nothing more. No need for higher pay for that.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
This sort of misses the point of the problem. There are a fixed and small number of well paying job and special skills or knowledge are required to get them. The number of unskilled jobs is very large- more jobs than there are people to fill them. These are the jobs that our president refers to as "jobs that Americans just won't do." These jobs are almost uniformly low paying, often menial, sometimes dangerous (recent statistic about 25% of all workplace deaths involve undocumented workers, which is disproportionately high).
Unfortunately, our American lifesytle and economy seem to require these jobs. The people who pick our vegetables, serve us in restaurants, work in supermarkets, work in hotels, work security jobs, etc. They are everywhere. Imagine how life would change without these jobs/people.
In fact, the American lifestyle is addicted to low paying jobs and what they mean- $2 BigMacs, $40 DVD players, cheap vegetables, etc. Companies outsource whenever they can to reduce cost and we , the consumers, reward them with our business. Over half a trillion dollars in trade deficits go overseas every year. Half a TRILLION dollars! Two or three years ago, there was a rumor that S. Korea was going to sell of US dollars in favor of Euros. Based on this rumor, the value of the dollar fell about a percent. China owns at least an order of magnitude more dollars (and growing every day). The administration accuses China of artificially devaluing their currency to keep costs of their good low. China/US relations quite frankly suck- US spy planes off the coast of China crashing into a fighter jet, the US bombing the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, President Hu visiting Bill Gates prior to president Bush, each accusing the other about human rights violations. The list goes on and on. China is a proud nation that is rising fast, sending up people in to space, and taking a more dominant place on the world stage. If/when they want to break the US financially, they almost certainly can.
Meanwhile, we, Americans, continue to pay illegal immigrant works to do "jobs that Americans won't do." All the while paying other Americans money for unemployment and welfare (Add to that the problem of billions being spent in Iraq.) The national debt is increasing. Bottom line is that this is not sustainable. One day China, Saudi Arabia, and all the other countries that own US dollars are going to decide that the US dollar is not a good investment (would you buy stock in any company that year after year goes further into debt?). That day is not far off.
I don't claim to have all the answers but I think that it involves something like paying people in the US a living wage, increasing the wages on "jobs Americans don't want" to the point where Americans would want them, stop migrating jobs out of the US, stop increasing the national debt, ie stop giving tax cuts with money you don't have. Americans will have to accept that it costs money to maintain our society, country, and way of life. It certainly does not involve smugly saying that if they are not qualified, they get paid "like shit."
You have nothing to lose but your IPchains?
--
RumorsDaily
That's because most of us are arrogant. I can take any college kid and put them in our user support help desk and they'll know everything they need to know in a few months. 2 weeks isn't enough, but I can turn a layman into a "computer pro" (according to the standards of our customers) in 1-4 months easily. And when we get to talking about salary, you can bet they all think they're underpaid, but they also think that everyone else is overpaid. The sentiment has nothing to do with tech support; pretty much everyone out there thinks that they are underpaid and everyone higher than them is overpaid. Within a year or two of getting a higher paid job, they'd start thinking the same; I only make $50,000 a year to do nothing, and jeeze, look at that guy! He's so overpaid!" It all has to do with expectations; a friend of mine is going from $7.00 an hour for 20 hours a week to $35,000 a year and his cost of living is probably around $600 a month. As soon as he got the offer, the thought was, "Man, only 35 grand a year..." We're "underpaid" in the help desk, but we make more than just about any starting job for a college student in our town. The mentality of underpaid vs overpaid isn't tech support specific, but one held by humanity in general.
-1 Flamebait. Heh. For all of us who have been and are currently in tech support roles where we're required to talk on the phone. >:|
You're nothing; like me.
Yeah, and then you can REALLY frustrate the people whose problem is that they can't get on the internet!
Only requirement for good karma: be pedantic as much and as often as possible.
I've just finished nine months of tech support.
I was paid 62k USD.
Like a lot of jobs, the range of pay depends on the difficulty of the work you're doing.
Some people get minimum wage, some people get plenty, and people in other countries find that the money they get paid buys a lot more of the local goods and services, so it's not useful in ANY way to directly compare only wages.
Film at 11.
Then the L2 would come on saying something like, "Tell me a little more about your modem problem", and the customer would say something like, "Oh, that's just what I put in the form to get to a real person."
Then things would get ugly fairly quickly.
That will teach them or what? :)
What's next? Slashdot dupes by linking to Digg that links to an older Slashdot story?
I used to work tech support for Comcast. I am also in an area that Comcast does not have service (Canada). So you could describe me as a person who had an outsourced job for a while.
I live in a smaller city, where there's really a University and not much else. As a result, the call center has hired just about everyone in town who has the slightest bit of computer knowledge at this point in time. The real life blood of the center though is in international students at the University. It's often difficult for them to find jobs, but they have a great deal of technical knowledge (especially the computer science students). As a result, our center was the highest rated center for Comcast for a very long time.
I got paid a little over $10 CAD/hr. I hear that it's gone up to $11.25 since I quit, but that's likely due to the minimum wage going up (it's $6.25). The call center is a complete shit job, and people only stay to earn money (providing tech support for Americans is right up there with jizz mopper), and the center has to pay us enough over minimum wage to be appealing.
But that's my personal experience. I find it rather interesting that according to the article, Americans get paid ~$3 less than us. But of course I had plenty of experiences with the American call centers. Mainly cleaning up messes that they created. So I guess that the call management people I worked for figured that the extra $3 was justified, as the results were better up here? (Seriously, I could rant for hours on the American call centers... the one in lubbock, tx most especially. And believe me, I wasn't the only one who had to clean up MANY messes from that center.)
