Slashdot Mirror
Ex-AppleCare Employee Describes Life Inside Apple
ahknight writes "A former AppleCare employee writes about his time in Apple. From the article: 'I remember when I first started at Apple they had a picture in the training class of some guy in flip-flops, shorts, and a tropical shirt in a decorated cube with a goofy grin, the message being: it's casual. One fellow even went as far as pushing that to the reasonable limit by showing up to work every day for several months in a bathrobe and sandals (and shorts). I don't recall a word ever being said. I think he actually just gave up because no one said anything.'"
lame.
No...it ran NetBSPee.
This is basically any IT / Helpdesk employee's story, not a lot of "inside Apple" info here. And the guy sucked at it because the most important part of being a good support guy/girl is to be able to get the customer to trust you and let you help them, EVEN if they're total bastards and very mad because something does not work.
Knowlegde and understanding of tech is just 50% of the support-job, knowledge and understanding of people is the rest.
Oh, and next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day... so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.
*embarrassed silence*
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Hello and welcome to my blog. Just want to whine about how I work in a crappy job I think I am too good for. Not only am I too good for the job, I am way better than everyone else there. Which explains why I have not risen so fast to the top of the company that the resultant nosebleed is dripping onto Steve Jobs' hair (which is a toupe, by the way - YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST FROM THE BEST GUY IN THE WORLD).
Not only am I great at everything, I am such a cold chap that I make everybody else cry due to my brilliance. I would laugh at their weakness but hey...I am just too cool.
Urgh.
What is the difference between this guy and waiters who snigger at customers who choose bad wine? The former has a blog, that's what.
I am now going to go click on his Google ads a couple of hundred thousand times and have his account suspended for click fraud. He made me waste four and a half years reading his Maddox-style crap.
I worked for two years at an apple re-seller dealing with support and sales. I can honestly say that the casual 'easy' lifestyle never made it to there..
.. stiff as a board.
I'm just about to start legal procedings against my former manager!
All of the Apple representatives that came to check up on 'us' as well didn't seem to have inherited the casual lifestyle either
You can only work in a technical service position for a limited amount of time before it loses its luster and shine, and you start to follow. Once you've performed a job for several years, you get into the groove and know how it's done. The knowledge is all there, somewhere, and it becomes routine to just look it up and spit it out on demand. You keep doing this, time and again, and eventually become a fixture: unchanging, unmoving, static.
The problems compound when this job involves the general public. Any technical job that involves helping masses of uncensored human beings understand technology will eventually wear the average man down, causing him to go bat-shit crazy and scream at the top of his lungs while trying to take out a swath of them with a surprise barrage of old SCSI cards. The largest catalyst for such violent behavior and general mental breakdown is best described by stating, simply, that most people exist at a significant intellectual delta from that burnt-out husk of a technology worker.
This doesn't have to pose a problem in an ideal world. In an ideal world, common people would be willing to accept advice from anyone capable of delivering it. In this real world, however, half of those that acknowledge that they need such assistance will turn violently against anyone they seek help from with such winning phrases as: "What do you think I am, stupid?" In most of the remaining cases, the user is a support vampire and that simply ruins those willing to try and help as badly as being berated for offering the answer. This behavior is evident in forums, mailing lists, in person, and most especially on the phone with technical support.
As a technical support agent, you develop mental calluses that help you move on and through the chaff and treasure the customers that are amiable, acknowledge that they need help, and are happy with the answer they're given. Genuinely happy. A good number of calls are actually like that and make the job bearable. A similar number are very, very far from it.
However, the core reason of why I recently quit my job in AppleCare is that in commodity technical jobs there's only so far you can go before you arrive at the end of the career path for the masses of technical agents and hit the lid where only five or ten pass upwards. Ever. When you get there, you have two choices for moving ahead: wait for the person in the cushy job you want to leave or die to make room and pray that it's you among the masses that applied that gets it, or move ahead elsewhere. After waiting for someone to bite it in a freak keyboarding accident for four years, it was time to go with Plan B.
So one day, when I had a life outside of the company set up and ready, I walked up to my manager and said: iQuit.
