Computer Jargon Too Difficult for Office Workers

slashflood writes "Most office workers find computer terms such as javascript and jpeg just as difficult to understand as a foreign language, according to a new survey. A poll of 1,500 staff by recruitment firm Computer People showed that three out of four wasted more than an hour every week simply finding out what some technical term meant. 'A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.'"

Comments

Article misses the point

[TripMaster Monkey]

I laughed myself sick reading this article...especilly the oh-so-helpful second page, entitled 'what it all means'.

Here's an especially good one from the list:

• Excell - this helps to run programs on your PC.

With 'helpful' articles like this, us IT professionals should remain in demand for a good long time. ^_^

But seriously, a good IT professional isn't one who's good at explaining the jargon, or getting laypeople to understand the technical isues...it's one that takes care of the issues for the laypeople, so they don't need to worry about them. A correctly managed IT department should be all but transparent to the other people in the office. Everything should just work, with the IT guy making certain the users' needs are met before they even know what they are. In a correctly managed facility, the IT guy's phone should almost never ring.

Re:Article misses the point

[Nos.]

But seriously, a good IT professional isn't one who's good at explaining the jargon, or getting laypeople to understand the technical isues...it's one that takes care of the issues for the laypeople, so they don't need to worry about them.

I think you came very close to hitting the nail on the head, but instead walked away with a brusined thumb. For most of us, understanding the issues that these people don't understand is common knowledge to us. We can take the time to explain these things to our customers or we can fix the problem, we can explain how to avoid similar problems in the future, or structure the environment to avoid them. To me, a "good IT professional" is one who recognizes what the customer wants and provides. Having worked a few help desk and similar type positions, I can tell you that some people don't want the problem fixed, they want to understand the problem. Others don't care, they just want it to work.

Now, there may be other obstacles to providing exactly what the customer wants. Most help desks don't want you spending 20 minutes on the phone with someone explaining why sending Grandma who's on dial up, 20 pictures from your 8MP digital camera may not be a good idea. However, I've always found that taking the time you have available to explain things at the level the customer wants, results in a much happier customer.

I said customers, but this of course can apply to anyone for whom you are working on a problem for. This also applies outside of IT. When I had someone in last year to clean our ducts, I spent a lot of time talking with him to find out what I could do to reduce dust and such in the air and picked up a lot of valuable information that has saved me money since then. Next time I need the ducts cleaned, I'll be calling him back because he was willing to pass on information and experience to me.

Re:Its not just computers.

[AKAImBatman]

"Test Procedure Specification" as defined by IEEE 829, mostly used in government work.

And as far as I'm concerned, workers need to get used to the jargon or take a hike. Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different. No one is asking that the average user understand coding, but understanding things like storage space is a requirement.

Re:Simple solution

[AKAImBatman]

Empower IT with HR's traditional roles of hiring, promotion, and termination.

And you wonder why people hate IT departments.

Listen, this "holier than thou" attitude is just stupid. Do you know how to diversify a portfolio to meet acceptable risk according to an efficient frontier formula? Well, some of those "idiot users" do. Does that make them smarter than you? If so, should they have veto power on how you run the network?

IT people are not necessarily smarter, despite what they may think. The goal is to work together in a company, and find solutions that take into account problems that employees may have. Which also means that locking everyone's computer so they can't do anything may not be the correct solution. Maybe, just maybe, users occassionly have a need that you're going to have to work extra to fullfill. That's why you were hired, not so you can sit on your duff and complain about all the work that users make for you.