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Destined To Fail
- DanWaterworth 14y agoPS: If you are in the Austin area and need a master carpenter, I know a guy who needs you just as much. This line made me happy.
- simplyinfinity 14y agoI simply hate it when companies do that ! They don't take care of their employees and it all goes straight to hell ! * written while sitting in a uncomfortable chair , old keyboard and 5 year old pc ( i make websites ) // end of rant
- Produce 14y agoWord of advice - if you know anything about the code that nobody else does, use it as leverage. Come in one day, call your boss into an office and tell him you're quitting. When he asks why - voice your problems with the tools you work with. Offhandedly suggest that you actually wouldn't mind staying if work wasn't such a pain in the ass thanks to these issues. Outline how much it will cost them to train a new employee up and how much cheaper the hardware is in comparison. Alternatively, just complain incessantly without threatening to quit if you can't get another job easily. Reason I say this is that me and my team have been working on shoddy hardware for the last six months, then we put our collective feet down and demanded something better. Now we each have a pretty damn sweet system to work on.
- cturner 14y agoI don't think you want to be living a life where you have to issue ultimatums to get what you need. The world is a bigger place. Find better work and go and do it. You can remind them of the things you've been unhappy about by leaving. If everyone did that (instead of sticking in dead-end jobs) it would be much harder to create crappy jobs.
- Produce 14y agoYet companies act in exactly that way towards their employees. Late too many times? Ultimatum is issued where you get fired if it happens again. Too many sick days? Same result. Underperforming? Yup, you guessed it. Your employers are not your friends - do what you have to to make your life easier. IMO, ofcourse.
- lmm 14y agoA good employer will talk to you and try and work things out before giving you an ultimatum. You lose little, and can make things a lot easier, by doing the same.
- cgoddard 14y agoFor most people quitting your job is an extremely risky proposition. Even if you do have a financial safety net, there are no guarantees other employers will be jumping at the opportunity to give you a job.
- simplyinfinity 14y agowhat do you do when you are the new guy ? 1-6 months int the current company ? Also i'm not the only dev ,there are atleast 3 other guys that can do the stuff i do. :|
- Produce 14y agoAre they also working with sub-par equipment? If so, put in a request together with them. Otherwise, put in the request yourself. If they turn it down, look for another job and put this one down as a contracting position. In my experience, employers in this industry pretty much never ask for references anyway, in the UK at least.
- praptak 14y ago"He explains how Time Warner issues a specific screw driver which acts as a key to open cable boxes and how the previous owner stripped it trying to open the wrong kind of box; it’s rendered useless. “You’re telling me they knowingly sent you out with broken equipment?” All Bill can do is laugh to himself and give back a defeated, “Yep.”" Separation of labor from ownership of (broken) means of production leads to hilarity. I bet Marx would have a chuckle over this.
- allbombs 14y agoFunny enough, I sit in the same boat.. tethering on my 6 gig data plan, waiting for my internet technician, only 2 more sleeps to go Bit off topic, but why aren't people crowdsourcing their internet connection in high rise buildings? I'm sure time warner and every other isp's would just love that Hope Bill can find work through your post. Kudos.
- ebiester 14y agoIt's not destined to fail when they have a monopoly. I can say, though, that Cox does a good job with the benefits of their actual workers. However, most of their workers are outsourced, and are treated the same way as in the article. This also means the actual employees have to fix up the subcontractors' mistakes, because of how badly their incentives are aligned. Source: a family member who is a Cox employee. I've also known a Comcast employee who had decent benefits for a call center job, but whose authority was sorely limited which made doing his job difficult.
- njharman 14y agoBut he and time Warner didn't fail. He sucessfully installed your whatever and TW is getting your money.
- Tashtego 14y ago... for the first sale. But if TW doesn't have a monopoly, I doubt they'd get the second sale after that experience.
- Spooky23 14y ago...but TW does. So they don't really give a rat's ass.
- moron 14y agoYeah, I'm not seeing TW's downside here. They're a monopoly, they don't have to care about tiny details like customer satisfaction or doing things correctly.
- andyjohnson0 14y agoI'm concerned that this article contains enough information for TimeWarner to identify Bill. I hope that he doesn't face any retribution.
- generalk 14y agoReally? Reading your comment I realized that I just naturally I assumed Bill wasn't his real name.
