Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Roargasm: Oct 21, 2010; Hate to sound sleazy
But tease me
I don't want it if it's that easy

psydude posted:

Medium and large enterprises, however, are beginning to insource a lot of applications into their own datacenters once again as the scalable SDN and distributed solutions previously used only by the large cloud operators have become commoditized and simple enough for standard NOC/DC staff to integrate with some vendor assistance, rather than requiring a legion of Stanford and MIT grads to develop.

I'm interviewing at a large SaaS company for a NOC position on Monday! Would be supporting SDN and lots of bash/python automation from what I can tell. Coming at it from an entirely Windows/Powershell background, fingers crossed

# ? May 8, 2016 00:22

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 18:49

uniball: Oct 10, 2003

My (new) boss recently forced me to take some hosed up hypercorporate cult-style sales training. Evidently it's very important for everyone in the company to "speak the same language" about "new opportunities". I'm a network engineer and I've been at a medium-sized MSP for three years without anything like this happening so far. I get that an MSP will be more sales-focused than most places, but don't loving offload your missed targets on your engineers.

I tried to get out of it a few times, but my boss eventually made it a condition of this year's raise so I figured I'd suck it up and sit through two days of hell. Once I saw that the raise had been processed, I signed up for the two full days of training (canceling a number of client meetings and postponing project work along the way).

Day 1 of the training was even worse than I expected. I worked in an Apple store years ago, so I was having severe PTSD flashbacks when the FranklinCovey trainer told us "you might even find these skills useful in your personal lives!". gently caress

I stuck through the grossly-irrelevant-to-my-career cold call training for as long as I could, but four hours in when the trainer told us that next we'd be roleplaying sales calls, I walked out and headed to a client site to get some actual work done. A couple days later my boss set up a meeting to "discuss my abrupt exit". Evidently the VP who organized the training was in attendance and was personally offended by my "rude actions", especially my icebreaker introduction (who are you, and why are you here? "I'm uniball, and my boss put this training in my contract and told me it's mandatory").

The meeting was 45 minutes of back-and-forth between my boss and another director and I regarding how critical it is that all employees be involved with "filling the pipeline" and "radiating opportunities". They were pushing hard for me to agree to apologize to the VP in question and complete the sales training. gently caress that forever, after 2 very angry years at Apple I now have some hard dealbreakers and dehumanizing corporate poo poo is one of them. I was completely prepared to get fired over this - I have plenty of savings and have been casually looking for a new job for 6+ months - but I'm the prime for so many systems and customers that I think they're pretty scared of losing me.

The meeting ended hilariously, with the director that's not my boss haggling over how much sales training I'd be willing to take - I agreed to a maximum of 30 minutes with absolutely no roleplaying. The entire meeting was surreal, which I expected, so I recorded it :niggly:

Listening back the next day was bizarre.

I've been lurking this thread for months, thanks for letting me vent!!

# ? May 8, 2016 04:35

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

uniball posted:

My (new) boss recently forced me to take some hosed up hypercorporate cult-style sales training. Evidently it's very important for everyone in the company to "speak the same language" about "new opportunities". I'm a network engineer and I've been at a medium-sized MSP for three years without anything like this happening so far. I get that an MSP will be more sales-focused than most places, but don't loving offload your missed targets on your engineers.

I tried to get out of it a few times, but my boss eventually made it a condition of this year's raise so I figured I'd suck it up and sit through two days of hell. Once I saw that the raise had been processed, I signed up for the two full days of training (canceling a number of client meetings and postponing project work along the way).

Day 1 of the training was even worse than I expected. I worked in an Apple store years ago, so I was having severe PTSD flashbacks when the FranklinCovey trainer told us "you might even find these skills useful in your personal lives!". gently caress

I stuck through the grossly-irrelevant-to-my-career cold call training for as long as I could, but four hours in when the trainer told us that next we'd be roleplaying sales calls, I walked out and headed to a client site to get some actual work done. A couple days later my boss set up a meeting to "discuss my abrupt exit". Evidently the VP who organized the training was in attendance and was personally offended by my "rude actions", especially my icebreaker introduction (who are you, and why are you here? "I'm uniball, and my boss put this training in my contract and told me it's mandatory").