Bitchman Begins
I worked in Austin's AppleCare center for four and a half years as a desperation move after a programming gig decided they'd rather give it a go without me several months earlier and my severance and unemployment checks stopped paying the bills. I've used a Mac since I had control over my mousing finger, so performing remedial technical support for Macs was an obvious choice for some quick money. Mac OS X 10.1 had just come out a few months previous, which was the only free upgrade Apple has ever released for Mac OS X as it was mostly an apology to those that bought Mac OS X 10.0. The PowerBook Titanium was the king of the road, until you opened it the 333rd time and the hinge decided it was time to move on in life. There were other Apple products, but I didn't care because those were the two I was told I supported at the time.
The job was remarkably easy, but it had been a long time since I'd done phone support, so I had a lot to learn on the procedural side. They have a shortish training course that they put all new-hires through that taught them how to use iMovie, what an iPod was (the 5GB bricks, at the time), and how to troubleshoot Mac OS 9 (no one was
How many of us here have done tech support as a full time gig? I bet the show of hands is impressive. How many realized it was time to move on, not just from the job, but from the "customerz R teh st00pitz" attitude as well?
No? Haven't figured that out yet? Enjoy your time in the middle.
There's always one, or more, of those guys who feel that they have been given the shaft. They're just so good technically but they can't seem to put a career together. Why? It' must be dumb luck and conspiracy. "I don't get promoted because [manager|company|god] is threatened by my skill, or because they are short sighted, or because maybe I didn't take a shower this month".
Those of you who have your eyes upwards, or elsewhere know who I'm talking about. Those who are this guy will not realize it.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Work for a company that markets to (and apparently, hires) unreasonable elitist snobs, and then have the nerve to be surprised and hurt when they whine like unreasonable elitist snobs?
It's not like anybody twisted this gomer's arm to become an Apple employee, nor continue the pain of cashing those regular checks for 4 years...
The telling point is that, even after all of his tale of woe, he's still an elitist snob going to work in an Apple-only software shop. Here's hoping when his gear breaks, he gets support from someone just. like. him.
The blog entry seemed pretty reasonable to me. He was in a job for a long time, got stale, realised it and got out for greener pastures. Lots of technical people do that, and it's a good thing for them.
I particularly liked the part where the bozo with the "mission critical" computer didn't back it up. If it's mission critical, you have redundancy. If you don't have redundancy, it's not mission critical - you've already decided you can survive without it.
Apple's tech support job is as lame and frustrating as every other tech support job. No suprise here.
Just out of curiocity, did u guys have females in your team?
I am thinking of changin' my job.
hilarious
The writer of that blog entry is obviously a native english speaker. There's no way he worked in tech support.
Pfft, harmless.
OTOH, life after slashdot seems to prove rather difficult for the site.
Become /. front page material?
Just wondering.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
That is the Apple way, folks. Robes, sandals, beach sand. Cars, guitars, sex, and teenager violence...
You are free to sweat in your Business Bhurka and eventually choke on your tie when it gets stuck in your Dell lapstop, but remember you had a choice.
Even though it was way too long, I actually read the good article. The guy is a bit of whiner, but then again he is pretty much spot on. People don't take good care of their computers or data. The (consumer-level) machines are cheaply made in sweatshops in China, by underpaid, expendable, poor people. The whole world has turned to shit. So, I agree with him: if your data and computer is mission-critical, for god's sake have a backup system.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Simple. TFA is slashdotted, so this way we PREVENT the world from hearing just how warm-and-fuzzy Apple is.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
Turning up in a bath robe for work is taking it to the extreme. May be it was a PR exercise on the employees behalf. Any way it is really good to have such loose dress code at work. Ultimately, people should be alowed to wear what they are most comfortable in rather than insisting on a particular attire to bring uniformity at the work place.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
Whatever, tech support is the IT equivalent of working in McDonalds. The only difference is how much knowledge you're expected to bring to the table. I'm sure there's some attainable goal of a satisfying tech support role, but it must be prohibitively costly and difficult to implement, since even Apple evidently functions just like all the rest when it comes to support workers.
The pay, conditions, level of respect you receive, and especially the customers, all comparable. Flipping burgers and switching backup tapes don't feel all that different, they're both soul destroying once you get past any initial novelty.
So it's hardly surprising that many leave the job in a pretty bitter state. What is surprising is how many of them think their situation is novel, and that it's worthy of sharing with the world.
No, but someone released an app that let it run Windows, and some bathrobe wearers got pissy because they saw it as a threat to their way of dressing, but other bathrobe wearers saw it as an opportunity for non-bathrobe-wearers to make the switch to the 'robe.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
If you take your employer to court, show some gnads, and appear in the courtroom wearing a bathrobe. =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Reading this made me think "wow that is EXACTLY what I went through" when I did customer service for NextCard credit cards (when they were in business).
