System administrator or outsourcing?
When the so-called “crisis” began in Ukraine, it entailed massive cuts in the workforce. Under the reduction got a lot of my colleagues, system administrators, who immediately asked to find a job, if not for a full day, so at least part-time for the administration of company offices. In turn, the companies, having dismissed the system administrators, motivated their decision by saving the company's budget and, as a way out, saw the possibility of IT outsourcing from other companies that provided such a service. What is good about this and what is bad I will try to tell from the experience of my colleagues and partially from my own experience.
Part one. The benefits of IT outsourcing in the eyes of the authorities.
- The system administrator needs to pay monthly salary in the amount of 500u.e. (basic knowledge and a small amount of work) to 1500y. e. (good knowledge and experience, a large load) on average. But, on the part of the authorities, the system administrator is a slacker anyway, as he sits and does nothing (on the contrary, this factor speaks for the work of the system administrator, if everything works, the administrator sits idle, if everything constantly breaks and does not work as it is necessary - the administrator has an ass in the soap and in front of the authorities the appearance of work is created, although the work of such an administrator is rather useless and unprofitable for the company). Not every company requires weekly reporting from the system administrator, if it is not a large corporation where each department reports, but we are talking about ordinary companies that do not require such reporting. In the end - the system administrator does nothing = a waste of money.
')
- IT outsourcing. In the opinion of the company's management, this is more profitable, since everything seems to be working, and when it breaks, you can also call a person from the company that has signed up to serve you. Departure is valid from 20u.e. to 100u.e. If the IT infrastructure has a very bad case. We get about 200u.e. per month for the company's services, sometimes even $ 0 when everything really works (which is rather not the merit of those engaged in outsourcing, but the person who previously worked as a system administrator and set everything up).
Based on the foregoing, we obtain an advantage in the direction of IT outsourcing. But this is only in theory. How it works in reality and how it is all bad to say next.
Part two. Inside view.
In our country, during the crisis, many small companies were divorced, which began to engage in IT outsourcing and wishful thinking. As a rule, small and medium businesses that are interested in saving are kept on their bait. Larger companies have their own IT department and only do partial reductions without an outsource alternative, or use IT outsourcing of large and well-known companies, which is the right choice.
How small companies work in the direction of providing IT outsourcing:
They have non-permanent staff of system administrators (administrators come and go because of the authorities' failure to fulfill their payroll obligations or because of dissatisfaction with their work).
The scheme is as follows - an employee comes, they are promised golden mountains, inspire optimism and show which way to go. They promise a salary of about $ 500. for a trial period. Every day new companies are hanged, they are forced to go from one end of the city to another (without paying for travel and mobile communication, promising to do this with the payment of ZP), then there is a delay of ZP for a fortnight to a month with an explanation that the work plan was not fulfilled and you will pass a trial period. Further, when the nerves are on the limit and there is no motivation to work further, the system administrator goes to the boss and puts the question in person, what he gets the answer that during this period he did not earn a penny, and if he counted, he worked in the minus of the company (he spent electricity I didn’t have a computer behind me even because of traveling, I spent the time of managers who were looking for clients for IT outsourcing and so on ...). Then the offer to work for $ 250 sounds. Assistant system administrator (ie, take a new one). It turns out that the promised RFP is not paid for the above reasons and suggest working further to allegedly rectify the situation (although a new system administrator has already been taken in place of the existing one). As a result, an employee is dismissed / an employee is dismissed (since everyone has some respect for himself and for his work, no one is going to continue the probationary period). The same situation in such companies with managers. They are told the same story and they are told that they are wasting the time of the system administrators who drive and do everything, how would they sit without work and wait until the manager finds a client.
All this leads to a logical conclusion about the disadvantage to take the services of such companies. Why? Because:
1) Administrators will change frequently, one will not have time to grasp the essence of the network topology as another comes into its place.
2) Administrators who are not satisfied with their work will look for another benefit, pull out hard disks from raid arrays (this company will not notice if there is no equipment inventory), purposely harm, copy confidential information, steal passwords for further tricks.
