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Is A Bad Attitude Damaging The IT Profession?
dtienes writes "Why does IT get a free pass to insult users? Slamming customers isn't acceptable in any other profession; doctors don't call their patients "meatbags" — at least, not publicly. But IT professionals think nothing of wearing their scorn on their sleeves (or at least their chests — just check out ThinkGeek). There's more at stake here than just a few hard feelings. IT may be seriously damaging the credibility of the profession. See the essay I'm An Idiot (And Other Lessons From The IT Department) for a former IT professional turned user's take on insults, attitudes and ethics.
(Full disclosure: The submitter is also the author.)"
Insulting the "client" isn't constrained to the IT market, it may be more visible to /.ers, but seemingly many
"professionals" think an attributes of being a professional
include being an unmitigated asswipe to those less knowledgeable.
My personal experience with over 25 years now in IT is that many times the asswipe-ness of an IT professional is inversely proportional to what they know and how well they know it. While I've known some brilliant IT staff who were grumpy, most of the anointed geniuses-with-attitude were self anointed, and less than geniuses (doesn't mean they didn't know anything, just that the attitude was a convenient and easy facade to hide behind).
The insulting IT staff were the ones I avoided -- mostly their expertise, as it were, was a diminished return in being held hostage by "their schedule", and their attitude. I'd much rather find assistance with a less competent person who is self aware and interested in helping find a solution if they don't know it themselves.
Admittedly there is a consumer demographic cowed by the angry IT support, and they probably accept and suffer more insult than they deserve. But, in the long run, I think any IT staff member who glories in his or her rancor and animus with the client grossly underestimates the long term impact on their reputation and career. If you think customers don't talk... and consider alternatives when they present, think again. (I long since have avoided Circuit City for not only rude treatment and condescension, but that kind of treatment coupled with virtual incompetence on that for which they condescended..., literally thousands of my dollars have gone elsewhere solely on "rude behavior" by "professionals".)
It pays to be nice.
(And, regardless of the sans-clue clientèle's, there are rarely circumstances that warrant abuse of the customer.... )
Sure, our profession and hte durrounding culture allows for the type of user tratement the author describes.
But don't think for a minute that IT folks don't need ethics. We often get to see data first hand that lawyers need subpoenas to obtain.
One can laugh at their user's technical abilities all they want, but the minute you talk about their data or the inside of their business, the IT career is over. As is the option for any other meaningful career.
Huh?
What about those customers who then treat IT like dirt every time a problem occurs? IT is only the savior when something gets fixed.
One thing IT professionals should always keep in mind is that someone may be ignorant without being stupid. I've seen too often people make this confusion. Also one should never confuse "obvious" with "usual". Just because we are used to doing things in a certain way it doesn't mean newbies should be able to guess how to do it by themselves.
IT can be a fairly arrogant profession, but I think this is a more common occurrence in technical fields than we might originally guess. The big driver, from what I've seen and heard, is the visibility of IT, and its importance to everyday life. The fact that many people are so perilously inept at operating and managing an increasingly core life staple prompts much of the snobby behavior.
Perhaps rampant irresponsibility is not quite as visible or dominant in other fields. For instance, imagine if a shocking percentage of the population drove their cars without any thought to changing their oil, airing their tires, or even filling their tank with gas. We would probably have a community of technicians and knowledgeable people ridiculing and advising these irresponsible "users."
IT has been an odd case, as normally the expense of adopting a new, non-user-friendly technology is prohibitive for people not prepared to maintain and operate the equipment. But, the drastic adoption and commoditization of IT has led this to be out of balance, with people trying to treat everything as a black box when at least comprehending the nuts and bolts is still essential for responsible use.
Customers also insult staffmembers or for that matter, anyone in the proximity, without restraint, for issues that are not directly their fault.
Insulting is the problem, not IT, nor the user.
--------
* Sigh *
Doctors have always insulted their patients in their notes .
More detailed list here .
The only difference between the average emergency room doctor's attitude to some of their patients and the cliched sysadmin's hatred of 'lusers' is the fact that doctors wear shirts and ties.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
That's true of pretty much every career field. You're not worth something until it works, and if it's not, it has to be the expert's fault.
Users have just as much contempt for IT as IT has comtempt for the user.
Nevertheless, IT continue to solve the user's issues, because of their professional attitude.
What I tend to dislike is the fact that a user with 3 computers at home, running their own local network, with shared Internet access and wireless connectivity to their laptop, DHCP, DNS, network printing etc... all of a sudden turns into a blatant IT fool the minute that they walk into the office. Just because there is an IT department they continue to be high maintenance, refuse to acknowledge problems and generally make things worse.
Then again, there's the other type, the genuine clueless user who thinks that they know what they're doing, but doesn't - you know the type, the ones you never should have given local administrative privileges on their own machines.
In my opinion the way to discourage this divide in your company it to have the IT department take each of the other departments out for lunch, say once a month - the relaxed environment in the absence of IT equipment and their problems aids the communication between the departments and generates an understanding of what IT is actually doing (Similarly IT get an understanding of what Finance, Sales, Marketing etc... do for the company as well).
Certainly IT isn't the only customer focussed industry where this happens, it's an extremely naive viewpoint to suggest that is the case. I can think of countless call centres for things such as gas, phones and so forth where I've been treated by people with abysmal attitudes.
As to why it happens at all, I think the reasons are rather varied.
You have people who are forced into using IT because everyone needs to use it for their job nowadays, only some people don't want to so they purposely make moan and make out the situation is worse than it is just to satisfy their own technophobic paranoia - people like this are extremely frustrating to work with.
Then there are people who treat IT workers as their own personal slaves, requests such as "change my printer cartridge too" - things that frankly, even a monkey could be trained to do, this type of thing is completely demoralising. If you had a mechanic out to look at your car, what do you think their reaction would be if you turned round and say "Oh go and fill it up with gas for me too".
There's the people who simply ask too much, most IT departments are staffed okay for looking after the business but there are those that seem to feel that the IT staff should deal with the home too. We've currently got a situation where we're staffed fine to run a secure, locked down network but our company has decided to push homeworking - this means people are wanting to setup home broadband on their laptop, this leaves us with a choice between having to visit each and every persons home - where two technicians have to do the visit, because one person can't go because of the danger of some pathetic low-life claiming the technician tried to rape them, steal from their house or whatever or alternatively we can remove the security settings so that the users can setup their home broadband on their laptops themselves. Again, this is a hopeless scenario because we then have to spend day in day out clearing spyware, viruses, finding space on their laptop for their work after their kids have installed Quake 8 or whatever on it.