I'm glad I got out of the phone support rut. It was a nice company to work for, and even fun at times, but it just goes nowhere.... and you really get sick of talking to customers.
What are you talking about? Earlier this week we went four whole days before we got that WSJ fluff piece. I thought I was going to die without my slashdot apple fix.
Thing is, Apple is one of the more interesting companies out there, so there is naturally going to be a lot of interest, negative and positive. I'm sure that if Apple stories weren't generating a lot of page hits, there wouldn't be as many of them on slashdot.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Wah, wah, Apples are better and I don't like it! Slashdot was the only place I could deny reality but it too is changing! Is there nowhere I can find refuge with others who share my beliefs?
Oh for shame! A helpdesk job with no upward mobility and he had to leave for greener pastures!
Give me a break. For those of us in IT, there are lots of jobs and lots of career paths -- but if you really want a new job, you have to motivate yourself, learn on your own, and (often times) leave the company to get a better job. If you're intelligent (as another user pointed out, just because you have a knack for computers doesn't make you smart) and are good with customers and juniors, you'll go far.
The key thing support guys (and I fall into this category) usually fail to realize is that they are not the cock-n-balls. They are the jock strap. It is their position to support the important parts of the business. Like the dispair.com poster says, just because you're essential, it doesn't mean you're important.
Me? I've got 8 1/2 years of IT experience. I went from being a lowly support guy (about as low as you can get...a data tech in the Marine Corps), today I'm a router guy who does senior-level enterprise network support for almost a half-million end users in our organization. Daily.
If you want it bad enough, you can get it. Just get rid of the "heh heh stoopid lusers" attitude and get with the program. IT support is little different than A/C repair, vehicle repair, medicine, or a myraid of other support/repair professions. Get the customer to trust you, don't make them feel stupid for not being able to do it themselves, and in the end, get them up and running, and happy that you're there for them, and will be next time.
You never hear EMTs giggling after work about stupid guys not being able to recognize heart attack symptoms. They get on the scene, and help the patient. Help the customer. Support them. That's what "IT support" is all about.
You're a towel.
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.
Oh wow... thanks for the absolutely horrible image.
Some apple employee, in court, wearing a bathrobe and exposing his testicles.
Thanks... now I have to wash my mind out.
(And I'm not just being sexist by assuming that it is a male, due to differential features of anatomy, it would be far too explicit for a female to show her gonads in court. "Your honor, I present exhibit A) My Ovaries") Okay... that's an even more disturbing thought.
guilt at not having backed up their mission critical data
Of course, the industry (which knows its software is buggy and tends to crash) has never provided a decent, afforable, back-up solution with its home systems.
Since they provide us will fallible operating systems, backup and restore should be easy and out-of-the box.
My biggest problem when I worked at Apple (tech support, then educational tech support) was that the only thing that mattered ever was sales. I was a good tech, but I'm not at all a good salesperson. I never once claimed to be a good salesperson... I'm terrible at it, don't like trying to sell things to people, and frankly just dislike salespeople in general. When I was hired on, we were told that there was only a little bit of minor sales involved, such as being able to sell someone an adapter or disc when they asked for it. If that was the case, then no problem, I can do that.
This turned out to be a lie.
All of the tech support agents have sales quotas. They must sell, or they may lose their jobs. The actual sales department got commission on sales. The tech support department just had their job threatened if they didn't sell $X in product per month. If you called in simply asking for help getting your month-old iBook to boot, I was expected to get you to buy something during that call... OR ELSE. For a while my supervisor made me keep a record of every call that I did not sell something on, and I had to have a good explanation as to why I didn't make a sale, or I would be written up.
All bonuses, awards, and recognition was given out for sales numbers, and nothing else. It did not matter if you were a good tech or not, if you were good at customer service or not, it only mattered that you could sell product to people who called in just wanting support on the stuff they already bought.
That's why I'm no longer there. (in the end, it was not my choice to leave) I like the products, I like the company, but I hate the practices of the AppleCare secion of the company so very much.
While tend to sympathize with tech support folks, this guy is a whiny prick. he keeps moaning about how terrible his job is, but he stayed there for 4 years! Keeps bragging about his skillz, but can't seem to get off his ass and find another gig, I guess cause "the pay is pretty good," or somehow having his job made it too hard to mve up.
