Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 11:53:11 -0400 From: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: shag@concentric.net Cc: bob@luke.pmr.com, joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu, davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <199707131553.LAA14866@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <33C9A3F8.41C67EA6@concentric.net> (message from Joshua Fielden on Sun, 13 Jul 1997 21:58:48 -0600)
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Sender: shaggy@houseofduck.dyn.ml.org Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 21:58:48 -0600 From: Joshua Fielden <shag@concentric.net> Organization: Shaggy Enterprises I have done internal and external support on both Mac and Win platforms, and the one thing I have noticed is the smaller the organization, the better support you get. When you start getting into larger companies, they merely hire warm bodies who can pass a basic proficiency test, just to get people answering the phones, and there is no internal access to the people who make things tick. In smaller companies, where they may only have 3-5 people answering support calls, every call needs to "count" more, and the actual rep has a much better chance of being able to flag down the person who wrote the program, or did the QA testing, and query them specifically, in order to get a more specific and personal answer. It's also easier to circulate new information among a smaller group, and compare notes quicker. This means new bugs are isolated and found quicker, and the overall support gets better as new workarounds/incompatabilities are fully circulated within hours, rather than days or weeks. In my experience, smaller organizations always have less ability to create beauracracy. As far as I can tell, in any orgainzation with at least a hundred people, half of them will be dead wieght. Or, at the very least, half the people will be doing things which aren't ultimately necissary for human survival. For example, in an optimal world, we would need farmers, and we'd need programmers. We wouldn't need people worrying about software licesning, we wouldn't need banks or insurance agencies, etc. (A furthur optomization would be to automate farming so that people wouldn't need to be involved in it.)
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199707131553.LAA14866>