That is incredibly generalistic and probably wrong more than correct (the first statement, the second one is a generalization but is probably correct most of the time). The truth is that people have a hard time relating to people's work that they don't understand, this isn't an American thing, this is a human thing. I work in a hospital's lab, this is both a service industry and requires scientific and technical knowledge, according to you I should be treated like a leper. I also live in Arkansas, which isn't that well known for it's learned culture (I live in a college town where things are a bit different, but all of my family lives in "The South") When I first started this job and people asked me what I did, I told them exactly what I do. After a few blank stares (mostly from family), I realized for me to do what I do requires a hell of a lot of education in a fairly specialized area and none of these people had that knowledge. Even so, they never treated me like a leper, they just never asked about my work again. After I made that realization, I started putting what I do into more general terms and explaining what it MEANS to them. Now the same family members ask how work is and if I've seen anything interesting pretty much all the time, several have said that they think I have the most interesting job in the family (it is far from the best paying, so that isn't the reason either...). At most family gatherings I'm asked to relate some interesting anecdote. Most of my wife's friends think the same thing too and she definitely doesn't work in science (she works in a business office).
;) ) is a rare combination of the very well educated and the people oriented. They both have extreme amounts of education and also work in a completely service oriented business, but to do that they have to have extremely good communication skills. Most doctors are very well liked and have a huge group of close friends. Almost to the last one, every doctor I know that ISN'T well liked, doesn't have those communication skills and is a specialist (or a surgeon ;) that doesn't interact with people all that much.
The point of this whole diatribe is that if I would have continued to tell people EXACTLY what I did in a way that they couldn't understand they would have thought I was snotty or elitist. When I started explaining what I did using more familiar language and terminology they accepted it completely and even became very curious. This is what is different between what I did and most computer tech people. Most CS people I know have a hard time explaining what they do without geek terminology and even more REFUSE to do it, they WANT to feel special. They think their knowledge of the inner workings of Microsoft's monstrosity and IBM/Intel/AMDs amalgam of hardware makes them special somehow and better than most. They don't realize that it simply makes them more knowledgeable than most in that one area. Most of the tech people I've known have also had a hard time relating to people well BEFORE they were actually in the tech industry or had any real education, so to say that these are WHY they aren't well liked isn't really possible.
A final example to drive this whole issue home is the medical doctor. The MD (excluding surgeons for the most part
The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas
Maybe sexual harrassment? I remember a guy on a metro bus in Lancaster, PA once telling his friend, and the rest of us, how much he liked delivering pizzas -- particularly the tips. He said $50 was his record for a single tip.
So if you are toying with the idea of entering a life of tech support don't just offhand discount an honest living delivering pizzas.
The American worker moves to Bangalore, forwards their support calls there, and lives out the rest of their days sipping champagne and eating caviar.
Look, if your not earning a "living wage" then adapt. This means going without luxuries. I have friends who still work "dead end jobs" and they harp all the time about the fact they don't get paid enough. Yet they still want their cell phone, cable, high speed internet, and more. Of course its not sustainable on their income. Worse, all these "monthlies" they pay out keep them from having the money they need to get an education to move them up.
The real trap is that too many people are convinced they deserve the "extras" but don't want to do what it takes to have them. These jobs that people complain about are for the unskilled. We are no longer a low skill work force but we do have many jobs that are low to no skill. Every economy will have these jobs. They are mostly to introduce people to the workforce. As many know there are people out there who just are not fit to work in professional environments. They don't have the personality, the required restraint, or the discipline. As such they will work these low end jobs. Some will take on more than one.
When I worked for a large security company, think rent-a-cops, I was amazed at how little some of the people made. We even had a few of these people working the building and lot of the company. What I found was three types of people, there are obviously more. The first were students who needed a simple job with regular hours. Much of security work is sitting and they would take advantage of it by studying. They would do their walks and escort ladies to the vehicles upon request. The second were people in between "real jobs" who were doing what was necessary to keep their homes and their families comfortable. Many had the security job as their second job. The third group were the majority of our hires, they were the people with no initiative. They simply didn't want more to do. Their idea of a better job was one with even less to do! Don't underestimate the number of people who fall into this last category. Sure we can find many who are in these jobs that should be somewhere else but those people are the exception. They should be spending their off time looking for the better job and improving their skills to get that job. I know, I was in this category for 5 years after leaving the service. I got out and expected to be able to land a decent job yet I found that my skills were not needed or out of date. I spent 5 years in a "dead-end" grocery job and eventually got myself back into tech school with the help of friends and my parents.
It was an incentive to not live that way that helped me move on. During that time I did without the big cable package, cell phone, and high speed internet. I didn't party every night or see movies all the time. I had an out of date car and for most of the time a 8 year old motorcycle to get to and from work. Sure it sucked, but initiative is the key. Unless you want to improve your situation you won't, you'll just bitch about how unfair it all is and never get anywhere.
Paying a living wage can be a trap as well. What consititutes a living wage for one person is barely surviving for another. How do you decide? Also, how do you provide incentive for people to better themselves and their families position if even the bottom end jobs pay a living wage? This is the big lie being foisted on people. The caring elite don't want these people to succeed, they want them content in their bottom end jobs so they, the elite, can enjoy all their low cost living without feeling guilty. Keep the poor happy and have no guilt for living off them. Gee, how nice. The "American way" is to build a better life for yourself if possible and definitely for your children. A living wage does not necessarily encourage the attitude needed to do that. Its a crutch, like many social programs, that keeps people just comfortable enough to keep them from improving while removing any guild felt by those with more.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
...we don't see any nationwide days of protest directed toward the technical support industry.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
I have occasion to work with a large, large number of HP products every day. Several times a week, something will fail.
:|
My calls to the HP Bangalore helpdesk are possibly the worst part of my week. What used to be a simple matter of spending five minutes telling someone from HP (that lived in my own state no less) what the problem was and having replacement hardware sent out, turned into at least a 20 minute "conversation", trying to get through the painful script reading bastards.
Same goes for Dell, IBM, almost any vendor I'm forced to deal with these days.
Fuck IT, I'm moving into law enforcement like I should have done eight years ago...
for what it is worth.
One thing I kept from my low skill days is my disdain of monthlies.
