Dell complaints

[DellSurvivor]

This is a message for all of my fellow Dell techs. Please understand that if you are looking for career advancement at Dell, like say to a Network Administrator, you need to find another job.

My Experience:

After obtaining multiple certifications, I left Dell after 4 months of applying everywhere and with 5 years of experience in Call Centers.

1. The job was as a federal contractor. I was offered the job by the federal contracting company, so I gave Dell my 2 weeks notice (and we all know that you get walked out of the door quick when that happens).

2. The contracting company called me up. The Federal government, after having reviewed my experience, had over-ruled them. It seems as though they did not count working at a Dell Call Center as sufficient technical experience. The contracting company apologized to me and told me that this had never happened. I was out of a job.

3. Step 3: starting applying like crazy to everywhere. I got 3 call backs for interviews. I finally got a job as an IT instructor due to my having an MCSE and other certifications.

The other jobs wanted to start me out as technical support with the opportunity to move up to networking.

In the end, I spoke to several recruiters. I was hired because I have an MCSE and a Master's Degree. They all told me that Dell looks extremely bad on your resume for a technician.

Apparently, many people, who've only learned the Dell way of troubleshooting, have went on to other jobs to do absolutely horrible work when it was discovered that they didn't learn how to troubleshoot properly.

My advice: if you are a tech who is serious about your career, got to another company if the opportunity presents itself. You will only be waisting your time at Dell and people will laugh at you if you start applying for some of the other positions.

[StrangeFarer]

Good call, Survivor. I can attest to the damage Dell did to the Nashville market when they killed Nashville XPS last year around this time. However, what most aren't aware of are the mechanics behind the damage. Let me clarify:

Dell in Round Rock begins considering Nashville for a new role, and plans to move XPS to Canada, to fulfill the advertising for American support.

Certain members of Nashville management get wind of this through their connections, and make ASSumptions. These managers tell their personal cronies about the coming change, but detail it as layoffs, not a function change.

The cronies leave, resigning while the market is still relatively good. They use falsified resumes to land positions around Nashville which require high competence and skill levels, none of which they personally possess.

Meanwhile, Nashville management begins making plans to obliterate the XPS staff. They do not consult with Round Rock on this- they ASSume the plan is to eliminate all XPS team members.

Word of the "layoffs" begins to get around, because Nashville management, in general, can't help but giggle gleefully at anything that is employee-hostile (especially if they're certain their jobs are safe).

Back on the outside, the cronie crew can't handle the jobs they've accepted, and begin doing the same worthless things they did inside Dell. Unlike Dell, however, real employers do not look the other way, even in the face of offered favors by the cronies. They actually NEEDED those jobs done, and done correctly. Heads begin to roll, and they're all former Dell employees.

Inside, the steamroller that is Nashville mis-management is barreling toward October 9th. Most savvy long-timers can smell the shit in the air, and pack their belongings, quietly letting it be known that a severance package would be amenable. This filters back to management, and they start drafting up the packages.

In Round Rock, plans to convert the XPS crew to whatever the new (and needed for long-term success) queue begin to hit snags- legal begins telling them that multiple severance packages have been requested by the Nashville management team. Round Rock management begins checking to see what Nashville's been up to.

Nashville management, meanwhile, is still playing the "big changes are coming, be happy" card, while secretly planning to dump almost 400 people onto the Nashville market. This is around September 1st or so, and they have no clue that Round Rock is fast becoming aware of what they're up to. Like kittens scratching on a linoleum floor, they think they've covered everything, and Round Rock will be SO PLEASED that they've anticipated their needs!

Meanwhile, the cronies are causing massive damage to the market, and to the name Dell as it appears on a resume. It is quickly becoming synonymous with "liar", "cheat", "thief", and "moron". They continue to lose their jobs, and keep moving on to other positions, spreading the poison like wildfire.

Round Rock, by now, has the full scoop- Nashville has single-handedly managed to not only ruin the deployment of the new queue entirely, but they've also managed to monkeywrench XPS itself- Canada is forced to take on some of the functions of the new queue, but is ill-prepared for it. Things go downhill, quickly. By the end of September, Round Rock caves in, and approves the severance packages, knowing Nashville wouldn't do anything they were told, even if there were time to try to reverse the damage. XPS is sent to the four winds, and suffers greatly for it, as do the customers.