- roel_v 14y agoDoesn't have to be his real name; how many employees were scheduled sometime during the last 2 months to have appointments at 9 at a building called 'Milago'?
- andyjohnson0 14y agoIt also mentions some of Bill's career history: former woodworker with army comms training.
- rythie 14y agoI'm betting they don't have that on file and very few people at the company know those details.
- stevenkovar 14y agoIf they seek to find out who "Bill" is, my hope is that they use the opportunity to properly outfit a man who could benefit from decent tools; in the end it would reflect well on their own bottom line.
- piffey 14y agoTwo hours to hook up your cable connection? Oh the torture -- better blog about it.
- nkohari 14y agoYou have missed the point. Read the article again.
- haakon 14y agoThis is completely off-topic, but what is the deal with grey font colours on light backgrounds these days? It pointlessly makes it harder to read. I shouldn't have to open Firebug to change it to black before I start reading.
- nirvana 14y agoI think its "kids these days" don't realize its hard for us "old folks" to read... but then he is a designer so.... What gets me are the sites who somehow break the generally very good scaling that Safari lets me do to make the text bigger.
- stevenkovar 14y agoNoted! I'll adjust the contrast.
- Yoms 14y agoGreat article. Another suggestion if you don't mind... the floating Steven Kovar block makes it difficult to zoom in and read in a mobile browser, as it floats on top of the text.
- stevenkovar 14y agoThanks for pointing that out as well. I'll work in a solution to that.
- presidentender 14y agoA friend of mine wanted his wordpress site's design updated, so I did so. He specifically requested the background be made grey, lowering the contrast from the default white, although he left the text black. He asserts that this makes it easier for him to read, which I find surprising considering that he's in his 50s.
- dredmorbius 14y agohttp://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/ I've got the same problem and gripe. Apparently one cause is design mock-ups in which text is ipsum-loremed and muted to reduce distraction from the overall design. Other useful tools include console-mode browsers, or plugins such as Readability Redux. Though I find my self increasingly editing out elements (in addition to fonts, especially static headers/footers) which get in my way.
- PaulHoule 14y agoYeah. I think of that stupid question, "Debit or Credit?" The more I think about it, the more I see it as a hypnotic induction that prepares everybody for bad service. It's the perfect thing to get people used to the idea that they shouldn't experience customer delight, never.
- theorique 14y agoHow is "debit or credit?" a hypnotic induction that prepares everybody for bad service? Isn't it just a request for a basic bit of information that a cashier needs to process a transaction?
- TheSOB88 14y agoI'm pretty sure it's a useless question. You can use debit cards as credit cards and vice versa.
- TimGebhardt 14y agoUse a credit card as a debit card and get charged the cash advance rate? No thanks, I'm glad people ask!
- grumpycanuck 14y agoNice American-centric view there. Up here in Canada we can use 'debit' to pay using our bank account with a separate card from our credit cards.
- gwillen 14y agoNo, it's exactly the same down here in the US. Parent poster is just clueless.
- otterley 14y agoMy purchases only qualify for the quota needed to trigger interest payment on my checking account if I choose "credit." Also, merchants are charged differently depending on the choice. So it's a useful question.
- johnchristopher 14y ago> The only way I could remove the monthly modem rental fee in my order online was to view the code on Time Warner’s site and edit a hidden part of the HTML for the appropriate checkbox to be visible. I’ve never had to ‘hack’ an order form before. I guess the "appropriate checkbox" was greyed out (no way I believe people are looking at the html in case there would be an hidden checkbox), then the author used firebug or something to make it visible and then submitted the form hoping the server on the other side is going to do something with the $post variable. Not that tricky but there is no way to confirm it's going to work as intended. IANAL but I raise doubts about the legal validity of such tamperings with web forms.
- johnchristopher 14y agoWhat are the reasons for my comment being downvoted ?
- lnanek2 14y agoSo they are overrun with customers, staff working their asses off already - and the author suggests putting work into supporting rare edge cases like customers bringing their own modem? Shouldn't they just remove that option entirely to streamline their flow, and ditch the ultra-rare customer who demands that? Sure, every customer wants a perfect experience super customized to their exact situation, but that's not how you run a business. Some of the biggest successes like Apple and McDonalds just pick some reasonable defaults, options, and cost per user levels and then that is that, no super advanced configuration, and the savings are huge. Just the lack of many different hardware configurations does wonders for Apple's software not running into problems and wonders for the hardware ordering cost savings (for the business).