I hate any and all IT-types that condescend to people who don't know how to fix a computer. The line "I don't work well with liberal arts school graduate wussies. I tend to make them cry. It's not intentional, it's just that they're idiots" says it all. What a fucking prick. I went to art school, and I'm Apple-certified, but I'm pretty sure he'd call me an idiot too.
The sad truth is there's a huge amount of users out there that consider computers appliances and nothing more. PEBKAC is a reality, but they've not been trained to troubleshoot systems, because their jobs never required them to do so. That's were the IT-arrogance comes from.. dealing with comp problems is easy most of the time, but not if you never did it.. it' annoying to have to explain the basics to people, and yes there are plently of idiots... and that's what AppleCare is for. DUh.
Here's a link to a mirror of the article:1 77c2f89f56969fd/index.html
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/bc678af2bc978862
I am a test technician for a small-sized medical equipment company. Our entire database system for products and production has been written in Java by a single skilled programmer.
However I can't get this programmer to correct all the spelling errors that permeate the user interface. Sometimes there are two or three on each page. I've made a spreadsheet of the mispelled words and their corrected spelling and their locations in the various user screens. No luck. This guy just doesn't care. I've tried to explain that presenting interfaces with misspelled words compromises his code and the confidence that all of the employees of the company have in his code. "The code works," he says, "that's the important thing."
'It's a sad, sad situation. And it's getting more and more absurd', as the Elton John song goes.
Things obviously haven't changed much at Austin support. I worked there over a dozen years ago, and all I'd have to do is change a few product names in that piece to duplicate much of my own experience.
I can say that if you think apple customers are hard to deal with you're a spoiled brat. They are some of the nicest, most intelligent people out there.It's all how nice you sound. I get maybe 3 insufferable jerks per WEEK. that's at 30 calls a day.
If you're an asshat, you'll get a lot more asshats because you CAUSED IT!
I personally PREFER people with zero knowledge of computers. they do exactly what I ask them to quickly and efficiently.
It's the people that think they know everything and argue that they know more than you that make life hard.
When someone is obviously low in computer proficiency I tell them "It's really OK. I'm sure there's something you do much better than me, some day I may need YOUR help."
The moment I say that the call goes very smoothly, as they know I'm not going to judge them, I'm just there to help.
Read the article he was a developer and walked into the job with an attitude.
I have worked a ton of these jobs and a lot of things people have said so far I totally and completely agree with:
1. Just because someone does not understand computers does not make them an idiot. I did tech support for lawyers at one point and you cannot tell me that the Harvard grad senior partner was an idiot just because he knew less about computers than Bob the first year help desk guy. Yet, Bob got his silly butt fired for treating the senior partner like a moron and insulting his computing skills.
2. Its customer service. Yeah you might be able to answer half the questions before the customer figures out what to tell you about their problem but come on.
3. Sure, a customer should be prepared with basic info going into a help desk call just like you should have all your insurance info right there when you call the company on a claim and all that. But this is not the way to look at it. When someone takes their car in especially nowadays they do not know cars and can barely in grunts noises and gestures describe their issue. That is the way it is. Its the job. Get over it.
4. You think customer service sucks? Man, you ain't seen shitty jobs till you flipped burgers or done landscaping in the hot summer or worked a conveince store so until you have scrubbed puke out of a toilet at 3am after the drunks drop come in with the munchies acting rowdy then shut the hell up. Boo-frickin-hoo You are above it? Then quit, get a better job and get over it.
5. I agree with the poster who talked about the good service from Apple. I have heard some motherboard freaking out mac in the shop for weeks horror stories. But it has never been my experience. I went in a month after I got my shuffle and the usb went dead and my computer would not recognize the thing at all. Unlike one poster that wrote the Genius Bar guys off as arrogant the guy checked out what I said I told him what I had tried and he plugged the thing into a Mac right there and - nothing- they replaced it right then and there. Quick, easy polite and all.
ACK
you hate sales, meetings, and 'liberal arts', then you whine all day about how incompetent management is.
classic case of 'i dont want to do it, but everyone who is doing it sucks'.
someone has to do that stuff or people like you wouldnt have a job.
what an unbelievably narcissistic asshole.