There's plenty more reasons, but it seems more generally that IT has an identity crisis - users aren't entirely sure what we actually do, where the line is drawn as to what a user issue is and what an IT worker issue is. Do we fix printers? probably, do we fix photocopiers? probably not, what if we have a multi-function printer/photocopier? What about telephones, if it's VOIP we most likely deal with it, but if it's a typical old fashioned Nortel or whatever system then there's likely a phone technician to deal with it. Now, I'm personally willing to have a go at fixing anything if there's a real need, but I don't like whiping the asses of lazy people who can't be bothered to change a printer cartridge and secondly, I simply don't have time to do absolutely everything. The issue is lack of well defines roles for most IT people and also hence lack of definition for users as to what they should and shouldn't expect from their IT department.
"Users are stupid and that needs to be the starting point for software developers." I read their trade magazines: "No matter how hard we pray...every network is at one time or other exposed to the ultimate technology risk: users."
... no, it makes the 'aaah' sound, see now? Good, have a cookie."
People working in offices should have a modicum of training with a computer. If a person had terrible spelling in the oldendays (before spellcheck was prevalent), they would probably be fired. IT people like myself (at my old job) having to go around and teach the most basic of tasks to people who should know a thing or two is extremely frustrating.
In the modern business world, being computer illiterate is like not knowing how to read. Imagine 'grammar' techs going around saying "now what does sound the 'A' make?
Some things I don't mind doing, like when windows bugs out and the printer gets deselected, I'll happily mutter "you know, windows should be a little robust, this kind of thing shouldn't happen, we should switch to macs" while I'm fixing the box and me and the user can find some common ground to grouse about. Other things, like how to change the margins in a Word document (which people forget sometimes twice a day) really pushed the limits of my patience.
The same goes for software development. I developed my own CMS recently. 99% of it was just tweaking the interface to make it more and more usable--not having too many options on a single page so as to not confuse people--that sort of thing. UI is a huge pain to deal with. I ended up just having layers of complexity so I could bring the learning curve to zero. Writing the 'help' pages was so tedious and interminable I nearly gave up after I wrote in "Enter domain here, click here for more information on domains." Is it so much to ask that a person running their own website who uses my CMS should know what a domain is? After working technical support for so long, I realize that yes, yes it is. The only hope you have in UI development is to dump as much user-friendliness in there as possible and pray that they can figure the rest out on their own.
This example pretty much says it all: I got an e-mail from a person using my CMS which read something like, "How do I get this thing started? I double clicked on the 'index.php' and it just opened a notepad with a whole bunch of gibberish [...] "
It's not always the IT guy's fault he's pissed off.
Latewire
...who the hell blames 'overambitious deadlines, changing requirements, and design compromises' on users? Everyone I've ever met blames them, quite rightly, on management. Or in companies developing applications to sale, on marketing.
I can just see it now:
'Bob, we've got to ship Thursday.'
'What? We haven't tracked down that crash-during-export bug! Damn users!'
*blank stare*
'Um, Bob? What users? No one's using the program yet, it hasn't shipped.'
'Oh, right. Damn marketing for promising random ship-dates without consulting with us!'
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I noticed this a lot at my job on a help desk. Re-route the ticket to the IT department responsible for the problem and the customer doesn't get a response for days, weeks, months, and, on a few occasions, years. The Help Desk gets the blame from the customer when this happens. A lot of the backend IT people have no customer relationship skills whatsoever because they're not required to deal with people outside of their department and there's always something more important going on (at one company, it was Diablo 2).
It's not a bad attitude, it's just a different set of values.
Personally I will outright go "you're being stupid, THINK" to someone, but I wouldn't go "oh that's okay, every body forgets which mouse button to click and can't find the little X in the corner you've used a hundred times before". Some might think I have an attitude problem for it, but personally I see it as different values. Geeks (who are drawn to IT) value the truth and no sugar coatings involved, 'normal' people are the opposit.
So why we may upset people or say the "wrong" thing, to us we're not having an attitude problem, we're just acting how we'd like everyone to act.
I like muppets.
Comparing IT with medicine isn't a good comparison. You didn't buy your life from a doctor.
As for why IT staff don't always respect their customers, try working in support. Customers threaten you, provide you with no information, blame you for everything.
Futures traders are notorious for being assholes to get what they want. Bankers have a reputation, occasionally well earned, of looking down on their customers. Professional athletes don't care about their image. In most of the above professions, if you're not rewarded for this behavior indirectly (by not being criticized as "soft" and therefore getting paid more), acting like an ass doesn't get you fired. As for burger flippers, flight attendants and Disney employees; tough luck. Acting like an ass gets you fired, immediately. As to where IT fits, it depends entirely on the existing culture of your organization. If everyone acts like an ass, you'll probably do fine acting like an ass. But choosing not to is generally better no matter what.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Too many users are proud of their ignorance of technology. You don't see patients being proud of their ignorance what's going on with their body. So doctors feel venerated and act as such. Even plumbers know that their work is appreciated. Since technology works best when it works invisibly, IP workers are often met with the attitude of "what the f**k is wrong with you guys... oh, never mind... don't want to know.. just fix the damn thing". So they get trained to treat users as willful ignoramuses. That's just the nature of environment in which they work. I think it used to be better when computers had to be maintained MORE often. Their maintenance was seen as a noraml think and those who performed were seen as saving the day. So there was mutual respect.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
And the solution would be to give them a helpful but extremely bitter tasting medicine that also acts as a laxative.
I don't understand where anyone got the idea that it was okay to be an ass to any client - even those who can't comprehend the work you do.
Try imagining that scenario between a Doctor and a patient. Does it feel any better? No. It creates confusion and mistrust.
Our jobs depend on us being able to make one part of the system work within a larger unit called "the business" If the client/userbase finds an IT resource that acts nicely and says please and thank-you, then you might one day kiss your job good-bye because at some point it will _seem_ like that person does a better job, even if they actually don't.