The meeting was 45 minutes of back-and-forth between my boss and another director and I regarding how critical it is that all employees be involved with "filling the pipeline" and "radiating opportunities". They were pushing hard for me to agree to apologize to the VP in question and complete the sales training. gently caress that forever, after 2 very angry years at Apple I now have some hard dealbreakers and dehumanizing corporate poo poo is one of them. I was completely prepared to get fired over this - I have plenty of savings and have been casually looking for a new job for 6+ months - but I'm the prime for so many systems and customers that I think they're pretty scared of losing me.

The meeting ended hilariously, with the director that's not my boss haggling over how much sales training I'd be willing to take - I agreed to a maximum of 30 minutes with absolutely no roleplaying. The entire meeting was surreal, which I expected, so I recorded it Listening back the next day was bizarre.

I've been lurking this thread for months, thanks for letting me vent!!

I am right there with you. I am not going to roleplay cold sales calls with anyone. I am not a salesman. loving fire me, I will laugh my way to my car.

# ? May 8, 2016 04:55

Chickenwalker: Apr 21, 2011; by FactsAreUseless

Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Mar 1, 2019

# ? May 8, 2016 05:20

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

I thought I would share a story with you.

Recently, my financial institution acquired another one. We had a common core processing software vendor, though they outsourced their processing to the SaaS arm of the company, whereas we process in house. They also oursourced their item processing (in banking, the check scanning and proof operations are usually on a seperate platform from the core banking) to the same core processor, who has a separate product. Again, it was their SaaS product. As part of the conversion, the vendor had to export all of their check images, COLD reports, statements, etc.. and provide them to us. Unfortunately, someone at the vendor hosed up and sent us all of the COLD reports of one of our competitors (I define competitor as a bank that operates in the same market(s) we do. In this case, it was only 2 or 3 cities).

I'm not a lawyer or compliance officer, so I don't know what the consequences truly are. Luckily for the "victim" bank, we're all honest and no one outside of IT has had access to these reports. If we were dishonest, we could almost certainly mount a very successful marketing campaign. I imagine their compliance officer is losing sleep over whether they are required by law to notify all of their customers of a data breach. Making matters worse, we didn't find the mistake until after the data had been imported and then backed up. I have declined to diverge from our backup policy, and we will not be signing the certificate of destruction until the scheduled snapshots fall off our SAN on their own. I'm not trying to be a dick, but I am not interested in increasing our risk profile to fix someone elses fuckup.

Long story short: if you store your data "in the cloud", your vendor can inadvertently gently caress you. In this case, our vendor is not a small one, they are one of the top vendors for core banking software.

# ? May 8, 2016 05:57

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

uniball posted:

My (new) boss recently forced me to take some hosed up hypercorporate cult-style sales training. Evidently it's very important for everyone in the company to "speak the same language" about "new opportunities". I'm a network engineer and I've been at a medium-sized MSP for three years without anything like this happening so far. I get that an MSP will be more sales-focused than most places, but don't loving offload your missed targets on your engineers.

I tried to get out of it a few times, but my boss eventually made it a condition of this year's raise so I figured I'd suck it up and sit through two days of hell. Once I saw that the raise had been processed, I signed up for the two full days of training (canceling a number of client meetings and postponing project work along the way).

Day 1 of the training was even worse than I expected. I worked in an Apple store years ago, so I was having severe PTSD flashbacks when the FranklinCovey trainer told us "you might even find these skills useful in your personal lives!". gently caress

I stuck through the grossly-irrelevant-to-my-career cold call training for as long as I could, but four hours in when the trainer told us that next we'd be roleplaying sales calls, I walked out and headed to a client site to get some actual work done. A couple days later my boss set up a meeting to "discuss my abrupt exit". Evidently the VP who organized the training was in attendance and was personally offended by my "rude actions", especially my icebreaker introduction (who are you, and why are you here? "I'm uniball, and my boss put this training in my contract and told me it's mandatory").

