Ask Slashdot: How Can You Find a Good IT Consultant?

Slashdot reader Thelasko says his wife manages a small eight-person business -- but remains unhappy with the company's IT consultant: She's had endless problems with Windows 10 Pro's update system causing downtime. Anytime she calls the IT consultant, they don't resolve issues to her satisfaction, and the company gets stuck with a large bill. She's resorted to researching and providing support for the company network herself.

The contract is up at the end of the year, and she wants to find a new consultant. The company owner however, doesn't want to switch because all of the work the consultant provided is covered under a "warranty" for 3 years (the company typically gets charged). I don't work in IT myself, and am unable to provide advice. What should they do? How would Slashdot find a reputable consultant?
Leave your best answers in the comments. How can you find a good IT consultant?

Comments

Don't be female

[Anonymous Coward]

Not kidding. IT bro's are not your friend. If you can manage it have a male negotiate, even if you are the decider. I speak as a female business owner.

You don't and this is why.

[couchslug]

You will be blamed for any changes you make.
Stupid bosses deserve to get what they ask for. Protect yourself, don't fall on your sword for someone guaranteed to yank it free then stick it in your back.
Do your job, get paid, and hand off all problems to the magic company supposed to fix them. Let them own their failure!

Freelancers!

[b0s0z0ku]

(1) Do it yourself ... or ...
(2) Find a competent freelancer

The problem is that most smart and competent freelancers get bored of doing network/IT support after a while and either go back to university and do something else, or move into a more interesting part of IT like programming or design.

This brings me to a third idea -- put up ads that you need someone at a local university. You might end up with a career-changer or former freelancer who needs a few dinars on the side to pay for school. Even better if you can pay promptly without too much drama.

Address Business Problems First

[brian.stinar]

You are not in a position to be successful.

You're asking the wrong question - instead of asking "how to find a good IT consultant" you should be asking yourself the questions "how can I position myself in order to be able to find a good IT consultant." If the actual decision maker (not you) is making decisions based on faulty understanding (warranty, cost, quality) then you are not in a position to make a good decision. Understanding this will help you resolve the actual problem (the decision making process) rather than the symptom (the poor performance of an IT consultant.) Once you address this, then you'll be able to do things like create evaluation time periods, measure effectiveness, measure cost, measure downtime, and other metrics that should help you solve the problem you initially tried to solve. Before that, you need to solve a deeper problem.

So, I believe you either need to change who is making the decision (delegation), change how they are making the decision (evaluation), or remove yourself from the equation (quit/stop caring), before you address the issue you initially asked about.

Re:Address Business Problems First

[Solandri]

I'd have to agree. I used to work as a freelance IT consultant. My family owns a building now, which I manage. I provide IT services for the tenants, half the time for free just because I enjoy figuring out what's causing the problem.

In the last 3 years, I'd say a good 75% of the problems I get called for are caused by Windows 10 Update. Usually the problem is it replaced a device driver which was working fine, with a "new" version which doesn't work. For about a year there was no fix - Microsoft removed the ability to exempt a device driver from updates. They finally added it back earlier this year, but by then some of our tenants had had to buy new printers because there was no way to make the working printer drivers "stick" in Windows 10.

The next most common is certain Windows functions (usually networking) failing or doing weird things. The cause is, again, Windows Update. This time an update requiring a reboot. But people used to get upset about Windows rebooting overnight without asking them, and losing all their work. So Microsoft erred the other way, too much. And now Windows often doesn't tell you when it needs to reboot to finish installing updates. But until it does, certain parts of Windows "mysteriously" stop working. (I used to just tell people to try rebooting. But with Win 8/10 Microsoft changed it so a shutdown and restart does not constitute a reboot. Shutdown now puts Windows into a hibernate-like state, whereas the updates need an actual reboot. To reboot Windows now, you have to actually select "Restart" from the shutdown options. Which is backwards - most people think a shutdown and power on is a more rigorous form of restarting.)

Unfortunately, all of their businesses are reliant on software which only comes in a Windows version (HIPAA-compliant). Which is why they opted to buy new printers rather than dump Windows.

Find Open Source solutions

[what about]

Of the people I know only the worse have remained on Windows, and for the money.

A simple reason, you are just a slave of Microsoft, so, you just work for money.