I treat my people with the respect they deserve. I don't always understand their jobs, and they sometimes wonder aloud what a genius I am. I just make an analogy comparing our two professions and point out the similarities. I find myself discovering just how much talent is required for what may seem like paper-pushing jobs. I just do something that requires a specific skill. When they see that it makes them much confortable with IT issues and how to handle them. Dumb requests are just as hard to stomach by everyone.
The IT undustry (management) is all over the new "concept" of IT being part of the "business". That may seem like a semantic shift to some, but it marks a specific change in how IT is looked at. It is now being pulled back in to the business, and requires that IT staff often know how their work impacts the users and vice versa. Just like any business component should. If you're still treating your users as sheep when that happens just because they can't understadn your work, you'll just look like the breat big asshole you likely are.
There are just as many idiots within IT as without it.
JB
I don't know about the rest of them, but my job description doesn't actually include hand-holding someone through computer use.
I just do that because I want my coworkers to get their jobs done well, so I do it, and I don't mind - especially if they learn something (I've got a teacher inclination). My ability with computers stems from the fact that I try to learn as much as I can about everything that I can. That's part of it.
The reason I get upset is the implicit lack of respect. Knowing how to use a computer is like learning how to drive: it's an expected part of society. You don't ask your mechanic how to drive, but people are regularly asking IT people how to use their computers. Asking the mechanic to do something like that would be disrespectful - he's not responsible for your ability to drive. It doesn't take a tradesman with a vast knowledge in his field to do it. Most five year olds can grasp basic computer operation.
If you work in a job where people didn't treat what you do with respect, how would you feel about them? It takes more patience than many people have, and they can't keep their frustrations to themselves.
Of course, if your actual job is teaching people how to use computers I could understand that you might feel differently about it, but I don't think that condition applies to most IT people.
Most jobs are to do one of these things:
1) Make computers do something they haven't done before.
2) Make computers do something that they used to do but don't do anymore.
3) Figure out the cause of condition #2.
Only a very small number of IT professionals are actually responsible for showing the users how to use their own computers, but this comes up a lot in the other jobs, and makes some of us a little testy.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, in my world, if I insult a customer, I get reprimanded or fired. I don't know anyone who does this directly to a client. Behind the scenes? Sure, perhaps. But not to the client's face. That ranks up with other unthinkable actions such as stealing from the company, and I'm not talking post-it notes. Why on earth would anybody want to insult their clientele?
If they've done something that they shouldn't be doing, there is a perfectly acceptable way of enlightening them that doesn't involve berating them. In my experience, most users are perfectly willing and able to learn if you're willing and able to take the time to explain it without an attitude problem.
This is the biggest bunch of nonsense that I've heard in a long time. Virtually every time I try to get help from my helpdesk on anything beyond pulling a cable or rebooting a server, I'm told that they can't help me, even when what I'm trying to do is required by policies that the IT people have put into place in the first place. My favorite reason for not helping is that I don't have a "supported configuration", even though I'm running name-brand hardware and software. My feeling about my IT people is that they're really great at running the network and server farms, but beyond that they don't care about their customers. The last problem I had I pushed up the management chain (outside the vendor that we hire to do the work) and was told that I was being "unprofessional" in my communications because I was pushing a customer-centric point of view. That being the case, why should our IT people get paid more when their contributions to the company are limited (or in this case, negative)? I'd be happy to support higher level of pay for them if they'd be willing to help tackle some of the real problems that their users are having.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
It's still a good question, even if the employees do, in fact, have a moderate understanding of their computers. If an IT guy can be nice to newbs, he can be nice to people of intermediate skill.
"What do you think of users who know absolutely nothing about computers?"
Well, I think you -- the employer -- need to seriously re-examine your employee base, then. This is the twenty first century. Computers in the business environment have been around for a good twenty years, and really started gettinng huge ten years ago with Windows 95. In today's modern workplace, if you really know nothing about computers, you aren't qualified for the job. It doesn't matter that you're a brialliant loan officer or whatever else -- part of the job involves using computers. Period. The excuse "I'm not a computer person" or "It's not my area" no longer holds water. This isn't the 70s.
I'm not asking users to know how to examine their TCP/IP properties or perform network diagnostics. I'm not asking them to open the box and replace bad memory, or how to mount an image as a device, or anything else remotely complicated or nonintuitive.
I am asking them to know how to do the basic, fundamental things that are required of them in their job, and do these things competently. You need to know how to open Word and grab a document off your coworker's shared folder. You need to know how to save things in sane, organized places so you can find them later. You need to understand that not everything is safe to arbitrariliy download and run, so don't do it. Basic stuff.
And perhaps that's part of why IT professionals hold users in such contempt. They are hounded nonstop by people who somehow got jobs for which they clearly lack the necessary skills (because using a computer is a necessary skill, people). And instead of getting to do anything interesting they spend half their time doing what amounts to job training for clueless people who really should know better.
To make it worse, I can think of few other fields where the client base gets as demanding and unreasonable. You won't often catch someone who deliberately tinkers with their car engine for no reason, breaks it, then harrasses the mechanic every thirty minutes to "just fix it". When the mechanic says "It's going to take two days", that's the end of it, and most people realize that no amount of arguing will change that. Not so in the computer world -- users think it's perfectly okay to get snippy, and that the Magic IT Guy can just wave his Magic IT Wand and magically fix any problem (usually by "just dialing in").
IT is a tough field, especially when you deal with end users. I think we get jaded and snotty because really, you can only listen to the whines and insults of the users for so long before it affects you -- and make no mistake, users are every bit as insulting as they think we are.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Your light-switch example hits the nail on the head, but probably not in the way you intended. If you flip the light switch one way and it doesn't work...try flipping it the other way. The building isn't going to blow up.
As long as a computer user follows a few safety guidelines (regarding opening attachments, browsing safety, and not deleting files you don't know are safe to be deleted) you can usually play around with the computer and figure things out. That's how you learn. Try something, and if it didn't work, try something else. While a basic level of training is required to know how to try different things (basic user-interface design, such as what that X in the corner does, and the difference between left- and right-click) after that, try a few different things, and if nothing works, call IT.