The meeting was 45 minutes of back-and-forth between my boss and another director and I regarding how critical it is that all employees be involved with "filling the pipeline" and "radiating opportunities". They were pushing hard for me to agree to apologize to the VP in question and complete the sales training. gently caress that forever, after 2 very angry years at Apple I now have some hard dealbreakers and dehumanizing corporate poo poo is one of them. I was completely prepared to get fired over this - I have plenty of savings and have been casually looking for a new job for 6+ months - but I'm the prime for so many systems and customers that I think they're pretty scared of losing me.

The meeting ended hilariously, with the director that's not my boss haggling over how much sales training I'd be willing to take - I agreed to a maximum of 30 minutes with absolutely no roleplaying. The entire meeting was surreal, which I expected, so I recorded it Listening back the next day was bizarre.

I've been lurking this thread for months, thanks for letting me vent!!

Good on you standing up for yourself. I'm all for training that might be a little outside of your comfort zone, but it should at least be relevant to your career.

# ? May 8, 2016 06:33

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

uniball posted:

Day 1 of the training was even worse than I expected. I worked in an Apple store years ago, so I was having severe PTSD flashbacks when the FranklinCovey trainer told us "you might even find these skills useful in your personal lives!". gently caress

How was working in the Apple store?

uniball posted:

The meeting ended hilariously, with the director that's not my boss haggling over how much sales training I'd be willing to take - I agreed to a maximum of 30 minutes with absolutely no roleplaying. The entire meeting was surreal, which I expected, so I recorded it Listening back the next day was bizarre.

How did this overall conversation progress? Personally, I've un-intuitively found success in feeding big egos only to go on with my original plan or finding greener pastures.

# ? May 8, 2016 07:18

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

psydude posted:

I agree to a point, but there is a certain inflection point where public cloud offerings become ineffective and inefficient, and I think we're beginning to reach an equilibrium. For most small businesses, there's really no drawbacks to moving to a public cloud model (certain exceptions include those that process highly sensitive data) while keeping two to three people on staff to manage everything else. Medium and large enterprises, however, are beginning to insource a lot of applications into their own datacenters once again as the scalable SDN and distributed solutions previously used only by the large cloud operators have become commoditized and simple enough for standard NOC/DC staff to integrate with some vendor assistance, rather than requiring a legion of Stanford and MIT grads to develop.

Agreed, while I'm largely SDN illiterate I do see there's a certain "grey-area" when it's come to scale.

A while back I was present for some Cloud sales-pitches with techs discussing how much simple hardware firmware updates have created a tedious amount busy work and potentially enormous outages. At the same time I've also been involved with Cisco's UCS implementations where they've nearly automated firmware updates eliminating a large part of that problem and when you then look at cost afterwards you've got to run through the numbers.

Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 08:08 on May 8, 2016

# ? May 8, 2016 08:05

uniball: Oct 10, 2003

Tab8715 posted:

How was working in the Apple store?

It was kind of fun in terms of how many crazy software/hardware issues I saw every day, and the social atmosphere was wild - imagine a 30 person helpdesk team that gets wasted with a large part of the 100+ person sales team three times a week. The actual work environment was hosed though: I was unanimously voted the best technician on the team multiple times, yet still got cost-of-living or lower raises every year because I openly shunned the scripted interactions. The daily brainwashing was exhausting to be around, to say nothing of the mandatory quarterly meetings where you listened to three hours of propaganda.

I hear that these days they've completely moved away from hiring technical minds and are now completely focused on "repairing the relationship instead of the issue". I learned a shitload about Mac OS, malware, bash, and networking while simultaneously furthering my antisocial tendencies and skirting alcoholism. My quitting-on-the-spot story is a post of its own.

Tab8715 posted:

How did this overall conversation progress? Personally, I've un-intuitively found success in feeding big egos only to go on with my original plan or finding greener pastures.

It was mostly me being lectured about "toeing the line" and "flying the flag" followed by rationale for my absolutely needing to complete this training and make upper management happy, with my responses stating no matter the corporate requirements I will never take training that involves roleplaying or focuses on sales. My favorite segment was them comparing my insubordination to cancer - "you start with one cell, others follow...".

