(no subject)
Ok, so I'm about to snap someone in half at work. We've dealing with this company ('The Company') whose name I cannot use because I'll be fired for mentioning it. Members on our board formed a 'business relationship' with 'The Company' shortly after I started to install a new phone system for us. As it turns out, 'The Company' is filled with utterly incompetent idiots who can't do any wrong in the eyes of their boss or in the eyes of upper management.
What types of stuff do they do? Let's explore:
Installed a power strip in our server room. Except, using the wrong voltage. These aren't your normal power strips. They're an $800 strip that you can connect to over the internet and turn off and on any of the outlets, so you can reset equipment remotely. When we received them, I brought up that the plugs were wrong. The CEO of 'The Company' sat in a room, in front of management, and told me that they are professionals in this, and that's the new standard in power cords. So, after plugging our server equipment into these strips, one power supply literally exploded in my face.
Whose fault was it? Mine, of course. Despite waiting 2 weeks to plug equipment into a power strip that we were assured by 'the experts' was the correct voltage, I was 'too hasty' in plugging the equipment in. Of course, the 'experts' at 'The Company' had already plugged in $50,000 of equipment, but that wasn't 'hasty' at all - it was 'professionalism'.
Insisted we use the same password on all of our networking, server and telephony equipment. Except, when they installed it, they set up public IPs on the equipment facing the internet ... AND SET THE SNMP WRITE/MANAGER COMMUNITY TO 'public'. So, the user accounting OIDs were wide open the internet for months.
Whose fault was it? Mine. I still haven't gotten an explanation, but it was 'my job' to make sure these things were set up correctly - despite the fact that we hired 'The Company' to do it, and they challenged every one of my suggestions, including not having the goddamn management address sitting on a publicly accessible IP address and requesting security audits afterwards.
Wanted to sell us a "trouble ticket" system for (I've heard) $40,000. Of course, none of the dozens of ticketing systems available for FREE on the internet (open-source) are good enough. We need theirs. And, we're also supposed to submit tickets with all of our administrative passwords into their trouble-ticketing system, viewable by all. When I attempted, their system crashed, displaying full pathnames into the web-browser, with phrases like "Error: Cannot open Microsoft Database 'C:\
\
.mdb'". An Access database! Jesus Christ! I'm supposed to submit a 'ticket' detailing access to information which is legally supposed to be secured to HIPAA standards into an Access database for their entire company to see?
Whose fault was it? Mine. Apparently, the message was from 'old code', despite being an ASP-generated scripting error. It 'no longer uses Access', and resides on a 'different server' (Apparently, they mapped their entire C: drive to another machine! Wow, they've gotta let me know how they did it). Had no explanation when I asked "Why are we spending $40,000 on code that's supposedly so riddled with old crud that it causes crashes with incorrect error messages" I was told that better coders then I am built this system, that they specialized in this stuff, and that I shouldn't be 'so combative'.
A remote office couldn't dial out on LOCAL CALLS, but LONG DISTANCE were just fine. A ticket was opened with 'The Company' by management to have this fixed. 'The Company' logged in, changed a number of settings effecting our entire network during business hours without testing, charging us ~ $100/hr to 'shoot in the dark'. One of the settings involved bandwidth on our internet connection. I attempted a test call off a trunk only to find they were all out of service - because the MDF cable 'fell' off the switch because 'The Company' didn't screw it into the device.
Whose fault was it? Well, let's not point the finger here, they couldn't have known ... even though I did. Also, we're still paying them for 'guessing' at a solution that had no business being tried during business hours on a live network and did nothing to resolve the problem nor could have reasonably been expected to.
It's beyond the point in which even humor can take care of things here. I'm a scape-goat, nothing more at this company. I've got the experience of $80,000+ Network Administrators, but I'm being treated like a (fairly stupid) $25,000 Help Desk Tech - until I need to bail them out, and even then it's twisted around to being something I've done despite having logs to PROVE it was 'The Company'.
I can't wait to find another job worth my time.
What types of stuff do they do? Let's explore:
Whose fault was it? Mine, of course. Despite waiting 2 weeks to plug equipment into a power strip that we were assured by 'the experts' was the correct voltage, I was 'too hasty' in plugging the equipment in. Of course, the 'experts' at 'The Company' had already plugged in $50,000 of equipment, but that wasn't 'hasty' at all - it was 'professionalism'.
Whose fault was it? Mine. I still haven't gotten an explanation, but it was 'my job' to make sure these things were set up correctly - despite the fact that we hired 'The Company' to do it, and they challenged every one of my suggestions, including not having the goddamn management address sitting on a publicly accessible IP address and requesting security audits afterwards.
\
.mdb'". An Access database! Jesus Christ! I'm supposed to submit a 'ticket' detailing access to information which is legally supposed to be secured to HIPAA standards into an Access database for their entire company to see?
Whose fault was it? Mine. Apparently, the message was from 'old code', despite being an ASP-generated scripting error. It 'no longer uses Access', and resides on a 'different server' (Apparently, they mapped their entire C: drive to another machine! Wow, they've gotta let me know how they did it). Had no explanation when I asked "Why are we spending $40,000 on code that's supposedly so riddled with old crud that it causes crashes with incorrect error messages" I was told that better coders then I am built this system, that they specialized in this stuff, and that I shouldn't be 'so combative'.
Whose fault was it? Well, let's not point the finger here, they couldn't have known ... even though I did. Also, we're still paying them for 'guessing' at a solution that had no business being tried during business hours on a live network and did nothing to resolve the problem nor could have reasonably been expected to.
It's beyond the point in which even humor can take care of things here. I'm a scape-goat, nothing more at this company. I've got the experience of $80,000+ Network Administrators, but I'm being treated like a (fairly stupid) $25,000 Help Desk Tech - until I need to bail them out, and even then it's twisted around to being something I've done despite having logs to PROVE it was 'The Company'.
I can't wait to find another job worth my time.