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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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Yes.
Next slashdot article please.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
when I declared that every other Tuesday was pants-optional day. Needless to say, very few ever join me.
One thing IT geeks need to remember is that if a user is bothering us, something in the system is broken. Even if it's the user that's malfunctioning, they're still a part of the system. They can be repaired via retraining and also replaced via human resouce departments.
I answer questions I know the answer to with "what?", then I answer it. Seems to piss lots of people off. =\
Yes.
I mean, its simple. All you have to do is click on use advanced options radio button, and then click the change advanced settings. No, the little circle first, right. Then the advanced button, and select check hosts file and check Internet Explorer preferences, then click on Next and Continue and, grrr. MOOOVE.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
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
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.
THIS JUST IN: People in the IT sector have the same behavioral traits as all of the rest of the humans on earth. HOLY SHIT!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
I don't mean to be rude, but just how many people clicked that link? This is ComputerWorld here, there are probably a couple hundred readers at any given time. Even if all of them clicked on a link on that site at once, you would expect any reasonably advanced technology to not buckle under the strain.
/. only link to services run on Celerons or what? How the heck many of us clicked that link?
Does
I think this is the only article in the history of Slashdot that could make GNAA comments, trolling and general bad behaviour -- ON TOPIC!
Annoying people exist everywhere. The trick is to direct their annoying behaviour at your foes.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's a beloved tradition.
Some kind of new 21st century discrimination? I have to be in IT to be annoying? huh? HUH? HUH?
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
isn't news supposed to be something we DON'T know?
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
The problem is IT people can interfere with my work, but what I do doesn't affect them. For example, I'm a scientist. I know Linux inside and out and have been using it at home and elsewhere for over ten years. Yet, I don't have root access to my *own* Linux PC at work, which is behind the firewall. So whenever I need something installed, I need to ask IT, wait weeks, explain what's needed ten times to different IT people, and my productivity is hindered. As far as I'm concerned, IT is more or less useless, as I could do their job in addition to mine. And of course they know that -- that's why they don't give root access to us scientists.
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
I like country music and beans, so the answer is no!
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.
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,"
So what do you do? Keep the conversation dumbed down, filled with small talk? I always laughed at the comercials for television shows that said "we'll be talked about at the water cooler tomorrow, make sure you're not the one that misses it". Maybe that is what most people want? I don't buy it.
I try and not talk above anyone. But I don't want to talk down to people either. My solution is to explain things in the simplest way. It is like when I was in college and I knew this one guy who was smart. But I would never ask him for help with anything because he always made things 100 times more complex than it was just to show everyone how much smarter he was. Nobody liked him, not even other nerds. Lets call him Steve for arguments sake. If anyone asked Steve for help, even something as simple as 2+2, Steve would decide that calculus was needed to solve that problem. He then talked so fast, most of the time, to make sure you could not keep up. When Steve saw the confused look on the persons face, a grin would form on his face and he would slow down long enough to mockingly ask "can you follow this, it is really tough stuff you know, so hard". And you could never send him an email without getting it back, grammer corrected. What a prick.
I guess my advice is don't be Steve. Don't be that guy.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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.
I think somebody has a case of the mondays.....
...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!
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.
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.
This all reminds me of a poll reported on by the Register about how end users don't see themselves as responsible for their own actions when related to IT. Relevent quotes: -One in five people surveyed said they are "too busy to download anti-virus updates". -Depressingly, nine in ten of the workers quizzed believe that have no part to play in preventing the spread of viruses, preferring to leave responsibility to "their IT department, Microsoft or the government". With this kind of attitude, it is no wonder IT workers get sufficiently frustrated so as to be "annoying".
I had a coworker that I shared a cube with, who would not only sleep during our lunch break (power napping is ghetto) but would talk in his sleep.
And one time I came back from lunch break and he was, I shit you not, singing The Bengals Eternal Flame in SPANISH. WHILE SLEEPING.
God I still have nightmares of that fucking freak.
Es esto que se quema una llama eterna?
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.
...but, I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume between the hours of nine and eleven...
Because he's my boss. And I'm a total pussy, so I take my gripes to Slashdot where they can be totally ineffective.