I seem to recall someone I knew got in a conflict with an Apple manager over whether or not "barefoot" was okay. I might be wrong, though. It's a long time since I heard the story.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Come on, this isn't news. It's just another self-involved blog post... jesus, why should I care? Waste of space.
I worked in Applecare for 9 years and saw a lot of this attitude. Tech support specialist feel more knowledgeable than we actually are because we forget the enormous support given to us by our teammates and the support infrastructure of the company. It might be true that any particular high level support tech could leave the company and get highly paid for the knowledge they possess but that superior knowledge would grow stale in hurry. They would have an edge for 3-6 months but after that slip down the knowledge slope and end up just like everyone else.
Applecare techs can quickly solve problem that would take expensive consultants because they have an instant reservoir of high quality information at their fingertips. First, they have their teammates who are also specialist in area who can be tapped just by poking one's head over a cube wall. Second, they have the databases, training and testing labs provided by the company that lets them find answers quickly. Thirdly, they can escalate problems up the technical food chain until it hits the people who actually created the product in the first place.
All this support makes the individual feel super-knowledgeable but I saw a lot of people leave for consulting gigs who didn't make it for long because they under-estimated how important their support was.
Tech support isn't for everyone. Its not a high status job by any means no matter how well compensated. However, if you like rapid problem solving, have basic personal skills and can just remember that if everyone knew what you knew you wouldn't have job in the first place, it can be a good career.
A lot of people equate "knowledge about computers" with "intelligence". There are some people in the IT world that consider their completion of a Java programming class as proof that they are the next Einstein. That's where the amazing arrogance comes from -"I know what the word "instantiate" means, therefore, I am far smarter than the average human being, perhaps the next step in human evolution". Where, in fact, they would still fail out of the Airco Institute.
Brett
Please. Those who can work as Developers, System Administrators or Network Administrators.
Those who can't cut that, work in phone support.
flipflops is a dot-com thing. I know people who do that where I work, shorts, flip-flops and t-shirts. So what. I'm waiting for someone to show up in drag .. LOL.. last person I heard that did that at a company was fired, not sure why though...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Somehow, actually, the thought of an Apple hipster representative reaching into her tummy in court and ripping out her ovaries is a real turn-on. But maybe it's just me.
I am trying to land a job at apple. but I get the usual, you have to apply through the website... :( does anyone here who works at apple or worked at apple has some tips on getting hired by apple?
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
It never ceases to amaze me how underpaid geeks somehow can't get it into their skulls that the guy is not stupid, he's a bloody doctor/lawyer/diplomat/you name it, for crying out loud.
And they tend to be the worst, because they expect us TO solve the problem in five seconds. Look, I don't know anything about medicine, law, politics, accounting, but I know computers. That's why you're calling me. Don't play the computer admin card with me, otherwise you wouldn't be calling me in the first place.
Tech support would be a lot more support staff friendly if people would start taking responsibility for their actions, but I think it's a proven fact through court cases and laws passed that "taking responsibility" is a lost art in this country.
My favorite call on this sort of situation involved a user calling in wanting me to join his new Dell to his company's domain. Never called us for advice, never even told us he'd be getting a new system. Dell rep sells him on "Media Center 2005." He gets pissed at me when I tell him that it can't be done.
"But the Dell rep said it's what I needed! You're the tech guy, fix it!"
"I can't. That's how Microsoft wrote it."
It eventually had to be escalated to a super. Just sad.
I find it simply amazing that most of you haven't even touched on this. One guy did who stated that just because the user doesn't know computing doesn't mean he's stupid. However, the majority of you do tend to throw crap at the IT people for not being understanding of the users' lack of skills.
I have been working in IT for over 7.5 years now and I can tell you this: It's not the users' lack of computer knowledge/skills that pisses us off. It's their laziness for not even TRYING to figure these things out. The vast majority of our problems are that users do not know how to user their computers. I currently support over 350 computers and 700 users. In this pool of users, there are very few (around 10 - 15) users who actually make a good solid effort to learn how to use their computers. When something goes "wrong" they instantly freak out and call IT to come to their offices to fix the problem. I don't have this documented so I will pull this number out of my ass. I am willing to bet that around 85% - 90% of my time is wasted on showing users how to user their computers.
