Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - A reaction that is a little more balanced, like this?

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Those attacks make me uncomfortable. Makes all of us seem . . . defensive.

2 - That sounds right.

And for the customers, I've seen a high percentage base his/her choice for one vendor or the other not based on price, feature-set, service, etc but just a preference for/against a vendor. It's personal bias rather than a business decision.

3 - Sometimes a personal bias, is still a business based decision.

Often a vendor that is disrespectful, is dumped because it's not worth the morale lost with employees who have to deal with them.

4 - I totally agree. We rarely know the whole story behind the business decision, and sometimes it's just a decision, and we'll never get more details.

This is like bitching on the previous Notes guy on his poor code: you don't know what were the conditions then, the guy's background and knowledge. Your job is to make things better and complaining about the past won't help.

Let's all be productive and as it's been said, look at ways we can prevent this situation the next time.

5 - Many times these decisions are 95% emotional so business rationale is not going to help. It's like telling my teenager he doesn't need a new car. His mind is made up. I'm just making noise. The attractiveness of the other deal needs to somehow erode. Illustrating that requires some offense against the other deal IMO.

6 - "This is like bitching on the previous Notes guy on his poor code: you don't know what were the conditions then, the guy's background and knowledge."

I do curse them sometimes and I've even commented my objections to one in particular at length in one piece of code I am now responsible for (I don't want my successor to think it was me that did it!) but the quoted point is true and fair and one I do very much try to remember when the impulse to rant starts.

With respect to the focus of the blog post I can only concur. I hate it when I see that kind of negative vibe put about in response to some kind of perceived loss.

Nearly twenty years ago I worked under an ex-Army brigadier and he once threw out a tender response from a well known company with an excellent product - possibly the best available product - simply because one of the pages on that company's tender response had been printed squint. They took it on the chin and that is as it should be. The decision had nothing to do with the merits of the product but it wasn't emotive either - the squinty runty tender document was viewed as evidence of poor quality control and extrapolated into possibly poor customer service we weren't prepared to take a chance on.

Sometimes decisions get made for seemingly unfathomable reasons. The company I refer to didn't whine about it and good for them - we noted the manner of their response.

7 - Carl,

I fully agree with your statement. Having been involved in many competitive situations I learned that respect for other solutions, perspectives and choices is essential