You want some real money? Simple, avoid nickle and diming yourself with all these monthly bills.
I have a pre paid cell phone. Since I have a regular phone line, without any of the silly add ons like caller id and such, I only need a cell phone for occasional use. While others I know spend 40 to 50 bucks a month I spend an average of 7 to 10 a month. Cable? I have basic cable for less that $15 a month instead of the big packages that are 40 to 60 in range. I do splurge with DSL but negotiated with my provider and only pay 40 instead of the normal 50 that most of their subscribers pay. I keep a zero balance on my credit cards, never buying what I cannot pay off immediately. When I go to buy my new laptop I will be able to pay for it straight up. Sure it would be nice to have it now but then I would have a new monthly. I don't eat out every night or even every weekend. I don't eat out for lunch at work, I watch my co-workers spend 7 to 10 dollars a day for lunch on top of their morning coffee runs, hell I bring my own instant coffee to work!
Get into the habit of not loading yourself down with monthly bills and you will see that you can do quite a bit with little money. Get into the habit of not buying your coffee house coffee every morning, eating out for lunch at work, and running a credit card balance and your income will seem to be many times what it is. Even I don't like the current prices of gasoline but since I am not burdened down with all the frivolous extras many people cannot seem to live without I can sustain the higher price of gasoline without a lifestyle change. I only have two kinds of monthly payments, my house and my car. So top that off with my bills needed to maintain the house and I can buy lots of "toys - read computer junk etc" and appear to my friends and coworkers to have more than I do. It took a long time learning what is really needed to enjoy life. Look, marketing works. You get bombarded every single day of your life. Too many people fall for it. They become to believe they need all these things, after all its less than a dollar a day, why shouldn't they? Well all those dollars add up and they reduce your flexbility and ability to deal with emergencies. If you lose your job what are the first things your going to have to give up?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There's also the fact that most American business managers consider their employees and customers to be parasites that are bleeding the company dry, and treat them as such.
I must need glasses. Did I read that correctly? Managers consider their employees and customers to be parasites? Employees provide products and services that the manager, uh, manages. And the customers are those that , uh, pay the manager and said employees.
One of the last time I called "tech support" was when a driver would not talk anymore to a piece of hardware. I already know that the driver developers suck at this company and I have had numerous issues with this software and hardware to boot. The application, disguised as an OS X "System Preference" said something to the effect, "Dude, I can't see your hardware". I looked in the system log files, and the driver said that it found the device, and then got some error. Being that I just updated my system from 10.4.4 to 10.4.5, and I've had issues with the driver in the past, I assumed it was due to the upgrade.
I verify this by hooking the device up to my other computer that has the stable 10.3.9 on it, and the device worked fine, so it looks like the 10.4.5 did the trick right?
Well, telling all of this information to "tech support" yielded nothing. The dipshit told me to "reinstall the driver" and reboot a few times. The same stuff they tell me every other time I call due to their horrible software. I asked, "Is this a known issue with 10.4.5?" He said, "No". Within 1 week and updated driver was posted on their website, and magically, my device was working again.
All the guy had to say was, "It does not work on 10.4.5, we will release a driver in a week or two", and I would have been OK with that. But he insulted me, wasted a toll phone call, and wasted my time. Not to include that this is only a hobby for me now, this incident could have cost me thousands of dollars if I were a professional.
One of the biggest challenges facing almost every support center and TAC I have worked with/in in my career is simple. If someone is really on the ball and works tech support they are at that same time soaking up knowledge, and usually getting free certifications from the company in their products (if the company has certs). This means that in a year or two they have much better skills at handling the software than the customers who are IT pros at these various companies. The software company doesn't want to pay much for support people because they view support as a cost center and need to pay bottom dollar (ergo outsourcing) when in fact some are actual profit centers.
End result? Good technician leaves support company to work for one of the customers, usually netting a 20-30% (or more) raise. Software company loses a year or two of knowledge and skill on the phone. I know of one company which believes all tech support jobs are "lateral moves" meaning someone can go L1 to L2 to L3 and literally never get a raise based on the promotions. These companies wonder why every 2-2.5 years they have an exodus of all their most skilled people.
Basically people use working at a call center as "On the Job Training"
The solution? Companies pay more for support people in order to keep skilled workers. The cost of that? Users have to pay more for support. Since users don't want to pay more for support (well a few will once they realize the return on it in quality, but still). This means companies won't pay more for tech support people, which means the cycle will continue.
Welcome to the machine.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
NTL has got a lot better since they moved their tech support to India. I rang up recently because my cable modem was acting flaky - got some Indian woman on the 'phone. "Oh drat", I thought (in polite company at least), "Here we go..." but actually she was incredibly helpful. Quite content to take my word for it when I said I had already power-cycled it, utterly unfazed when I said it was connected to a FreeBSD router but I knew that wasn't the problem, and happy enough with my concise and accurate description of the fault. A quick consultation with her Lev 2 and I had an engineer out the next day.
So just starting out and you want some experience, then look for the in-house support. It is becoming few and far between but many companies would rather have their support handled by employees instead of some outsource. They may bring in outside expertise if needed for projects or 3rd party support for a service or application.
Now I work for a consulting company, on a career level this is great I get work on systems I might have not been able to in my old job as well as the opportunity to further my certs and expand my knowledge.
Dewser - all around techy "In the immortal words of Socrates - 'I drank what?'"
I am surprised no one has mentioned that $13k a year (about $6.5/hr) is almost the same as $7/hr. This assumes 40 hours/week for 50 weeks.
So the question becomes, where was that money savings in shipping support to India? Apparently Americans will work for "Indian wages" for support.
One possible difference though, there is no comparison between their relative skill sets.
If these Indian tech support people have actual tech degrees and excellent educational backgrounds, why is it that I would still much rather talk to one of the $7-an-hour Americans, who against all odds seem to be able to provide better service? I have NEVER spoken to an outsourced tech support rep who actually knew what he was talking about- generally, when I start talking to someone with a faint Indian accent who calls himself "Brad" or "George", all I get is a script, and I know it's time to hang up the phone and try to contact tech support via email. All this stuff about tech support lines being staffed by highly trained Indian professionals seems like PR to me, with the actual standard being ability to speak passable English and read from a script.
