Is the SBS community a good substitute for training?

This is my formal response to this post. I feel that I, as a community leader and a great contributor to it, have the right to this opinion based on my experience over the past 10 years working in IT.

Now I'm sure by now nobody asks why Susan Bradley writes pages and pages of op-ed on her blog. The latest one has been prompted by me and several months of lost sleep discussing the SBS "community" with her and exactly what the value, responsibility and participation in that community means.

Introduction

I have not hidden my disgust for incompetent people that pass themselves off as small business IT consultants. I first met Roger Otterson at TechEd and within about 30 seconds of introducing myself I managed to stick my foot very far up my mouth in my assessment of the small business IT consultants:

“Roger, I have over 4,000 partners out there. Now, only about 5% of that actually does any true consulting or IT business, the remainder of them are just people that failed in the corporate world and thought they could quickly cash in on their mediocre technology skills”

How’s that for the elevator pitch? Although I’m sure I could have phrased this much nicer the truth is much uglier than that. You see, active small business consultants that float up to the “global SBS community” tend to have one characteristic that is invaluable to anybody looking for a competent employee: willingness to learn. Willingness to admit when they need help, willingness to research. Over time that help is paid back, as those that were “new” yesterday become the “gurus” of today. It’s a good thing, this is why we go to events, this is why we network, this is why we promote the concept of community in terms of working together, sharing our problems, successes and failures so that we can globally help one another win.

The Problem

Now as the concept of community gets adopted by more people the community undoubtedly attracts ignorant leeches that have no business being an advisor to anyone, on anything. You’ve met them, perhaps they have destroyed your network. You’ve received their business card, they likely didn’t have a web site or a phone number attached to them. Everything about them screams “hobbyist” yet they stand in front of you demanding your support.

Allow me to share a story of a gentleman I nearly punched at a TS2 event. This person has been involved in a migration which caused his clients network to be downed for a few days. JJ had pulled me aside to assist the gentleman with the question he had on SBS Migration. JJ recently wrapped a TS2 Wednesday on the Web with Jeff Middleton who is the author or SBS Swing Migration toolkit, an excellent and comprehensive resource on SBS migration. I had just finished an interview with Jeff for the SBS Show where he shared the future of his company, the changes to the Swing Migration pricing and structure and nearly all the details. This gentleman that was standing before me had a simple question:

“Can you please tell me more about the Swing Migration, I have a server that I need to move immediately and I don’t know how to proceed. Can you explain how Swing Migration works?”

Ok, innocent question. Did you watch JJ’s webcast? No. Ok, did you listen to the SBS Show? No. Ok, did you look at SBSMigration.com? Skimmed it. Ok, please go review those resources and I’ll be glad to point you in the right direction afterwards.

“Well, no, I can’t do that I have too much to do. I don’t have the time for that. Can you just tell me how it works, what the steps are?”

At this point I walked away from this gentleman as I was quite ready to punch his lights out. How ignorant could you possibly be that you refuse to do the basic research and training for the job you quite obviously told someone you could do?

Believe it or not, this is the overall competence level of majority of the small business consultants out there. Do not believe me? Please go to a TS2 event and listen to the questions they ask. They have some of the brightest PSS engineers that also happen to have a personality representing their interests to Microsoft and the best questions they can muster are “Why isn’t xxx in the Action Pack?” I am one of the biggest TS2 supporters out there and I constantly call the real partners in the Microsoft community to come out, network, learn, share. Do they? No. Why not? Because they get disheartened to see what their competition is up to. Yes, the guy stealing the swag at a TechNet/TS2 event. Yes, the guy with no business card. Yes, the guy that let his customer “try out” software from his Action Pack. You know them well, they are out there.

