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The 'Cable Guy' Now a Network Specialist

Posted by timothy on from the 55k-isn't-too-slouchy dept.

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."

9 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Not comcast by bigtrike · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last time I had a comcast tech out to fix my cable modem, I had to show them how to use ping.

    1. Re:Not comcast by mrclisdue · · Score: 5, Funny

      Good work on your part.

      He showed up at my place shortly after, and I showed him how to use LOIC as a tool to check the comcast servers.

      Next time, I'll show him how to speed up his PC and search for Nigerian princes.

      cheers,

    2. Re:Not comcast by AngryDeuce · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, my experiences with Charter have been about the same over the last 10 years I've been a customer of theirs. The only time I ever had a tech that seemed like he knew anything (and didn't just try to bullshit me) was recently, and even then it took a problem being escalated to the supervisor's supervisor to get that kind of attention. Turns out the "shitty wiring in the walls that was preventing [me] from getting more than 4 meg that would never be repaired unless the landlord tore all the walls out and rewired the building" was actually a faulty node that was blasting everyone in this complex with so much noise on the lines that anything beyond regular web surfing didn't work for shit (and even that worked like crap during peak, which was always the excuse, "it's peak usage, sorry, nothing can be done". It took a year of complaints from everyone in this complex until they finally investigated and found the problem with the node and, when they replaced/repaired it, holy shit, everything started working again. Imagine that...

      If there was any other alternative that offered similar speeds, I would switch, but unfortunately my choice is them or DSL that tops out at 7 meg for the same price. Either way, their Level 3 guy openly admitted that most of the lower level techs know enough to plug the shit in and do basic troubleshooting, but that's about it. However, he did say that 99% of the time the problem is user error related to people not knowing how to plug the shit in or connect to the network, so maybe that's why? Either way, though, I could do without the bullshit answers. I've had the problems blamed on my router more often than I can count (even though that's complete bullshit), and funny, that always segues into trying to get me to rent one from them for $7 a month. Uh, yeah, no thanks...

    3. Re:Not comcast by interval1066 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ...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".'
    4. Re:Not comcast by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Not comcast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Relevant xkcd

    6. Re:Not comcast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When I was at the other end a customer called claiming he was some Network Specialist and he knew there was something wrong on our end.

      I asked him if he could prove I was an idiot by removing the second network card config he had configured. Things suddenly worked.

      So yes, there are idiots on both sides. I understand that a script is stoopid for most of us here, but for the majority of 'specialists' it isn't. I have seen people trying to solve an issue for 45+ minutes only to realize they did not do step 1 or step 2 in the script.

      If somebody asked for the IP adress of any server, we just gave it. We even explained telnet to POP3 for dial up customers who often received to large mails and MS cut of the connection.

      Sure it is annoying and you have checked everything. On the whole it however will save time. Not with you. It will with the 1000 other customers. The problem is not so much the usage of a script, but the script itself. If you get people who say "My mail does not work" the standard we did was to do a traceroute to see if there was a connection or a DNS problem. If that worked, we tried a telnet to see if there was no firewall issue.
      Only then did we check the mail program. This if the mail had worked previously.

      And if you are so smart and have a connection, why don't you look up the IP adresses in either your settings or on our website. Yes, you can find that without a valid DNS server. You are the specialist. You figure it out if you don't like the way we give support. Yes, I have hung up on customers as agent, supervisor AND manager because they started demanding I do things their way and refused to answer some extreme simple questions, like their login (so I can see if there is an issue with their account) or their basic network setting. They kept telling that there was an issue at our end without giving ANY feedback on how they reached that conclusion.

      I am there to give service. That does not mean I am your servant. And yes, we gave the best service at that time of any provider. When I compared with others, our 1st level support did what others did at second or even third level.

      So next time, just go with the flow and use your knowledge to find those adresses yourself with your knowledge. There is no reason to call them for the DNS addresses. None whatsoever unless you are not a specialist of any kind. Then please follow the script to see if you have not forgotten other configurations.

  2. Hmm.... not so sure about this .... by King_TJ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. yes, those people are so filthy! by decora · · Score: 5, Funny

    one time , i even had one ask me 'how my day was going'.

    can you imagine the nerve of these servants?

    to talk to me, a LINUX user, like that? and they dont even know how to disassemble their makefiles? balderdash!