

Going Overboard:  Keep IT or Dump it? - genehughson
http://genehughson.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/going-overboard/

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lifeguard
A tale of outsourced IT

I worked for a startup recently that used an outside company for IT. At first
a company in another timezone was used and they had weak desktop support. We
got a local company to our office to take over and they were very good at
level one support issues like "how do I log into email"? And "my laptop won't
turn on". But other issues they were not so good at. And much worse: there was
no real planning or management. A non-technical manager was forced to be the
liaison with the IT company. It was embarrassing to see employees struggle
with easily solvable issues. It may have saved money, but it was a big hit on
the engineers morale. They also went from using 95% Apple tech to a mix of MS
Windows, Linux, and OS X. Employees started using MS Office (trial version
bundled with laptop) despite the company being standardized on google docs and
gmail. Others could not read their powerpoints. Former employees were allowed
to keep thousands of dollars in Adobe software because no one was managing
licenses.