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.
I'm just trying to fit in.
-----------
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.
Perhaps go clip then in the restroom?
Who's more irritating then?
I could run circles around one of our IT people and I have no training in the fields whatsoever.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
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...
The only reason I try not to piss people off at work is that I know if I lost my job and live out my dream to poison-gas my high-school reunion, it'll be more work than if I just keep my mouth shut.
Gee, I don't see anything about how annoying cab drivers, waiters, construction workers, football fans, etc, can be. So personally I'm doing s/IT/human/ and fuck the bullshit.
Seriously, this article takes the one group of people who are generally shat on all through their youth and then gets the joy of being blamed for problems due to low budget not lack of foresight and we *still* can't say I told you so, WE'RE annoying? STFU, whores. You'd best believe I can do a lot more than annoy the in-duh-viduals and cow-workers around me. ALL PEOPLE ARE ANNOYING. At least the article bothers to allude to such when they say that "some acts annoy some people and sail right past others"... translation: EVERYONE ANNOYS SOMEONE. Speaking from experience here, if you can't put up with someone who's "annoying", then you're even worse off than they are. The workplace isn't fucking kindergarten. Maybe that person is actively trying to be friendly and for whatever reason, they have different values and strengths than you. I know I'd be annoyed as hell if someone came into my cube and started talking football for half an hour. I still wouldn't tell them to "fuck off", I'd let them know that I wasn't interested. How about this for annoying: people who write articles about IT workers foibles in such a way as to imply that "IT == Geek == Annoying == deserves to lose job". How about this: "Geek == IT worker == I barely have the coping skills to not sever your ugly head and use the blood to paint my bathroom, and you're calling me annoying? Then stay the hell away 'cause I find your pulse and breathing abhorrent". Fuck this article. And fuck all the ex-jocks, ex-cheerleaders, ex-popular assmonkeys who read this and think "Gee, why don't those loser nerds and geeks in IT just act the way I act? I'm perfect (as evidenced by my popularity and physical beauty) so obviously the problem with /those people/ is that nerds and geeks choose to be unliked and so they deserve to be made fun of/ridiculed as annoying/blamed for problem X..."
MOTHER *&@#^(*&@^#*&@ BITCHES!!!! AAAAAGHGHHGHH I HATE STUPID PEOPLE (yet somehow I manage to live with them. Imagine that)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
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".
Maybe his cubicle's a stall in the 3rd floor bathroom. IT jobs just don't have as many perks as they did before the bubble burst, you know. If your job stinks, there's not much you can do about it. Outsourcing's possibly to blame for the lack of jobs. Let's get our workforce out of the bathrooms and into the real world. Fight outsourcing with tooth and nail.
"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.
I personally think that the most annoying thing about some people in IT is their total absence of verbal skills.
For instance, in a previous company where I worked, some of the IT employees could only communicate to other people in the same office via HotMail Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger or some other instant messaging tool. *EVEN* when the person they are talking to is sitting less than a yard away.
And when you try to talk to such people using normal vocal means, they would give you a blank stare, a long pause where they attempt to remember how to talk and eventually they may find it within themselves to say "Umm... can you IM email instead?"
Very frustrating!
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
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!
Peppering conversation with technical jargon... oh my!
What about peppering conversation with business or marketing jargon.
It would seem to me that the message of the article is it's ok for business, markerting and financial types to act according to type, but God forbid that a techy should act according to type.
Business discussions use business language.
Marketing discussions use marketing language.
Financial discussions use financial language.
Technical discussions must now use baby talk, lest we annoy... read, expose areas of ignorance... within the other disciplines.
Who's annoying?... Writers of pap populist biz articles.
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?
My problem with Windows is what people DO know how to do with it remotely.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
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-
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 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.
That people have a 'tact' filter. Some people filter inbound, some people filter outbound, some people filter both ways (rare), and some people don't filter at all.
Non-IT people tend to filter outbound - they don't say something for fear of offending someone. Not always the case, certainly, but by and large that's my experience.
IT people tend to filter inbound. In the days of yore, it wasn't uncommon to see discussions where "What are you, stupid?" was said, and generally it wasn't taken personally. It was just one of those things that was understood.