Maybe the problem is that users are never told about that, or that they were asleep during that day school. Nevertheless, it's one of the most basic ways that we learn--try it and see what happens. Maybe if IT layed out the basic safety rules and then said, "Please play with the computers to see how they react when you do various things," then seemingly basic tasks wouldn't be so hard for users after awhile.
The IT professionals I've come across that are rude are simply lacking in social skills and are shocked when they are told later that they are being rude or arrogant. It's down to the prevalence of Asperger's (or towards that part of the spectrum of autism). It's a natural condition. The thing is that too many companies allow geeks with no social abilities to interface to customers (directly in the case of tech support, indirectly in the case of writing UIs). It's time that the management of companies recognized the situation and had professional customer-facing technical support that came with a smile and empathy, and had professional interaction designers that realize "Error: Keyboard not connected; press F1 to continue" is not an acceptable thing to say to people.
Also, let me comment on something you just said. Computer processes are strange to many people. Users who gained an understanding of them by memorizing steps cannot discover changes in these strange processes by learning it themselves. Mostly, these are people who are nearing retirement age at this point. Please note that I'm not disparaging; I think it's just fine that someone chosen a method that, for them, is easiest and best to learn the technology. It took my mom (with my assistance) the better part of a decade to make the transition from having to memorize steps to learning the concepts in question. It all depends on the person.
Do you honestly think that something like hierarchical directory structures are intuitive? Hell, there is a significant number of users, young and old, who do not understand files themselves. The file needs to belong to something: it's a Word file or a Powerpoint file. It can't be an "image" file, because that has no meaning if it's not attached to an application and its associated function.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Let's look at this from a different perspective, okay?
What would a shop owner expect as an answer from a mechanic applicant?
Owner: "What do you think of customers who know absolutely nothing about cars?"
Mechanic: "I think they'll probably cause a lot of damage to their vehicles which means we'll make a lot of money doing the repairs."
How about a dentist?
Owner: "What do you think of customers who know absolutely nothing about tooth care?"
Mechanic: "I think they'll probably cause a lot of damage to their teeth which means we'll make a lot of money doing the repairs. Do we have literature I can recommend to them?"
See? The difference is whether the USER is paying for their ignorance or the COMPANY is paying.
In the case of tech support, in most cases (unless you're a contractor/consultant) it is the company that is paying the price. It's easy to be VERY nice when you're looking at a disaster that you'll be paid a couple of thousand dollars to fix.
It's completely different when you're looking at a disaster that will require you to work 60+ hours this week
Mechanic: "Honey, I'll be home really late but I'm making at butt-load of money! We'll party this weekend."
IT Tech: "Honey, I'll be home really late. I know. No, there's nothing I can do. Yes, I know. I know."
That's because they want someone with no outside interests so they can work them 80 hours a week until they burn out. Not every employer is like that, thank goodness.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
> I have recently seen job adverts in the UK that have included lines such as "the sort of person we are looking for is a geek. You probably prefer to relate to computers and have very few friends".
I'd say, it is more a positive trend. To my eyes, it means just: "We are not necessarily looking for a technical person with good communication skills, speaking 2 foreign languages fluently and managing experience. We are just looking for a person with good technical skills with a personal interest in intelectual challenges."
You see, they are writing "you probably prefer", not "we prefer you to". I'd say it is an encouragement for socially less apt, but technically inclined ones (commonly called "geeks" or "nerds") to apply for the job.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
And by the way, adapting your surroundings to yourself is what spurs progress, unless you think sleeping under a pile of leaves and eating tree bark is a better way to go than building shelter and farming.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
This is ironic because very often the decisions the cause people to hate IT are not being made in the IT department. Even the article says:
Yet I've never worked anywhere where the IT dept made these decisions. We don't ship crap, rushed software that makes the users look like idiots because we want to. We do it because it's cheap and that's what the business asks us for.
"Unfortunately many people are unwilling or unable to do that. Lacking this ability is not limited to computers and operating systems. I would consider it common sense-apparently it isn't so common :)"
I have been training an apprentice machinist of late...
"Ya don't learn nuthin' if ya don't break nuthin'"
Or in normal english "If you do everything only one way, you don't know how to recover from the wrong way or learn a better way."
Or as what I tell my co-workers (as I am the "known geek") "The only reason why I know so much about computers is because that's how much I broke stuff"
--
BMO
I think everyone here, especially the article author, is missing the basic *systemic* reason for IT-User antagonism.
... their boss ... would get them fired.
The reason is simple: the IT Department are the buffers between bad executive decisions and the majority of workers. As a buffer, IT gets abraded a lot.
It's *not* a matter of "luser" ignorance, no matter how that's the conventional wisdom. I work for a large tech company where the average user could design their own graphics co-processor, and we *still* hate the IT department and they hate us. Why? Because the executives chose to outsource IT to India, resulting in most of the company not being able to get support in our own time zone. As a result, we get kind of impatient and cranky when something simple (like a password reset) takes three working days to resolve, and something complex (like a request for *not* routing VPN traffic from SF to Atlanta through Norway) is completely impossible. As a result, we take out our frustration on the IT staff and they respond in kind.
It's a rare company where the support IT staff get to choose the software or platform the company will use. It's usually "magazine-ware" chosen by the execs regardless of functionality or even appropriateness to the business, and it's IT's job to "make it work" even if that task is patently impossible. So IT, stuck between a rock and a hard place, saves their egos by blaming the users. Since blaming the real culprit
If you compare it to Doctors, the *average* IT department operates in an environment like the *worst* HMO. And unlike doctors, there's nowhere to go that's better.
There's also the fact that IT, like Customer Service, spends the greatest amount of time dealing with the most pigheaded recalcitrant people, and tends to develop a dim view of humanity as a result. The majority of users, who aren't a problem, barely come to IT's attention.
The article seems to be equating IT with software engineering - especially when he linked "it's debatable whether IT qualifies as a profession" to a page on the professional status of software engineering.
Where I work most of our software engineers aren't in the IT department, and there are certainly a lot of IT people who don't routinely call their customers idiots, lusers, or clueless.
However, I am a UNIX sysadmin and freely admit that I willfully piss off my "customers". Yes, it's true. I deny requests that are against policies and procedures established by the business. The sad thing is that the customer is 99% of the time fully aware of the policy and are merely trying to circumvent it, often by trying the different sysadmins, especially the newer ones who are still learning.
