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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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The article basically says "IT people can be annoying, and it can endanger your personal or work relationships. Never fear though, anything you do may or may not be annoying depending on who you talk to, so, for the sake of your job and your life, damit, stop being annoying!"
Whats so special about annoying IT people? arent there plenty of annoying people in any given profession?
The difference is that you don't approach your users - they approach you. If they are unapproachable by you because they are annoying, there's no loss. If you are unapproachable because you're an annoying prick, they will just suffer through whatever problems they have and you won't have a purpose for continued existence.
Plus, you are paid to deal with annoying users. IT salaries are high for a reason, and it has nothing to do with being the button-monkeys most of them are.
It may be annoying to my end users when I attempt to explain things to them and they don't understand the terms I'm using.
But it's annoying to me when they insist on being ignorant about the tools that they need to do their jobs, and that I'm paid to maintain. A tiny bit of effort on their part would pay huge dividends.
Why is is that people think being ignorant of how a computer works is something to be so damned _proud_ of? Nobody says "I'm car-illiterate" with a little chuckle after they wrap a sedan around a tree, but users who accidentally destroy their computers somehow think it's IT's fault.
--saint
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.
Ha! Here's how that typical scenario goes...
USER: My e-mail doesn't work.
IT: What's wrong?
USER: I can't send e-mail. E-Mail doesn't work. The system must be down.
IT: None of the other 1700 employees have had any problems at all today with their e-mail. Can you be more specific about what your problem is?
USER: It doesn't work for me.
IT: Did the computer give you any error message?
USER: I think so but I wasn't paying attention.
IT: You realize that when something goes wrong on the computer, it tells you what went wrong? That message helps us know what the problem is?
USER: Yes, but e-mail doesn't work.
The article seems slashdotted, so I'll offer three of my own:
1. People who won't read the documentation thoroughly. "How do you use dd?" "Well, it's documented in the man pages." "I know, but I thought I'd ask you." I hate people who want to be spoon-fed the answers. Even worse are the ones who will ask you the same question a week later. DON'T TELL THEM! Make them look it up - they'll learn so much more in the process.
2. People who blame the software. "I found a compiler bug - this loop won't exit." "Um, that's because your exit test is wrong." Count the number of times a person blames the compiler, the libraries, or the operating system for problems that turn out to be their own; this count will be inversely proportional to their quality as a programmer. The worst ones find a new bug in the compiler every day.
3. People who give up too easily. Something doesn't work exactly as it seems it should, so they try a few variations - maybe - and then they run for help. "This doesn't work like the book says it should!" "OK, did you try ____. Or ____? Or _____, or even _____?" No? then why are you bothering me? THINK about what you're doing, then try to figure it out for yourself before crying for help. Perseverance is a quality all good programmers have.
The examples the article mentions really aren't specific to the IT field. Any field that requires a higher degree of knowledge has speciliazed jargon and inside humor. Guess what.. people annoy people. Amazing! Techs annoy end users. End users annoy techs. Chinese people annoy the English. Mac users annoy Windows users. Muslims annoy Christians.
That annoyance is usually the fault of the annoyed because he or she is frustrated because they don't understand. Sure, there are things you can do to not be condescending towards people, but thats more a life skill that everybody should have for everyday life.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Essentially the article says IT guys annoy people who don't know squat about computers, and then these people leave the IT guys alone.
What it doesn't mention is that what annoys IT people to no end are the people who know nothing about computers but try to interject their opinion. You know, the poeple who don't listen to you when you say don't install program X, or don't install anything, or ingeneral ignore you when you say DON'T DO THAT!.
IT people tent to get bad reps because the technology is new and people have been ocnditioned that people who know about it are nerds or geeks. What they should understand is that IT guys are the mechanics of the technical world. You don't but diesle in a gasoline vehicle beause it is cheaper. If you do your mechanic will laugh at you and say don't do that again. The same way you don't instal everything you come across on the internet because your IT guy will laugh at you and say don't do that again. The only difference is you are more liekly to listen to your mechanic than to your IT guy.
Note: you and your probably doesn't apply to the slashdot crowd at large but speaking in third person about ID10T errors is annoying at best, so you was used.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
This is annoying:
"Well, my email is working, so it must be a problem on your end."
This is not:
"Hmm, let me check our mail server - well, everything seems OK there, let's see if the problem is on your computer."
Two ways of saying the same thing, one is antagonistic, the other is constructive.