These days, there's more of a mix of people fitting the inbound vs. outbound filtering groups, and that leads to problems in business.
This article does a pretty decent job of highlighting one of the things I find to be the most ironic about IT personnel (and I have been one for almost 15 years now) - they tend to get into the business because they don't have to deal with people and don't want to. Yet IT work these days requires more interaction with people, not less.
Take Directory Services technology; according to Burton Group's studies, implementation of directory services technologies is 80% politics and 20% technology. The technology isn't really that difficult, but getting agreement between the various groups who own parts of the data about who owns particular pieces of data requires a fair amount of negotiation and people skills.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
I know this thread is laid to waste... but I need to vent, so deal with it...
Around my cube I have 8 neighbors...
1) 20s White Male - listens to his headphones and drums on his desk with his pens... occationally kicks the back of the cube every few beats... likes to talk to his mommy and wife or both at least every 60 minutes. Thinks that in order to speak with non-native English speakers you need to yell at them loudly. Did I mention the customers he supports are in Taiwan?
2) 20s White Male - not annoying at all... yeay!
3) 50s Fat White Male - eats non stop during the day... favorite food is apples, so I listen to him crunch apples aaaaaaaalllll day long. All the fiber tends to make him a bit flatulant... he's shameless when letting them rip... they're loud and stink and he "giggles" after a loud one... occationally calls out "sorry!" if it's loud and instantly smelly.
4) 20s Asian Female - Probably the most attractive female in this section of the building... which means she has non-stop male visitors who come by to "say hi"... when she's not talking, she's eating and making disgusting slurping noises...
5) 40s White Male - nice guy... makes some weird noises occationally, but 99% of the time he's quiet...
6) 40s Asian Male - very nice guy... clips his nails at his desk... yeeeeccchhh
7) 50s White Male - laughs like count dracula (not a joke, he's just a freak), looks like the news reporter on sesame street when he talks (i.e. jaw stays stationary and the top of his flops and pivots while he talks). Clips his nails at his desk... big problem there-- he gets distance out of the nails. I've found one laying on my desk and/or floor occationally. I've vowed to beat him to death with a power cord if one lands while I'm in the cube.
8) 40s White Female - Very nice, but has a very long and drawn out "fake" laugh that she uses constantly... gets on your nerves if you're already stressed out from the other freaks.
We also have at least "cougher" on any given day... which is someone who has a combination of AIDS/TB/Polio/Herpes and is coughing as though this is the last 10 minutes of their life...
whew... I feel a bit better... I like to think that I'm like #2... I don't make any noise... I stay off the phone except for business, and even then I try to stay quiet... never listen to music loud, and when I do listen I don't drum or pump my leg to the music... never eat at my desk or perform personal grooming acts...
No room here though, so read it here.
** Heller
On another instance I did an hour and a half round trip to type a persons surname into a login prompt - since the person's supervisor would let me talk to them directly and refused to pass on a message. I'm sure they were annoyed by me assuming I knew the solution to the problem without seeing the screen.
Since then, whenever I need to log into a MS Windows machine I always type the clients login name into the box after I have finished - just the same as what they see when they turn the computer on.
I'm very good at annoying accountants - they cannot concieve of the idea of building an ordinary PC from parts, and the paperwork involved consumes far more time than assembling the PC - so it probably would end up cheaper to buy one assembled for an extra hundred or two. When IDE cables and mice are listed as assets it's time to duck and cover - and if you put a low end machine together out of mostly spares, it gives accountants the horrors.
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.
If you truly believe, or can prove, that a disproportionate percentage of IT workers are "annoying", perhaps you're missing a much more pervasive underlying cause? Perhaps you should investigate the prevalence of giftedness, High-Functioning Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and similar traits within the technical segment of the industry?
Further, I'd suggest that those who aren't so "afflicted" had better learn to be more tolerant, because IT and in fact the whole of science and engineering would not be what it is without these people, pleasant to work with or not; THEY have the talents that more pleasant and tactful - but average - people lack. The entire history of scientific achievement owes its very existence to these extreme Yin-Yang social outcasts, stretching back to naked-in-the-street Archimedes and beyond.