Althought I know this is the case in alot of companies, I'm not quite sure what companies this article is referring to, I see refrences to HP but I can honestly say I get paid more then I should for the L1 software support for one of the big three computer manufactures ;)
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
I just ran a currency conversion between $7.00 and it's equivalent in £ Sterling.
It came out at £3.83. My job at McDonalds in England pays me £4.59/hour. When someone at McDonalds is getting paid more than the line of work you're doing, you know moving on is the bst idea.
~The TwoTailedFox posts again....
You can still trash a mac if you know shit about computers and insist on fucking with them. You can still fall for the ol' 'allow this program to run as root' social exploit.
They need systems which do not allow for remote changing of system code. If this requires a man to show up once in a while to plug in a device to update the firmware, so be it.
I've been told that such service jobs are the future of our economy!
Blar.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1) As commented many other places, you get what you pay for. If you're going to pay $7/hr US, or less for offshoring, you're going to get tech support on par with the kind of service you get when ordering fast food.
2) On the other side of that coin, if you are an employee of any kind, you should be doing your job to the best of your ability, not being an elitist prick to make up for what you see as an imbalance in compensation. Doing a crappy job for $7/hr isn't going to qualify you to get a job making $10 or $15. Besides which, you knew the deal going into it. You'd make $n/hr and be required to perform certain tasks (certainly including "don't be an elitist prick to customers").
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
It's pretty hard to run a tech oriented business ya know. I worked for Time Warner once upon a time as a tier 1 tech. Basically we were just customer fodder. I knew more than the "have you reset your modem" drivel, but I was not ALLOWED to go beyond that because that's what the tier 2 and tier 3 techs were for. So in a sense, we were automatons with human voices that were supposed to try to pick up sales on every call from every jim-bob down the street who threatens to kill me because he can't watch his nascar racing at 3 in the morning.
Machines can't yet do that. And when they can, many people will be out of a shitty job they never wanted.
You're nothing; like me.
It's the nature of the beast. Level 1 support is entry level and so skill is going to vary depending on the product you're calling about. I've worked frontline consumer and frontline for professional server products and the training and pay varied greatly.
It really depends on the product being supported and the customers. I've worked in tech support for a long time and you have to work on the following principles when dealing with a customer-base with a varying level of expertise.
1) Start simple. Explain concepts using non-technical words and provide detailed instructions. If the customer demonstrates some technical skill then adjust to their level. It's fairly simple to quickly determine someone's skill with a few questions. If it's done well, the caller doesn't realise they're being tested.
2) Don't assume the obvious. No-matter how experienced someone is, they are prone to making silly mistakes. The trick is to disguise the questions so they don't seem patronising. If you just ask someone if they've plugged it in, some people will take offence or become embarassed if they did indeed forget to plug it in. Ask them to disconnect the cable and reconnect it. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
The front-line guy in most cases isn't a moron and does speak English. What you're describing is an incredible generalisation or you've been dealing with companies that just don't take support seriously.
$50 dollars an hour for support is either incredibly excessive or very cheap depending on the type of product. It's the difference between buying an iPod clone or a Magnox nuclear reactor.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I am at work now doing tech support for Apple. 11/H Canadian is not bad, to tell people how connect to wireless networks with 3000 dollar computers and surf /.
An illuminating look at how the Indian techs on the other end of the line are told about Americans. It was on Weekend America this week: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/ind ex_20060429.html
Both "Dial 'I' For India" and "God Calls the Call Center" are good pieces. "God Calls" is especially enlightening, as it's an interview with the author of "One Night at a Call Center." He advocates some chitchat with the tech support person as a way to break the ice, and talks about the formula "10=35," taught to workers to make them patient with the Americans, as a 35-year-old caller supposedly has the IQ of a 10-year-old Indian.
That doesn't make any sense to me... what are you saying?
You're nothing; like me.
I'm sure a mod is going to -1 parent into oblivion... but it's damn true. I'm so sick and fucking tired of foreign tech support. I have NEVER solved a non-trivial issue with foreign tech support. It's funny, in the enterprise the big thing is always "support support support". We won't buy a product without support. But I've found that most enterprise support is absolute garbage and not worth the time (hardware not so much, but definatly software). I'd rather post to a mailing list and talk to someone who actually understands english (as opposed to just spitting out words).
We had an issue with the Windows firewall hanging rlogin connections. I talked to about 30 dingleberry chasers over the period of 2 weeks and eventually just told the users "when Microsoft hires decent support, you won't have to wait 30 seconds to login." The Windows firewall modifies the tcp/ip stack in a certain manner. For some reason, it would block a certain packet (if I remember correct, it would block the final rst in the login sequence. It would eventually timeout and login). I don't know how many times these ass-monger specials told me to open the port via an exception. I even tried to show them the packet sniff with the firewall on and off so they could see exactly what was happening, but those super intendant chalmer dry humpers didn't understand how to read it. Mind you I made it up to level 3 support.
99% of foreign tech support is utterly useless. I refuse to ever talk to them again. Certain companies will transfer you to an American (with a wait time), others will try and pin you as a racist.
As a side note, for side work I'll only consider support contracts with solely American companies. There are many left and are usually the smaller guys. But I can't deal with another 30 minute conversation explaining why a packet sniff isn't a violation of the TOS.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
When I got into tech support in 1995, I was making $9 an hour to start. It just went up from there. By 99 when I got out and started programming, I was making about $22-24 an hour, still doing phone support. Granted, I went from product support to internal phone support, but it was still a decent living.
Has outsourcing really killed the support industry that much?
