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Originally Posted by Acropolis
I have worked for both Telewest and NTL both inhouse and as a contractor, on installs, service and as a supervisor. I state this purely so you can see i have experience.
There is a massive difference between the way inhosue and contractors work yes, mainly down to the way contractors are treated by the cable companies, no real support is given, and stock is very hard to get hold of. We went through a stage where we couldnt get STB or SACM's at all, yet the inhouse guys had loads but we were still expected to do the installs? How? Cab keys were a constant battle to get hold of, try and we would they just wouldnt give us any, yet still expected us to do the work without causing damage, and they would frequently throw more work than we could handle at us, so you would take on more engineers then the work load would just disapear once again. I had weeks where i would be sending engineers out with 15-18 jobs each per day, then next week they would be lucky to have 3 or 4, when this is happening its impossible to organise staffing levels properly.
I can not speak for Telewest as it has been some time since i have had anything to do with their network, but as for NTL, from where i have worked mainly around the midlands area, the network is a disgrace especially around the Leicester area. The cabs are a disgrace and its impossible to find what you are looking for and spare drops, i have been to cabs where there are not enough taps for the demand by far. As for jumpering, I came accross a lot of faulty connections on E and D sides, which would cause problems with jumpering, so some engineers rather than ringing up would just pull cables, or wouldnt check to make sure a pair was dead before connecting to what they had been assigned, a lot of this was due to problems with NTL's routing dept, and when you tried to phone them it was a joke. I spent 3 hours on hold one day trying to get a pair i could use, it just want possible to speak to them on every job, or you would only get a couple done each day.
As for working for contractors, then there is a potentional to make a lot of money, depending on which company you are working for, when i was installing i would regualry do £3500 per month, ok i was doing a lot of work for that money. But the company I was working for lost the contract and everyone got TUPE'd accross to another firm and the pay structure was completely different, whereas i was making £300 a day for instance under the new scheme i would only have been £120 or so, so it wasnt worth it for me, so i stayed with the existing company and am now very glad i did as i have a brilliant job that really doesnt involve doing all that much to be honest, but is varied and very interesting.
At the end of day, it may come to something or it may not, those that have been around in the game for a while, will know that whenever a rumour like this comes out it always gets blown out of all sense very quickly, and what people are saying very rarely turns out to be true. When the rumours about the company i worked for loosing the contract started, there was uproar instantly that the company was going bust, they wouldnt be able to afford to pay the wages etc etc, and a lot of the crews downed tools and didnt come into work, hiding the vans etc as a means of expecting to be paid for their work, now i can understand that there are going to be some concerns, but that kind of behavour only makes matters worse, and all it ended up doing was getting them the sack and reported to the police. Whereas if they had listened to what they had been told then they would have been fine, the scarey thing was most of them had been through the process several times before as well, utter stupidity. I got told repeatidly i was a fool for staying with the company after they lost the contract as i would be out of work within weeks etc etc, after a couple of months they new contrators got rid of a load of them, and they all came looking for work from the origanal company, hahahaha who's the fool eh.
Listen to what is been said, dont take it all for gospel granted, but dont assume they are out to screw you over either, at the end of they day, they still need people to do the work, and without techs/service/network etc etc they have no business.
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