Posts made by tirendir

@scottalanmiller You have a lot of confidence, that means something (a very important something imo). You're good at what you do, you like doing it, and you seem to like constantly progressing up the ladder(s) of your choice because it sounds to me like you see no real impediment to doing so. I really do highly respect that.

@scottalanmiller At the same time, your explanation fails to accommodate the fact that the MSPs are making the exact same dumb decisions, so how are they better just because they're bigger and making the same stupid decisions?

@scottalanmiller Have you ever considered that because you're actually good, that you have only worked at good places for quite some time?

Would it not make sense that because you are good, the only places that recognize your value are the ones that are also good enough to offer you what you're worth? It would be a bit of a mark on you for taking stupid jobs, or good roles from stupid employers would it not? I would say that yeah, it's far more likely that you have persistently worked for employers who are exceptions to the rules if you are exceptional. That makes sense if you think about it, because dumb enterprises aren't going to recognize talent, nor value it nearly as much as smart/good ones.

@scottalanmiller Getting a good MSP, and getting a good MSP that can provide services as required by the organization for a price that they can, or are willing to pay are very different things though.

I'm not saying that there aren't good MSPs that could be contracted, but just that they won't contract with a lot of businesses in ways that are agreeable, so the businesses look elsewhere. Because the good MSPs opt to demand X amount of resources for their services, they created the opportunity for less-good MSPs and internal IT to fill that void. Just because there are good MSPs out there doesn't mean that everyone else agrees that they're worth what they believe they are. Some organizations may simply decide that their scale is too much for their needs, so their cost does not justify the value they perceive, so they leave the MSPs offer on the table because they failed to offer an agreeable solution. It's just capitalism on display.

@scottalanmiller By enterprises yes, which is not remotely similar to SMBs which is what we're talking about. Big entities can hire their entire infrastructure and ecosystems for efficiency, which is also why they can't do much quickly or with much flexibility in most cases. IBM has historically been an exception to that rule. Disney is an exception to that rule as well.

Even large enterprises struggle with bad management, because most managers are bad too. Again, the problem throughout every industry at ever size and scale in every business in every country on earth is an issue of having the wrong people in the wrong roles at the wrong times more often than not. Leaving only a handful doing what they will excel at, in a role that suits them. It's not a scale thing. Scale just tries to compensate for the wrong people in the wrong place problem with some success, but it varies and is not as universal as you're saying imo.

@scottalanmiller By 15 years, a good entrepreneur can easily make enough money to retire. Many can do it in 10, and sometimes less. Do the statistics account for that at all to your knowledge? I haven't checked so I'm uncertain.

@scottalanmiller Plumbers don't have to teach the value, the value is obvious because the results are obvious. If pipes don't take sewage out of the house, well.. it's not hard to see the problem and why plumbers are valuable. Same for Electricians when the AC is out due to power issues and the heat index is 110 degrees outside. Lawyers, Doctors, and Accountants are in the same boat. Their trades by nature explain themselves to a large degree.

Which of those fields operates in a single location for long periods of time for the same customer?
None of those examples is comparable to IT, because they're all fields that are only utilized by their clientele when they are needed. IT is pretty much always necessary, so it's hardly comparable to compare contractors to permanent service providers.

@scottalanmiller Perhaps the average SMB goes under where you are, but it's about 50% nationwide for almost all major industries, except ironically in the Information Industry. There's an inordinate amount of them in some parts of the United States that survive much longer than in others. Part of the reason is that enterprises run them roughshod with sheer size and monetary absorption power, meaning they must be creative, or fill niches that are not filled elsewhere.

The Northeast is pretty saturated because it's old and well established, the South and Midwest are not.

@scottalanmiller No, it is the job of experts in a field to teach businessmen who are not experts in the field of the value of their trades. You have that stated incorrectly.

