Support Contracts (was Re: Paid Sun Patches)

Tue Feb 18 17:29:30 PST 2003

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 15:50:36 -0800 
richard childers </ kg6hac <fscked at pacbell.net>> wrote:

> The problem lies in convincing the people whom originally set the
> budget that (a) they are wrong, and (b) you are right. Jobs are lost
> over issues like these; care is indicated.

Be careful there.  The calculation really isn't a pure cost vs cost
balance, tho we'd like to think it is.  I've seen enough good people
canned for making wise long term decisions that simply weren't
comfortable in the moment of pain.  Disasters and the motivations to
assign blame are strong forces.  A long track record of saving small
money (which in sum exceeds the corresponding single large expense) is
trivially overlooked by most humans given an opportunity to point a
finger and say, "Its his fault!  He should have had a support contract!
Fire him!"  The fact that you can pull paperwork showing no net loss (or
even a profit) over the last N years is pretty easy to overlook when the
pain is RIGHT NOW and alimentary canal deposits are hitting the rotary
air movers of half a dozen dept heads.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.