The Issue With SysAdmins, From a VAR’s Perspective

Ugh.

Here’s some examples I have dealt with from VARs.

Every week sending me an email asking about what we are doing with our environment or what our future plans are. This are ignored. It’s not your business to know. Our management and the Sysadmins know and we don’t need or want your input unless we specifically ask.

Asked for a quote for new product. I’ve already researched this product and if I’m not asking questions except for price, I don’t need to have a discussion with your sales reps or the vendor. And don’t ask where we are at with the quote every week. I told you I’m just looking for pricing so I can work with management on business cases. This takes a while, especially in large environments. Plus there are other VARs probably involved with similar solutions we need to compare and analyze.

For some other points in your post:

Management generally has no idea how anything works from a technical perspective. However, I agree a Sysadmin shouldn’t be going around their management to redo quotes without first consulting them on why. Those are not good admins.

I have absolutely no idea how any business or department works, I just know how technology systems work and stay in my lane because I’m a specialist. However, I work with the management team to explain to me what they want accomplished so I can figure out a technical solution for it. I provide multiple examples to management so they can then demo to see what they like and don’t like about them to choose what direction to go in. My colleagues all do the same, and I haven’t really seen others not doing this unless they suck at their job.

Now, having a VAR telling the departments or managers our proposals aren’t good and we should be doing something else instead will get you banned from talking to us again. This just creates distrust. If you really think something isn’t right, notify the Sysadmin, and if you don’t get a response let them burn themselves if it is a bad idea. More than likely, however, they have other plans you don’t know about or requirements you aren’t aware of. This goes back to the first thing, it’s not really any of your business unless we specifically ask. Too many VARs try this nonsense.

To address the moron statement, this is called blowing off steam because of nonsense they probably have to deal with on a regular basis. This doesn’t just happen with Sysadmins though, this happens in all departments. I over hear it all the time.

For the yelling match, yeah that should be taken offline. I’ve seen some people do this and it just disgusts me.

/r/sysadmin Thread