That's what social skills are all about - learning to communicate effectively.
It's possibly the most vapid article I've read in a long time.
Don't bother posting the text, let me save you the trouble and summarise for you:
a) If you annoy people at work...you might not be promoted. (*gasp*)
b) If you are an annoying person generally, e.g. you annoy the customers, it's possible you're annoying other people too. (*gasp*)
c) In order to not annoy people, try and be less annoying. (*shock*, *horror*)
d) If you're worried about annoying people you need to buy the books and hire the services of the consultants who seem to have been interviewed for the article. (*raised eyebrows*)
That's it. That really is it.
Oh, e) Actually it's alright to annoy everyone so long as you're right and the company benefits. (*errrr?*)
I know it's fun to be smug about this, but this is a serious problem amongst programming teams.
Two teams that I have worked in now seem to hold the belief the the size of one's penis is proportional to the amount of stuff you know - technical or otherwise. Yes, even if it's never going to be relevant to the job at hand, and certainly if it can be used to make someone else feel inferior.
I deal with this every day and now I dread coming into work. However, I doubt that relocating will solve the problem, just suspend it for a while as most programmers seem to be very shy to the new person.
I think what the funniest thing is, however, is that when you do it back to them - to see how they'll react, they get just as mad as I would. They simply have no concept of the damage they do - I mean, none of us are perfect and I'm sure I have done it a few times myself, but I work hard to make sure I don't come off like an ass, even when I want to.
My manager of course, fosters this kind of communication - he thinks (I was told this directly) it creates a more productive environment. In my experience, it disallusions me and makes me want to work less, take more vacation/sick days to get out of work, and generally feel unwelcome everytime I step into the office.
What do I do? I'm a lead programmer at one of the top 50 e-commerce websites in the world. I think I can hold my own and then some when it comes to doing my job, that's never been the problem. IOW, I'm not a marketing guy who's technologically illiterate.
This attitude pushes talent away (we've had several talented interviewees not interested in our team after they interviewed), and productivity will only increase when the people with the problem are either excised or learn how to effectively communicate with their teammates.
Try to understand the type of person you're dealing with, says Steve Smith, a technical business consultant in Seattle for storage maker EMC Corp. "If I'm dealing with a [nonintuitive] person, I need to put things in concrete language. This person doesn't want abstractions."
The problem is a lot of IT, particularly when programming can be abstract, this is not a problem but users as questions like "why isn't it working"
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.
The problem here is that business people know thier business, and say "i have problem X" whereas I don't understand X. so i then ask questions to gain an understanding of X. So now after spending all that time (money) understanding and another boatload of time (money) coding up something which is starting to look like it will do the job the business owner changes thier mind. By this time a change of direction may cost me thousands of pounds and its thier right to change thier mind? Perhaps we would find business people less "annoying" if they were prepared to pay (with money) for thier own indecisiveness.
The Mac zealot.
The born again Christian.
The guy who just saw Fahrenheit 9/11.
The guy who thinks he knows the best restaurant in town.
The Atkins dieter or health nut who tells you how crappy what you're eating is.
The grammar nazi.
People who explain themselves for too long.
word.
Also annoying, people who act annoyed at being asked to do their freaking jobs.
Heres some major annoyances that IT people have to deal with:
-Talking on speakerphone at maximum level (everyone in the office thats not IT)
-Whispering about coworkers in the next cube over (I can hear every word if no ones on speaker phone)
-Slamming doors
-Arguing with coworkers in the hallway (go somewhere else)
-Changing the thermostat every time your personal temperature fluctuates.
-----------
USER: My e-mail doesn't work.
IT: What's wrong?
USER: I can't send e-mail. E-Mail doesn't work. The system must be down.
IT: I don't think the system is down. Let me see. Hmm, I can send mail. I wonder why you can't.
USER: It doesn't work for me.
IT: Did the computer give you any error message?
USER: I think so but I wasn't paying attention.
IT: Ok, let me come look at it. Maybe something is wrong with your account.
-----------
You're supposed to have an attitude of wanting to help, not proving it's not your fault. Jeez, no wonder people hate IT users, with responses like that.
-Dan
How about because using a computer is more complex than driving car?
This is the exact lack of perspective in IT people that I wrote about in another post. Just because you understand what a "command prompt" is doesn't mean everyone else does. But the majority of us knows how to push a gas pedal and steer a wheel.
