Posts by Salestard

IT Salespeople eh?

You just can't trust em to say the same thing twice... why anyone thinks putting them in a witness box is going to change their natural inclination to bend the story to suit the audience, I don't know.

Salestard

IT Salesperson since 1997.

3 days of Corporate Gulag

Satre was of the opinion that hell was being trapped in a room with one's friends - obviously he'd never attended any kind of IBM convention.

Fly to Bali, spend 3 days being battered senseless by powerpoint delivered by people far too enthusiastic about the job/company, and then get to do the really important bit of telling any senior management type within earshot how great they are.

Unsurprisingly, the people who find this kind of activity worthwhile and fulfilling are precisely the ones that get nominated for this kind of thing. Which makes it the perfect positive feedback loop... which goes a long way to explaining IBM's problems. More amusingly, they're also the kind of people who don't need to be sent on some jolly to keep them happy and motivated.

So I suppose that makes one man's hell, a true IBMer's eternal paradise of powerpoints, hashtags, and grovelling sycophancy.

Free Tat

Let's face it, the main reason any of us ever go anywhere near trade shows and expos is for the carrier bags of free tat with the occasional useful thing thrown in; Mouse mats, memory sticks, pens, lanyards, and all sorts of other stuff to keep your desk full of semi-useful clutter.

and to think...

we used to mock the Soviet/Communist system for its ability to squander vast sums of money on achieving massive inefficiency...

Three words

"How do they keep getting these contracts?"

"Why are we outsourcing to Crapita? Can someone explain it to me?"

Three words - Lowest Economic Bid

Not helped by the marvellous tangle of budgets from LEAs, Central Gov, and lord knows what else. I understand in some instance it is only Capita that bids for these things.

Always the cheapest

Consequently, always the worst.

On previous form...

..of Microsoft and devices, I think I'll give this one a miss.

Surface RT - good idea, terrible execution, product dropped.

Band & Band 2 - great spec, terrible execution, product dropped.

Lumia 950/950XL - murdered WP in one fell swoop, badly made, product dropped.

I'd love to find a replacement to my dead Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 that doesn't cost an arm and several legs, but don't think this is £500 gamble I'm willing to take.

Imagine my surprise when...

As a very long time sufferer of Southern, GTR, and all the various permutations since BR, I was genuinely astounded to note a Wi-Fi Onboard sticker on the brand spankers new Siemens thing into London Bridge the other morning.

Actual wireless telegraphy on an actual train just into service! Only a mere decade or so after I remember using it on a forty year old repainted Intercity 125 to Brizzel from Paddington!

Much less of a surprise was the fact that it looks like GTR think putting a sticker on your train makes the Wi-Fi magically appear.

There was no Wi-Fi.

Then the train was terminated at, funnily enough, Haywards Heath for reasons not explained, but almost certainly down to a chronic shortage of trained management.

Smells like paint

Grandfather was in the Guards for 34 years, and maintained the Queen and most of the upper echelons of the royal family must think the whole world smells of fresh paint.

After they swallowed up SEMA, we had one of the head sheds from Schlumberger US do a state visit to the regional backwater I worked in. Most people had made themselves scarce, and the guys entourage almost outnumbered the grunts in the office.

Veep arrives at my desk

"Hello, and what do you do?" says the man with unnervingly white teeth, looking straight through me

(cluster of Veeplickers behind fix me with baleful stares)

"Err, I sell stuff, sir"

"Well, great job, carry on" comes the reply, and he's already moving away before finishing the statement

As they sweep onto the next poor sod, one Veeplicker murmurs in my ear "well handled, thanks"

So inspiring.

Summed up in a sentence

As you chaps might be aware, I've been selling IT and IT Services for a long time, for companies far bigger and more unwieldy than Capita. Indeed, I recently declined the opportunity to be interviewed for a role with them.

Most people's perceptions of IT Sales are shaped by the small percentage of total wankers they deal with, rather than majority who might be varying degrees of useless, but usually want to do the right thing by the customer.

Then we get this shit;

"and some 162,000 items of clinical correspondence going undelivered because the terms had failed to make forwarding a contractural obligation."

A simple thing.

Somewhere, someone missed out on this at contract stage. It happens. No big deal to deal with it.

Except when it is - When collectively, nobody at Capita takes responsibility for it... the account team don't regard it a problem, nor the service team, the lawyers, the management, nor anyone else.

'nah, not in the contract, not our problem, not our problem to even tell NHSE of the problem... fahgedabowdit'

Employment law, huh!

What is it good for?

Well, if nothing else, from protecting us from the worst excesses of such progressive, modern, employers like this who treat their staff on a level barely evolved since the industrial revolution.

The really sad thing about this is that in an organisation the size of Oracle, this would have required numerous decision makers to approve it. Away from the employee and line, who are emotionally involved, second line, HR, and so on all have sat down and gone through;

"We want to sack this guy, he complained about something"

"Okay, what's he doing now?"

"Well, he's in hospital on approved time off for serious health and mental issues. It looks like his marriage is breaking down"

"Fine, sack him"

Humans...

They were banned 5 years ago?

I left the blue hellhole five years ago, and I'm pretty sure they were banned already then... despite the fact IBM branded USBs were available to order from the branded marketing catalogue.

Also recall the CD/DVD drive on the Thinkslab was locked out. Extremely clumsy BitLocker (or similar) drive encryption which required unlocking even coming off screensaver.

I've also got a vague memory of the corporate BlackBerry having some shit-awful MDM smeared over the top, because BES wasn't enough.

The paranoia extended to travel policy - if you needed to work on a train journey, you HAD to travel first class... which given I had to lug the laptop about with me everywhere, meant I always travelled in the slightly less shit seats on Southern.

