PHBs Getting "Secret" IT Training

An anonymous reader writes "As if all of us aren't already already aware of this, PHBs don't know jack squat about computer technology, and they won't seek any training from their own IT staff because that would be an admission of "weakness" so instead they are getting outsiders to train them in secret." Lucrative work for the secret tutors I s'pose. I guess getting tutored in secret is better than just floundering in ignorance.

Comments

slashdotters are equally clueless

[puzzled]

I find it funny that a group that collectively has trouble with personal hygiene, getting a date, ever getting a second date, finding something to talk about besides computers, etc is down on high level executives.

So they don't know computer applications. They know finance, marketing, operations, negotiating, and a host of other things that mostly don't have anything to do with computers, but do have a lot to do with ongoing success.

One of the happiest, best paying environments I ever worked in had me reporting to a division controller responsible for operations accounting related to stores doing $200M in sales annually. She was almost helpless on all sorts of things computer related, but she could sign purchase orders faster than I could type and when HQ IS weenies got under foot her head would spin around, she'd spit nails, etc, etc, and they'd go back to guarding their silly little mainframe, while our mighty intranet continued to win the hearts & minds of the people in the field.

Instead of poking fun at them, maybe you should study them - they *are* the ones with the money/power/cars with power windows that work - you might just learn something.

Re:MOD PARENT AS HIGH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE

[stonecypher]

Sometimes I hate being right.

This seems about as problematic as an Arab nomad behing hydrophobic. Hint: patting yourself on the back doesn't make you seem right.

I though I illustrated it pretty clearly by what I chose to quote.

Oh, sure. And if what you chose to quote didn't significantly alter the meaning of what was being said by inference of context, you might have half a point.

Or perhaps you consider belittling "dorks" to be a valid social skill.

No, but I'm more than happy to sound off about the holier-than-thou tech jock that read two Compaq manuals and thinks he's Wozniak.

You seem to take cause to imply responsibility. I don't.

Bullshit. If it weren't about responsibility, the quote would pack no weight. That's like saying "you're the kind of guy that sets off avalanches sneezing."

The implication that you're now pretending that you didn't make is that I'm some sort of overbearing bully. What you cartoonishly fail to realize is that the converse is true: you IT dorks lord your competence over other people's heads as if it is the very definition of being a tool using mammal to know how to take a macro virus out of MS Word. If the user cannot merely upgrade a video driver to fix a bug, they are the simplest of buffons, not fit to spit shine the shoes you won't wear because they're too old. If the user can't do something ostensibly as simple as running their virus updater, they are beneath the contempt of the species, not fit to pity, surely encoded in a lesser genome made of tar, filth, potted meat product and caffeine-free rc cola.

Anything the user doesn't know how to weild is blamed on the inability to handle simple tool use, something a different IT orangutan in a different branch of this thread is being his chest about at this very moment.

What you aspergers rejects don't seem to fully grasp is that that's not simple tool use. When I have to call AAA because my car started making a horrible sound while I was driving, does the tow truck guy make fun of me for not recognizing the sound of a pebble stuck under my brake pad? No. When my garbage disposal overflows, and the plumber has it fixed in under five minutes with a drain snake after I flooded my apartment for two days being certain of my ability to handle it myself, do I get an earlashing about how I should learn to use a wrench and a flashlight? No. When the neighbor kids hear you can burn letters into someone's lawn with fertilizer, does the grounds guy harass me for not knowing you can't just wash it away because it'll be permanent? Nope.

The problem isn't that people can't handle simple tool use. The canonical example, my mother, which by rote cannot set either her VCR clock or her car stereo presets, is quite adept at moving between MS Word and IE. This is all a user should need to know how to do, other than turning the damned thing on and off, and maybe how to start pinball. It's a tool! It's a multiple thousand dollar tool! Why can't it just be made to fucking work right?

Granted, that's voiced as Joe Average User; like every slashdot relic, i yearn for the days when the subpar BBS loser knew his IRQ and DMA/HDMA list by heart, and could probably whistle his init strings. Big scary microsoft word doesn't scare me any more than you, and like you, I find it somewhat disappointing that there's so much confusion over a tool which generally works without fuss.

Unlike you, I still have ties to my mortal soul. I remember what it was like to be befuddled by the literally hundreds of similarly (badly) named menu items, grotesque lists of impenetrable options arranged in a fashion familiar only to those familiar with the underpinnings of software and the generic OS metaphor.

Of course, you seem to have missed in both of your points that I was doing something other than to belittle IT jocks. For one, I'm only belittling those which have the attitudes; I for one didn't, back when