Now I know some of you are going to bitch about the use of the word 'wasted' there, but it really is appropriate. Would I apply for a job as a chef of a 5 star hotel if I didn't know how to use an oven? If I couldn't make the thing cook food, would I bitch and moan that the oven doesn't work and call the repair guy in to fix it? Hell no! I would be fired. One of the major problems here is that more and more jobs today require people to use computers. When people apply for jobs in my department, they are asked if they know how to use a computer. Specifically, clerical staff are asked about MS Office and they even have it on their resumes that they are proficient with Office. I'm not kidding, the people who put these skills on their resumes ask me simple things like, "how do I save a file?" I literally had to draw a picture of a computer with a blow up box for the power button, just so one of our PhDs would know how to turn the computer on. I wasn't being sarcastic. He TOLD me to do this for him! These types of problems are NOT rare! Most of my users freak out when an error message pops up. When I ask them what it says, they said they didn't read it, they just clicked 'OK' and bad things started to happen. People need to have the common sense and lack of laziness to at least read error messages that pop up. The ones who do try to read it still end up geting freaked out before they finish and call us. Basic understanding of the language on your screen and a basic basic basic knowledge of computers is enough to understand most of the error and other messages that pop up. (Please, don't give me shit about cryptic messages. I am fully aware of them and hate them, but most messages are very easy to understand if you just read them.)
Getting past the issue of user laziness and onto the issue of user knowledge, there is a difference between computer users not knowing how to map an SMB share and people who don't know how to login or save a file. Face it, 30 years ago pen, paper, and type writers may have been the tops in office tools, but today, it's the computer. We should have some reasonable expectations for what you can and cannot do with a computer before you are hired into a job that requires its use. Consider the billions of dollars wasted each year in the mere time it takes IT personnel to teach users how to use the tools of their jobs. Until the k-12 system catches up and the graduating high-school seniors are expected to know how to use a computer as well as a pencil, we need to have some better policies surrounding the minimum level of computer proficiency for a job. If you apply for the job and claim to have that proficiency and it becomes found out later that you don't, instead of giving your IT guy more grief, give the employee who isn't qualified the axe.
I want it to be known that I am all about user education. I have been doing it for over 7 years. But their needs to be a limit. I'm n
Just because someone does not understand computers does not make them an idiot.
Nod.
I'm sure my mechanic thinks I'm a pain in the neck, 'cos I don't find cars the coolest things ever and keep coming back with stuff I could have avoided if I obsessed over my car the way I do over my computer.
I have the same problem, and have a simple mechanism for backing up my data. On my Mac, I have one extra physical harddisk for backup. On that disk I create an encrypted virtual drive (DMG), my backup image. I have Deja Vu installed and it runs daily/weekly to make a backup. About every week I copy the encrypted disk image to an external harddisk. This means I only have to copy one file, which is a lot quicker when using USB 2.0 (in my experience) then copying thousands of files (like those in the library). I suppose on Windows you can do the same.
I use two 2.5" harddisks, because they don't need a power supply (usb 2.0), and they are small and better prepared for moving around. One is always in a different place (at work), and when I make a new backup, I swap them. If someone would steal it, they would have to know the password to open the dmg. The only thing is that this way you don't have a backup from a longer while ago.
This mechanism may seem difficult to setup (for the average user), but when it is setup, it works really easy. The only thing you have to do is copy the dmg-file to the external harddisk.
This is life in nearly every company. Compare the developers in Apple or MS to the support staff (phone support, sales, janitors). I bet most large companies have more janitors than developers. Look at auto companies. How many design the cars vs build and sell them?
The guy is more of a whiner than insightful.
qz
Though it requires a small investment, it's definitely possible and worthwhile to set up a practical backup solution. I had all my data on a Powerbook with a 120GB HD, but I purchased a 250 GB external hard drive and left it on my desk at home. Every few weeks I'd plug it in and click on "backup" (the drive came with backup software called silverkeeper). The initial backup took a little over 30 minutes, and incremental backups took 5 or 10.
Last month my laptop was stolen, and though I was pretty upset, at least I didn't lose a meaningful amount of data. I just picked up a new MacBook Pro, plugged in the hard drive, and restored in a little over 30 minutes.
So there is a practical backup solution out there. That's mine. You're right that DVD's are certainly not it. But I'm pretty happy with mine. Unless two geographically seperated disks die in the same timeframe, I'm good.
Cheers.
I work at Apple and I wanted to chime in (anonymously).