It used to be that the changes where reasonable and bearable, but really, Win10 is sit

You really want to get better ? Start with replacing 1/10 of the computers that do menial work with Linux + Libreoffice.

It works, and the people dealing with it are better...

Re:It's a fool's errand

[CAOgdin]

Gee, what an ignorant, blatant assertion...no doubt by a chair occupier in a large corporation.

Small businesses always need competent consulting (which only a few actually get) to help them achieve their goals in business. And, Large Businesses use them as a "check" on their staff, who are often not as up-to-date as is the qualified consul.

I only did it for 20 years, and only to Fortune 500 companies...and no CEO ever complained about my deliverables. It's the insecure programmers and "analysts" who need that regular paycheck and so don't dare to propose anything outside their self-imposed box.

--Carol Anne

Re:That warranty makes zero sense to me

[Kjella]

The company owner however, doesn't want to switch because all of the work the consultant provided is covered under a "warranty" for 3 years

Also if the work is covered under a warranty, shouldn't that mean they have to repair whatever even if not under contract?

Better questions, how often have they ever gotten warranty repairs free? Who's time and money is spent investigating a possible warranty issue? If the consultant blames Microsoft, would they ever make a third party review? Even if they did and found shoddy work is mostly at fault, would they ever have the time and resources to drive a process to force the consultant to unwillingly fix it under warranty? I smell a cushy kickback scheme here, the consultant gets the job of finding the problem. So 90% of the time, it's not his fault and he bills in full, while 10% of the time he'll say it's a "free" warranty fix. Of course he bakes that into his rates, but in return he gets all new business because the owner feels he'll lose "invested" warranty time going with somebody else. He's being played by a simple mind trick.

Re:You don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat. The original question is: "How do you find a good (Windows) IT consultant", which is a subset of "good Windows IT", which is, of course, the null set.

Which, while a popular opinion on Slashdot, is incorrect. There are plenty of senior Windows professionals. The problem is that not many companies are will to pay for expert advice. They want cheap service and they get what they pay for.

To find the best, find a company that has senior Windows professionals who are Windows NT experts. Why? Because the underlying Windows system hasn't changed much since Windows NT days. Windows has the same strengths and weaknesses that it had back then and they are well understood by the NT guys. The newer Windows guys are brought up with the philosophy that it's easier to re-image, but the worker loses a ton of downtime re-configuring all of their apps. The Windows NT guys were brought up with the philosophy of fixing the OS in place.

Windows "NT guy" here. Windows Update. System Restore. Apps. An infinite array of security policy options. The bloody UI that still gets even seasoned professionals lost. I can think of another dozen things that are vastly different with Windows 10 vs. Windows NT. About the only damn thing that remained was NTFS. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you better find a Windows 10 professional. More specifically a desktop support specialist who specializes in Windows.

See, that is the inherent problem with the assumption that you can just go out and find an "IT guy" who knows it all. That world of IT is vastly larger than it was 30 years ago. It's like wanting to find "some mechanic" to work on your Ferrari.

Attention businesses running Windows. Learn to fucking specialize and get the expert you need. And understand you get what you pay for. It's that simple.

Re:You don't.

[Archangel Michael]

I don't claim to know it "all", but I can tell you, that I know a lot about enough, and a little about a lot.

Quality IT guys these days have loads of experience. I'm part of a team that manages 4,000 mostly Win 10 (a few Win 7, 8) and I have seen weird things on Win 10, but most (almost all) of them are stable and don't have problems updating. The rare few that do have problems updating, we simply re-image. I also realize that is not really an option for a Mom n Pop Store. On the other hand, spending $500 to repair a 5 year old computer having update problems with win 10 is also not really an option IMHO, especially when you can get a replacement for similar or slightly more. How much time / money do you spend fixing a random Win 10 update problem is up to you. But sometimes, it does take 8 hours to fix. And figuring 60/hr for quality IT support is close to that hypothetical/mythical $500 bill above.

And then after spending $500 it still might not work right. Those kind of bills are almost always able to be mitigated by proper backups (who needs those!) and understanding that data is actually more important that the Operating System. Most mom n pop outfits have to weigh the cost of having good IT vs not going broke. The problem is that is far too often a fools gamble. Don't bet against the house, it always wins.

Good IT is expensive, bad IT is costly.