October 8th- Black Monday. Surprise firings of the Dell Nashville management team occur, all the way up to the highest levels. People who were certain they could not lose their jobs are summarily walked out. These same people, in a further ineptitude, are the ones that Nashville management had planned to handle the employee firings for the next day. At 5PM CST, an email is sent out to all XPS team members, requiring them to be at work the next morning at 8PM CST.

Outside, cronies keep spreading the seeds of destruction. By now, even recruiters are starting to turn away people with any Dell experience, no matter how old it is.

October 9th - Black Tuesday. People show up at 8AM, and are made to wait for hours at a time, to be escorted to one-room meetings. The management that's left (poor souls), are in charge of handling the entire population, doing the out-processing. Some teams are singled out for immediate Sales conversion. Others are given no such opportunities.

Afterword: For over half a year, the Nashville market, for anyone daring to associate themselves with Dell, is ruined. People are offered jobs at half or less of what they were making, when they're offered at all. Benefits packages are non-existent in Nashville, for the most part. The Nashville market is now gun-shy, and refuses to risk anything on anyone formerly with Dell.

This is what I witnessed, not only from my own experience, but those of many, many others around me, as well as direct statements from recruiters and employers in the area.

And now, Dell stock is at early 1990s levels. Within one year.

Good riddance- karma does work, it seems.

[DELLapidated]

[DellSurvivor]

[DellSurvivor]

One last thing for my techs.. If you do get a Dell certification, then do the EMC and the Server Associates. Those are the ones that will be looked upon with a small amount of respect in the technical world.

Also, when you float your resume out, put down cases where you did something extraordinary (non-dell policy) for some big name customer. That's what I had to do in order to get someone to finally see that I was not a bad-technician just because I worked at Dell.

While I was at Dell, the top technicians with other experience, were gone within 4 months as they quickly saw Dell as a bad situation.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Survivor: You have a master's degree? Not to be pointlessly critical, but have someone who knows how to spell proofread your resume. That may be killing you more than the name Dell.

Perhaps indeed the name Dell represents institutionalized failure to a lot of hiring managers. IT managers in particular, know that Dell support is as bogus as the day is long, so if you worked there that makes you bogus by association, whether you really were or not.
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[DellSurvivor]

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

I know, hardly anyone (besides me) proofreads blogs.

You never know why resumes get rejected. HR is actually in the rejection business, and in a bad economy they are at the top of their game. I also strongly suspect that a lot of the jobs you see posted are only advertised so the company can claim they offered the position to the public, when in reality it has already been filled from inside or by an executive's relative.

I don't get much response to my resume either, spelling or not.
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[Neoburn]

Hey, just to add my story in to the mix, left Dell during the Ottawa site closure... took a bit of a break from work while I moved across the country(until October-ish) then got a job as a contractor doing government software stuff.... I moved from support to packaging, and so far, everything has been fine... they didn't ask about my time at Dell nor anything like that

[Kingspit]

Wow, just wow.It is not Dell that hurt you with your Federal job quest. I come from an IT background and have those "real certs". The real issue is that what used to be enough to get a "real" IT job has changed. Dell on your resume, (as long as you stayed for at least a couple of years), is a good thing as far as the overall job market goes. Just like any career, it shows you have some idea of responsibility. Certifications without hands-on experience show character only.

Back in the 90's, if you had an MCSE, A+, etc, and no experience, then you could land a pretty high paying job. Companies, government, education, etc have learned their lesson dues to "paper only certs" and these folks not earning that salary, and with the money is very tight, they are now extremely careful. Call center experience counts for something, but will not help in an actual IT job much anymore. You have to take what you have actually aquired from the call center, like people skills for example. They really do count as a skill set out there.

I hate to douse your disgruntled fuel, but this one is on you. You should have maybe asked more questions in your interview, done more research about what they needed, etc. Who knows, maybe the hiring manager decided to hire his brother-in-law instead. (Happens in Metro Nashville IT every day). Maybe the hirng manager was just an idiot. But Dell had not a freaking thing to do with you not getting that job. Let's be grown up about it. And if Dell asked you to leave after giving notice, there were other issues with you going on.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

[StrangeFarer]

[poormanq45]

Honestly, the dell troubleshooting method sucks.

They don't want you to troubleshoot. They want you to use DSN, and now knowledge, to simply ask questions with a yes/no type structure. This is not proper troubleshooting.

Proper troubleshooting involves being able to take the explanation of the issue and quickly isolate the problem into as small an area as possible.

Dell doesn't teach this, it is simply a blanket everything method that takes forever...

[shen]