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Tech support departments are famous for burnout and constant employee churn, which adds substantially to the cost of recruiting and training new support reps. In fact, a new survey by the Association of Support Professionals shows that roughly 40% of support employees leave for new jobs every year. However, less than half of these employees leave their companies completely; the rest are either promoted or reassigned within the support group, or else they move to non-support jobs within the company, such as development or sales engineering. Promotions and transfers do leave openings in the support department that have to be filled, the report notes, "but the company itself doesn't lose its investment in employee development."
Tech Support Turnover Rates, Association of Support Professionals, 66 Mt. Auburn St., Watertown, Mass. 02472; 617/924-3944. Web: www.asponline.com.
U.S. DISTRICT COURT judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Microsoft: "[Microsoft is] a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and the rules of law that lesser entities must respect." (Quoted in eWeek, 3/19/01)
MICROSOFT chief executive Steve Ballmer on his company's willingness to place "big bets": "You build a piece of technology, you ship it, people don't like it, you improve it, they don't like it, you improve it again; five years later, a billion dollars into it, they like it and you get huge [revenues] that spring from that." (Quoted in Computerworld, 6/25/01)
RED HAT chief executive Matthew Szulik on Microsoft: "I think we're dealing with the most vicious competitor of the last 30 years in technology, and they're only getting stronger." (Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 6/29/01)
GORDON & GLICKSON attorney Hillard Sterling on the Appeals Court's decision to overrule Judge Jackson: "This [case] isn't quite over yet, but it's the bottom of the ninth, and Microsoft is winning by ten runs, and there are two outs." (Quoted in InfoWorld, 7/2/01)
LIBERATE chief executive Mitchell Kertzman on the Appeals Court ruling: "Any company that was counting on the federal courts to make them competitive is just road kill." (Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 7/2/01)
GRAYBAR ELECTRIC manager of PC administration and support Bob Ksiazek on Microsoft's latest revisions to its end-user licenses: "I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun, and Microsoft is just asking me to hand over my wallet." (Quoted in CFO, 7/01)
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