Most often reason for me to deny a request? Failure to follow change control procedures and obtain the appropriate approvals from all stakeholders before requesting the change. Change control procedures aren't just put into place by IT - they are demanded by the business and for some systems are required by regulations. The second most often reason is that the request violates security policy or procedure.
Yet, when I deny such a request because proper procedure hasn't been followed, I get to hear about how "IT gets in the way and we could do this so much (better|faster|easier) by ourselves."
I also do evil things that inconvenience users such as requiring them to change their passwords four times a year. I personally make their life rough by setting the system to lock their account after three unsuccessful logins - and I do it on purpose. I make it so hard for the developers by not giving them accounts on the production systems, and I interfere with the ability of the QA teams to do their jobs by not giving them access to unscrubbed logs containing containing the personally identifiable information of real people using our online services.
Believe me, I've heard about what a jerk admin I am.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
As if if there weren't enough opinion pieces here, here's a reply to the blog.
...and of course, you clicked the link. Sheesh. I'll agree your IT department royally
screwed up that policy by send the info in an attachment, but the final fault is yours.
The fact that you CAN fake an email address is one of many reasons you were asked NOT
to click it. Sure enough, contrary to advice, you did something you weren't supposed
to. THAT is the sort of thing that earns people the ire of ANY professional; ignoring
sound advice because it doesn't jibe with your world-view IS ignorant. People with
emphysema {on oxygen tanks, no less} that smoke, folks who check gas tanks with
lighters, doofs that climb down their chimneys just to get stuck... ALL these morons
were doing something they were told NOT to. Just why should I feel sympathetic?
[I'm an idiot.]
Good start.
[I'm stupid, clueless, dumb - hell, I'm a complete moron. I'm so inept, in fact, that a new word has been created to capture my incompetence: "luser." I feel terrible about it, I really do; it was never my intention to upset my IT department - heck, the whole IT industry - by not being bright enough to use the wonderful tools they give me. But I just can't seem to get it right.]
Gee, being bright has less to do with it than you think. My FAVORITE customers are the folks that upfront say, "I am CLUELESS when it comes to computers." They know what they know and don't about PCs, and are WELL AWARE of that boundary; they don't attempt to cross it for good reason. These aren't "lusers", they're users; the easiest of ALL client types [IMHO] to work with. Show them what you need them to do and NOT do, and they'll follow it religiously. The reason you're an idiot follows here.
[I mean, I know I'm not supposed to click on attachments. Clicking on attachments is bad. My IT department sent me an email explaining this. They were even kind enough to attach a Word document explaining how to set my computer up to prevent the spread of viruses through attachments like...well, like Word documents. I have to admit, that little irony had me scratching my head for a few minutes. Was this some sort of test for us lusers to see if we pay attention? Then I realized the message came from my IT department. And you can't fake an email address. No way.]
[I think I passed their test.]
What IT department has the time to TEST their users?!? Unless it's directly tied to training or downsizing, I've never seen any reputable department waste time like this. You want to look at it as a test, fine. You clicked the attachment. You failed the test.
[And yet they still think very little of me. I read their blogs: "Users are stupid and that needs to be the starting point for software developers." I read their trade magazines: "No matter how hard we pray...every network is at one time or other exposed to the ultimate technology risk: users." I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be reading these blogs and magazines; it's all highly technical stuff they're talking about, and I'm probably missing the crucial subtext when they refer to me as "this most dangerous species of wildlife." My problem is that I just don't get it.]
Right. You don't get it, yet you're willing to spit out 4 pages explaining why it's OUR fault you don't get it. You've ignored one of our most basic mantra: RTFM. If you had read the plethora of articles available online, in magazines and books, you'd see why social engineering remains one of the most successful vectors for any network attack. There lies part of the problem: you want to learn about a topic without reading or studying it. Good luck.
[Or, not.
The IT profession - and it's debatable whether IT qualifies as a profession - needs to get its act together and start acting like one. Today, IT behaves more like a high-school clique, knotted together in the cubicle maze, snickering and slandering everyone who's n
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Sorry, I think you're turning yourself into a Victim, at the expense of the other gender. Reality is somewhat the other way round. If the average IT student is more nerdy and more clumsy with women, that does not equal less respectful. Also, do women pick studies based on where they can find the cutest boys, or something? This is not empowerment. Saying "girls are only not chosing IT because of the boys" is nonsense, utterly lacking any respect to those boys, and defying the real reasons why there are so few women in beta fields. Does this start at high skool, where the nerds terrorize the pretty girls, to prevent them from maturing their hidden interest in Calculus, not boys? Perhaps, it's only a mild suggestion, you should look at yourself?
That's exactly the same thing as saying that they're unwilling or unable to do their job. If that's the case, they are incompetent and should be fired.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sounds like my dad's high school physics course in the early 70s. The teacher walked in on the first day of class (they called him the "caveman", btw) and told them that all the girls were good little girls who went home after school and helped their mothers around the house, so they would get As, but that all the boys were bad little boys who went out behind the pool hall after class and smoked, so they would get Bs. And sure enough he stuck to his guns when grade time came.
Newsflash: swords cut both ways.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Why do you think it's growing? Society has always been biased against those who weren't sociall apt.
WRIW, it's my general feeling that discrimination against shyness has decreased over the decades. This doesn't mean it's decreased very much. It's more that people now are generally more isolated than they were in earlier decades, and that (most kinds of) shyness is less of a problem when you are interacting over the net than in person.
OTOH, it used to be that shy or not, you were forced out into social situations. I'm not sure that's as true as it used to be. A part of the more general isolation is that those who naturally have trouble with overly isolating themselves aren't coerced as much (by external factors) to interact. So they don't do it as much, and get less practice. Perhaps this means that they become, relatively, even more inept.
However, don't interpret this as discrimination, or an increase in discrimination. I don't think that's what's happening at all. (Well, at least in my neck of the woods.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Slamming customers isn't acceptable in any other profession; doctors don't call their patients "meatbags" -- at least, not publicly.
About 15 years ago, I was jogging daily. I started having a pain in my ankle, not from an accident or anything, it just slowly started, so I stopped running, but the pain was getting worse every day, so I went to see the doctor. I get into his office, tell him the story and his response is, "Do I really need to tell you what you did to your ankle?"