Computers, unlike cars, constantly have problems that require checking the internal hardware or software configurations. Do you know how to refit your car's exhaust manifold? If cars were as flaky as computers, wouldn't you feel annoyed at the anti-social, nerdy car mechanics whose lives are spent arguing over car model brands as though they're religions, and taking time out of their oh-so-busy schedules of bitching to each other in order to fix your incessant problems?
Yeah...perspective is good.
That's not an article. It's an advertisement for a book.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Dude you are annoying.
There is a reason you don't have root.
You don't need it.
And nothing pisses off an admin more than mr. I run lunix at home I'm so 31337.
So keep your attitude to yourself and understand your job is not to admin the box.
Your job is to do scientist shit.
If you want root get a job as an admin.
Until then shut the fuck up.
Perhaps go clip then in the restroom?
Extremists of all types are really annoying:
The Mac zealot.
Oh yeah, 'cause its a JOY to deal with the people, whom when informed that you have a mac at home, inevitably ask "are you stupid" or some variant of it.
They usually then proceed with demonstrating their abysmal ignorance of all things mac, like stating "it must suck not to be able to open the case" or "man, why did you buy that? You can't even upgrade anything in it!".
Yeah, THOSE people aren't annoying.
health nut who tells you how crappy what you're eating is.
Yeah, people who want you to live long and healthy piss me off...
You can't take the sky from me...
I REPAIR computers for a living. I don't do training. Why do end users think that it is my job to train them how to use a computer? Did any of you pay a mechanic to learn how to drive? Why do end users expect that all IT/geek types are happy to train them, for free non the less, about everything from Basic mouse use to how to do some formula in Excel?
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I find anyone who divides the workplace into "IT people" and "business people" annoying. As if IT is not part of the "group".
Now, the help desk people generally do not have the personal or company resources to adjust the processes to accommodate the available humans. However, there are many people in every organization who do have these resources, and yet do nothing. They sit at their expensive desks jacking off and shopping instead of finding creative solutions to quality and user interface issues. They blame the wage slaves and customers for not precisely following their half assed implementation of a process. They waste company resources by making expensive wage slave replacement a part of the process. I have seen both sides of this, so I am not talking from theory.
So, if you see a problem, and cannot fix it yourself, document the problem, think of a solution, and don't just blame the people calling you.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This can be terribly annoying - I have seen students in upper-division physics courses clipping their nails in the middle of a lecture while sitting in the front row. Why they feel it is so important to clip their nails at that particular time is quite beyond me.
Every client of mine, about 1/3 the men and 3/4 the women have this forced facade of a personality where every syllable is accentuated and they choose words like "Suuperr!! That's just superr!" and it makes me want to kill myself just to listen to. (If you've seen Lost in Translation, think of the blonde that's in Tokyo promoting her movie, and that's what I'm talking about.)
Isn't it funny that the best "actors/actresses", the ones we give Oscars to (usually) are the ones that can come across like they're not acting at all on screen. Genuine people who deliver what they say from who they really are without pre-processing it. But in real life you rarely find these people, everyone's trying to perfect this plastic personality willing to sacrific who they really are just to get a promotion. Even worse is they don't leave it at the job, it becomes permant like tatoo'd makeup. You see them in public or even talking with their "friends" and it's the same fake-speak, forced body language. I feel sorry for the lemmings. How did we get reversed to where Jack Nicholson in The Shining is a far more realistic person than Jenny Smith over in accounting?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
The article says that IT people should improve their communication skills in order to communicate more effectively with other people.
BUT! There is an underlying assumption that the IT person's communication skills are sub-standard.
What if it is the OTHER person's skill that is sub-standard. Well, the easy solution is to say that if the IT person was an even BETTER communicator, then s/he could compensate for the failings of the other person.
From the article: "If I'm dealing with a [nonintuitive] person, I need to put things in concrete language. This person doesn't want abstractions."
Now, the REAL PROBLEM is that it is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT to develop expert skills than it is to develop average skills.
So it will ALWAYS be easier to blame the IT people for not having excellent communication skills than it is to realize that LOTS of people have POOR communication skills (and they're not all in IT).
Again, that quote from the article...
The person you are talking to understands ONE approach and is UNWILLING to work at grasping a different approach...
So YOU have to be able to handle BOTH (or more?) approaches, re-phrase the material in either (any?) format and be able to determine WHICH approach the other person is locked into BEFORE you annoy him/her by repeating your material.