@scottalanmiller Structure naturally impedes flexibility by design. Not sure how you're getting that adding structure somehow increases flexibility when by the very nature of structure, it is by design intended to reduce flexibility by adding rigidity. That's not to say that some rigidity is good, but the larger a structure, the more rigidity becomes necessary to maintain efficiency, ultimately reducing the flexibility similarly.

SMBs problem isn't too little flexibility, it's too much flexibility. My argument is that you seem to not understand the issue with SMBs, since you keep saying they're too rigid when that's the complete opposite. The problem is that SMBs tend to lack enough structure, while larger organizations lose flexibility due to size and scale necessitating increased levels of rigidity. SMBs suffer from too many options and not enough expertise to find their medium. Your position seems to be swinging wildly the other way by offering far too much rigidity to allow many SMBs the freedom they need to adapt as quickly as they often need to.

You keep saying good MSPs, but THERE ARE NONE anywhere remotely close to a lot of businesses. It doesn't matter if there are some if they're half the world away. Scale does matter, but greater scale does not automatically mean better just like how you seem to think that small scale can only be bad is also false. There's a reason most highly creative organizations are not that large. IT is an anomaly in that respect, because the technology is so advanced, it takes a lot of resources to create things; however that is not the norm in many (possibly most) cases.

@scottalanmiller Well, the US military is a weird case anyway, so I don't count them either. Besides, they're more like the biggest, strangest non-profit IT outfit in the world I'de say; and they have pretty irregular needs in a variety of ways as well.

@scottalanmiller I had typed out a long response, but I realized it was probably not going to be worth it, so I decided to pick up with where the overnight conversation had moved.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm well aware that I'm in one of the unusual cases where my organization is an SMB, but it's well managed, so we largely avoid the poor decision making that tends to make SMBs so crappy for most IT to work in (and makes your MSP for SMB argument have so much merit in many cases). My issue isn't with your suggestion, but with it's seeming refusal to acknowledge that the scale is probably too great. I worked at the biggest IT support organization on planet earth for half a decade. Let me assure you from experience, they don't pay better, they're a LOT more stress than I get where I'm at (MSPs are notorious for that phenomenon some of us would know as the "Tyranny of the Urgent"), and scale doesn't necessarily make it better for everyone.. just those who need that specific thing at a level of specialization that benefits from greater scale.

There's so much variation in SMB needs that it's positively ludicrous to even begin to suggest that standardization past a very basic point is going to make things better. It won't. All the specialists in the world dealing with weird crap takes more and more time, making their expertise less and less valuable until the specific specialist has experience with that particular piece of weirdness. However, the cost of their expertise doesn't change for the end buyer no matter what the actual value they get out of the expense turns out to be. If it really was cheaper for all SMBs to contract MSPs for their IT, they would be doing it. If only good MSPs were worthwhile, there wouldn't be so many more bad ones than good.

The problem is that the market seems to disagree with your thinking. Does that mean the market is totally right? Of course not, we all know there are tons of craptastic IT implementations all over everywhere, but "good" is very relative, since even most of IT doesn't understand good IT.. and even much of the good IT folks don't even necessarily agree on a wide variety of what constitutes good IT. SMBs mostly just don't have any care or interest in anything but results, and most IT aren't capable of speaking boss well enough to get most businesses to understand the necessity and value of doing IT correctly. The problem with SMB and IT has always been poor business decisions, not necessarily poor IT. Hiring people who aren't capable is a poor business decision first and foremost. Most SMB IT get hamstrung by their inability to help the organizations decision makers see the value of properly funding their business infrastructure where IT is concerned. Again, goes back to the first problem of not hiring someone who is equipped to do the job properly.

