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Are You Annoying?
cweditor writes "This Computerworld article looks at some habits of people in general and IT pros in particular that can drive co-workers crazy."
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Are You Annoying?
Irritating behaviors not only annoy your co-workers, but they can also compromise your effectiveness and even derail your career.
News Story by Alan S. Horowitz
JULY 23, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Do you tell IT insider jokes that users don't understand? Do you sprinkle technical jargon through discussions with business people? Do you find that you've usually got the right answer to any problem and you let everyone know it? If so, you may be something you didn't think you were: annoying.
Everyone's annoying some of the time, says Kimberly Alyn, a corporate trainer and co-author of Annoying People and Why You're One of Them (Llumina Press, 2003). But annoying behavior can have serious consequences in IT, where it can compromise your effectiveness, wreak havoc with projects and even derail your career.
Annoying behaviors are tricky because what annoys one person may sail by another. "You can say the same thing the same way to two people, and one person will say, 'Damn, that's annoying,' and the other person will not think anything of it," says Dan Bent, CIO at Benefit Systems Inc. in Indianapolis, an administrative services provider to health care plans.
But annoying behavior in IT sends ripples through the whole business. Gary Langer, associate vice president for academic technology at Chicago's Roosevelt University, explains that when IT support people are annoying, "people lose confidence, and they just give up. They stop asking questions."
Bent concurs. "You're always communicating with other people, and if you're annoying them, it reduces the likelihood your message will get across," he says.
Projects may also suffer. Jackie Palmer, a senior product manager at CRM software maker E.piphany Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., tells of participating at a meeting for a large insurance company that involved implementing process change. "The only way to do it is get [users] to buy in themselves," says Palmer. But a consultant at the meeting began to dictate what would happen. "The users became very combative," she recalls. It took several weeks of meetings to resolve the issues, and the project fell behind schedule.
If you think that you can't be annoying because you often work alone, think again. You still deal with people for support, advice and information, as well as to get a promotion, notes Gini Graham Scott, author of A Survival Guide for Working With Humans (Amacom, 2004).
For the worst offenders, the consequences of being annoying are potentially dire.
"Say someone comes to you and asks you a question today, and they find you annoying," says Bent. "Maybe the next time, they'll ask someone else. Soon people stop coming to you and asking you things, and you end up without a job."
The IT Niche
IT has its own annoying quirks. Langer says some IT people label users as neophytes and then blame them for any difficulties. "The user insists their e-mail doesn't work, and the IT person says, 'My e-mail works perfectly,' and assumes the user is the problem. Users really find this annoying," he says.
Some IT people are so sure they know what the problem is that they don't even listen to the user, says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director at IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology in Menlo Park, Calif.
IT people expect users to always know what they want, and they can get exasperated when they don't. "Business people have a right to change their minds, because the business changes," says Ellen Gottesdiener, principal consultant at EBG Consulting in Carmel, Ind.
And IT folks often require the "right" decision, says Gerry McCartney, CIO at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia. "[They] have diffic
...take for instance yesterday. The developers, who are fully aware of how email works, came to me and said that one server couldn't send email from another server. So I asked them if they had tried logging into the server to telnet to the mail port on the other server. Of course, they hadn't. I did it, with root and the regular user, and it worked fine in both instances.
In the space of ten minutes, they had wasted my time. They had distracted me from what I was doing. And why? They assumed that the script they were writing couldn't possibly be at fault. They didn't take basic steps (that they knew how to do!) and assumed that the problem must be with the servers.
The next time they come to me, I will be less likely to be as willing to help, as I will know that they have both wasted my time before and have not likely taken basic steps to troubleshoot. So I will be more annoying next time.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
Just install the software in your home directory. Then you have your own copy that you maintain.
I have tons of personal stuff I use installed in my home directory at work. The nice thing about UNIX software is that 99% of it can be installed anywhere, and doesn't have to be in system directories. You also don't need root to install 99% of software.
The only downside is fascist admins who discourage the practice, or filling up the disk with your copy of SuperStatistics2002 which takes up 3GB. This is obviously impractical for very large software packages or stuff that requires licensing.
-Z
Ugh.
Work for the team, or contract yourself out. IT is like a support medic, if there's no one to support your job is useless.
