Re: Sun support quality, was: Re: SUNSOLVE IS DRIVING ME INSANE!!!


"Richard L. Hamilton" <Richard.L.Hamilton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <6529mcF2e53cbU4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Thomas Dehn" <thomas-usenet@xxxxxxxx> writes:
Popular methods to cut costs are
- layoffs, generally, do not have sufficient resources to
cover load spikes
- replace skilled expensive engineers with unskilled cheaper
engineers from some 3rd world country (who will then
frequently quit after a few months, because with the
additional experience they can make more money elsewhere)

That can happen often enough with non 3rd-world folks.

Not to the same extent.
Some of those outsourcing companies in India
have turnover rates of 90% per year.

Also, the problem with the 3rd-world folks tends as often as not to be a language (and
sometimes culture) gap; even their standard English (for my example given
that's what I use 99.99% of the time) is limited, and more normally spoken
(idiomatic) English (or whatever language is not native for them) will
throw them entirely. Communication is a _critical_ part of support, and
any problem there greatly impacts the customer experience. Don't' get me
wrong, I respect that someone wants to work rather than rely on charity
(if any), but I really think they need to come better prepared, _or_ the
employer needs to screen or train better, or (where practical) team those
with good technical vs communications skills to reinforce and improve
one another.

All correct, of course. I would go even further:
- the language gap gets much worse when support is provided
in broken English, but the customer receiving support
has limited English language skills (such as most French,
Italian, Spanish, and Japanese customers)

- The outsourcing to 3rd world countries does not stop
at getting some cheaper, but reasonably skilled and experienced engineers froms India
or Singapore. Those already demand at least 20k-30k per year, and hiring them
might work. But the beancounters everywhere don't understand that those
20k-30k per year plus another significant sum for training and equipment is
the absolute minimum they must spend to get acceptable
quality. So they search for cheaper labor in China, North Korea,
and probably soon somebody will begin hiring chimpanzees.

- There is not only a cultural gap that makes communication difficult.
There also exists a major cultural gap in the attitude towards quality.

Japan, Switzerland, and Germany are example countries that have a culture
based on being pedantic and doing your job right the first time.
The US with their focus on quarterly profit statements, and sometimes an
attitude of trying to make the customer feel good with words while
providing rotten quality, are already quite a bit down from that. For example,
I am always willing to share in great detail how United lost my luggage,
and then lied to me for several days that they had located my luggage,
and would deliver it to me within the next two hours.

But from the poor US attitude towards quality its still a steep decline
to countries such as China and Mexiko.

- concentrate everything in a few locations
- deny everything that can be denied, delay everything that can be delayed
- cut down on testing, ship alpha quality products or product updates
[...]
Not all IT vendors have used all such methods, but every
IT vendor is using some such methods. And any such cost
cut will reduce quality. Meanwhile, improved
quality would be necessary to compensate for the
hideously complex setups that have become popular.

There actually exist some mathematical models for this.
Under certainly conditions, it is possible to prove mathematically
that competition based solely on price will inevitably
lead to low prices and rotten quality.

Sounds interesting; where can some of those models be found; or what
conditions might change the balance?

I guess a good starting point is a 1970 paper which has
its own wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons


Thomas
.

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