Paying an MSP is no different in many respects, because they're having the same problem obviously, or the issue wouldn't be so prevalent. Experts = expensive in the minds of most businessmen I've ever met. It doesn't mean they don't understand that experts also = good at what they do... but if the MSPs aren't convincing them of the value of doing IT properly, whose fault is that? If the "Good" MSPs aren't fixing that, then they're at fault for that exact same issue too. Clearly there are not enough MSPs of the type you describe, because they simply don't exist within about a thousand mile radius of where I am. So the idea that having more of them would fix the issue just doesn't add up in the real world, because there aren't any that are good enough at business apparently to figure out that they're completely missing an enormously underserved area. Or they're not good enough to convince people that paying that much money for doing IT properly is wise. That would make them good at IT, and not nearly as good at business. Sounds pretty familiar unfortunately. There's simply far too many variables to make such blanket statements without automatically ensuring that the statement is flat out incorrect in a whole lot of circumstances. Consolidation and scale doesn't fix the fundamental problem of IT failing to successfully convince many business owners, managers, and executives that doing their IT properly is worth spending the monetary difference to go from good enough to get the job done, to ideal.

@scottalanmiller It's never cheaper to build a more expensive bridge unless there is an inequality of labor value. Again, a good MSP versus bad internal IT will naturally be in favor of the MSP. Likewise, good internal IT versus a bad MSP will favor the Internal IT. Just because you tag MSP onto the labor pool and add more tools doesn't mean they're superior in any way at all. It just means they have more tools that may or may not reduce any costs.. because if they must pay for tools while the Internal IT use free tools because those are sufficient for the needs to accomplish the same task.. not only did the MSP pay money for unnecessary tools, they also paid for more people to accomplish the same tasks that less people accomplished with cheaper tools.

Aggregation is irrelevant, because the cost is still higher in every respect for the MSP until/unless they can aggregate the costs enough to actually overcome their increased costs. As you said, if MSPs consolidated enough, that could and probably would happen. But until they do, it's just not how things are in the real world for the large part.

If an MSP has to pay me 65K including benefits to do the same job as I do for my organization, then they're going to have to split that for each and every single specialization they have to make up the cost difference of the SMB paying me. The whole reason we dropped our MSP from being our primary IT was because there were no MSP options available that could offer the services we required for less than it cost to pay me, and ultimately an additional IT staff member to do it. We also have less issues, because there's no such thing as the systems administrator you're talking about in the SMB world Scott, there is merely the IT admin who does the work of an systems admin, a network admin, a security admin, a systems engineer, a network engineer, any every other administrative or engineering roles that the MSP would have to pay no less than around $300K+ to employ for the same roles, and there's still no guarantee that even one of them will be any better than the SMB IT is. In my case, I'm also the Security Officer, which the SMB would be wise to have anyway.. so I'm really not sure how you can justify that through an MSP, without them having to pay the exact same money as the SMB, or even the SMB hiring an additional staff member to handle the security post.. that and MSP will be cheaper.

It's cheaper for the MSP, not for the SMB.

@scottalanmiller My question then would be, why spend more money to build a bridge that supports more weight if you're never going to send anything heavy enough to even remotely stress either bridge in the first place?

The more expensive bridge that practically affords no real benefit to the organization is now an opportunity cost with no upside except for a theoretical scenario that will likely never occur in the real world.

@dashrender As for me personally, I'm honestly not looking for a promotion, because the salary I get is something I'm content with for the immense non-monetary benefits I get at my current workplace. While I get a paycheck that says I'm on the low end of the scale for my job title and responsibilities... I actually feel less pressure than most folks with less responsibilities than I have, because of the position I have in my organization, and the way they have let me guide the ship so to speak.

The idea that any SMB wouldn't have a retainer is kind of dumb tbh, any SMB doing that is being dumb in doing so lol. Unless any organization has a fully-competent IT staff with redundancy of roles included, then it's nothing more complicated than contingency planning to keep an MSP on retainer for a fee as part of the "hit by a bus" policy we often call it at my employer. It's not because we need an MSP to do things for us except in odd circumstances.. but because it's frankly a totally unnecessary risk not to keep an MSP available should we need them explicitly because our IT department is small. We pay them like 6K/year, and we get a day or so of labor hours we can spend to have them do whatever little thing we want each month as well as getting basic monitoring services through them just to help them stay on top of what the environment looks like should they need to step in, and it alleviates some of the mindless burden from our local IT.