Wouldn't it be so much easier for the other person to come up to an average level of understanding of abstract concepts?
Rather than the IT person becoming an expert in BOTH concrete and abstract forms of communication?
something like:
As an IT person, I find a few of the complainers annoying. Take, for example, Ellen Gottesdiener's statement that business people have a right to change their minds. Yes, they do, and I don't mind that. Change is a fact of life. What I find highly annoying, though, is that those same business people refuse to acknowledge that they changed their minds. They change their minds, don't bother to tell me they have or what the new decision is, then squawk when I'm still working based on the old decisions and then squawk more when I tell them the changes will take more time because I've got to go back and re-do work that's already done.
Another is Gerry McCartney. Certainly often there's no one right answer. The problem is, usually IT doesn't get the luxury of budget and schedule to cover every possible answer. At that point it's supposed to be the business people's responsibility to decide which answer they want to go with, so IT can get on with the job of implementing it. It's horribly annoying when they won't do that, or even indicate priorities so IT can work on the most important (to the business people) stuff first.
The final annoyance is when business people expect me to respect them but they refuse to respect me in return. I was hired to solve technical problems. The business people were hired to solve business problems. If you've got business constraints on the acceptable solutions, don't come to me asking only for the technical solution and then whine when my answer isn't the one you have to have. If there's constraints, tell me what they are so I can factor them in. And be prepared if I have to tell you that there aren't any solutions to your problem that'll actually work that also meet the constraints (real-world example: you want a vehicle with 3750 cubic feet (25x15x10) and 80,000 pounds of cargo capacity, under the constraint that it has to fit into a compact-car parking space). If there's non-technical factors that dictate the solution then don't bother asking me, and don't blame me if the dicatated solution doesn't work.
I hate when people misuse frequently used words too. I'm ok if someone misuses a word that's not part of common human discourse, but "irony", but the concept and the word, ought to be well understood by everyone who, say, graduated high school. I give people points for getting kinda close, though, like if they use it when they mean sarcastic or sardonic. That's kinda close. I once heard someone use it when they just meant "funny" (as in, "Did you see America's Funnient Home Videos last night? This guy got hit in the nuts! It was so ironic I shot Big Gulp through my nose!"). That was really annoying, especially considering that person was college educated. I felt like having him savor the iron-y taste in his mouth after I busted open his lip.
Part of the problem with irony is that it sometimes lurks just below the surface. The poor maligned soul that inadvertantly started this thread-bash may have actually detected irony in this situation and been referencing it, leaving us readers to discover it.
SO: Say my purpose is to reduce the overall amount of annoyance in the world. I write an article, the aim of which is to do that. But my intended purpose is at odds with what actually happens; the article itself is annoying, everyone who reads it gets annoyed, and the article actually increases the amount of annoyance in the world as a direct result of my own inability to practice what I'm preaching in the article itself.
Isn't it ironic? Doncha think? A little tooOOOoo ironic?
(I can't believe I'm actually inviting mod-downs by going back to Alanis Morrissette. I really thought I was better than that.)
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
The people who carry this question that far (as in the article) are the really annoying ones. They're the corporate-culture-nazis, PHBs, HR-types with w-a-a-a-a-y too much time on their hands.
It's one thing too say that being uber-geek with non-geeks is annoying, or arrogance is annoying, or bad hygiene is annoying.
But some of the quotes are way over the top, talking about how we all must constantly monitor EVERY word and mannerism, in ANY company, or else risk contaminating the entire work environment.
These are the same ass-kissing back-stabbing political types who constantly use language like "proactive", "incentivize", "realign", "laser focus", "customer-centric", "team players", "challenge", etc.
Oh, and my favorite -- there are no "problems", only "issues" and "concerns".
Information Technology is a field often unique in a corporate workplace because #1. It's usually a liability and rarely a balance sheet asset, that is to say, IT makes money by saving money, #2. IT will consume all resources available, #3. IT speaks a different language.
:)
Many IT people rarely have the most advanced toolset available due to #1, are often pissed at management due to limitations on #2 and are often misunderstood due to #3.
IT people act as the bridge between the world of the tools and people and it is very important that IT people have solid customer service skills, only the customers are coworkers.
As one administrator overseeing 100 machines, 2 websites, and facilities, I often became overloaded in my last position and garnered a bad attitude which unfortunately made my job harder as people became less communicative about their technical problems and made my deductions more difficult.
