Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!brett@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU From: brett@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Brett Fleisch) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: RE: Masscomp Message-ID: <1385@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 08:15:24 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1385 Posted: Mon Sep 9 08:15:24 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 04:54:05 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 93 > From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) > Subject: Re: Masscomp > Date: 6 Sep 85 06:54:28 GMT > To: unix-wizards@brl-tgr.arpa >>> If you are having problems with software bugs, they will let you talk >>> to a software engineer If you are covered under a software contract. >>> ... >>> If you are not covered under a service contract, they will also let >>> you talk to a software engineer, for $80/hr. >> >> This is a very bad company policy. The objective of a small growth >> company is to develop/adapt software for their special purpose hardware >> that customers are satisfied with. Bugs, which are inevitable, should >> be corrected. In this case, the company is discouraging them >> from being discussed by having an 80.00/hr fee. > The objective of a small growth company is to make money. If all your > software engineers are tied up saying "RTFM" to customers, this makes it > harder to make money. The $80/hr fee is a price for a service, and serves > to cut the demand so that it matches the supply of that service. In this > case, it tempts people to save themselves money by actually Reading The > Manual before bitching to the vendor's technical support people. > ... more stuff here "re: using fee to discourage dumb questions" > ... > ... > Guy Harris I dont understand how you jumped to the conclusion that the 80.00/hr fee was a way for the company to encourage people to read the manual and thus to discourage "dumb" questions. Since we have no public figures on the ratio of people on-contract to those off-contract, for all we know the 80.00/hour fee does exactly the wrong thing, like I suggested: Organizations less familiar with the underlying software buy the contract and get the right to talk to an SE with "dumb" questions. Organizations more familiar with the underlying software choose not to buy the contract because of their extreme familiarity with the software. Nontheless, they get the talk to an SE for 80.00/hour who tells them to send a written report in. In short, I claim the argument the company will be more productive because of the 80.00/hour fee is fallacious. If you'd care to cite specific ratios for service contract/non-contract and try your argument again then maybe I'd be persuaded. If we assumed a 50/50 ratio, then you'd still have a good percentage of "RTFM"s to give out to "on-contract" people. If we assume 80/20 then you're talking many, many fewer "RTFMs" for "off-contract" people and the fee probably does more harm than good - discouraging important bug reports. Nontheless, if you believe in constant number of "RTFM"s, the company is much worse off in the 80/20 ratio. Thus, saying an 80.00/hour fee decreases the number of "dumb" reports makes little sense if there are a very small percentage of clients "off-contract". What it does is discourage "useful" bug reports - which even a small number of - may be very useful for improving the underlying product. My statement: >> This is a very bad company policy. The objective of a small growth >> company is to develop/adapt software for their special purpose hardware >> that customers are satisfied with. and yours: > The objective of a small growth company is to make money. shows another fundamental disagreement. What my statement tries to indicate is market-share is the most important issue for a growth computer company. But I think that is beyond the scope of this group. Sorry, this has drifted a bit from the main topics of this group. I would be very interested in knowing what the average ratio of clients on-service-contract to not-on-contract are nowadays. I'm sure a number of people who read this group would be interested as well. -------------------------------- Brett Fleisch University of California Los Angeles LOCUS Research Group 3804-f Boelter Hall Los Angeles, CA 90024 Phone: (213) 825-2756, (213) 474-5317 brett@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...sdcrdcf, ihnp4, trwspp, ucbvax}!ucla-cs!brett -------------------------------------------------------------------------