That's more or less the kind of stuff this author is talking about. It happens in every profession. The fun part of the story is this: He says, "You've sprained your ankle, walk it off." Two days later I was using a crutch and the following day, two crutches. I go to see a podiatrist, tell her what happened and tell her about the first doctor. She says, "This other doctor, did he take x-rays?" "No." I reply. "I see. Did he have x-ray vision?", she asked. After x-rays, it was clear that I had torn a ligament in my ankle and was tearing a second one by walking on it.
But anyway, the point is simply it happens in every profession. It's probably a bit more exaggerated in IT, but the reasons for it, I think, are pretty obvious. First of all, many people in IT are geeks and got started early. They've always known more than others about IT stuff and they have a tendency to carry the same attitude of superiority in that area onto adulthood with them. Many probably weren't athletes or the "cool kids" in their schools and therefore have the feeling that their superiority in IT and the need for their skills is, as young adults, their time has finally come to "get even", so to speak.
Comparing this to a doctor is simply apples and oranges. To be a doctor, you need to get pretty damn good grades all through college, pass the MCAT, and then do 4 years of med school and 3-7 years of residency, depending on the specialty. Medical schools tend to look for a certain degree of maturity in candidates and if they don't have it coming in, they tend to get it as they go through. It's a completely different world than what "normal" people go through and thus, it's going to tend to produce much more mature people.
As for other fields, people tend to enter at a much lower level and tend to need maturity to move up. IT is just different. They'll take just about anyone with the skills. IT people do gain experience at their jobs, but they tend to move up faster, or they move out. Maturity usually has less to do with advancement than skill, unlike other jobs where maturity is often integral to advancement. Maturity in IT gets you into management which is where a lot of geeks don't want to go.
Or, when the IT staff go on strike, and the CEO can't call someone to attach a word document to an email, then the company will still succeed or fail exactly as they would have before...
IF people in the company would pay attention and try to learn something, then yes, the IT staff would be just as important as the janitorial staff. However, the CEO does not have to call the janitor every time he needs to throw something away ("now I've got this piece of paper, and I don't want it anymore. What do I do with it?" "Look to your left. There is a little round metal can sitting there, with a thin plastic liner. Put the piece of paper in the can.") or use the restroom ("now look, sir, you just need to direct the stream at this ceramic receptacle on the wall. I wish I didn't have to keep telling you that"). If people in the company can learn how to use trashcans and toilets, then all the janitor needs to do is empty the trash, fix the actual equipment when it fails, and sterilize things. If people in the company could just learn how to use their computers, then all the IT staff would need to do is maintain backups, apply occasional patches, and fix hardware failures.
Fact is, most companies, due to non-IT people's willful and prideful ignorance, DO depend much more heavily upon the immediate and constant services of their IT staff than they do upon their janitorial staff.
Also, most people do have some idea of how to do janitorial work. They have acquired the necessary knowledge one way or another to do the work of the janitorial staff. They do not, however, have the necessary (and enormously more extensive) knowledge required to do the IT staff's work. Usually, in today's culture, the acquisition of knowledge is equivalent to the acquisition of respect. However, for IT staff, frequently the acquisition of knowledge is equivalent to the acquisition of derision.
Non-IT people in a company tend to treat their IT staff the way some asshat french noble from the sixteenth century treated his household staff. (not that all 16th century french nobles were asshats, but I'm sure you're familiar with the stereotype.) The staff had acquired specialized knowledge (say... cooking) quite independently of any effort by the nobleman, and this specialized knowledge was quite frequently required by the nobleman in order for his noble life to continue without hiccups, yet the nobleman looked down his nose at them precisely because they knew how to make his life comfortable and because they did make his life comfortable. True, they did get paid (well, lets say they did for the sake of argument anyway), and apparently in your view, that gives the noble the right to treat them however he likes, but it also means that the servants must never ever speak ill of their master.
The whole feudalism thing went away for some very good reasons. We don't need to return to it in a new form now.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
The older, far more wise and seasoned professionals usually don't call the end users idots, they just refer to the junior admin staff as idots.
In my (limited) experience, it's more common that the wise and seasoned refer to everyone as idiots — including themselves. Insert various "to err is human" jokes....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
You go into your doctors office and he says you need to have a procedure immediatly to remove some part of your body. You might consult one more doctor but at no point do you actually truely question the actions he is about to take even if it means removing a piece of your body.
On the other hand you go to get your computer fixed. The IT person tells you that your computer is slow and cant do anything because you have 39 viruses and some untold amounts of spyware on your computer. He suggests that you should backup all your documents and let him wipe the system clean. You disagree with him and tell him to install more ram to fix your computer because of an article you read in the paper. He installs it begrugingly and you return a week later having the same problems and stating that the ram is bad and he needs to replace it. rinse and repeat.
The reason IT people are nasty at times is because everyone believes they are an expert when it comes to computers. It is somewhat insulting that everyday someone will tell you to do something that you explicitly told them was a bad idea.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
Freshman year of high school, I had no friends. Beginning of sophomore year, I got bored and decided to get some, despite having no conversational skills. So I spent a few days listening to people talk and that was it. I knew how to converse. After a few weeks of practice I had the same social skills as any arrogant dumbass you'd see making fun of geeks.
TO NORMAL PEOPLE: If you see an intelligent person whom you perceive as having no social skills, it's because they either never bothered learning them, or they don't use them. Never assume you were born with something they weren't, and definitely don't think yourself better than them. You probably just used your time for less intellectual pursuits when you were growing up.
By the way, about I don't think you know very much about ones and zeros. Do you honestly think it's more difficult to compliment someone's hair than to read a circuit diagram of a full adder with a latch and see what it does? Or that it's more difficult to trade Simpsons quotes than to recognize and exploit a buffer overflow? Or that it's more difficult to listen to someone bitching about their ex-wife then to understand how the discrete logarithm problem can be used for public-key cryptography?
ResidntGeek
You replace a users broken monitor. Two hours later, that same user calls back and complains that since you replaced the "computer", they can not print anymore and they have a filing due in 10 minutes. "IT always does this, does anyone there know what they are doing up there?". Rumors are spread among the users that IT has screwed up again. Another user offers up that Outlook isn't working either because a client called and stated they did not get an email I sent them. I just emailed this person yesterday and they got it, what happened today? We can not work like this, IT department is a bunch of idiots.