Greener pastures is absolutely my main focus, this place is too small for stoking egos to give me any worthwhile returns.

# ? May 8, 2016 08:19

ptier: Jul 2, 2007; Back off man, I'm a scientist.; Pillbug

uniball posted:

My (new) boss recently forced me to take some hosed up hypercorporate cult-style sales training. Evidently it's very important for everyone in the company to "speak the same language" about "new opportunities". I'm a network engineer and I've been at a medium-sized MSP for three years without anything like this happening so far. I get that an MSP will be more sales-focused than most places, but don't loving offload your missed targets on your engineers.

I tried to get out of it a few times, but my boss eventually made it a condition of this year's raise so I figured I'd suck it up and sit through two days of hell. Once I saw that the raise had been processed, I signed up for the two full days of training (canceling a number of client meetings and postponing project work along the way).

Day 1 of the training was even worse than I expected. I worked in an Apple store years ago, so I was having severe PTSD flashbacks when the FranklinCovey trainer told us "you might even find these skills useful in your personal lives!". gently caress

I stuck through the grossly-irrelevant-to-my-career cold call training for as long as I could, but four hours in when the trainer told us that next we'd be roleplaying sales calls, I walked out and headed to a client site to get some actual work done. A couple days later my boss set up a meeting to "discuss my abrupt exit". Evidently the VP who organized the training was in attendance and was personally offended by my "rude actions", especially my icebreaker introduction (who are you, and why are you here? "I'm uniball, and my boss put this training in my contract and told me it's mandatory").

The meeting was 45 minutes of back-and-forth between my boss and another director and I regarding how critical it is that all employees be involved with "filling the pipeline" and "radiating opportunities". They were pushing hard for me to agree to apologize to the VP in question and complete the sales training. gently caress that forever, after 2 very angry years at Apple I now have some hard dealbreakers and dehumanizing corporate poo poo is one of them. I was completely prepared to get fired over this - I have plenty of savings and have been casually looking for a new job for 6+ months - but I'm the prime for so many systems and customers that I think they're pretty scared of losing me.

The meeting ended hilariously, with the director that's not my boss haggling over how much sales training I'd be willing to take - I agreed to a maximum of 30 minutes with absolutely no roleplaying. The entire meeting was surreal, which I expected, so I recorded it Listening back the next day was bizarre.

I've been lurking this thread for months, thanks for letting me vent!!

The MSP I'm jumping ship from is very very sales focused. The CEO is sales and until we merged didn't have a partner that was technical. Monday morning meetings where they are telling us about a contest of who can sell the most SSDs onsite ( which doesn't include me as I'm a senior in a hobbit hole getting real work done ) is just mind numbing. Never a thank you for pulling off a nice project which keeps the client happy and the recurring revenue coming in ( the check had already cleared ), but massive kudos for someone who sold some POS client on an SSD we made an extra $20 on. Cool story bro.

On a side note I did :yotj:

and am moving on to a state college where I can actually get a vacation. :byewhore:

# ? May 8, 2016 14:12

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

Between uniballs sales training and adorais accidental data acquisition.... :stare:

# ? May 8, 2016 14:50

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

uniball posted:

My favorite segment was them comparing my insubordination to cancer - "you start with one cell, others follow...".

# ? May 8, 2016 15:40

tomapot: Apr 7, 2005; Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.; Oven Wrangler

uniball posted:

Role playing training

I've taken a bunch of those at my company but a) they are not mandatory b) they are soft skills / management courses ( performance review, coaching, dealing with conflict). Role playing is the worst part of training classes; uncomfortable, but I'm not sure how else to get practice in for some of this stuff.

# ? May 8, 2016 15:56

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

lampey posted:

It costs a business close to 50k a year for a minimum wage employee after benefits, workers comp, taxes. The business will be better off using an MSP with respect to employee retention and institutional knowledge.

Maybe it's a New York thing, but I have never personally encountered an MSP with acceptable employee retention. The one I interviewed at had employees on CRTs.

