What are IT Geeks doin in the telcom business 25

[firefoxfire]

I am wondering what everyones experience is with these IT geeks that think they belong in the telcom business simply because they can plug an IP or VOIP telephone set into a router.

I keep hearing complaints from people all over the place that they are promised the world from these guys and they get nothing but excuses from lost and poor connections to system and networks that are continually off line.

I hear that the features and services are never correctly configured and that training is very poor or the customer is just given a manual or directed to a web site for help.

These guys are just not telephone people and have no idea how proper cable management works let alone the proper needs of the customers.

They introduce and install equipment that is overwhelming to the customers and their employees with to many features and complicated menus to work with etc.. They are trying to force a telephone to do the work of a computer or Laptop.

And the attitude I get from these guys is usually paranoid, unreliable and uncooperative to say the least.

What is your experience with these guys getting into the telcom business?

Thanks

 

[jeffmoss26]

If the IT guy had his way, it would be a 100 foot patch cord run across the ceiling, excess coiled up above the ceiling tiles...

jeff moss

 

[IPGuru]

Fixin
ChaChing

I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!

 

[Mamoose]

A really good IT guy would also lay that 100' patch cable on the florescent lights to keep it off the ceiling tiles.

 

[firefoxfire]

Then when the Fire Marshall comes to inspect the customers office they site them for low voltage violations then surprise the customer now has to pay a fine and or fix the problem at rush costs.

 

[SYQUEST]

Not to mention the code violations for attaching the cable to conduit as a means of support! This is one of the most violated NEC codes.

....JIM....

 

[pbxn]

Or said IT guy has a real bad day when said Fire Marshall, pops a tile, see's the cable fall on his head, and calls to his guys to give him a set of bolt cutters. Then snip, snip, building goes dark, lol.

 

[IPGuru]

pbxn
that reminds me of a time when a colleague found a 3pin plug wired to a 3pin plug so they cold connect it into a 4 gang unit without bothering to wire it up.

Jiust when you though it couldn't get worse they were using Coax!


I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!

 

[Oldtimephoneguy]

Boy this post has been going on for awhile. Why don't we really say how we feel? I replied earlier but still have some of my 2-cents left. About 3-years ago, Moe, Larry and Curly came in to install our 1st Cisco Call Manager phones. They were very well versed in Cisco switches and etc. But they thought being they have several Cisco phones in their office on a squared system that could install and set up a Call Center (IPCC). Right away I knew these guys were clowns. These new to be users were my "customers" on our NEC system and all was good but we had to move them offsite so mgmt wanted to try the new age phone system. These IT dimwits wanted me to do all the "leg work" and interview the users to see what they needed. I told them I knew what they needed and I knew what they had, how it worked but I didn't know how the Cisco phones worked. I was more than willing to help but told them I didn't know their systems abilities and limitations so I wanted them there. Like I said, these IT idots only knew about their "squared" 8 phones at their office. I had to explain "telephones 101" to them which they hated but I made them listen. It was interesting and almost comical explaining to them the absolute basics like What DIDs are and how they work. And why we had to go with (fit in) the numbering plan the City already had in place so there wouldn't be a conflict now or later. I wish I could remember everything when the circus was in town but I slept several times since then so... The best thing was when they thought a hunt group is what Dick Chaney was in when he shot his friend.

Frank. City of Cape Coral, Florida

 

[firefoxfire]

The good IT guys and there is only a few as far as I have see, will know their limitations and bring on a good telco guy as part of their team. They will let the telco guy do all the cable management and terminate nice BLUE jacks all over the place for them to use and then everyone is happy.

The smart IT guy who does this is always a winner with the customer. I have found only one IT group, small, managed by the owner and this guy and his employees all respect me and let me do my thing and I do my thing and we are all the winner as well as the customer.

Him an I never step on each others toes we do actually work as a team for the benefit of the customer.

These guys are a rare bird.

 

[KE407122]

My favorite was watching 2 IT guys punch down two 25 pair cables between 2 10A Bix mounts with 46DI data jacks for data.

1. If they lifted the sub-floor tiles they could have easily moved the 10A Mount to where they really needed it.
2. Instead they stripped back the pairs and then communicated which single wire they were punching down next.

"Uhh I have a Black wire with little yellow ringies on it..."



KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'

 

[Mamoose]

There is a whole lot of unusual in that one.

 

[KE407122]

Yep.
There is no Black wire with little yellow rings.

KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'

 

[Oldtimephoneguy]

I've been with three IT departments in the last 19 years and I've come to accept that the Telecom guys are the Fire Hydrant of the IT department. Even tough our systems are up much longer than their systems. They always have the attitude "it's only a phone".
If you're an IT guy and you keeps your systems up 99% of the time you're a hero. If you're in Telecom and your systems are 99% of the time, you're fired!

Frank. City of Cape Coral, Florida

 

[firefoxfire]

Most IT guys just have a Holier Than Thou attitude and won;t ask for help. They don;t seem to want to learn from the experience of others or have a mentor help them.

they are usually very sloppy, unshaven, smelly with bad breath. The way they present themselves to clients has just shocked me time and time again.

