testing
@com.br
| reply to Harleyguy
Re: Bell Layoffs: Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal
testing is mostly validation and is already-mostly- automated...
involves the tester
checking several -ancient-data bases to make sure they are all up to date
then testing the line (mostly automated.. but human touch is still necessary at this stage to be able to diagnose problesm...and to be able to fix the weird cases we hear about)
and dispatching/contacting the client if necessary
by sending these jobs to india/elsewhere, bell is relying on their automation, which we all know is far worse than `ok` and ditching the experienced testers...
this mean ignoring the extreme problems(losing a couple of customers here and there), which require and expert opinion, but relying on drones(humans trained to act like drones) to do the job(mainly clicking buttons and following flow diagrams...instead of knowledge, and experience...)
so instead of happy knowledgeable customers, and word of mouth advertising ..bell is relying on retired people and ignorant and busy customers to keep them in business..
and yes i am an ex-tester in hamilton- (quit more than 5 years ago) |
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llollool
@com.br | reply to Harleyguy
ahahaha we all know how much the field guys love the agents in india..
the guy who was here last time almost strangled himself when he was forced to talk to one... poor guys (including the ones in india.. who take all the blame) |
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Harleyguy
join:2008-02-01
Waterdown, ON
| reply to Glen1
said by Glen1  :Testing is not much different from outside work. You isolate where the trouble is and then send it. The tester goes from point to point to find out if the trouble is "in" or "out" and then sends the ticket to the appropriate location. "in" - C.O. "out" - Field. This can be done from anywhere. When CALRS was first introduced the testing could be done from a central location, each area didn't need its own testboard. Now it can be done overseas and routed to the appropriate section with trouble or SWT. I will give you that, but have you ever seen a Afwfm ticket with 5 VC jobs or an SCV assignment with 3 "C" order and 2 LT's
There is more involved in testing than meets the eye and from my experience most India agents are not the brightest PEBBLES on the beach and the day that I have to deal with those IDIOTS is the day all my Bell services are gone. |
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Glen1
These Are The Good Ol' Days.
Premium,MVM
join:2002-05-24
GTA Canada
 ·Bell Sympatico
| Unfortunately yes I have seen those. I was having coffee with 2 C.O. guys the other day and they said FWFM was the worst thing they ever experienced since they started with the company...sometimes you have to just start over and make it work. This is something the India experience will never know about.
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My Canada includes Quebec. |
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Harleyguy
join:2008-02-01
Waterdown, ON
| reply to testing
said by testing :
and yes i am an ex-tester in hamilton- (quit more than 5 years ago)
I got news for you those were the good ole days when all you had to do was 8 troubles a day.
Things have changed dramatically. |
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Harleyguy
join:2008-02-01
Waterdown, ON
| reply to Glen1
said by Glen1 :Unfortunately yes I have seen those. I was having coffee with 2 C.O. guys the other day and they said FWFM was the worst thing they ever experienced since they started with the company...sometimes you have to just start over and make it work. This is something the India experience will never know about. If testing goes to India , people will quit their Bell services by the thousands |
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not a sucker
@videotron.ca
| said by Harleyguy :If testing goes to India , people will quit their Bell services by the thousands LOL then Bell will try and sucker more people into long term contracts by offering another xbox360 if you take take a 3-5 year contract. HEH How many here are still stuck on this contract and had your unlimited changed? Laff. Poor suckers.
Sucker born every minute.... Bell will find them. Thats their strong point. |
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Deadpool
Go Sens Go
Premium,VIP
join:2001-03-29
Canada
·Bell Sympatico
| reply to Harleyguy
said by Harleyguy :said by testing :
and yes i am an ex-tester in hamilton- (quit more than 5 years ago)
I got news for you those were the good ole days when all you had to do was 8 troubles a day. Things have changed dramatically. Testers in Hamilton are actually better now versus 5 years ago. They don't argue anymore and take the call from the Helpdesk rep no matter what - which definitely was NOT the case 5 years ago!
--
Disclaimer: If I express an opinion, it is my own opinion, not that of Bell or its related companies. |
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HeywoodFloyd
join:2008-11-23
Canada
| reply to ho ho ho
Now things are really bad at Bell because of the 11 layers of management (Rogers only has 4). Depending upon which business unit you reference for numbers, Bell Canada has 52k employees. 5100 Bell technicians are CEP. I'm not sure about the Expertech and BTS technicians but lets be liberal and pretend that these two add up to 4900 for a total of 10k technicians. (BTW, these people are CEP as well but corporate politics has made sure they have different CEP contracts, which do not come due at the same time).
Now the last time I counted, there were 12k clerks in an employee association known as the CTEA. If you divide 52 by 22 and drop the fraction you will see that there are two managers for every employee. (I thought the Roman army 2000 years ago proved that you should have one manager for every ten soldiers). Now the clerks have been getting fired left and right for 4 years now because the CTEA has no real power. (in fact, 30 years ago if you wanted to go into management, one sure fire way was to become a CTEA rep). So in 2007 the CTEA employees voted to dissolve the CTEA (association) and join the CEP (union) but this can't happen just yet because the Bell still has a valid contract with the CTEA.
OK so the Teachers are taking Bell private on December-11 and you know that the new owners will want to cut costs but letting dead wood float away. If middle management gets rid of clerks who are about to become unionized employees, and they do so by outsourcing this work to India and the Philippines, these managers will still be around to manage the foreign contractors. Managers are sacrificing employees to save their own skins and they don't seem to care how many customers will be driven away by this decision. (I have heard loss numbers of 10k per month or 120k per year) |
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Jolie
Take my advice.. I don't use it anyways.