3) All the money spent on IT outsourcing of this kind is a waste of money and sometimes damage to the budget if we take into account point 2
4) Infrastructure security breach (if access was given to 1C, for example, then there is no need to explain anything), installation of trojans or software like radmin for the purpose of harming or just for the sake of entertainment and self-esteem.
5) Administrators begin to use company resources (hosting, if given for maintenance) for their own purposes (here I would like to note that in fact, full-time administrators also use these resources, but if all passwords are dealt when they leave the company, then access is closed or at least there is a possibility that an employee who is motivated by work and salary will not create problems for himself).
6) An important factor - the time of work. If you need to do something now and immediately, the administrator will be at least 3-4 hours at best or the next day (as he has other objects). In practice, problems are not solved and stretched in time.
Part Three What better way to do?
There are a lot of negative factors and the consequences are even more, therefore, if you already use outsourcing, then choose companies with a name and recommendations and not the first financially satisfying one.
The way out of the situation is likely to be returned to the staff of the system administrator, if not for full-time work, but for part-time employment. This will solve security problems (if a compromise is found between the employer and the employee), the task time will be faster, the administrator will not go into details every time, having experience in this company.
Naturally, you can and should sign an agreement with companies that provide IT outsourcing, but you don’t sign an agreement with their system administrator, and he, in turn, doesn’t sign an agreement with his superiors (often these people do not formalize). It is clear that all the responsibility on the company will be and not on the administrator, but you will get little benefit from that. If the company is small - it is better to find a person who posted his resume on the Internet in search of part-time employment and offer him a job on departure (this is much better than an outsourcing of the “Sharashkin” office), if the office is quite small, then ask a friend if he has friends ...
In any case, my advice to you, do not use the services of incomprehensible offices. If you want to save on maintenance of vital things, such as your data and company equipment, then you should have a system administrator (full, part-time, part-time).
Part Four Characters.
The story is true and based on the stories of employees of some outsourcing companies (of course, small and lousy companies whose name I will not call so as not to do dirty PR on the habr). To be precise, these are the stories of 3 system administrators and 4 managers from different companies. And if to clarify even more, then this is also my vision of the situation, since I myself once worked in IT outsourcing and now I have to observe such work.
All the above are facts and partly personal experience.
Part one. The benefits of IT outsourcing in the eyes of the authorities.
- The system administrator needs to pay monthly salary in the amount of 500u.e. (basic knowledge and a small amount of work) to 1500y. e. (good knowledge and experience, a large load) on average. But, on the part of the authorities, the system administrator is a slacker anyway, as he sits and does nothing (on the contrary, this factor speaks for the work of the system administrator, if everything works, the administrator sits idle, if everything constantly breaks and does not work as it is necessary - the administrator has an ass in the soap and in front of the authorities the appearance of work is created, although the work of such an administrator is rather useless and unprofitable for the company). Not every company requires weekly reporting from the system administrator, if it is not a large corporation where each department reports, but we are talking about ordinary companies that do not require such reporting. In the end - the system administrator does nothing = a waste of money.
')
- IT outsourcing. In the opinion of the company's management, this is more profitable, since everything seems to be working, and when it breaks, you can also call a person from the company that has signed up to serve you. Departure is valid from 20u.e. to 100u.e. If the IT infrastructure has a very bad case. We get about 200u.e. per month for the company's services, sometimes even $ 0 when everything really works (which is rather not the merit of those engaged in outsourcing, but the person who previously worked as a system administrator and set everything up).
Based on the foregoing, we obtain an advantage in the direction of IT outsourcing. But this is only in theory. How it works in reality and how it is all bad to say next.
Part two. Inside view.
In our country, during the crisis, many small companies were divorced, which began to engage in IT outsourcing and wishful thinking. As a rule, small and medium businesses that are interested in saving are kept on their bait. Larger companies have their own IT department and only do partial reductions without an outsource alternative, or use IT outsourcing of large and well-known companies, which is the right choice.