The best way to find out what is wrong with a machine is to #1. know your network and #2. ask. If email is no longer working, what were they doing before it happened? What other problems have they been having recently?
It's important the users do not feel foolish or somehow ignorant, for while they are, IT would not appreciate having accounting come down and babble about depreciation schedules as related to long-term profitability and delaying purchases through the end of the fiscal quarter. I would rather hear "we can't afford it right now", much as the user would rather hear, "oh yeah, that sucks, let me come over and look at it as soon as I get a chance. If you could remember what you were doing when it happened, that would help me out a lot in getting you back up."
Remember, the users' jobs are to do work and IT's job is to make it so they can do that work. While a broken machine sucks for us, it prevents the users from achieving their goals... which in the long-term, engangers our jobs as well as theirs.
As long as I had enough energy, I treated my users with respect, encouraging them to call me on the weekends, stopping by if I was nearby and checking to make sure chronic problems were remaining resolved, and sending out emails that let everyone know exactly what was going on in plain english.
And they loved me, they said I was the best admin they'd ever dealt with and they appreciated how much work I put into not just to making the tool work but also into making disruptions as pleasent as possible. Heck, when things were slow, I had them bring in their own laptops for maintainence and all the rest.
What did I get out of it? In two years, my salary doubled (it started a little below average and ended very nicely), we got a lot done technically on a very tight budget (buying as many solid-state components as possible used with warranties), and spent a fraction of what we should have because everyone understood what we needed to do and was in on it... even though I was the only admin.
I graduated with a degree in Psychology and it has made me more valuable than all the certifications in the world because I know that the machine is just a total and the real focus should be on the users. If you can make the machines work for the users instead of the users for the machines, your life will be infinitely better IMHO.
On a coda, I left the field; too stressful. I'm in marketing now and enjoying it. While I miss the thrill of bringing a new server up, installing a new service and watching it's resource use graph climb, or something as simple as replacing shitty mice with nice mice, I don't miss the long hours and the stress. I do miss my users though. I knew everyone in the company, their work hours, and was one of the few to be able to name them all forward and backward.
Customer is king yo, customer is king.
It is natural to resist change as it disturbs the current order we have now and makes things more confusing for us.
Even if we end up with a better language in the long termn, language evolution will be resisted, as it will take effort and confusion to evolve it. Language is such a complicated concept that simply grasping it in the first place is quite a feat. Expecting people to then keep pace with the latest changes in it will, of course, lead to problems. You cannot expect this to be different.
In addition, the fact that both going and coming have been used to represent orgasm presents the very ambiguity you stated that it didn't. Consider: "I waited, and but he came." What does this mean? Ambiguous, eh?
A language without ambiguity helps understanding immensely - without slang, you could understand what that said, immediately. If language was frozen as it was now, perhaps it would remain as bad as it is, but we would all be able to learn its nuances and not have to relearn them.
im in ur
He said he was an 'expert' and know linux 'inside and out' so obviously he know about your solution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"And your periods and commas belong inside the quotation marks."
../." would be more confusing if you didn't realise that the final period was a full-stop, and unrelated to the thing you need to type.
Not if you're a programmer -- see the hackers' dictionary. If the period wasn't in your quote, it would be inaccurate to quote it.
For example, telling someone that a command is "cd
...And IT folks often require the "right" decision, says Gerry McCartney, CIO at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia.
I'll tell you want is annoying: going through three interviews for an IT job at Wharton and then never hearing from them again. Not even a "You sucked, move along." or "We've chosen another candidate."
And this from a prestigeous business school?
(Yes, I'm sure they didn't hire me because of my horrid spelling skills. Or because I need such black and white answers such as "You are hired." or "You are not hired.")
This article completely fails to take into consideration the role particular business practices play in creating annoyances for IT users.
/reduce/ the likelihood of further calls in the future? Who cares if that may help to reduce the stress in the workplace arising from people getting frustrated with systems that just seem to behave arbitrarily, because they don't understand them?
/other/ locations.
i've been told time and time again by users how helpful i am, how clearly i explain things, etc. But who cares, when it's expected that one should resolve all queries in an average of 3 minutes? Who cares that maybe, just maybe, taking an extra couple of minutes to explain how a system works might actually
No, calls 'should' be resolved in an average of 3 minutes, and that's that. Otherwise i'm 'obviously' not 'efficient'. Never mind that my 'inefficiency' in one location is actually reducing inefficiency in multiple
Thanks, needed to get that off my chest.