Come the revolution

When I eventually put my plans for benign world/national/county* domination in action, then the first against the wall won't be the lawyers. No, that'd be far too expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with wrangling.

In the glorious republic, I will instead give defendants in blatantly bullshit C&D, trademark, and IPO cases the option for Trial by Combat; The respective MD/CEO of each organisation in a fight to submission with weapons decided by the smaller party. No stand-ins or champions.

*Actual extent of domination may vary. Level of benign also variable. In fact, it'd be like Populous, only with better graphics

Apart from that, I have nothing constructive to say about this article.

Is that perspective I see vanishing into the distance?

I don't really like Apple, and regard their products that I use somewhere between unremarkable and really unremarkable (iPhone 6S, iPad Air, and occasionally MacBook Air, all for work porpoises). I get the fanboi thing, I get the ecosystem argument, and hey - nobody forces anyone to buy their electronic tat over and above anyone else's.

But let's put the X thing into perspective;

1) it's a phone, product cycle life max 2 years

2) it's a phone, just a phone... one phone only, Mishter Vashily

3) Apple were, are, and will remain Effing Big, even if they write-down the entire X inventory

4) Is it, cosmically speaking, really important that they didn't sell as much as they thought they would?

Truly, nothing to see here, move along please

Aside from the usual noise

There's an interesting thing to note - Javid is not considered an ally of May. This in itself is interesting - May's grip on power is tenuous; mostly she seems to still be PM because nobody else is stupid enough to want to lead the mess she's gotten them all into... except one man.

The real danger we face now is that May goes and we end up with HIM as PM. That would be a Very Bad Thing Indeed.

You know of whom I speak.

Northerners...

Story time. (because I've not got one for the Friday on-call thing)

Decade ago, I'm at Manchester airport awaiting my evening flight back to Gatwick. It's delayed so I wander round to the 'International' terminal in search of some food. Because I'm a soft shandy drinking southerner, I have a fundamental aversion to gravy with everything, which limited my choices somewhat.

Eventually I arrive at what would best be described as a Tortilla wrap bar. No gravy in sight. I scan the menu on the wall behind the counter, discounting the various options until I arrive at Pepperoni Pizza. This seems like a sensible choice - enough carbs and saturated fat to tide me over until I get home.

My request for said pizza results in a flourish from the guy behind the counter, as he whirls the worlds biggest tortilla bread around. He throws the tortilla on the counter, grabs a slab of pizza, and plonks it in the middle of the pitta. I call a halt to the proceedings;

"Woah, stop - what are you doing?"

"A pepperoni pizza tortilla wrap, it's what you asked for!"

"Erm, can I just have the pizza?"

"No"

"Why not?"

"This is a tortilla wrap bar... I have to wrap it in a tortilla... of course, you could always unwrap it once you've bought it"

I turned down this culinary adventure and went to find anything else. I remained bemused by the concept of a pizza wrapped in tortilla, wondering if it was truly a north-south thing going on here. So I ring my good pal, a Boltonite through and through, and the most northern person I know.

"Hello mate, need your help... I'm gonna say four words, and I want your immediate, instinctive reaction"

"Go on"

"Pepperoni. Pizza. Tortilla. Wrap."

"....what? together? a pizza wrapped in tortilla?"

"Exactly that"

"That is utter... GENIUS!"

Chips and gravy it was then (and I threw the gravy away)

It's the ultimate echo chamber

In the world of salestards, LI is reasonably useful in keeping tabs on where old contacts have gone, and identifying people to cold call (and before anyone moans, the pre-LinkedIn way to identify people was to simply ring up and ask who the IT manager is... all LI does is save a bit of time).

However, extended phone book usage aside, it really is an endless stream of self-promoting shite from self-proclaimed 'influencers';

We've had that Russian chap from the Daily Mail parent for while, but he's now been replaced with Brigitte who has written a book on AI, recruited 4,000 homeless pregnant disabled veterans, and regards the sun rising every day as an event so awe inspiring she has to make some vapid post about it so thousands of time rich halfwits can hit the like button.

The news feed algorithm is totally borked, and a premium account won't save you from promoted/sponsored content.

The supreme mark of it being a Microsoft product though? The fact the site doesn't really work with Explorer.

"... we did not take the risk to send a plumber [out] at 10,000 metres."

The actual risk being that having sucked their teeth, made the leak worse with a set of mole grips, and rummaged about in the back of the van for ten minutes, all 84 of them then vanish off 'down the plumber's merchants' for several days.

Quick as a flash

scuse the pun...

Just as the rest of the world starts to notice that cloud storage, particularly massive cloud storage with big security requirements, mostly isn't as cheap as you thought it was, especially when you scale it... the British public sector comes crashing through the door with both feet.

But hey ho, better than it going to Capita

Carriers being more aggressive methinks

Certainly if my own experience was anything to go by...

This month, three months before the much anticipated end of my Lumia 950 contract, O2 offer to pay off the rest of the device plan if I re-sign early.

What could have been a look-in for Carphone with the big Nokia just turned into me staying direct with O2 on a OnePlus 5T (which I hadn't previously considered, but was cheap enough to see no increase in monthly outgoings).

Curiously, Mrs Salestard's mobe - also with O2 - two year stint finishes in July. It's low-mid range Xperia - they're also offering to pay this off early. The only thing in Carphone's favour here is they have a much bigger midrange, erm, range than O2

Except it wouldn't be AI

Because once they find out how much AI costs, and how much dealings they'd need to have with long-haired liberal hippy IT types to make one, it'll get dropped faster than an anvil down a well. It'd have to be watered down a bit price-wise, and they'd need to be sure of it'll do nothing but drift centre-right, be fluent in non-speak, and be of sufficiently mature technology that their core supporter base can cope with.

It's got some keen young tory intern behind mIRQ written all over it, this one.