:)
Just because you are great at AppleCare support doesn't mean you are a good candidate to move up. Being a manager is a different job that takes diplomacy skills, patience, which you seem to lack, and you hold serious contempt towards the meetings - the bread and butter of management. You may not think they are important but they do and you have to respect that. Maybe if you came into a meeting without the "this is a waste of time mindset i only cared about 5 minutes out of 60" you might actually walk away realizing that it was a useful time where everyone was caught up, group decisions were made, and appropriate action items were determined and distributed.
Yes, tech support sucks. Hard. I've had lots of friends in tech support. I understand how hard it is to deal with some customers. Most of the world feels your pain: waiters, food service employees, retail employees, the dude who works concessions at a movie theater, etc. These people take tremendous abuse from the rude masses. The difference is that they realize that they are the bottom of the food chain where they are, and they acknowledge they are there doing a job that others can do, and no matter how well they clean that bathroom they won't be promoted to general manager of the McDowells. Sure, you are well educated, but at Apple you near the bottom of the food chain (retail is the bottom, but the geniuses are AppleCare, so there is some overlap I guess). Retail and AppleCare sounds like you are getting your foot in the door, but you're getting your foot into the door of the non-attached guest house. It won't get you into Apple 'corporate' in Cupertino. Just an FYI.
As I was saying... One source of frustration with tech support is difference between intelligence and ignorance. I don't know how to fix my car when it breaks. I earn a very large salary as a software engineer, but I'm sure some mechanics would think I'm a total idiot because I don't know how to replace a catalytic converter, and would think i was being rude by asking "well, why do i need to replace it, can't you fix it?". However, that same mechanic would probably not hesitate to ask me for help with his computer help if he found out I worked for Apple, as people usually realize that other people are specialists in different fields. The problem arises when you assume everyone knows as much as you about your particular field of specialty. As much as I hate to say it, it's people like you that give a lot of techies a bad reputation of being smug elitist pricks. As a software engineer at Apple I have my share of shit to deal with too. I doubt there are many jobs out there that are the equivalent of "beer and massage day"
As another analogy of moving up... QA is not "an entry point to moving into engineering". Those who think that are delusional, unless they are actually software engineers that couldn't find a job in development so you found a job in QA for a while. You don't hire a tester and a year later say "you know, he's a really great tester. lets make him an engineer". In fact, having a degree in CS can 'taint' QA people because they start thinking like programmers instead of users and stop finding the bugs and edge cases that the engineers forgot about as well. Being an engineer is a completely different skill set. Great QA uses and hones their skill set (automation, test plans, thinking of interesting new ways to break stuff, regression testing). Software engineering has design principles, application/technology architecture, algorithms, judgement calls, a few caffeine induced marathon coding sessions, insight and cleverness, and a lot of creativity. Congrats, you know about server. That's nice. So did every dot com kid. You're lucky to have a job where you can apply your knowledge and get great benefits doing it. That still doesn't mean you should move up in your organization. In fact, if you do your job really well the managers may say "he's doing a great job, lets move him up in the
:) this basically continues the sentiment of the GP
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Ok, you know what? When we're very young, most of us learn to ride a bicycle. Then, at 14-16, we learn to drive a car.
I don't hear anyone complaining that the steering wheel is not "intuitive". Hell yes, it's intuitive, and we're not going to replace it with handlebars from a bike just so someone can learn to use it without having to learn more than how to use a bike.
Well, a computer is the same way. As a programmer, I simply refuse to make my software anticipate what users are used to, and adapt to it. I refuse to make a word processor that looks and feels like a typewriter.
When I started using Linux, I had no expectations that it would work exactly the same way Windows did, and I was willing to learn. If I had wanted it to behave exactly the same way Windows did, I'd have kept using Windows.
Yes, it's very nice when something has a small, clean, simple interface that you can figure out within moments of opening it. But at a certain point, the user has to learn the interface, not the other way around. When my dad couldn't figure out how to use the keyboard to go backwards in Firefox, because the keystroke is alt+left, not backspace, that's not Firefox's fault. That's PEBKAC.
(And yes, I know backspace works now.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Shouldn't that be "appear in the courtroom wearing a bathrobe and show some gnads?"
Wow, that person sure comes off as an obnoxious, cocky bastard in that article. Comic Book Guy personified.