How small companies work in the direction of providing IT outsourcing:
They have non-permanent staff of system administrators (administrators come and go because of the authorities' failure to fulfill their payroll obligations or because of dissatisfaction with their work).
The scheme is as follows - an employee comes, they are promised golden mountains, inspire optimism and show which way to go. They promise a salary of about $ 500. for a trial period. Every day new companies are hanged, they are forced to go from one end of the city to another (without paying for travel and mobile communication, promising to do this with the payment of ZP), then there is a delay of ZP for a fortnight to a month with an explanation that the work plan was not fulfilled and you will pass a trial period. Further, when the nerves are on the limit and there is no motivation to work further, the system administrator goes to the boss and puts the question in person, what he gets the answer that during this period he did not earn a penny, and if he counted, he worked in the minus of the company (he spent electricity I didn’t have a computer behind me even because of traveling, I spent the time of managers who were looking for clients for IT outsourcing and so on ...). Then the offer to work for $ 250 sounds. Assistant system administrator (ie, take a new one). It turns out that the promised RFP is not paid for the above reasons and suggest working further to allegedly rectify the situation (although a new system administrator has already been taken in place of the existing one). As a result, an employee is dismissed / an employee is dismissed (since everyone has some respect for himself and for his work, no one is going to continue the probationary period). The same situation in such companies with managers. They are told the same story and they are told that they are wasting the time of the system administrators who drive and do everything, how would they sit without work and wait until the manager finds a client.
All this leads to a logical conclusion about the disadvantage to take the services of such companies. Why? Because:
1) Administrators will change frequently, one will not have time to grasp the essence of the network topology as another comes into its place.
2) Administrators who are not satisfied with their work will look for another benefit, pull out hard disks from raid arrays (this company will not notice if there is no equipment inventory), purposely harm, copy confidential information, steal passwords for further tricks.
3) All the money spent on IT outsourcing of this kind is a waste of money and sometimes damage to the budget if we take into account point 2
4) Infrastructure security breach (if access was given to 1C, for example, then there is no need to explain anything), installation of trojans or software like radmin for the purpose of harming or just for the sake of entertainment and self-esteem.
5) Administrators begin to use company resources (hosting, if given for maintenance) for their own purposes (here I would like to note that in fact, full-time administrators also use these resources, but if all passwords are dealt when they leave the company, then access is closed or at least there is a possibility that an employee who is motivated by work and salary will not create problems for himself).
6) An important factor - the time of work. If you need to do something now and immediately, the administrator will be at least 3-4 hours at best or the next day (as he has other objects). In practice, problems are not solved and stretched in time.
Part Three What better way to do?
There are a lot of negative factors and the consequences are even more, therefore, if you already use outsourcing, then choose companies with a name and recommendations and not the first financially satisfying one.
The way out of the situation is likely to be returned to the staff of the system administrator, if not for full-time work, but for part-time employment. This will solve security problems (if a compromise is found between the employer and the employee), the task time will be faster, the administrator will not go into details every time, having experience in this company.
Naturally, you can and should sign an agreement with companies that provide IT outsourcing, but you don’t sign an agreement with their system administrator, and he, in turn, doesn’t sign an agreement with his superiors (often these people do not formalize). It is clear that all the responsibility on the company will be and not on the administrator, but you will get little benefit from that. If the company is small - it is better to find a person who posted his resume on the Internet in search of part-time employment and offer him a job on departure (this is much better than an outsourcing of the “Sharashkin” office), if the office is quite small, then ask a friend if he has friends ...
In any case, my advice to you, do not use the services of incomprehensible offices. If you want to save on maintenance of vital things, such as your data and company equipment, then you should have a system administrator (full, part-time, part-time).
Part Four Characters.
The story is true and based on the stories of employees of some outsourcing companies (of course, small and lousy companies whose name I will not call so as not to do dirty PR on the habr). To be precise, these are the stories of 3 system administrators and 4 managers from different companies. And if to clarify even more, then this is also my vision of the situation, since I myself once worked in IT outsourcing and now I have to observe such work.
All the above are facts and partly personal experience.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/75220/
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