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The 'Cable Guy' Now a Network Specialist
Hugh Pickens writes "Amy Chozick reports that cable guys, long depicted as slovenly cranks who dodged growling dogs and tracked mud on the living room carpet, often have backgrounds in engineering and computer science and certifications in network engineering. 'Back in my day, you called the phone company, we hooked it up, gave you a phone book and left,' says Paul Holloway, a 30-year employee of Verizon, which offers phone, Internet, television and home monitoring services through its FiOS fiber optic network. 'These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home.' The surge in high-tech offerings comes at a critical time for cable companies in an increasingly saturated Internet-based market where growth must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades. 'They should really change the name to Time Warner Internet,' says Quirino Madia, a supervisor for Time Warner Cable. 'Nine out of 10 times, that's all people care about.' Despite their enhanced stature and additional responsibilities, technicians haven't benefited much financially. The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."
I don't know that the cable providers are really trying to get "Network Specialists" to do the installs? I completely agree that times are changing, and today's installer is much more likely to be bringing the connection into a home for Internet service than for simply watching TV. But the median pay doesn't sound that out of line to me, for what I think they're really looking for -- which is someone capable of efficiently driving to customer locations and following some defined procedures to hook up the cable and attach the required equipment.
The real "Network Specialists" they'd pay a lot more for would be the guys working at the "back end" of the cable company, managing the large switches handling all the traffic going out to various neighborhoods and ensuring people aren't hacking a modem in some way to get more bandwidth than they paid for. Other back end workers would be responsible for such things as rolling out firmware upgrades to the cable modems or set-top boxes on their network, testing equipment that comes back in as defective or customer returns, and keeping on top of network outages.
Just because today's customer is more sophisticated and wants to attach 15 or 20 devices to their connection doesn't mean the INSTALLER is expected to assist with any of that. My personal experience with cable company troubleshooting of issues (such as intermittent connections) tells me that if anything, they'll ask you to disconnect the cable modem from everything else and troubleshoot with only one PC connected directly to it. They don't really understand, or WANT to understand all the other things you might be trying to do with it.
...I had to show them how to use ping.
On the other end of the spectrum, needing to call technical support simply to get the ips of the name servers I needed to use elicited a salvo of "Can you ping the servers?" and "Can you give me the output of tracert?" Finally, after 15 minutes of explaining that I was using linux ("That platform isn't supported"), I could configure my machine myself, and all I needed was this one bit of information, the "tech" on the other end of the line actually seemed annoyed with having to give up the one piece of info I actually needed.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
No joke. My dad has Charter out at his business, and his modem died not too long ago, so he called them up and they came out and replaced it. This new modem had three different ethernet ports on it, and what the charter guy did was plug the router into the second, non-operative port (he was only paying for one connection anyway), and then plugged his desktop directly into the first port on this new modem. He also told my dad that he needed a "business router" and that's why the router no longer worked. Business router my foot, all he needed was someone with a brain larger than a peanut to come in and hook it up for him. I unplugged the computer, plugged it back into the router, then plugged the router into the first port of the new modem and all was well. It's just a cheap little d-link router but it works fine, he doesn't need anything more and never did.
What I do:
Them: Hello my name is $OBVIOUSLY_FAKE_NAME
Me: $OBVIOUSLY_FAKE_NAME, is it? I know you have a script and all, but please save us both some time and just escalate me to a higher support tier, the info I need isn't on your script. (If they refuse, then I say: "Sorry about this, I know calls are recorded... so, I'm right pissed off and I'd like to talk to your manager!")
Once I've got the next higher up support personnel on the phone I can usually say things like: "I need the IP list for my name servers, my IP is: xx.xx.xx.xx", or "Your cable-tech guy forgot to give me the admin password for the modem, what's the standard PW or reset procedure & web-based config?" and I'm off the phone in mere moments.
IMHO, there's no need to ever mention what OS you're using. If they ask I tell them it's none of their business, they sell network service, not software.
As a former tech support rep at a call center, I can absolutely vouch that the first people you talk to are going to be idiots reading off a card.
I wish there was a menu option you could select in the phone tree system that says "I hereby declare myself to be competent in the topic at hand. I have tried the routine troubleshooting to no avail, and believe the problem lies beyond my control to fix. I agree to pay a $50 surcharge if you prove me wrong and I should have stuck with the regular support staff.