That printer was out of paper, had you looked at the screen it has, you would have seen that. We also provide you 20 printers on this floor that you can print too, sorry you have to walk 20 feet to pickup a job from that printer over there. There is wheels on your chair, push yourself over there if you do not want to get up, go in reverse, it is easier to move yourself in the chair that way.
As for that email? Thanks for calling my supervisor and CC'ing an email to our VP telling them that no one has helped you yet with that email problem. I looked through your box and our server logs, I see yesterday you sent an email to client@aol.com, today you mailed client@aol.con. It was rejected because aol.con does not exist and you received an email telling you that. I called you for some clarification and to explain this to you but got your voice mail. I went by your desk and you waved me off. The other unrelated email problem you had today was their server rejected it because you attached a 75MB file. Our system can handle and process that but the recipients server can not based on the second rejection email you received. There is nothing I can do about that, I don't know why they have it set that way, I know the client told you it should work but he/she will have to speak to their OWN IT department to clear up that issue. No, I am not calling the clients own IT department for a problem the client is having with his IT department and his email system.
My opinion..
I wish there was a nice way to put these things but if a user is automatically stressed and irate, they are probably going to be treated the same way in return. I guess it should not be that way but I am not the whipping boy either. We are ALL professionals. We all work in the same company and all are required to be here and do our job for this to work. If we were not needed, the company would not employ us. If technology and IT was so easy, we would be getting half what we do get. Explaining complex situations to the users is a hard task, even more so when they already have their mind made up.
Here is a very specific example of a user trying to blame the IT deparment that I did not include above. This actually happens to use quite often.
We have a computer based time tracking system (software time clock) that all hourly employees use. When we do "on next logon" software updates, sometimes it takes a few minutes and delays the users computer from getting to the prompt to check into the time clock. Supervisors are aware of when we push software updates so they can look out for people that are a few minutes late checking in and adjust as required. We often have users call us directly and complain that somehow they were given some random software push which delayed their check in and want us to call their supervisor. We had no updates scheduled, no reference or logs on that computer to indicate any update was pushed to their computer that day and they get pissed. "Well someone was updating something", bullshit, do not blame it on us because you were 3 minutes late. On that note, people have tried the bad mouse or KB thing as well when they are late.
"In the mid-80's I encountered a similar situation in high school where I was point-blank told by one of the teachers in final year that I should be enrolled in home economics not maths/physics/chemistry."
If you had simply asked the teacher to please make his recommendations in writing to the advisor, and send a copy to your parents, you would have *owned* that teacher.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I realized while replying to another comment that IT departments should work more like my copy department. If I want the standard service (say B/W copies) then I get it for free from the public copy machine on my floor. If I want a banner or some other oddball copy service then I have to pay extra to have someone handle the job for me. I can get virtually anything that I want from my copy department (including books) as long as I pay their bill. IT should work the same. Set up basic service for those who want it (equivalent to putting a public copy machine on every floor of the building) and then charge for the fancy stuff. I'm totally ok with that model because I still get what I need but it serves to deter me from setting up special configs that don't have a business justification.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
So, let me get this straight, he put in all his hours, and left early on Friday because he's worked a full week.
You schedule meetings at the end of the week, at the end of the day. You didn't see this coming?
You *better* pay above market value if you require people to work more hours.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I seriously doubt that Asperger's is nearly as prevalent in the IT field as jackasses with bad attitudes are.
I agree with the parent totally, there is no one industry that has a monopoly of this sort of attitude, but to bring it back to the topic at hand:
Speaking as a member of this technical group, I can honestly say that there are three major groups of client. The honestly clueless, the willfully ignorant and the technically savvy.
I personally enjoy working with the honestly clueless, as they admit they don't know much, and are willing to learn the things they don't know. I don't cop abuse or arrogance from them, and we work together to solve the problem.
I also don't mind working with the technically savvy, as they often have pinpointed the problem, but don't have the access to actually fix the issue.
The willfully ignorant are the problem. They often create their own problems, and then refuse to listen to the solution. They think that they know better than the technician, which in 99% of ALL cases is simply incorrect. They are almost always abusive and condescending to technical staff, and spend much of their time not only making our lives miserable, but also putting road blocks in front of us when we try to fix things for them.
Courtesy is a two way street, and while I agree that it is lacking from the IT industry as a whole, to say that we are the only ones guilty of it is very short sighted.
That might explain the case of the "caveman", but only if it were true that he put a single ounce of effort into teaching anyone. To put it flatly, he didn't. According to my father, his primary concern every day was that all of the desks should line up with their left front leg exactly at the correct intersection of four tiles.
Also, it is definitely worth mentioning that the number of women both entering and graduating from college has exceeded (by a significant amount) the number of men doing each activity for some time now. That's a sure sign of discrimination against women, isn't it?
I'm not saying that such discrimination doesn't exist, or isn't a problem. Nor am I claiming that discrimination in the other direction is equally a problem. However, I do think that we need to be very very careful that our zeal for compensating for discrimination doesn't become inequity in the other direction.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
But they don't give the men less respect BECAUSE they are men, do they? You are the one who missed the point entirely.
I have had the same experience in my life as a female electronic technician, so I know what she's talking about. We do get treated with less respect by some people right from the beginning, until we show them what we can do. Then they either treat us with some respect or they hate us for being smarter than they think we should be, depending on whether they are introspective enough to be capable of re-examining their initial assumptions or not. Younger men seem to have more trouble with that because life hasn't taught them enough lessons.
It does help to develop a thicker skin and learn to tell when they are serious and when they're just trying to bait you because they are bored, and to learn how to respond in kind in the latter situation.
Thank you, so much, for proving parts of what I was saying and, in your efforts to prove yourself as being one thing, you proved yourself to be the other. I'll start with a little bit at the end first:
I don't think you know very much about ones and zeros. Do you honestly think it's more difficult to compliment someone's hair than to read a circuit diagram of a full adder with a latch and see what it does?
