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Ok – I just had an interaction with a “technical” support rep from Symantec that is quite simply driving me insane.

I want to thank “Shajeewin” for renewing my objection to outsourcing jobs overseas.  Yes people, it’s cheaper.  But then again you do get what you pay for.  This “person” (and I use the term loosely) had an interaction with me that doesn’t pass the Turing test.  Note to companies – if you’re going to outsource your support to a third-world country, pick one that can fucking speak *AND UNDERSTAND* the English language first.  *THEN* see if you can find one who is technically competent.

Then fuck-off for outsourcing jobs when we have 10+ million unemployed in our own country.

Background:  I am trying to set up a customer who wants to push a Disaster Recovery image of ONE computer system across the internet to my datacenter, to be used in case their building becomes a smoking hole in the ground.

Initial push of data is about 30 gig, daily updates in the megabytes range.  The hard part is this customer isn’t the type to spend a lot of money on Bandwidth, so went with Verizon DSL, with it’s whopping 128K upstream speed.  (Verizon – you suck too.  #justsaying)

My solution for this was to do the inital backup to a USB drive, hand-carry it to my system and upload it, and then push the incremental updates over the wire.  Simple, right?  (Trust me, it is)

So I look at Norton/Symantec Ghost.  First option, I’ve always liked Norton – though in retrospect I’m changing my mind about that QUICKLY.

Here is the chat that ensued (with my after-the-fact comments thrown in)

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If we want to reign in the deficit let’s start by fixing the absolutly stupid way our government spends money.  And let’s *START* with the defense contractors, not exclude them like everyone wants to.

This business of “I have to spend the money or I won’t get it next year” has got to stop.  It’s a large part of the reason we’re in this mess.

I spend a lot of my time working at a government agency and I watch it happen every time Q4 rolls around.  Suddenly everyone has money they have to spend and by gods they’re going to spend it, even if it’s on useless shit no-one is going to ever touch.

In one equipment cage someone has abandoned almost 200 SunRay2 client workstations.  They were bought with end-of-year money but there were actually no plans to ever put a virtual desktop infrastructure in place.

In another cage there are several hundred old Dell workstations that have been upgraded.  They are still in support.

You get the idea.  I dig through the floor and find cables that are run from one side of the datacenter to another, capped and terminated on both ends, with no actual use.  (This was the fault of the government contractor, not the agency itself.)

And I’ve been in defense contractors that have literally dumped millions of dollars into projects they KNEW were set to be cancelled just to get the money on their books.

Now don’t get me wrong, (full disclosure)  *I* am a government contractor.  However, I’m also the one who flat-rates a 40-hour week and then regularly works 60 hour weeks to ensure I get the job done.

We as a people could eliminate the deficit without laying off massive numbers of people by simply being smart about how we (agencies) spend our(American’s) money.

1. Find a way to provide incentive for government agencies to save money.  Offer a 10% bonus for savings, recognition, etc.

2. Stop with the “you didn’t spend it last year so you don’t get it this year.” bullshit.  Needs change from year to year and this practice does nothing but forces agencies to spend money uselessly.

3. Understand that shit happens.  Allow government agencies to apply-for and pull from discretionary funds for unforseen/emergency spending with justification and approval.

4. Motivation is key – Get the unions out of government offices.  The reason federal employees are so lethargic is because they know it’s almost impossible to fire them.  Unions just make this worse.

5. Get rid of the GS payscale system.  When a federal employee gets to Step-10 of their pay-scale, they know there are no significant future increases in their pay coming.   Therefore they have no motivation to do anything over and above “their job.”  Federal employee payscales should equal private industry payscales, to attract the best and brightest of the industry.  (As an example, if you are hired as a GS14-Step10, you take the job knowing you’re never going to get a significant pay-raise for merit.)

I’m curious as to other suggestions my 4 readers might have.