Government officials and policy makers talk about jobs Americans won't do. The reason why most Americans won't do certain jobs is not because of the work, it is because of the low pay! Americans need a certain amount of money to pay for housing, energy, food, as well as all the government-mandated expenses. Most mega corporations have become so obsessed with short term profit margins that they willingly sacrifice quality and customer service in order to squeeze another nickel in short term profits. Governments have become so obsessed with making sure that everything that is done under their auspices conform exactingly to every written specification and petty policy regardless of the costs. This is why costs are so high and service is so shitty.
What the author said is true when it comes to computer tech support. Most "technicians" receive about 2 weeks of training here in the Police States of Amerika before being turned loose on the phones. When I worked at Sykes Enterprise as a tech support agent, I was trained for two different clients. The first client was AT&T Worldnet. This training lasted about 3 weeks and included some basic computer troubleshooting concepts as well as training on how to use AT&T's troubleshooting database (Information Warehouse). The second client I worked for was SBC Internet, and this is where I received "training" on how to use their "Knowlege Base." The way "Knowlege Base" was organized made it next to useless, so a group of tech wrote a Web Browser sidebar that made finding relevant information much quicker. Many of the managers did not like that fact that this tool was created because they thought it would foster dependencey, however the technicians loved it.
The point is that different people with different skill levels become involved in tech support for various reasons. Some do not even know how to turn on a computer, while others are people who have programmed and hacked their way around systems for over 27 years. I took a tech support job because I (thought I) wanted a doorway into the I.T. profession.
I became dismayed as to how management limited my ability to provide assistance to users simply because if I provide a high level of support, customers would expect other technicians to do the same. I finally got promoted to the I.T. department after a couple of years. I ended up leaving the company in order to accept a position as a software engineer at another (small) company. About 6 months after I left the company, it moved overseas to the Phillipean Isles.
Tech support pays nearly all technicians low wages regardless of the knowlege and skills of the technician. This is the same for nearly every job in the P.S.A. What the government and corporations don't seem to grasp is that people can and do learn very much outside the confines of a four year college program. These days, if you are working as an employee for someone else, about the only way to get a good paying job is to become a memebr of the bachelors' degree club. For many who choose to go this route, they have to spend much more than four years living under slavish conditions in order toscrape together the money to pay for their membership. A great majority of those who get their degree are lucky enough to have parents wealthy enough to pay all of the membership fees. Others manage to get student loans to pay for their membership. A membership in this bachelors' degree club is considered mandatory for most well paying careers that
once accepted non degree holders.
An example of a job that now requires a college degree is that of a nurse. About 30 years ago, a person could become a nurse by studying some material and getting on the job training. Nursing school was also an option (which is a good thing). Now days, it is against the law to be a nurse without having a college degree. The cost of nursing school is simply beyond the reach of most working people. There are those who would say that this is done to protect that [patient from shoddy work. I would
I'm embarassed to say, but, looking back it may have been the best job I've ever had. The pay was more than enough to live on, and since my AHT was low (you know what I mean) I had virtually no responsibilities or oversight. So I got paid $10+ an hour to surf the web and listen to music.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
WOW she actually recieved 2 weeks of training before taking calls, when i was working L1 helldesk calls they put you on the phone the second or third day and said you where trained.... answer the phone.... answer the questions.... close calls.
I worked in the computer industry and the cell phone industry and it was the same both places.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Well its a slow day... so here is my input. I do tech support Lvl 1 for Apple. High turnover rate... poor service. Most people dont care about this job, so it results in shitty service. There are basically no insentives to do a great job and help the customer. The insentives are for selling. I dont want to sell, i rather technical help people. I find it rewarding to get someones, say a student with a paper to write, computer orking so it can serve its purpose. I treat people according to how they treat me. If your an ass, condecending, or scream at me, expect to wait abit while I read /. before i fix your problem, because I am researching the issue for you. Also if your pleasant and understanding, I will go out of my way to be helpful.
If you dont hear anything for a while after you ask, "I want to speak to the president of the company, I want there phone number", it is because I am laughing at you and your muted.
If I dont help you because you using a product I dont support, I dont care if you have used macs since 1984, own apple stock or own every apple ever made and worship your newton. ... opps got a call... gotta go.
Here it is:
:)
:)
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I do network administration and end user support. A particular clerical person was always having problems running Windows for Workgroups. The hard drive finally crashed, and when we got it back I convinced the boss to load her machine with DOS only. I created a batch file menu, tested it, and then compiled it into an exe file. When the person was at lunch I installed it on her machine.
When she came back from lunch she called and said her computer didn't work. I asked her to read the screen to me. She said "Bad Command or File Name." So I went over to her desk.
We started her machine and the file menu screen came up. It read:
1. Main Frame
2. Word Processing
Press the number of your choice and hit [enter].
It looked right, so I told her to press either 1 or 2 depending on whether she wanted to go to the main frame or the word processing package. She pressed 4. And, of course, we got the error. When I asked her why she pressed 4, she said, "It says press the number of my choice! I choose 4!"
---
it is the Matrix, man, and this chick she has no problem making a choice
(of-course the batch process should have taken care of invalid input
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe by changing your greeting you can help speed things up. I'll add the inflection and tonals
"Hello (higher and faster than normal,because you stretch it out very slightly, end the O Long "Hellll-O), you are speaking to the computer help desk (this is lower pitched and slower, just slightly, with an exact matching linear cadence on the syllables, they are all equal), this is Matt (emphasis on "this"), how may I help you with your problem?(how is treated like the first "hello", end the "you" a little louder, notmuch, just a little 'in soviet russia...YOU'..."
This is psychology and salesmanship, and double reinforces to the customer the primary thing that is going on, they aren't calling *Matt*, they are calling *the help desk and they are annoyed with voodoo that has nailed them*. It's just a slight wordage variation with the addition of just a few more words and paying attention to how it sounds, but it amplifies the initial interaction so that both parties can get quickly to the point. Also remember, you are a sales person, even if you aren't selling anything tangible per se, you are immediately in a customer/sales position. You are "selling" a service that your "customer" never even wanted to be forced to buy in the first place, so it's a "tough sell", your customer IS approaching you with a negative based mindset, ie, they already have a problem which has annoyed them to some level, so you have to be extremely delicate and precise, but control the situation and your only tools are language and psychology.