# ? May 8, 2016 18:14

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Chickenwalker posted:

Guys thoughts on this quote: better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

In my current position I have more autonomy and feel like I have a quicker path to the top, but it's the top of a crapheap. And I'll probably never surpass my current boss or be able to make any really meaningful decisions on my own. I have a potential offer for a new position with probably better hours, pay and benefits, plus everything won't fall on me all the time because I'll be surrounded by competent coworkers. But advancement for that reason and the fact that it's a very corporate structure will probably be slower.

That's fine, because to get anywhere pay or position wise you have to jump anyway. This way you can hopefully learn from people who know what they're doing.

# ? May 8, 2016 18:18

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

Call your mothers.

# ? May 8, 2016 18:23

CLAM DOWN: Feb 13, 2007

H110Hawk posted:

Call your mothers.

You're not my mom

# ? May 8, 2016 18:28

George H.W. Cunt: Oct 6, 2010

Mothers can wait remember?

# ? May 8, 2016 18:32

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

SaltLick posted:

Mothers can wait remember?

My bad your SAN needs a fresh backup.

# ? May 8, 2016 19:05

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

tomapot posted:

I've taken a bunch of those at my company but a) they are not mandatory b) they are soft skills / management courses ( performance review, coaching, dealing with conflict). Role playing is the worst part of training classes; uncomfortable, but I'm not sure how else to get practice in for some of this stuff.

You're lucky it's just training and not motivational exercises. My last job had us write a sentence on "What success means to me" and it got put up on a wall. I kept putting it off until whoops, I missed the deadline how bout that?...

# ? May 8, 2016 20:58

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

CLAM DOWN posted:

You're not my mom

Does your mom still hangout around dockside bars? What's it been, 13, 14 years?

# ? May 8, 2016 21:33

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

Neddy Seagoon posted:

You're lucky it's just training and not motivational exercises. My last job had us write a sentence on "What success means to me" and it got put up on a wall. I kept putting it off until whoops, I missed the deadline how bout that?...

"What success means to me: not having a job that subjects me to pointless exercises."

# ? May 8, 2016 22:13

CLAM DOWN: Feb 13, 2007

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Does your mom still hangout around dockside bars? What's it been, 13, 14 years?

On the holiest of days, drat that's cold

# ? May 8, 2016 22:17

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

uniball posted:

My quitting-on-the-spot story is a post of its own.

Neddy Seagoon posted:

"What success means to me"

"Money"

# ? May 9, 2016 09:50

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Collateral Damage posted:

# ? May 9, 2016 11:27

Walked: Apr 14, 2003

Anyone had any luck getting ahold of an Azure sales rep? We're doing a market analysis of cloud providers, but we're a government organization so we need to verify a number of things for our use case.

We've reached out through their sales form and heard nothing back. Google and AWS have been exceptionally responsive. Any POCs or suggestions for Azure?

# ? May 9, 2016 12:56

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Collateral Damage posted:

"Money"

That was my first thought too, but I doubt they'd have liked it.

# ? May 9, 2016 13:03

Toshimo: Aug 23, 2012; He's outta line...

But he's right!

Success means being able to afford the personal life that allows me to endure my job.

# ? May 9, 2016 13:27

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Is there some place to buy like a huge box of those lovely generic Dell mice? What do you guy use for replacements. We have a ton of new keyboards but we're down to like 2 nice, not sure what people are doing to them here to use them up so fast.

# ? May 9, 2016 13:31

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Microsoft used to sell their basic mice in a cardboard 6-pack. Don't think they do anymore, but try https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Microsoft-USB-Wired-Basic-Optical-Mouse/2509734.aspx

# ? May 9, 2016 13:58

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

http://www.pcconnection.com/product/logitech-m100-usb-optical-mouse-black/910-001601/11021051

$5.80 for the Logitech M100 is the best deal I have found so far

# ? May 9, 2016 14:06

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

Toshimo posted:

Success means being able to afford the personal life that allows me to endure my job.

-Government Contractor's Slogan

# ? May 9, 2016 14:18

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Walked posted:

Anyone had any luck getting ahold of an Azure sales rep? We're doing a market analysis of cloud providers, but we're a government organization so we need to verify a number of things for our use case.