Either way, soon enough you'll be out of a job (or won't get one) if you're a prick.
Why don't you install the stuff you need in $HOME?
/usr or /usr/local.
I do. But sometimes it's not so simple as just editing one line in the Makefile. Lots of software expect themselves to be in
Plus, there's the annoying limitation that our home directories are only allowed to be 400 megs. (Because they back up the home directories and don't want to back up too much, I suppose)
Here is a nice story from the Guardian that might clue you in a little bit.
Oh, co-workers who correct colleagues on points of grammar and/or spelling are, in fact, annoying.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Your frustration is understandable, of course. After you figure out what the problem is, you can remind the user to check the error message, not do what he/she was doing wrong, etc. But being mean about it isn't going to fix the problem, it's just going to make them not want to ask you when they have a problem. When that starts happening, people start to hate IT and start thinking about replacing them.
Even if the user is wrong every time, it's your responsibility to help them. Some people just never learn, but if you keep helping them in a friendly way, they will worship you and think you are indispensible. When you start to write them off and act like it's always their fault, they will be just as frustrated with you and want to get rid of you.
-Dan
Although I really, honestly, believe that you could be trusted with root on your linux box at work. (and if you just send your IT guys my way. I'll be willing to vouch for you.) there are some scenarios where giving even experienced users root is a bad idea for the company as a whole.
Unfortunately, where I am is the worst of all worlds. The machines are maintained with automation tools, but they are set up poorly, so the default install is already screwed up. PC Tech support ignores Unix machines, so they are on their own and maintained by the individual users.
Irony is one of those words that's very quickly being redefined by modern usage.
((please note, the usage of "you" in the following argument is defined as "you understood", the common plural usage. Not the singular usage. Or did that change?))
Ah, yes, the old "I'm too lazy to pick up a dictionary and find out what a word REALLY means so I'll just modify it" clause. While I am not picking on you in general, it does seem a custom to just change the meaning of a word. "moot", "hacker", and now an important literary term called "irony".
What about twenty, twenty-five years from now? Conversation will become more ambiguous (wait, that word still means 'open to more than one interpretation' right?). We, as a society, over time, have formulated words to more clearly define things. Take a look at any older language and you'll be hard pressed to find such modifiers as "terrible", "horrible", "fabulous", and "fantastic".
And now, just because someone doesn't feel like paying attention in English class, meanings of words get changed by the vulgar (definition 3). Years from now English classes will teach courses in "Irony: Not the modern kind, but the kind that employs such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect."
Why not just use a different word for what you mean? We have 26 letters, create a new word.
---
Personally, my favorite response for the mis-use of irony is: "I believe thw word you were straining for was "coincidence". Irony deals with opposites, coincidence deals with things that are related. If a rescue helicopter happened to have killed the person they were trying to rescue, that would be irony. The fact that you are a moron and mixed up the definitions of 'irony' and 'coincidence' is just a coincidence".
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
"Well, my email is working, so it must be a problem on your end."
But WHAT is going to be done? WHEN will it be fixed?
"Hmm, let me check our mail server - well, everything seems OK there, let's see if the problem is on your computer."
The investigation is CONTINUING.
Now, to make the FIRST response into a CONTINUING investigation....
"Well, my email is working, LET'S SEE IF THE PROBLEM IS on your end."
There, that doesn't sound so annoying now, does it?
Most times, it isn't the response, it is the whether the end-user feels that his problem will be fixed and how soon.
Praise English and its holy creators.
If a rescue helicopter happened to have killed the person they were trying to rescue, that would be irony. The fact that you are a moron and mixed up the definitions of 'irony' and 'coincidence' is just a coincidence".
I'm going on a limb here but if what you descrive is irony. Maybe people thinkg that its not irony because "Michael is a really damn annoying and he is trying to teach us how to not be annoying". Nice try but is it not irony if "Micheal is annoying the hell out of us talking about annoying people."
Sounds like a leadership problem to me. And, before I continue, I'm currently a softare engineer who is also a technical lead on a small team. I believe that I know where's you're coming from.
When you boil it down, the workplace behaviors that you're describing reads like a combination of intellectual elitism and childish insecurity.