Right off the bat they will need to be defused down from their anger (whatever level that anger is at, it *is* there), and they have to be re-assured that this will "work", that by the end of the conversation they will be a happy camper-and you have made a "sale", you have "closed". Tone of voice is very important as well, it makes a big difference. You need to sound enthused, happy, and *very* confident. You only have two sentences total in the beginning to establish the mood and probable outcome of the call, no matter the problem.
Anyway, fool around with it, try some experiments, it's amazing what slight variations can do to help out.
Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
Years ago I had a summer job doing tech support for a software package for the mac (it shipped on a single floppy, to give you some idea of how long ago). It was a little company with all the programmers in one room, and a tiny business office with one desk.
They didn't even have enough computers for me to have one, but someone was on vacation when I started so I got to play with one for a week, but mostly worked from the manual. The biggest problem people had was "It won't install". I would walk them through the install, and it worked every time. Almost every one of them would then say "but I did all that 6 times already. why does it work when you're on the phone?" I sometimes gave them a joking reply about software that could tell they were on the phone with tech support.
The other approach to most problems was to look up really fast in the manual where the answer to their question was and say "On page X of the manual it says to do..." and sometimes walk them through it if necessary. This at least gave them the idea that they should look in the manual first.
US minimum wage is still $5.15. While some states and/or cities have chosen to set a higher minimum wage, over half the states have the same minimum wage as the federal government.
Source: List of U.S. state minimum wages
It's hard to judge that salary without knowing where you were working.
Wasn't windows advertised to make the Internet 'go faster'? At least in South Park the Movie the general had a good response to Bill Gates :)
----
* A Friend: "It takes forever for a web page to load on our computer. How come yours is so much faster?"
* Me: "Well, what kind of modem do you have?"
* A Friend: "I think it's a 486."
* Me: "Um, no that's a type of processor. What speed of modem do you have?
* A Friend: (confused) "Uh...well, it has Windows 95, it has 16 megs of RAM...I think it's a 14 something modem."
* Me: "Ok, you'll need a faster modem to download pages faster."
* A Friend: "Why would it need a faster modem?"
* Me: "My computer has a 56K modem, and that's a lot faster than the 14.4K modem you have."
* A Friend: "But why would it need a faster modem? I could just install Windows 98, right? That should speed it up."
This was a few weeks ago. Since then, he bought the Windows 98 upgrade and wanted to know if I could help them install it. He was still convinced that that was all he needed.
You can't handle the truth.
When I did L1 support for HP a few years ago we had to completely disasemble large corporate printers (the 5 - 6 foot tall ones) and then put them back together before we were allowed to take calls about one. We were able to do this and learn call control techniques in 2 weeks no problem....
I've worked in the technical support industry in California, now in Pennsylvania. I started with a company you probaby all know, called EarthLink. $10.00 an hour to start. EarthLink was outsourced overseas, and they laid everyone off. When I left EarthLink, I was making around $20.00 an hour (after 5 years :doh:). Anyway, from there, I worked at Sprint, and now I work for Suscom/Comcast. Technical support is in my blood, and I think always will be. I love working in the industry, even though I've had some bad experiences with customers. But, the one thing in this article is true. If you're not nice to the tech on the phone, we will not be nice to you, and will not go out of our way for you. Oh, and another tip. Asking for a supervisor because you're unhappy with a techs answer, is just plain stupid. Supervisors, 99 times out of 100, know LESS than the tech you're talking to.
I agree with you there. But that does not mean the rest of us should sit back and do nothing. We should try to give people every possible opportunity to build a better life for themselves, by providing more open access to education and job training, and by helping those people who are trying to better themselves to support their families in the interim.
Back before outsourcing was a big deal I worked for a mail-order PC company doing technical support. I started at about seven bucks an hour and hammered on the phones, worked lousy shifts, and was required to work every other weekend. Usually, I loved the job but sometimes angery people got to me. I did have my life threatend on more than one occasion. In one case the threat was serious enough so that the police were even called.
After a few years of doing this gig, I started getting calls from head-hunters at work and at home. The salaries that these guys were offering were more than double what I was earning! At first I resisted their efforts, I was safe and secure in my job and I liked it but one day I recieved an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was allowed to "name my price, name my conditions" so I picked a number that I thought was unbelieveably high, said I wanted to work Monday through Friday, and that I had a guaranteed one year contract. When they agreed to meet these demands, I couldn't believe it!
I went to work as a contractor and worked for the agency for over two years when the company that I was working for offered to "buy" my contract from the agency. In the end they offered me a job with another raise, full benefits, retirement and everything! The company agreed to give me up in exchange for more business from the company. I am still there and have worked my way up the ladder.
I can credit that phone-line tech support as being a great foundation for the path that I followed and the work that I am doing today. I am glad that I did it then and am not doing it now. It was an excellent and fertile training ground that opened a lot of doors for me.
I can't help but wonder how out-sourcing will affect the future generation of tech types. If these jobs aren't around to give the "experience" that so many better jobs require. If these jobs are all overseas, what is that going to do for the corporate IS jobs that demand the well rounded experience a TS job gives?
here are a fixed and small number of well paying job and special skills or knowledge are required to get them. The number of unskilled jobs is very large- more jobs than there are people to fill them. These are the jobs that our president refers to as "jobs that Americans just won't do." These jobs are almost uniformly low paying, often menial, sometimes dangerous
I think the problem is that brains and smarts can either be automated or offshored. It is easier to put domain knowlegde in software than it is to put physical tasks such as flipping burgers into software.
However, in the future when bandwidth gets cheap enough, remote-controlled robots may also do the "menial" tasks. Your burger will be flipped from Tumbuktoo. They can even repair the bots remotely.
Nobody is safe.
Table-ized A.I.