Granted, I'm a statistical outlier, but I won't get significantly more cash working in an MSP or Enterprise setting unless I move somewhere that negates a sizable portion of the value of the dollar gain. So between more money that's not actually worth that much more due to cost of living differences and whatnot, I'm content where I am, making at the bottom end of the typical pay range for what I do because I don't get put under much stress, we're ahead of all other organizations and MSPs anywhere near us in terms of how up-to-date our environment is, and my pay has increased over 50% since I started with this organization just under 4 years ago.

I'm aware that for most IT folks, promotion = job hopping to a large degree, and that's something I have zero interest in doing. I don't want to climb corporate ladders, because I don't frankly care. I get to do what I love, so as they say, I don't really have to work a day here.

@dashrender If the job is done properly in the first place, issues that require any significant specialization will be few and far between in a simple environment such as most SMBs operate. Wouldn't it be reasonable to state that to a large degree, only the SMBs that are fairly technical in nature are particularly likely to have many system that require a level of complexity necessary to need specialists to troubleshoot or repair?

I agree about vacations, but the issue circles back to bad IT versus good IT. A good IT admin running a one-man show may run a watertight ship that won't cause problems while they're away any more than an MSP-tended IT infrastructure would. Just because an MSP has more bodies to throw at problems doesn't negate the fact that doing it right in the first place negates that from being anything but an unlikely happenstance in the first place.

@scottalanmiller I guess my question is if good in-house IT is no different than good MSP IT, then why does it matter which solution any particular organization decides to employ, if not both? the supposed benefit of an MSP or Enterprise affording upward mobility is the same reason that anyone who is actually good at their job is less likely to be promoted from their current role proportional to how good they actually are. It's just a catch 22 where there are more positions available, but there's no incentive for the organization to actually promote you.. but in fact, their incentive is to not promote their specialists.

If the problem is people, then the issue is identical in MSPs and in In-house IT. The only difference is the impact could be greater to an SMB that it is to an MSP... unless the MSP doesn't have any role redundancy in which case now ALL of their clients who rely on that same sucky individual all suffer instead of one SMB. If the same 1% of internal IT are good as the 1% of MSPs are good.. then lets dispense with the MSP talk and call it what it is: Most IT people suck at doing IT, and your opinion is that MSPs provide a higher likelihood that they will suck less even with the exact same fundamental problem because there are more chances for them to have some of those 1% not-sucky IT people. Is that a reasonably accurate assessment?

@scottalanmiller So what do you classify as a good MSP?

Oh, there's a "introduce yourself, noob" thread! Hi all =D

For what it's worth, I do believe that an IT department of 1 is rarely ever the best solution. If an SMB hires internal IT, it should be because it's the best solution for their organization, and it needs to be enough IT capability to actually manage and operate their environment well. I like the enormous flexibility my current SMB environment affords me, to the point where I'm waiting on certain software vendors to make their solutions available for me to deploy... something I would have either had to create some complicated 3rd-party solution for at a likely steep cost, or would not be able to deploy for months or even years from now in any other setting.

Enterprise might get things sooner, but my deployment will be ultra-simple to deploy and manage; and I'll in many ways have comparable security to many much larger organizations, and far sooner than most other organizations of our size or type for quite some time. I can be an early adopter without having to invent the whole thing so to speak, which is fantastic for me.. and something I would likely never get to do in an Enterprise, and not for likely a year or two in an MSP. Granted, this is because I've built up a high level of trust with both my boss, and our board.. so I can do virtually anything I want with some reasonable justification. I've inquired at the MSPs in the area, and I'm where I am because none of them offer me anything remotely similar to what I have now, and some have even contacted me for consulting at times.