 

The SPF

Last month I had a prolonged public discussion with David Schrag regarding the SPF – Single Point of Failure small business consultant. The sole proprietor, unincorporated, poorly trained individual that seems to be the jack of all trades, master of none. You’ve met him. This man can design a mainframe and also does web development on the site. Yes, he has 50 years of corporate IT experience, has been in business for 20 years, looks about 40 and has never managed to grow his business past the sole proprietor status. SPF looks for every opportunity, pretends he can do anything from CAD training to network engineering but somehow doesn’t own a business card. He is an expert at VoIP and Cisco high end routers yet doesn’t know what show config does or where the DNS records are edited. You know him well, your friendly neighborhood computer guy that in any corporate environment wouldn’t even be allowed to clean the dust off the power supply. 

These people are dangerous. Failure is the name of their game and they are the number one, largest, most resilient part of small business IT. These are the men and women that destroy one small business after another, the ones that use Windows XP as a server, that tell businesses they don’t need a server, that host business web sites on dyndns, that have never in their life even bothered to read a book. The “enthusiast” – and now they have become the managed services provider.

Yes, this sole proprietor shop that cannot give anybody a lead, that will not share his customer with anyone that might be able to help, that will not reveal a single thing about what they do or share anything they may know – these guys and gals are out there writing managed services agreements. They are out there, without backup, without failover, without someone to lend them a hand… they are approaching small business and telling them that for a flat monthly fee they will be their tech support department. Yes, anything goes wrong, we’ll be there! Oh really dear SPF, will you? What happens if something happens to another client of yours, whom you’ve promised one hour on-site response time, while you are working on my problem? Do you leave me in the water while you go save them? How do you prioritize? How and when do you train? How and when do you take vacations?

In my years in the IT business I have met many consultants. Only a tiny fraction of them is still in business as a sole proprietor. Those that survived are the ones that specialized heavily and networked every step of the way to provide a comprehensive solution to small business. Majority of them that got very successful at what they do formed partnerships, even bigger companies on their reputation and excellence. I am one of those people.

The rest. They died. You see, an SPF is a leach. SPF has a few clients, perhaps one well established one that keeps them around. SPF’s skills are not high enough to be attractive enough to any employer, but they are a means to solving the most basic of IT problems, the company representative when it comes to research and overall less of a burden for a small company than an IT person might be. They stay in business as long as their sugar daddy business stays around after which they find a new role selling real estate, insurance, mortgages or whatever else requires little education.

 

The Problem

The single biggest thing Susan Bradley has against me is that I consider IT a profession. What comes with being a professional? Education. Experience. Certification. Reputation. Ethics. I see these lacking more and more as the “community” grows and I feel that we as community leaders are committing an immoral task by empowering incompetent people to do more complex tasks instead of handing them a loaded gun with suicide instructions.

Last year I had an “IT Professional” from Orlando ask a very basic DHCP question. This happened on a public Orlando IT Pro mailing list where a gentleman asked about the DHCP server in his Virtual PC shutting down. Before I got a chance to respond another “IT Professional” responded leading the first guy in the completely wrong direction. This is the practice that my friend Pablo Averbuj calls “blind leading the blind.” I scrapped the presentation for the next months meeting and instead held a presentation with JJ on the basics of networking and Windows Domain Controllers. We went through routing, IP assignments, domain controllers, FSMO, trusts, authentication, troubleshooting mail, network, authentication and related problems. After we were done with the presentation I told my group that they need to look around and seek a mentor. If you are just getting started the learning curve is sharp enough. There are too many books, too many webcasts, too many podcasts, too many blogs, too many white papers, too many classes, too many e-training opportunities – get someone you can learn from to tell you where you should focus on. A guidance counselor on your way to IT Professional excellence.  

For the most part, I have never seen most of the people in that meeting again. It was one of our most densely attended meetings, New Horizons offered everyone in the group a two week course at over 75% off and there was just no excuse anyone could have come up with. 

At that point I decided that SPFs are no longer going to benefit from my hard work and that I will not allow my community to become what TS2 has become. I will not allow the people that can’t even understand the basic concepts of computers and networking to be on the same list as the true professionals that are in this business to help small business. In order to participate in the group discussions you must have at least one server you are responsible for. If you have 0 servers you are added to a newsletter list. No beta access for you. No Microsoft incentives for you. No opportunity to ask stupid questions that when pasted into Google produce a solution on the first result. You have to be a serious IT Professional in order to be a part of the IT Professional Association. It’s much like the Bar Association, except for IT Professionals.

