DarkAlman

That what's commonly referred to as the theoretical "Star Trek society". Hence Picard's line "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"

Arguably in a post-scarcity highly automated society socialist policies (but not necessarily socialism) becomes increasingly important for society to function as you will likely have a large population of effectively unemployable people dependent on the state to provide them with basic necessities.

Including food, Clothing, Shelter, Education, Healthcare, and a degree of entertainment. Those that choose to work are motivated by their own accomplishments, to prevent boredom, are rewarded by getting more access to entertainment (to reduce stress) better homes, better food, etc.

But of course this is all theoretical. We have not yet achieved a post-scarcity economy on Earth so what we end up with instead is Communism and all it's problems.

But even if we did have a post scarcity economy this is still theoretical. Who's to say that kind of socialism won't collapse and become autocratic and have many of the same problems as every other historical socialist state?

How do you deal with the problem of 'minimals' people how refuse to work out of pure laziness or spite and merely consume from the system without contributing? Is it morally wrong at that point to mandate that they have to provide a minimum amount of work to society? or is that a form of slavery or facism?

Does capitalism or democracy have a place in that kind of society? Do we have to remove the concept of corporations, private ownership, being rich, or inheriting wealth in order to satisfy the conditions needed to create a post-scarcity economy? (So that you don't have a small percentage of people owning just about everything and using far more resources than there fair share)

And what happens when the government can't provide the basics to it's population because of miss-management, incompetence, or some kind of calamity?

It's a nasty practice that I've previously been on the receiving end of. It's not just MSPs either, there's a lot of industries that do that.

At a previous employer I was disciplined for not checking my emails at 3am, because apparently I wasn't allowed to sleep while oncall?

When they threatened to fire me for refusing to comply I quoted them the labor law and showed them how much overtime they legally owed me and they changed their tune pretty fast.

You shouldn't be offering 24/7 service if you aren't willing to have 24/7 shifts.

I've tried real hard to avoid these practices while being a manager. You can't avoid some after hours work in IT, but you can automate away a lot of things, be flexible with schedules, pay OT, and set it up so your staff have infrequent oncall rotations instead of 'all the time' or every couple of weeks.

If I had a magic wand I would wave printers out of existence.

If you're in it for the money and job security I suggest you learn Mainframes... like the old IBM type.

I'm not joking, mainframe guys are super in demand and it's garaunteed job security. You'll be the mainframe guy at a major insurance company or whatever because you'll be the only one that knows have any of it works.

Otherwise IT security is lucrative, but very very stressful.

TLDR: If you have good people, you pay them well, and they don't get burned out then they'll pay more attention, care about the customers, and won't be as prone to mistakes.

The most consistent complaints I hear from existing MSP customers wanting to switchover to us is not being able to get hold of techs on demand, delays in getting support, pushy sales people + constant upselling, regular maintenance not getting done, and straight up incompetence.

For the first two staff are often used to having a dedicated IT person on staff that can show up and teach you to use excel at the drop of a hat. When you're with an MSP you have to deal with the fact that we have a lot of customers and we have to prioritize who gets service when.

We have a servicedesk to provide quick service, but staff often hate calling for support so it's give and take. Having high quality people and good training for the service desk helps, but you also need to have a good escalation path so that people don't waste time on the phone with issues the tech on the line can't fix. Being able to do regular onsite visits helps with the touchy-feely stuff.

We also offer fulltime onsite techs if a company wants, but they have to pay extra for that.

For the pushy sales people, that's a cultural problem within the MSP. We have sales people dedicated to MSP accounts that aren't on the same commission structure as our enterprise sales guys. That helps a lot. The MSP Sales guys get commission based on new contracts and retention so they are more interested in keeping customers happy than upselling them on something they don't need to make their sales targets.

As for incompetence and not getting stuff done... have good people, good managers, and pay your techs what they are worth. Give your techs a chance to learn, listen to their ideas, and innovate. The biggest complaints I get from MSP techs I talk too is dealing with burn out, refusal to pay industry average wages, and not enough time for hands on training. Too many MSPs are only interested in the bottom line rather than developing people, so they become meat grinder shops that go through a revolving door of techs. I've worked very hard not to be like that with my teams...