You are indeed right. This concept, though, appears difficult for many Americans to comprehend and leads to some amusing consequences. There was a good-sized article in the Washington Post a few weeks back about the subject of 'tipping' in foreign countries, and a reader contributed his story about a recent trip of his to Jakarta. It seems after a LONG plane ride, a great deal of trouble when arriving at his hotel, and needing to actually change rooms after finally getting one, he was truly grateful for all the personal, personable and good help he received from the hotel bellman, so he tipped the man US$10.00. :)
He shortly received a call in his room from the hotel manager, who politely informed the guest that he had just tipped the bellman the equivalent of a week's wages, and that the hotel would be holding this amount for him along with his usual paycheck, so that his wife could pick it up for him at the end of the week as she always did.
This concept, though, appears difficult for many Americans to comprehend. . .
It is not a new difficulty. Thoreau bemoaned the fact that he could not get people to understand that they would be better off staying in Concord, rather than going to Boston for "higher wages," because a dollar in Concord was worth several times what it was in Boston.
Those who believe that the answer to globalization is paying those in the third world an American wage simply do not comprehend the issues and that the end result is massive social and economic distruption and increased poverty. Anyone who wants to see this as a fact only need visit Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro. The shanty towns of millions are the direct result of planting an isolated outpost of the first world economy inside a third world economy.
KFG
I know how you feel. I do tier 2 tech support. These customers are the worst of the worst half the time. They are abusive and argumentative most of the time. I've had customers get mad at me because there 2.4ghz coordless phone is jamming the signal of thier wireless router. I've had customers get mad at me because their computer won't start. I've had customers get mad and blame me because their modem is fried because they plugged the USB coord into the Ethernet slot of the modem. (Yes it actually fits).
The policies with Time Warner can be as ludicrase as the customers. They are actually more interested in whether we say our closing script then whether we resolved the customers issue. I've seen huge changes in the IVR so that it takes us longer to get customers to the people who are going to be able to help them. One division the people down there refused to declare outages. So we started a policy of transfering customers as quickly as possible. That was meant to flood the division so that they would finally declare outages and we wouldn't have to trouble shoot known issues.
I've seen situation where the techs on the phone have told management that resetting a digital phone modem will disconnect the call. They actually didn't believe us. We had to prove it to them. I wonder how many customers they lost on that one. Some of the techs abused that one thats for sure. But afterward they came up with policies designed to waste even more of our time.
It seems the customers we get on the phone don't seem to understand it makes no difference to us whether they get online or get there connection working. We have our policies and procedures that we must follow. There are things that we are not ALLOWED to do and we have to refer them to another company or somewhere else. People don't get that. They try to push us to go out of scope all the time. We have to be very harsh sometimes with people just to get them to hang up. I once had a guy call and try 5 times to get me to do the same thing. I had to flat out tell him I'm not helping you with that 5 times. He then tried to manipulate me into assisting him. I had to tell him again. The problem was completely out of my support boundries and out of the support boundries of the company.
Customers when they are confronted with that can be very abusive. Especially when they know the company we are sending them to is going to charge them for technical support. Then it gets really ugly. YOU HEAR THAT NORTON AND MCAFEE. It gets ugly!!!
I knew people who dropped out of college suckered in by job at a hospital. A job which is unionized and probably qualify's as a "living wage" or whatever crap that is. Nonetheless, its enough money to get suckered in - enough to get the things you relate - cable tv/modem, cell phone, etc. And for a struggling college kid, this seems like a huge improvement. But once stuck into this... they never or rarely get out. A few move up a notch or two, but most languish.
That's why any proposal for living wage is a bad idea. This lets people get complacent and satisified at a living wage with little incentive to move up or on.
Indeed. Although I'm not sure 'planting an isolated outpost of the first world economy inside a third world economy' is the right metaphor or explanation, but it certainly rings true. (Although, "I Am Not An Economist :) )
I lived and worked for almost two years in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before the breaking of the currency-equivalency with the US Dollar and the subsequent devalutations and upheavals...
Their situation was more of one which really was the situation of what possibly WAS one of a first-world economy (some years ago, leading to the description of BsAs as "the Paris of South America"), which later devolved through a complex interaction of government meddling, corruption, graft, theft, mismanagement, over-extension of credit and loans by true first-world economies, and who knows what else -- into a truly sorry state of affairs. And of course, one of the primary indicators of 'things gone wrong' is and was the apalling difference in living standards between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' You had to get used to seeing the line-ups of poor families outside the restaurants in which you just had dinner: waiting for the 11pm 'garbage time', when the restaurants put their nightly black plastic garbage bags out for later pickup. Families had certain areas staked out -- fighting for them if necessary -- so that they could open the garbage bags and retrieve whatever was edible, packing them into cardboard boxes to take home.
and at the time, Buenos Aires was preparing their bid to host the Summer Olympics...
Perhaps their is something in these situations which just basically makes people delusional.
Because people would want to talk to a real human, and would fill out the forms in such a way that would get them to that L2 operator as fast as possible.
Hell, I do that now. I've also stopped entering my account info because the human I get never has it anyway.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
And do you know wno's financially supporting that rise? You are! Every time you refuse to examine a label to see where a good is made just so you can pay the lowest possible price, every time you shop at Walmart in lieu of a store where domestically-produced goods are offered, you are helping to finance that expansion. Wake up, America! Start paying attention to where your stuff is produced and start supporting your neighbours again. Otherwise your tech "support" will come from India, your T-shirts will come from China, your Nikes will come from some other 3rd-world country, and you and your children will never be able to leave the ghetto your country will have turned into.
licet differant, aequabitur
I'm not sure 'planting an isolated outpost of the first world economy inside a third world economy' is the right metaphor or explanation
Go to Cordoba and then drive about 100 miles out of the city. Cordoba looks like a first world city, because it is a first world city. 100 miles out you'd be hard pressed to even recognize it as the same country. It's not merely the difference between city and urban settings, it's a completely different world.
