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Rant: Lazy Documentation, NX-OS and Asking for Feedback

2nd July 2012 by 5 Comments

I mostly read the PDF versions for Cisco Documentation. Mostly because reading in a web browser isn’t as good as using Preview on a Mac and certainly more preferable than the lousy font rendering in MS Windows.

On a separate note, I loathe being asked to complete customer surveys and providing feedback because it happens so often. It must be fashionable among the MBA and marketing types because it never bloody stops. It sure feels like every vendor interaction these days involves taking yet another survey. It can’t be long before a survey will be included in the PO acceptance process – This sounds disturbingly possible: SalesRep: “Hi, I see you didn’t complete our customer survey on the Purchase order. I’m sorry but we accept your order until you complete the anonymous survey”.

Yeah right. Anonymous my hat.

But I digress. It’s certainly easy to waste hours in a week answering stupid surveys and feedback requests.

But right now I’m get mighty annoyed when reading ANY documentation for the Nexus product line you get this on every bloody page:

  1. It’s really annoyingly offensive
  2. It’s aesthetically ugly to the document layout.
  3. It’s been there for over three years.
  4. I hate being asked to do someone else’s job for them. Are they too lazy to check it for themselves ?

I’ve sent them an email :

Here is my document comment: Can you please remove the ” Send document comments to [email protected] from the top of every page in PDF version. It’s really, really annoying. I’m tired of being asked to do your work for you.

Please help me in improving my work life by ridding the world of this visual abomination and send an email to nexus7k-docfeedback@ cisco.com

I thank you.

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • Dan

    Ohhh Greg… you hit one of my biggest annoyance points with my datacenter provider. The pain in dealing with them is almost unbearable at times and never gets better but they are CONSTANTLY asking and reminding us to complete the feedback surveys. I have been loudly refusing to complete them in protest and I go on record about why and and you hit that nail on the head too, MBA and marketing types!

    • http://twitter.com/tatersolid Ryan Malayter

      If you’re talking about Rackspace, I feel ya. Love most everything about them, but the survey overload needs to stop. They even send “two-question surveys” via email where the survey content and response links are in the HTML message body. Shudder.

      • Dan

        Nope, we use Rackspace for some very light hosting, the provider I’m referring to starts with the next letter in the alphabet.

  • Colby

    Really doesn’t bother me.

  • will

    Then again, this documentation is for us (guys who work on the gear) and no one else. Something tells me many would be complaining if there was not a way to fix these documents. I’ve sent a number of emails on my first year working with the 7Ks asking them to fix a few things with the documentation, ccing my account rep, and was provided feedback on some of those occasions.

    I do not know of any other vendors who do this.

    I hate to complain when they’re offering a chance to provide input that the engineering group will read.