They are usually late to appointments and won;t return calls, email or text promptly or at all sometimes.

I had one that had the nerve to try to Pick My Brain for telco install procedures but would not turn the job over to me.

When I call him he never returns my call when I need help.

I have cut him off. No more freebes.

 

[firefoxfire]

Most IT guys just have a Holier Than Thou attitude and won;t ask for help. They don;t seem to want to learn from the experience of others or have a mentor help them.

they are usually very sloppy, unshaven, smelly with bad breath. The way they present themselves to clients has just shocked me time and time again.

They are usually late to appointments and won;t return calls, email or text promptly or at all sometimes.

I had one that had the nerve to try to Pick My Brain for telco install procedures but would not turn the job over to me.

When I call him he never returns my call when I need help.

I have cut him off. No more freebes.

 

[IPGuru]

The most frightening thing is we have had to learn data networking to a reasonably high level. Vlan's, DHCP Scope, QoS etc.

& then find that the IT dept(if you can call it that) in all but the largest firms has not got a clue what we are talking about or how to set it up & wont change anything because "It took us ages to get it all working straight we don't want to break things now"

I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!

 

[Sympology]

Wow you guys really have some crap IT departments. I guess it's becuase I work with the guys.
I have 3 Netowrk guys sat behind me, develops around and server guys dotted around us.
We have cable installs done by a dedicated team and we monitor the nuts of our systems...

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[mattKnight]

>Wow you guys really have some crap IT departments. I guess it's becuase I work with the guys.

I suspect though, that you work in an enterprise environment. In general, Enterprise IT means specialists rather than generalists.

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[nessman]

TDM vs VoIP - depends on your business requirements. Some companies have the budgets and manpower to upgrade/replace everything 5 years. And for vendors like us - hey, more money to keep us profitable. Each system has it's pros, cons, risks and benefits.

On the other hand - can't beat Nortel TDM phone systems for their reliability and uptime that the IT world only dreams about. I maintain a large number of customers who have phone systems that are 10+ years old. The other day I had to replace a 21 year old analog line card that had finally called it quits in a Nortel 81c about the same age. How many 21 year old computer systems are still around these days with 100% uptime? Not too many.

But going back to the original topic here, I'm an IT guy turned voice guy. When I was in IT, I cut my teeth on my company's Option 11c as a cost-saving measure ($150 for the phone vendor to walk in the door to do 5 minutes of work I could have done myself?) and eventually got out of IT to work for a Nortel/Avaya partner - but hired as a Microsoft OCS guy. However, that business is still evolving for us and I'm spending most of my working on Nortel Meridian systems - with a little bit of Norstar and BCM thrown in to keep things interesting. For me it's greater job security because everyone and his mother has an MCSE these days - and they've saturated the job market to the point where starting salaries are half of what they were 10 years ago. I'm good at IT stuff, and I'm good at voice stuff. I'm one of those rare breeds with good customer service / people skills and a wealth of knowledge in voice and IT (and I still have lots to learn). There are times where me, the phone guy, runs circles around a customer's IT guy because they're too busy playing with the newest shiny object they saw at some IT convention and not focused enough on the foundational stuff that keeps it all running smoothly. My paycheck and performance evaluations reflect that.

I do see lots of problems in the field with IT guys doing as much as they can before calling the phone vendor - and as a result, we end up fixing lots of problem that would have been freebie maintenance/warranty work to billable T&M because their IT guys didn't know what they were doing - even "IT stuff" they would break, causing their VoIP phone system to fail because they failed to monitor their server running DHCP services telling them they were about to loose a hard drive in a RAID-5 array (server has 3 drives, one already down, 2nd drive failed rendering the array useless) and because they didn't have hardware to fix/replace the server, we billed them for around 11-12 hours (at prevailing wage rates no less because of state labor laws here) to reprogram each and every one of their IP 1100 series phones with static IP addresses - just to get them back up and running. But hey - it's more $$$ for us, so you IT guys keep breaking our phone stuff!!

But what kills me is that much of the phone stuff the IT guys are doing is already covered under maintenance - they're already paying us to do it for them at no additional cost... but they want to do it themselves and it costs them more in the end. I'm all about customer service, but at the end of the day, my job is to take your money. Us vendors need to turn a profit after all.

I'm not opposed to showing an IT guy a few things they can do on their own that won't break anything and won't eat into our MAC revenue, but voice is a specialty that does not belong in the realm of the jack-of-all-trades generalist IT guy.

That said, however, as more and more customers migrate to VoIP, phone guys who want to survive and prosper MUST become knowledgable in things like Ethernet, PoE switches, routers, VLAN's, subnetting, DHCP, SIP, etc... etc.... Otherwise, as TDM systems become obsolete, so will your skillset and ability to stay employed and any run-of-the-mill IT guy will easily replace you. The goal is to become VoIP subject matter experts for the products you install and maintain.

 

[firefoxfire]

Yes you make a good observation. We telom guys HAVE to learn IT stuff customer now come to expect me to set up what I call "Light Data Networks" and we do it properly because we have the discipline of the telcom world.

I leave the complicated stuff to the IT guy that I trust.