KFG
My company pays $10 to start and the top people make around 16. Of course we are a small company and try not to do the L1, L2, L3 support levels.
We also do have benefits, 401k, and paid holidays. Yes techs do have to take a lot of unfair abuse. Goodness knows I do as well. Funny and I thought that we where underpaying our support people.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
While I was in college, I worked tech support for a local ISP. It was small enough that I was L1, L2, and L3 support as well as manning the storefront. They had policies that basically ran contradictory to basic customer service. If the customers couldn't connect, we would run them through the basic setup again and then refer them to their phone company (which, due to deregulation, had something to do with bandwidth sold to other local telecoms...or so I was told). When customers tried to renew their service, they had to pay the entire amount upfront, and if they were late and/or tried to use a credit card, fees were tacked on. We always removed at least one of the fees to keep the customer, but if one of the owners was there and overheard it, we were in for a talk.
For being the owners of a small business, they really didn't care for treating their customers right, and in the end, it almost cost them. They had already started losing customers to SBC and Charter, and I doubt that the company would have survived if they weren't bought out.
My Sysadmin Blog
"Are your servers down, or did someone spill beer on my modem last night?" Seriously.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
Amen to that. I work "Level 1" for a content management software company. Our level one is composed of former sysadmins, DBA's and coders. We are paid fairly well, and have what I consider to be a pretty good gig. Of course our customers are spending at least 6 figures on our software, many of them in the 7 figures, and we use our support as one of our big selling points.
That being said, it is frequently necessary to get very simple with our customers. Many experienced sysadmins have a habit of skipping the documentation (I know that I did), and as such will skip simple, yet critical, steps. It is very important, for the sake of a good customer experience, to not have these people feel like we are patronizing them, but to still check the basics.
The US government encourages outsourcing and supporting Indians over their own people by having a tax system that charges employers per employee.
Some big companies pay as much as $11k per head in taxes. But that doesn't apply for seperate Indian companies.
So in reality the American working for the same wage cost twice as much. That is screwed up.
http://saveie6.com/
What kind of cruel Stalinist dictatorship supporting terrorist would say such a thing?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
.. that you actually understand systems and have common sense troubleshooting skills.
You know, those pictures show me that the only difference in working environment between Accenture and India is apparently the Indians are far less sexist in their hiring policies.
Identical desks, Identical lighting, Identical layouts, far more female employees.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
I think its more sad when a *nix sysadm/netadm gets paid less than PeeCee support.
Nations that have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security should not compete with nations that do not have.
Otherwise it will result in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom
God and religion are distinct
The company I work for (can't say who) has a call center in Phoenix and starts L1 techs at $12/hr. The biggest difference is that you can't get by reading a script, you actually have to be familiar with various OSes and home networking. If you're doing scripted L1 support you're getting paid for your skill set, which is reading and light typing not technical ability. While there are a lot of companies that don't want to pay a skilled person to do the job domestically, not all of them feel that way. If you don't have the skills or can't find the work, then it's time to go to something else.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Don't feel so bad for the $13k/year tech support person in India. To get a similar cost of living comparison, multiply the salary by 10. Yep, they're living like they make $130K/yr in the US. A week's worth of groceries in Bangalore for a family of 4 will cost about 500 rupees if you don't shop carefully -- that's about $11. A really nice, top of the line apartment will cost around $700/month -- basic accomodations are much, much less. $1/day will pay for a maid. $30/day gets you a nice car and driver. 20-somethings in India making $13k/year are living the vida loca. Those prices are in Bangalore, which has seen rampant inflation. By the time a senior engineer is making $40K/year, they're living like millionaires. How many American techies can afford a full staff of servants?
...you sound just like the poeple who tell blacks and latinos that there is no racism, and they just need a little more motivation; bootstraps and all.
Some times there really are poeple who try and fail. Sometimes there are groups of rich white guys, or maybe rich asian guys who sit around a table and think up ways to stay rich at the expense of a targeted group.
Money and economics sometimes trump social constructs. Someone is working to make sure you WANT/NEED/GET a new car or cell phone, or DVD player every few years. Does the fact that you can't resist make you less than? Does the fact that you can't quite afford it based on your income make you an idiot deserving of a life of servitude? You DO still need a new car to get to your menial jobs don't you?
I think the roots of much of this are in how we prepare our workforce for the workplace. 87% of the highest paid CEO's in US corporations did not attend a public high school. 93% attended an Ivy League or "elite" college or university. Sounds pretty hard to compete with the big boys if you attended the nieghborhood high school and community college.
I know a mechanical engineer who only makes 60K a year, with an average job. I also know a carpenter who claims he will hit 80K before the year is out. Both required lots of time and training or schooling that may be unavaileble to many. I don't blame the poeple at the bottom for making thier way as best they can. especially when there really is a barrier keeping the masses from moving up en-mass. But what do I know, I am in a dead-end job myself.
Heybiff
Even the Sun goes down.
Worst part of tech support is that tech support is the most in touch with the customer, yet marketing never actually talks to them.
(Some yeara go...)After doing tech support for twenty months, and filling up "standard replies" that ended up becoming most of their online database, it bothered me that noone asked me what the people thought. Further, my second year got me a measly 5% raise from the original 26k. Then they hired new people at 35K. When i complained they offered to match, at which point i told them about this little thing called trust. So, i quit (i let them fill my position first) and started looking for a new job. That was one main reason i left, at least.
Ultimately, tech support know more about the company base users than anybody else. Why they are treated like dirt is unknown to me. It's like a person denigrating his own feet because they sit so low.
Have you read my journal today?
which is a little mind-boggling considering how much simpler the UI is
Such as, for example, dragging your CD icon into the trash bin in order to cause the drive to eject. Every OS has its idiotsyncracies
They'll insist the machine is plugged in, they've pressed the power button, and it's turned on.
You then trek up 3 flights of stairs, arrive at tehir desk, press the power button, and it works. They'll insists "oh that didn't work for me". Yeah right.