DATA POINTS: TECH SUPPORT TURNOVER.[CHART OMITTED]Tech support departments are famous for burnout Burnout Depletion of a tax shelter's benefits. In the context of mortgage backed securities it refers to the percentage of the pool that has prepaid their mortgage. and constant employee churn churn: see butter. , 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 Thomas Penfield Jackson (born January 10, 1937) was a United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia. He was appointed in 1982 after serving as president of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He is currently an attorney with the Jackson and Campbell, P.C. 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 Matthew J. Szulik - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Red Hat, leader of some other technology companies, such as Interleaf and MapInfo for more than 20 years. 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 The refusal by a judge to sustain an objection set forth by an attorney during a trial, such as an objection to a particular question posed to a witness. To make void, annul, supersede, or reject through a subsequent decision or action. 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 (Liberate Technologies, San Mateo, CA) A software company that specialized in the information appliance field. Formerly Network Computer, Inc. (NCI), a spin-off from Oracle in 1996, it changed its name in 1999. chief executive Mitchell Kertzman Mitchell Kertzman is a venture capitalist with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and former CEO of Sybase, Powersoft, and Liberate Technologies. [1] References 1. ^ Hummer Winblad biography of 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 See Chief Financial Officer. , 7/01) |
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