- whichdan 14y agoComcast charges $7/mo for a shitty modem. A brand new top end Motorola modem costs <$90 from Amazon. Why shouldn't we buy our own modems?
- decklin 14y agoFor the same reason that they should make sure every tech has a functioning screwdriver? Everything that adds 5 minutes to an appointment adds up. The success of e.g. Apple is because they wake a product that works, not because of some nerdy argument about settings. If your product is getting a tech to show up within an N-hour timeframe, you need to find ways to engineer that. Of course, as has been pointed out up thread, most cable companies don't have to care if their appointments are reliable, so they don't, and whichever department made that web form probably wasn't accountable either.
- nirvana 14y agoOf all the government created monopolies, the cable monopolies are some of the worst. If cable companies had to compete to keep business, they'd offer better service and treat their employees better. Southwest airlines is a good example of a company that has to keep costs low, but does this in part by treating their employees very well. Notice that they charge ever higher and higher fees, in part because the municipalities are on the take here and get a cut of the fees, but also because the demand is inelastic. If you live in Austin and you want cable, they have your business. So, there's no reason to spend the money to have enough technicians to ensure they are able to do a good job and a timely one. A big part of the reason this never improves is that everyone blames Time Warner. TWC is just maximally allocating resources, which is what they should do. Namely, out of areas where they have a monopoly protected by the violence the city of austin will do to any other cable company that tries to compete.... and into areas where they have to compete for customers. But you don't hear this issue at election time. Why do people not hold their city council peeps accountable for imposing this overpriced monopoly on them? My guess is that most don't realize it is a government created monopoly, and the ones who do, many think that there would be no cable if the city hadn't given those rights away as an incentive to install all the cable. (not the case... places where this doesn't happen, still get cable because it isn't that expensive to put in the cable.)
- rthomas6 14y agoWhat exactly could I personally do to change this situation?
- Produce 14y agoIt's a democracy - cast your vote. Psyche! Learn to love your monopolist overlords.
- incomethax 14y agoYou could actively petition your friends and neighbors locally and try to change your local representation. Especially in elections for Alderman, niche issues like cable monopolies can carry weight, especially because voting is based on the issues raised by a vocal minority. In some places being elected to city council is not that difficult and can be managed in addition to a full time job. Anecdotal evidence but - a friend of mine works as a VP of a local consulting firm and also manages to do a great job as an Alderman.
- asmithmd1 14y agoI am wondering how Time Warner is getting away with categorizing this guy as an independent contractor. He wears a company specified uniform, uses company supplied tools, and does jobs in the order specified by the company. This sounds like a clear-cut case of mis-catagorizing an employee as in independent contractor in order to avoid paying overtime.
- rickdale 14y agoTime Warner seems like a company that suffers from being run by cooperate execs who dressage for fun. Besides totally ignoring the inconvenience that they place on each of their customers, they also clearly undervalue their employees. The biggest thing outside of this article that shows they are out of touch is their lack of ability to get a deal done with NFL for the NFL network and RedZone. The NFL's RedZone network has changed the way Americans watch football (the biggest sport in America), yet 3 years into the network and Time Warner still has no deal. It's tiresome and another inconvenience for the customer.
- Produce 14y agoWelcome to the wonderful world of corporations - where nothing makes sense, everything is late and the dumber you are, the higher you climb!
- tmccall1101 14y agoGreat story. Large businesses like TWC create systems in which they can uniformly control the process of their employees providing a bridge between their product and their customers. Unfortunately, rarely are these systems as fine-tuned as Apple has their "genius bar" set up, for example. They're usually more similar to the DMV, where the paperwork and step-by-step process provides an experience that attempts to create an equal experience for all customers (that also allows for business-specific necessities, such as keeping a huge group of constantly changing data organized to go along with the DMV example), but the experience ends up being more of an obstacle or burden than it providing things like efficiency and flexibility. I guess what I'm saying is that TWC sees no advantage of providing a better system. It costs money to uproot the current system, and it also costs money to create and run a system as detail-oriented as companies like Apple. They still get people to buy their product (even intelligent, insightful ones like the author of the article), and the profit margin is probably so significant that they consider it unnecessary to make Bill's day easier. Something that probably sounds a lot like, "If Bill doesn't like his job, he can quit." Or, "If Steven (the author) doesn't like our product, he can find another place to give his business." The real problem is that TWC understands full and well what they're doing. You think they don't get hundreds of phone calls every week from angry customers or disgruntled employees? The fact of the matter is that they have the upper hand in terms of what the author was pointing out. I just feel bad for Bill, and the thousands of people like him. This sort of thing makes you feel lucky not to be forced to lead a life that includes a job that is just one huge up-hill battle (in all the wrong senses of the phrase). Good luck to Bill. My favorite part was his notice at the end to anyone who needs a master carpenter. I hope somebody contacts him who read that. Edit: after reading more posts, it's clear that a large part of "the problem" has to do with the industry itself and the players involved. I think we'd all love to see somebody uproot the whole industry and start from scratch.