I don't mean to pigeonhole you, but are you the type that likes to chop his girlfriend into tiny bits and then immerse those bits in boiling water, because "you like your women like you like your coffee"?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"One fellow even went as far as pushing that to the reasonable limit by showing up to work every day for several months in a bathrobe and sandals (and shorts). I don't recall a word ever being said. I think he actually just gave up because no one said anything"
:)
Man that really brought a smile to my face!
Gotta love human nature eh?
Some asshole _always_ has to push the enelope on rules he he
Ok, so in the end this guy left a dead end support job for a start up that could presumably create something cool and new and really change things.
This is exactly why outsourcing is a good thing. Cisco purged a bunch of people form call centers near where I live, sent all the jobs to India... Everyone was up in arms, the tech community was angry, no one could "find a job" cause suddenly there were 800+ certified, experienced techs in the job market.
Fast forward 2 years... All of the ex-cisco employees have jobs now, and alot of them have started new companies that are doing some pretty cool stuff, they are hiring people, creating more jobs, and being more innovative.
If Cisco hadn't sent all the dead end jobs to India, there would be ~50 less tech companies in the area, and about 2k less jobs. Anyway, I have seen first hand that sending these types of dead end jobs overseas is not a bad thing, even if they are "white collar", "good paying" jobs.
Were there a worm, a spider and a grasshopper there?
Oh wait, that was a peach.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
You are good.
Then again, its hard to find processed girlfriends in a box...
You know, the number of people on slashdot who'll jump on someone for not referring to every customer with sunshine coming out of their asshole is absolutely sickening.
It doesn't matter whether it's waiterblog or gasjockeyblog or applecareblog -- The customer has a certain role, and when you step beyond that role, you're going to leave a bad impression. It has nothing to do with being technically incapable, and everything to do with being an asshole. Sure, having to decipher a thousand dialects of stupid is unfortunate, but it's the pretentious asshole lambasting some poor helpdesk tech beause his "mission critical" machine has no backups and just failed is no different than the stories on the waiterblog about assholes who think they deserve a reserved table because they're "special" and drop all pretenses of humanity while dealing with their waiter, or the asshole trucker who thinks the gas jockey is their personal verbal punching bag.
It's been a long time.
I had almost the exact same situation, except that in my case the cause of the problem was that the cable modem had gotten fried by lightning. It was obvious, but the Time-Warner/Brighthouse fool on the other end insisted on going through troubleshooting anyway. I've done my time in phone support as well, so I'd taken my LAN out of the equation and double-checked before I called. I accepted the BS troubleshooting until he asked me to "bypass the cable" between the modem and my computer. I asked him what the hell that meant (English was clearly not his primary language), and he explained that he wanted me to turn the cable around.
That pushed me over the edge, and I switched from patient and helpful to "why the fuck are you wasting my time?" mode. I got my ticket number and took my burnt up modem to the local office to be replaced. As it turned out, the one they gave me as a replacement was bad as well (I had a friend bring his cable modem over and it worked fine). Needless to say, the next call to support was much shorter and less pleasant, and on my next trip to their office I had them test the replacement unit before I left with it.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
That's because you're looking in the grocery store, not the morgue, silly!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Since it has "Apple" in the subject somewhere.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
I hate Applecare. I dont' have problems with any other customer service folk -- not Verizon, or Comcast, or Earthlink, or PC techies. We can have a nice chat, solve the problem, even laugh. But the Applecare kids take the cake as the biggest assholes I ever have to call. I've put off solving my Mac problems for days just because I didn't want to have to call those venomous jerks.
I'm guessing they get minimum wage and are furious.
A common problem is that they don't listen. They seem v. impatient as I describe my problem, going "uh-huh, uh-huh," like they want to hurry me up. Then turns out they didn't listen and need me to say it all over again, sometimes a couple times before they can grasp the problem. Why don't they take notes?
Then they say stupid things. I called in because my wireless mouse would not pair up. Tech guy tells me to "open the finder." How am I going to do that? I ask. I have no mouse. Duh, I forgot, he said.
I like getting tech support via chat cause each time they need me to repeat something, I just copy and paste the previous time I wrote it. Presto! Today I had to paste the same thing four times for the tech guy for Quicken. Every time he asked that question, I'd re-paste the same damn paragraph.
Seems like many of these kids come on the phone already seething from some previous bad experience. They are looking for someone to take their frustrations out on. They need to give them tennis rackets and pillows so they can go hit and scream in a padded room insted of sadistically torturing the innocent mac user who has already been on hold 30 minutes and expects to be treated like a customer.