We've reached out through their sales form and heard nothing back. Google and AWS have been exceptionally responsive. Any POCs or suggestions for Azure?

What exactly are you looking for with a POC?

# ? May 9, 2016 15:36

Walked: Apr 14, 2003

Tab8715 posted:

What exactly are you looking for with a POC?

We have a number of specific pieces of information we need to (ideally, at least) discuss with a sales engineer.

Contract vehicles, IPv6 deployment roadmap, FedRAMP certification (and specific information as to which components of Azure currently have this, including a roadmap going forward for those that do not.)

Basically, it'd be great to actually discuss the product with a sales rep familiar with the federal space, but for whatever reason Azure is just not responding to requests for a sales contact.

# ? May 9, 2016 15:41

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Walked posted:

Anyone had any luck getting ahold of an Azure sales rep? We're doing a market analysis of cloud providers, but we're a government organization so we need to verify a number of things for our use case.

We've reached out through their sales form and heard nothing back. Google and AWS have been exceptionally responsive. Any POCs or suggestions for Azure?

Like everything else with Microsoft, you're better off going through a VAR to get a hold of whoever you need. CDW is plenty knowledgeable here, but any other large VAR should be helpful also.

# ? May 9, 2016 16:02

Walked: Apr 14, 2003

Vulture Culture posted:

Like everything else with Microsoft, you're better off going through a VAR to get a hold of whoever you need. CDW is plenty knowledgeable here, but any other large VAR should be helpful also.

Unfortunately, for this we cant just simply go through a VAR. As the contract is of sufficient size, we need to analyze providers in advance respective to our needs, then put this to RFP / the acquisitions folks. Anything sufficiently small I can bid out to VARs myself (and regularly do), but that wont fly on this one.

Simply going to our CDWG rep would be great; but is not really appropriate for this matter. (I wish it were, mind you)

# ? May 9, 2016 16:08

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

What prevents a VAR from participating in an RFP as a partner to Microsoft? We do RFPs all the time. I'm not sure I understand the issue.

# ? May 9, 2016 16:46

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Walked posted:

Unfortunately, for this we cant just simply go through a VAR. As the contract is of sufficient size, we need to analyze providers in advance respective to our needs, then put this to RFP / the acquisitions folks. Anything sufficiently small I can bid out to VARs myself (and regularly do), but that wont fly on this one.

Simply going to our CDWG rep would be great; but is not really appropriate for this matter. (I wish it were, mind you)

You're not asking for a bid, you're asking for an introduction. Especially if you already have a relationship with your CDW rep, this should be absolutely no problem for anyone.

# ? May 9, 2016 17:18

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Anyone have any favorite headhunters in the SF Bay area? I'm looking to bring in some local systems engineers. (If this is you, feel free to PM me directly about that too, of course.)

# ? May 9, 2016 17:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 1, 2024 18:49

Walked: Apr 14, 2003

NippleFloss posted:

What prevents a VAR from participating in an RFP as a partner to Microsoft? We do RFPs all the time. I'm not sure I understand the issue.

Red tape; most likely a mismanaged office here to be frank.

Anything below a certain dollar threshold ($25k) I'm allowed to engage our VARs directly for bids/discussion/pre-sales demos/quotes, etc.
Anything above this threshold I can specify requirements and select products, but not solicit bids or engage VARs directly; that is done by the acquisitions office via their ~~process~~

Honestly, the bidding/procurement process is one that I try to keep my head out of as much as possible - its really not my wheelhouse. We've always engaged directly with major vendors for larger projects; put together requirements, specifications, and build-sheets, and let acquisitions deal with the purchasing/bids/etc.

The fact is, AWS and Google have been completely cooperative in getting the requisite information for us to get this over acquisitions, Microsoft has not.

Vulture Culture posted:

You're not asking for a bid, you're asking for an introduction. Especially if you already have a relationship with your CDW rep, this should be absolutely no problem for anyone.

This is true; I'll reach out and ask - I do appreciate the suggestion. I'm just averse to asking sales people to put me in touch / coordinate when I know this wont go through them in the end for purchase.

# ? May 9, 2016 17:24

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