- lukev 14y agoWait. He first "hacks" the order form to make the "supply my own modem" checkbox available, and then complains that "Time Warner should have known, based on the options selected during my purchase, that I would supply my own modem and asked me personally to supply the MAC address and relevant information". Can't have it both ways, man. Time Warner can be blamed for many things, but expecting them to seamlessly support an option they had disabled intentionally is a bit much. You're lucky they let you do it at all.
- stevenkovar 14y agoThe URL string suggested it was an A/B test, similar to what we use at AppSumo. The option was available when you went back to the options page, but disappeared after a script/some data loaded. For what it's worth, that particular insight was from "Bill."
- rwhitman 14y agoYou basically have to hack / debug every website from Time Warner in order to use it. I swear I've whipped out chrome inspector / firebug attempting to use TWC websites at least twice. There could be an equally long blog post about the maddening information architecture and odd lapses in QA on critical features. For nearly 4 months their online recurring billing was sending me confirmation and then one day I get a shutoff notice with audacious late payment fees - why? Because the system failed at making the transaction but there was no error handling, so instead of throwing an error it instead just marked me as having missed a payment on the backend.
- vardyr 14y agoDon't worry, I am convinced that checkbox does absolutely nothing, enabled or not. I just moved within Austin, and I didn't hack the form. I selected the option for supplying my own modem because it was available, and the technician was still blindsided when he saw my modem. To top it off, this was a transfer, so it should not have been news that I brought the modem from my previous apartment, especially given that I selected the checkbox confirming this. While holding the modem he brought along to install, the technician informed me that I also had a modem attached to my account supplied by them three years ago, and asked where it was. I was not paying for a modem that was listed on my account for three years--I verified this. Laughable account auditing on their part (that should be automated), no loss for me, and neither party has any idea where that modem wandered off to. The technician was pleasant and the installation only took a few minutes, so I count myself lucky. Overall, though, it was incredibly sloppy and didn't exactly inspire confidence. Par for the course, I suppose, because three years ago they goofed up my work order by never completing the scheduling process, but confirming the time and date of the appointment with me. Then, after apologizing, they scheduled the new work order another two weeks out.
- rdl 14y agoI've never met a technician (outside the government) who didn't have his own tools. This is probably why.
- orangecurtain 14y agoSecurity tools aren't readily obtainable by independent contractors.
- patja 14y agoIsn't anyone else simply flabbergasted that the OP has never seen Blade Runner?? I'm not sure how being "too young" can be a valid excuse unless you are under 15 years old.
- DanBC 14y agoIt's a 30 year old movie. Alien is nearly 35 years old. There have been a bunch of movies made since then that OP may have thought he needed to watch - thus not having time to watch the actually good movies. I'm about to watch both of these in the next month, so it'll be interesting to see the clunky bits. Visions of the future from the past are fascinating. (See also the Gibson story "The Gernsback Continuum".)
- probablycorey 14y agoThere are very few clunky bits in Alien or Blade Runner. It is amazing how well they hold up.
- josephcooney 14y agoI dunno. I love Alien as much as the next guy, but there are a few times when you see the alien and think "that's just a thin person in an elaborate suit".
- DanBC 14y agoInteresting that's what you notice, and not the CRTs or the incandescent bulbs in switches.
- stevenkovar 14y agoI've seen what appears to be the Director's Cut, which is missing narration and a scene or two. My 'too young' comment was in reply to seeing the original version of Blade Runner in the theater.
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- RockyMcNuts 14y agoDestined to be fired... now that the post about how horrible he thinks his employer is has gone viral. Hope that carpentry thing works out.
- smhanov 14y agoDon't be silly. Nobody in the real world reads Hacker News.
