RE: iSeries Education (was iSeries vs. zSeries)

Yeah my experiences have been similar over the years, one manager I worked for 
delighted in the fact he never spent his training budget, and could use it for 
other things he thought were more important, don't know how he got away with it 
really. However I have also seen the other side of the coin especially when SAP 
started to become popular, a friend of mine was IT manager for a company and 
they put in SAP, his staff stayed for an average of 6 months before leaving to 
take up lucrative freelance contracts, in the end they just could not afford to 
keep training staff and keep on contractors while they did it and pay for the 
SAP stuff so they got rid of SAP, don't know what he was paying them but it 
obviously wasn't enough to keep them, and I suppose he could not come close to 
freelance rates. 

I worked for one software house when PC's were just starting to rear their ugly 
heads so I asked for PC training. "Don't need it" said my manager, "once 
'Silver Lake' (remember that chaps?  :-) ) is released then everyone will want 
one of those, no one will ever want a PC again!" And as we know now he was 
totally correct wasn't he?  :-) Mind you didn't stop him signing a support 
contract for one of our clients PC's the very next day, and I wonder if you can 
guess who had to do the support? Isn't it so embarrassing when all the users 
are stood around watching and waiting for you to do something and you haven't 
got a clue what to do?

Steve 

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of
dkahn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 25 August 2005 11:18
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: iSeries Education (was iSeries vs. zSeries)






Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I used to work for a consultant.  Their philosophy towards education
> was that if they trained you it just made you more marketable and
> you'd leave the company.

Some consultant! The idea is to be able to charge a high rate for your
people because they are superior. It costs a bit more to educate and keep
them, sure, but the consultancy ought to be able to more than recoup that
in their higher fees. Clients are not usually impressed when their own
staff have to educate the consultants they're paying for (and neither are
the client's staff for that matter).

--
Dave...
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