I today manage two lists. One for general information on events and happenings around Central Florida. The other is for true IT Professionals. Everyone is welcome to the meetings, everyone is welcome to voice a problem. However, as far as I am concerned, if you are detrimental to the business you are supposed to be consulting I am not empowering you. Susan has on many occasions tried to guilt me into offering help to those that don’t deserve it. She fails to understand the SPF concept. Susan is an accountant, she is a DIY(er) – Do it Yourself(er) because she had to deal with incompetent IT support in the past. She sees my limitation of the Association membership as a personal wall that would never have allowed her to become who she is today.

To an extent she is right. But the day that Susan Bradley hires me as a Jr. Tax Specialist is the day I back away from my morals and start helping liars and thieves. SPFs are rude, they are dishonest, they are immoral and they expect you to do their job for them. They want every aspect of their job explained to them, every problem resolved, every issue handled and they expect you to document it for them. They refuse to do any troubleshooting, post intelligent questions, train, educate, etc.

 

Responsibility 

I am not the smartest person in the world. I, however, am fairly successful. Why? I always looked up to the people that are doing better than I am and always strived to learn more and do better. Recently I spoke to a dear friend, Beatrice, who put me at somewhat of an ease about not being the community punching board for SPFs:

“Was any of it easy? Was getting your MCSE easy? How many books did you read? How much troubleshooting, experimenting, testing and banging your head against the wall have you had to do to get to this level? How much have you sacrificed for your expertise…. And people want you to give that away for free? Yeah, right.”

This community has a responsibility to its participants. Who assumes it? Generally, no one. I recently brought up this topic, “Is the SBS community a good substitute for training?”. Here is that conversation:

Vlad Mazek says:

so basically SBS Community = substitute for reading documentation

Jaded MVP Alter Ego:

How is the world a better place if you spend your free time empowering people who are not qualified to do their job?  Who wins?

Vlad Mazek says:

the customer wins according to Susan. If you could have a do-over, would you wait for a community to help guide you through the job or would you hit the books, get certified, get trained?

Jaded MVP Alter Ego:

That's exactly what I did.  Dude – 3 months in to my MCSE, I knew more than 75% of IT Pros out there because it was still fresh in my mind.  It has been a long time since anything other than self-study was more efficient for me (and I'm guessing you're similar).  A lot of people aren't like that, though.  My thing is that I'm not interested in talking to the lower 2/3s.  It's not the best use of my time.

Jaded MVP Alter Ego:

yeah, I'm not a big fan of that.  You empower joe-bob to install server #1.   he does ok on day one.  day 2 something breaks.  are you now morally obligated to help him out?

Jaded MVP Alter Ego:

Honestly, I don't know how they'll answer that one.  Given the number of newsgroup threads that end with "that didn't work, now what?", I'd say that the sense of responsibility ends rather quickly.

That last line sums up the problem very quickly. Is the community empowering the wrong people and to what extent should it be allowed?

 

Conclusion 

And there you have it. SBS community is one of the biggest and most dynamic on earth. But as this community grows and reaches people that may not understand the community spirit, at what point should we stop handing out the fish and start handing out fishing poles? Everyone in small business IT consulting is concerned about the Geek Squad and Best Buy yet nobody seems to have the SPFs on the radar. I feel it is immoral and a form of academic cheating to do other persons job for them. I am not saying we should build a huge border around the community and make only the most athletic of idiots that jump over it participate – but I am saying that as we grow we resist the temptation to act as an evangelical church that is out to save everyone and force them to recognize SBS as their personal savior. Not everyone is cut out for IT. This is not an easy job, this is not a static job where skills don’t need to be worked on for years. This is a profession. So to everyone that doesn’t treat it that way, let me be the first to give you the following words of advice from Simon Cowel: 

“You are just awful. You should give this up now.”