What the article didn't address is the commonly held, and still sometimes too true, stereotype that "nerds don't have good social skills". I've encountered my fair share of alpha geek wannabe's and been one myself (although I'd like to believe that I've since reformed).
I believe that leadership at your company, and you should take a role here as well, should attempt to subtly curb the intellectual elitism quotient. Not being a leadership expert (no pointy hair here just yet...), I believe that there is a component of tolerance, on your's and your cultures part, that has to remain but tempered by some degree of discipline.
As you stated, clearly, you aren't the only person troubled by this insecure behavior--because, if someone is always struggling to be ahead of everyone else, they must have some fear of inferiority, right? Take offenders aside, on an individual basis, and take the time to explain your concerns to them. Assuming that you have some degree of authority in your workplace, and that the individual in question has the slightest concern over maintaining a steady paycheck, it ought to act as a cold splash of water in the face.
The trick here is that you don't want to alienate your team members while you're disciplining them. You don't want to bitch slap them (well, ok, maybe you do) but a line has to be drawn and they have to understand where that line is.
I'm on my eighth tech job, having moved around a lot by choice early on in my career, and every workplace has had some alpha geek quotient. The more rudderless the team has been, the worse that quotient gets out of hand. (I feel like a pointy hair wannabe saying this but) I truely believe that leadership is the key here.
But annoying people are generally to be dismissed, executed, or sent off to die on some god forsaken hill.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
IE doesnt support blink, you're thinking netscape and Mozilla.Man, the MS bashing has hit a new low when people are attributing Moz/Netscape stuff to MS.
http://webdesign.about.com/library/tags/bltags-
It is true that English is constantly evolving. There's no question about it, and it isn't just in the area of vocabularly, either. "Billy" Shakespeare's grammar takes a lot of effort for someone raised in the 20th or 21st centuries. Point taken.
That does not imply that therefore anything goes in language. To extend the evolution metaphor, not all language mutations are viable offspring. AND, in my opinion, the current mutation of "irony" tends towards confusion. Here's why: "irony" is a technical term in the literary profession, just like "gigabyte" is a technical term in the computer profession. If "irony" gets redefined or even extended through common usage, it becomes inrementally more difficult for literary discussions to take place with clarity.
Much the same problem has happened when the term GB was redefined by the hard-drive industry to mean "1 000 000 000 bytes", which allowed them to inflate their capacity claims. Few were fooled, but it made purchasing hard drives more annoying, because it required reading the fine print just to find out how much storage was actually on the drive.
So, while I agree with the general idea of an evolving language, I would hold that technical terms should be considered "reserved words."
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Not, that would not be irony. Unless you define "irony" to mean what Alanis Morissette evidently thinks it does. She's wrong and you're wrong.
Let me give you an example of irony. Take this sentence:
"ticklemeozmo certainly has grasped the concept of irony"
That was dripping with irony, get it? Your rescue helicopter example isn't irony, it's a twist of fate. In fact, your misunderstanding of the term irony probably stems from the usage:
"Fate must have a keen sense of irony to allow that helicopter to crash on the person it was rescuing"
The above is not the same as your use of the term. Allowing the helicopter to crash on the rescuee might be seen as an ironic statement by Fate, if you believe Fate was in control of the helicopter in the first place. As a disinterested observer the crash holds no irony for us, and certainly not for the person being crashed upon, in and of itself.
OTOH, your use of the helicopter example in a post lambasting another poster for his misunderstanding of irony, is, in a word, ironic.
Google for more references, here's a couple to start you off:
http://www.politicaljuice.com/2004/05/defining_iro ny.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ironic (check the usage note)
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Swing and ooo, foul ball. Close though.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Irony
Use of irony
The word "irony" is frequently used figuratively, especially in such phrases as "the irony of fate", of an issue or result that seems to contradict normal expectations derived from the previous state or condition. Irony of fate
The expression "irony of fate" stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals, with deliberate ironic intent. For example:
* Ludwig van Beethoven's loss of hearing;
* The rain that sets in immediately after one finishes watering one's garden, following many days of putting off watering in anticipation of rain.
Situations resembling poetic justice, but lacking the aspect of justice, may also be ascribed to the irony of fate.
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.