Premium
join:2004-08-07
London, ON
| So many rumours flying around, but, it's a wait and see situation. Last week I spoke with a 905 tech and he told me he had heard that between 4500-5000 techs would be gone in the new year. A short time later a 613 tech said he had heard the number was closer to 8000. Then another said, no, the 5000 was Bell Mobility being spun off. So, we can speculate all we want , but, until it actually happens nobody really know for sure. |
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HeywoodFloyd
join:2008-11-23
Canada
| reply to Glen1
said by Glen1 :Unfortunately yes I have seen those. I was having coffee with 2 C.O. guys the other day and they said FWFM was the worst thing they ever experienced since they started with the company...sometimes you have to just start over and make it work. This is something the India experience will never know about. As I have posted elsewhere, there are currently 2 managers for every single employee at Bell Canada. But the situation in the Central Offices is much little different with one manager for ~ 25 employees.
Consider this: In the old days, CO techs got their troubles from TRACS (which got them from CALRS). Frame techs got their orders from MFAS. Field techs were dispatched from either CALRS or FSOS. Data techs worked from TRIS (pronounced "trys"), Remedy, and one other system I forgot the name of. Special circuit orders were sent to the CO via MTWO or SSAMS depending up whether they were internal trunks or external customer circuits.
Now it's 2008 and you are a manager attempting to manage a large group of techs. It will be a lot easier for you if your technicians are all working from the same computer system. On top of this, if you are training a group of people to cover many jobs in the event of a strike (BTW, the last one was 1999), then putting them all on one crappy soup-to-nuts computer system will be better for you as a manager than it is for your technicians.
Now many of the older computer systems required dumb-terminal (or terminal emulator access) but FWFM is web based so I suppose it will be a lot easier for foreign contractors to access the latest system.
Of course, putting your eggs in one basket does come with some risks. Last year FWFM experienced some strange performance problems which included loss of data. This could only be fixed by bringing in an Oracle specialist from France. With this European connection it makes you wonder is there are SAP modules in FWFM as well. |
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CanerisErik
Caneris
Premium,VIP
join:2007-10-03
Toronto, ON
| said by HeywoodFloyd : Remedy The biggest piece of crap I've had the pleasure of working with at four different organizations. It's amazing how every large organization seems to be drawn to it and all the ITIL crap that revolves around it, when in reality it just makes things worse. |
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Harleyguy
join:2008-02-01
Waterdown, ON
| said by CanerisErik :said by HeywoodFloyd : Remedy The biggest piece of crap I've had the pleasure of working with at four different organizations. It's amazing how every large organization seems to be drawn to it and all the ITIL crap that revolves around it, when in reality it just makes things worse. Thats only one opinion.
For the user with a text search license who can create PDQ's or Macros , there is nothing that can be pulled out of Remedy.
Its a great tool for those who are not afraid to use it. |
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CanerisErik
Caneris
Premium,VIP
join:2007-10-03
Toronto, ON
| said by Harleyguy :Thats only one opinion. Unfortunately it's a very prevalent opinion in places where they have tweaked the hell out of it, it runs slow as a pig, and no one uses all the fancy features. Last time I checked, that would be Rogers, Primus, government of Ontario, Toronto District School Board, just to name a few.
Damn, I even recall calling into Primus support two years ago and joking with a random tech about how much it sucked, and I've never even spoken with him before.
So you're partly right, it's an opinion, but not "only one" 
It's certainly a popular product though and perhaps it's even improving lately. |
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alphaz18
join:2005-02-26
CANADA
1 edit | reply to CanerisErik
said by CanerisErik :said by HeywoodFloyd : Remedy The biggest piece of crap I've had the pleasure of working with at four different organizations. It's amazing how every large organization seems to be drawn to it and all the ITIL crap that revolves around it, when in reality it just makes things worse. Staring at remedy HD4 right now. Yay! :\ yup every large company uses this ..
depends on the implementation. of the forms and such. the bell remedy hd4 is actually quite fast i find.. however.. this other one i work with.. is slow as.. ummm a rock. |
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CanerisErik
Caneris
Premium,VIP
join:2007-10-03
Toronto, ON
| said by alphaz18 :said by CanerisErik :said by HeywoodFloyd : Remedy The biggest piece of crap I've had the pleasure of working with at four different organizations. It's amazing how every large organization seems to be drawn to it and all the ITIL crap that revolves around it, when in reality it just makes things worse. Staring at remedy HD4 right now. Yay! :\ yup every large company uses this .. depends on the implementation. of the forms and such. the bell remedy hd4 is actually quite fast i find.. however.. this other one i work with.. is slow as.. ummm a rock. Agreed, it depends largely on the customization and the forms. |
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Savillian
join:2003-11-22 | The day I have to sit on a phone for a WHOLE day with a tester(much like today) and he is in India (or some other place I have trouble understanding their dialect)is the day I quit the Bell group of companies. |
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jj_frap
join:2003-12-15 | reply to ho ho ho
And I suppose my old 310-Prime Quebec job will be sent to Tunisia within two years. |
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shrug
@videotron.ca | reply to ho ho ho
No offence to the Bell employee's... but the writing is on the wall and has been for a year.
If no one is making alternate plans now or seeking alternate employment now and you bitch when the hits come, its your own fault. |
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alphaz18
join:2005-02-26
CANADA
| i get where shrug is coming from. but. why doesn't bell try to get new customers by offering decent services and what consumers want. instead of running themselves into the ground by trying to scam every penny out of everyone then trying to sell less and less for more $$$. then making them piss angry and trying to force them to stay by using contracts and termination fees.. and when that fails. they whine and raise prices some more. saying we're not doing well! we have to raise prices! and the cycle continues.. eventually you can raise all the prices you want but it wont matter if you have 0 customers.. |
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