I have often had this same discussion with my wife, who is a nurse at one of the top ten hospitals in the country. When she is on call, she receives approximate 20% of her hourly rate while she is waiting for an emergency. If she needs to respond (aka go to work), she receive time and a half, whether or not she is over 40 hours. Please note that she must arrive within 45 minutes.
From what I understand, this is close to the industry standard for the medical practice. Why should IT reinvent the wheel? IMHO if this is adequate compensation for those saving lives, it should be more than adequate for those who are stuck with the less important task of keeping uptime.
I personally work for a company, Linuxgruven (www.linuxgruven.com) that offers Enterprise Linux Support around the United States. From what our clients have expressed, one thing that makes a difference and helps provide accountability to the management is being able to provide on-site support in a timely manner. Not every Linux support company can do that. A number of our clients have large clusters (>100 nodes) and they want someone on-site ASAP, meaning hours not days. With more than a hundred people spread throughout the country, we make this a reality.
Also, any company should evaluate a product (i.e. Linux) based on what it can do today and the near term future. If the company that put in those 90,000 POS systems promised them something Linux won't be able to do until kernel 2.6/3.0, then that company is at fault. Unrealistic expectations from ill-used products usually can not be corrected in the support realm. They move to the software development area, where hacking can create what the customer needs. A great example is ImageStream building enterprise class Linux-based routers.
I am not solely trying to advocate Linuxgruven but would recommend to IT managers out there to look for this in ANY SUPPORT COMPANY, whether its Linux, Cisco, Microsoft, or any other infrastructure component.
Neoflux
email me at matthew@SPAM-sucks.porterhome.com
remove the SPAM-sucks part
I have to agree. The OVERALL quality of/. articles has steadily degraded; however, the quality of ads has gotten exponentially better. Keep up the great work! Neoflux
I live in Saint Louis and this is the most non-geek friendly city on the face of the planet. The amazing thing is it ranks on the map as one of the high-tech cities of America. The problem is that all the "high-tech" jobs are for Edward Jones, Ernst & Yound, or some other boring jobs where you support systems. There is absolutely no inventing happening here.
One possible exception is the company I work for- which will go nameless.
P.S. If anyone remembers, Saint Louis is the city where the mall tried to ban retailers advertising their websites. That about gives the frame of mind here.
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I have often had this same discussion with my wife, who is a nurse at one of the top ten hospitals in the country. When she is on call, she receives approximate 20% of her hourly rate while she is waiting for an emergency. If she needs to respond (aka go to work), she receive time and a half, whether or not she is over 40 hours. Please note that she must arrive within 45 minutes.
From what I understand, this is close to the industry standard for the medical practice. Why should IT reinvent the wheel? IMHO if this is adequate compensation for those saving lives, it should be more than adequate for those who are stuck with the less important task of keeping uptime.
I personally work for a company, Linuxgruven (www.linuxgruven.com) that offers Enterprise Linux Support around the United States. From what our clients have expressed, one thing that makes a difference and helps provide accountability to the management is being able to provide on-site support in a timely manner. Not every Linux support company can do that. A number of our clients have large clusters (>100 nodes) and they want someone on-site ASAP, meaning hours not days. With more than a hundred people spread throughout the country, we make this a reality.
Also, any company should evaluate a product (i.e. Linux) based on what it can do today and the near term future. If the company that put in those 90,000 POS systems promised them something Linux won't be able to do until kernel 2.6/3.0, then that company is at fault. Unrealistic expectations from ill-used products usually can not be corrected in the support realm. They move to the software development area, where hacking can create what the customer needs. A great example is ImageStream building enterprise class Linux-based routers.
I am not solely trying to advocate Linuxgruven but would recommend to IT managers out there to look for this in ANY SUPPORT COMPANY, whether its Linux, Cisco, Microsoft, or any other infrastructure component.
Neoflux
email me at matthew@SPAM-sucks.porterhome.com
remove the SPAM-sucks part
I have to agree. The OVERALL quality of /. articles has steadily degraded; however, the quality of ads has gotten exponentially better. Keep up the great work! Neoflux
I live in Saint Louis and this is the most non-geek friendly city on the face of the planet. The amazing thing is it ranks on the map as one of the high-tech cities of America. The problem is that all the "high-tech" jobs are for Edward Jones, Ernst & Yound, or some other boring jobs where you support systems. There is absolutely no inventing happening here.
One possible exception is the company I work for- which will go nameless.
P.S. If anyone remembers, Saint Louis is the city where the mall tried to ban retailers advertising their websites. That about gives the frame of mind here.