Day after I receive calls from technicians that seem to have no clue what they’re doing. Is it that easy to become a field technician or does management just not care?
Before this starts pissing off everyone, I do receive a fair number calls from techs who really are fantastic at what they’re doing and understand what’s going on, it just seems that the really dumb ones far outnumber the smart ones.
@U7AfVoe-1ld That just sounds unbelievable for sure
There are bad people in every group in the company you sometimes get a few that care and are willing to go the extra mile. Our group probably has more certs than any other on a wide range of technologies and able to do anything, but we feel like WS is trying to turn us into non-thinking monkeys. I personally haven't had to call tech support for the last 10 years, but I now have to deal with some arrogant twat that assumes I don't know how to ping something and wants to take over my laptop just to turn up something simple. I don't ever give them access when I get that attitude. I hear the same old lame excuse Let's change the Nid, let's change the patch cord, Let's change the SFP.
Learn to troubleshoot and learn the OSI model.
I know we have some bad techs, but I guarantee you there are some with more certifications, and more telecom knowledge, than you will ever have.
There is a reason why customers call us techs directly when they need to actually get something done.
On the other hand, I love a good laugh and this company certainly provides that everyday.
Don't bother asking why with this company. Ask how.
As in how did that dumbA hood rat over in data get to be a team lead (C.A.) ??
I guess TT likes to keep all the chicken heads on the payroll. Keep em dumb, keep em down. Must be the new business model.
Unfortunately it takes years to really be comfortable at knowing your job. Problem is Windstream expects quality and quantity after months of so called training.Most of the knowledge has left the building by now and the people that are left could care less and just laugh at how bad things are today. Very true about the training process, send the new hires out with techs for a couple of months. Then send you to school for 2 weeks with trainers that think they know everything but can’t answer any tough questions ( always know the answer before asking the question ) they sound like a politician beating around the bush because they have no idea. This dog and pony group is just here to tell the techs you are to do everything from the frame to the house and do it fast or you will be put on the PIP program.
As a CLEC field technician with 15 years of experience, I can say this with confidence. There are dumb--s people all over the place. Our jobs are nightmares now. I'm dealing with the dumbest people in service delivery, activations and repair. It wasn't always like this. It seems that people are just getting dumb as hell or just don't care anymore. If it takes me 4 hours to do something that would of taking me 30 minutes to do in the past because the repair or service delivery tech has no idea what they are doing, that's fine with me. I simply document on the dispatch the reasons for the delays. "Activations technician refused to tag the voice traffic to the vlan from the velocloud interface going to the customers equipment, after four hours of advising this, finally tagged and customer is up now" They think they are saving money by laying off the people that knew this but in reality they are just pissing the customers off and they are leaving. Less customers = less revenue = bankruptcy. More time on site working on this = more money spend on the dispatch and less time for me to work on other customers issues. It's so simple a caveman could understand this however it seems our leaders do not or they just don't care. I just hope when we finally fail, there are investigations. I am sure there will be because the investors are going to demand it after all their money is gone.
As a field tech aspect of things....WS is hiring people with absolutely no experience in telcom. They let them ride with other techs for about a month or so. Many of the techs training the new hires have less than 3-5 yrs service or less themselves. We've seen a new hires be here less than 2 months, start training brand new hires.
They send the new hires to a two week class on how to use a HST and base everything off of using a TDR. They put the new hires in with other techs, yet won't adjust quota to allow the senior tech time to actually train the new hire.
A lot of us feel like new hires should do at least a year of POTS only tasks, to get the basic concept of telco before ever being allowed to touch dsl or anything else. Heck, we have techs with less than 5 yrs that panic if they come across a 66 block.
On the network tech side......training. They have stopped training most NT's. They have been responsible in maintaining all this CO equip with no triaining. E5's, E7's, C7's, Cyan ring, etc.......WS feels that a 30 min CBT is more than enough to teach an NT how to work on these pieces of equip. It's also been almost 20 yrs since they offered any DMS switch class to any of the NT's in my region.
The reason from WS for this, NT's are nothing more than card changers. If they need help, call NOC or DNOC and they can talk them through it. Or just google it and see if they can fix it that way.
So as you can see, unless the tech actual takes their job serious and view it as a career and not just a job, as WS and TT tells us that's all it is, there is no reward for wanting to learn more, do more, etc.....Some will spend the time to research and train themselves to make their job easier and be more knowledgeable, others don't care...."if WS don't care to train me to do my job, why should I worry about it, I'll just keep doing what WS tells me to do"
you think the FIELD out here dont know what we are are doing you must have spent about a year in your job we carry you dumb a$$es most of use have been in this bis longer then you are old
Possibly because the young and lower paid techs are the bulk of what's left. Birmingham's last 3 or 4 walked were Tech 2s and with lot's of time. They have no Allworx, Option 11, Mitel skill remaining.
Why do stupid people ask stupid questions? Why do people reply to all to say not to reply to all? I got a million f'ing questions but the only ones that should be asked here are in regards to layoffs.
Take a lesson from metaphysics - the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.
Oh man I 100 percent agree with you. There’s some people who shouldn’t have access to anything at all here. On our end it’s because the job is mind numbingly simple and the good analysts leave for better jobs. Most of the people who stay are the sh-- ones or the few that somehow really enjoy this.
If you’re being contacted by your network techs to help them out, im probably not talking about you.
I don’t feel superior to anyone here, I just think that some of these people shouldn’t be techs like some of my coworkers shouldn’t analysts.
It's like everything you have some real bad ones and some good ones. I know some pi$$ poor TAC and NOC analysts and I know some good ones. It's all about training and job satisfaction. I got a lot of network techs that just hit me up on Skype. They know I got their backs and I know if I got an issue in there area they will bend over backwards to help. Give and take. Some folks in the tac/nocs think they are some how Superior.. B.S. get over that fast or your going to have a bad time. Team work makes the dream work. Too bad this is Windstream and it's gone to $HIT BUT it's still a good policy were ever you end up.
Dont worry, that problem is going to work itself out