- recycleme 14y agoThis hits close to home. I tried getting internet service from TWC twice but they failed each time. The first time they couldn't find the cable output. Turned out it didn't exist. So I scheduled an appointment for a "wall drop" (creation of needed cable output), but the guy just showed up confused that I didn't have one asked me to schedule a wall drop.
- adavies42 14y agoa few years ago i moved into an apartment in NYC that somehow didn't have a phone line. at all. like there wasn't a wall jack in the entire apartment. (it was a hundred-year-old building, i have no idea how this was possible.) i discovered this when i finally gave up on cable internet (insanely unreliable there) and needed about five calls and three visits to get verizon to understand that someone would have to drill a hole in my floor and run wire into the basement before my DSL could be hooked up, because yes, i really didn't have a phone line.
- nanijoe 14y agoWhat does AppSumo do? It appears you first have to sign up to find out..
- baddox 14y agoDid I interpret this correctly? The technician saw the name Nebuchadnezzar and assumed it was a reference to a ship (perhaps from The Matrix) and not the infamous Chaldean emperor from the Tanakh?
- PotatoEngineer 14y agoPop culture has more traction than ancient history does.
- RexM 14y agoI had an appointment scheduled with Time Warner in Austin, for Friday between the hours of 8AM and 9PM to fix my internet which has been randomly losing signal. I figured I could take a day off of work and try to get things done while the internet was up, which turned out to only be about 3 hours. I got a call from the tech. at 7PM saying he was on his way. An hour later, after hearing nothing, I try to call him and get voice mail. I call Time Warner to see what happened and they said that I didn't answer the phone when he called... even though I spoke with him and told him I was home (and answered his questions about whether the internet was still out, three times.) I had to schedule for this Wednesday, where I'll have to take more time off of work to attempt to get this fixed. I understand that the majority of the blame lies with Time Warner for allowing their field technicians to get overbooked and blamed for being late or missing jobs, but it's hard to not be upset at this particular field tech for saying he was on his way, and then not showing up and reporting it as a missed call.
- niels_olson 14y agoAverage return to work after inguinal hernia surgery: worker's comp case: 6 weeks self-employed: 2 days
- lcargill99 14y agoit didn't really fail. You were up after it was all over with. Fast, cheap or good - pick two.
- Danieru 14y agoExcept cable setup is neither fast, nor very good. At best they picked one.
- pasbesoin 14y agoI hope this doesn't backfire on Bill. It puts me in mind of a story I heard this past weekend (for the second or third time -- hint, hint as to the experience's effect on the customer, to any cable co. "image" people happening to read this). The person I spoke with ("the customer") told me how, transitioning from an outside antenna to cable TV, he had been very careful to tell the Comcast order taker that his installation should be classified as a "new" installation and not as a simple hook-up (the latter implying a pre-existing cable line to the property). The order taker seemed to have enough technical understanding to understand this and indicate they were recording the order for service installation as such. When the technician arrived, he seemed quite competent, quickly assessed and understood the situation, and began executing a new installation including a new line from the pole. However, he quickly started receiving calls from his supervisor, who was nasty and who started shouting at him so loudly -- including foul language -- that the customer could hear the supervisor's side of the conversation bleeding out of the technician's cell phone. Apparently, despite this customer's care in placing the order and the order taker's reassurance that they understood what was needed, the order ended up in the order tracking system as a simple "hook-up". There was nothing the technician could do about this, and he remained courteous with the customer and efficient in his work. But he was totally, abusively berated and dumped on by his supervisor. The customer felt bad enough about this that he actually apologized, saying he was sorry the technician had to go through that. In retrospect, he told me he wished he'd followed up with Comcast support until he hopefully might get through to a manager with sufficient authority to reprimand -- fire, preferably -- that supervisor. Someone who should not be managing anyone. And yes, the technician was a contractor. Personally, I see so much of this, I think Congress should be made to pass a law forbidding these (Federally regulated, quasi-monopolies, after all) companies from using any contract workers. These companies have obviously abused their positions, including in their labor relations. Make all their employees full time, with benefits, and put the companies directly on the hook for such abuses. When they need to make up the differences in expense, take it out of those companies' managements' hide. If you want an argument for that, what premium do -- or rather, don't -- they have to offer and pay to get management capable of managing a fucking monopoly (or the next thing to same)?