I taught myself 6502 Assembler. I did have a couple classes in computers, like BASIC in high school. I am now doing quite well (not to brag, but for the 2nd time in a year I'll soon be buying a convertible with cash upfront) with my own business, which is based on software I have written. I am not using anything I learned in classes. On my own, I learned about OOP, about what I needed to encrypt and decrypt information to transmit it securely from one point to another, including cryptography (and going from one language on the server to another on the client, with steps in between), secure transmission, and other issues. I taught myself between 5-8 languages so I could do what I needed to do. I used to do a lot of hobby work in electronics, even long enough ago I remember a wonderful company named Heath which made a lot of kits I learned on, including a trainer system for a 68xx CPU that had to be programmed in Assembler, without a CRT or 101/102 key keyboard.
Yes, I know a little bit about ones and zeros.
Do you honestly think it's more difficult to compliment someone's hair...
It's not that easy, and that you reduce it to that indicates either a certain contempt or misunderstanding of the, as it is sometimes called, "human element. You show that even more earlier when you say, "I had the same social skills as any arrogant dumbass you'd see making fun of geeks". you insult and make fun of people that have social skills, but don't see that in doing so, you are treating them with the same contempt you claim they hold for "geeks." In theory, complimenting someone's hair or listening to someone complain about their wife is easy, but to do it effectively, so that person feels heard or noticed, and so they will prefer your company over someone else, means not only being sincere, but knowing when the compliment is appropriate or not. Has a woman worn the same hair style for 3 weeks and you're just complimenting it? Then she knows you don't pay attention to her. While she may thank you, she is mentally noting, in a case like that, you are just trying to be nice but are clueless about whether she looks nice or not. Either that, or she'll likely file you under, "This guy will say anything nice to me if he thinks it'll help him get laid."
Listening to someone with difficulties in their marriage falls under the same category.
You also have your paragraph, "TO NORMAL PEOPLE" and you use quite a few comments that do a great job, again, of showing arrogance. You use terms with emotional loading, like "less intellectual". I work with a lot of people who don't program. My clients are very smart. Many are lawyers, some are mortgage people, some are in other professions where they need brains to succeed. They did spend their time for "time for less intellectual pursuits when you were growing up." They, however, know their fields extremely well. The lawyers I know would never dream of calling people who aren't law geeks "normal people" and the same goes for other fields. These people are all quite intelligent and it helps immensely that I not only don't treat them as "normal" and act like I'm better because I have a higher IQ, but that I don't see them that way.
The difference is I've learned in life that intelligence is ONE factor out of many that makes up a personality. It isn't better or worse than empathy. The difference is those that know they have a higher intelligence tend to like to think that makes them above normal and better than all the rest, which leads the the very arrogance you show in your post in many small statements.
Thank you for providing us with a good example of a "geek" who thinks s/he is better than everyone else and in an attempt to justify that, shows the very arrogance s/he feels others show toward him/her.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Keep telling me I'm worthless to you, see how happy I am to ask "how high?" next time you tell me to jump.
It's mainly our frustration with the people we have to admin for. I've had my share of support work. In my experience, you run into the first person you want to kill after no longer than a month, on average.
How do you feel when someone belittles your work as "pushing buttons and drinking coffee, if you're not surfing"? How do you feel when someone makes the same frigging moronic mistake after you've been there three times, showing him how it's done? How do you feel when he still claims it's your fault? How do you feel when people start fiddling with the setup who don't have a clue at all just what they're doing? How do you feel when they install software to bypass your security, sometimes even succeed only to cause a network wide problem (and blaming you)? How do you feel when someone's solution to a program being blocked by the virus scanner (because it's infected) is to turn off the scanner (and blaming you for the infection)?
I could rant on, but I guess you get the picture.
So yes, you start to hate the user. You start to belittle him, you start to be condescending, not out of spite (ok, with some users it's plainly spite), but simply because he effing is a moron. It's amazing how normal, rather intelligent people turn into bumbling fools in the presence of a computer. Just to hear them rant about that "stupid machine" and them telling you in no uncertain terms that they think you and your whole computer nonsense should be thrown out of the window.
Yes, I have shirts with certain "information" to the people around me on them, and yes, I wear them proudly. Get a friggin' clue or feel addressed.
I have a lot of patience with people who don't know. There is no shame in not knowing. There is shame in not wanting to learn. And the people who should feel the message is for them are the latter ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
More than likely some fucktard from HR came up with it and told IT to implement it.
You give the HR department too much credit. What they really did was pay a bunch of third party consultants a crapload of money to bypass IT altogether and implement the timeclock system with no IT involvement, then told IT to support it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I disagree. Imagine the forensic pathologist that has to perform a rape exam on a 7 year old girl's corpse. You have to maintain your distance from it or it would drive you insane.
or in my case "that's how much i broke stuff while trying to figure out how the heck my sister broke the darned thing"
I just told my mom that I set up Linux so that she has no administrative abilities, meaning she CAN'T break it. She's free to click whatever she wants and not be afraid of breaking anything, just explore. Hopefully, she'll take that advice, because she's never been one to click around. Maybe the knowledge that she really can't cause lasting harm will give her a bit less restraint in clicking on everything in sight. Now if only I could get my siblings to learn from their mistakes after clicking the wrong thing. You'd think at 17 years old they'd be able to get that "downloading things that are advertised in Flash ads is a bad idea" but they still do that crap.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
You sir, are a retard. If you blame the inability to type on the IT department. If you want IT to drop everything for you, but you can't drop everything for IT. If you blame a completely seperate companies problem on your own companies IT department. If you think that it is okay for an employee to blame an unrelated issue on them being late. There are certain minor things that it is necessary to be able to do yourself. Such as check the gas on your car, unless you expect the manufacturer to come by and check that for you. The same goes with minor office work, being able to check the printer or copier to make sure it has enough paper for what you want to print/copy is one of those things. Same thing with being able to double check your own spelling. How about a little of your own advice. Stop being a problem.
Those of us in the 'support' industry hear all the time about how we're an unnecessary 'cost' to the company rather than an asset, and about how we have a bad attitude, despite the fact that we're treated the way we are, and despite the fact that we too are bound by strict budgets, upper-management decision makers, poor software systems, long hours, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. Guess what: sales people, executives, warehouse people, machine operators and marketing people are all 'costs' to the company as well. Let the sales people see how much less productive they are when they have to write down and fax all of their orders to be fulfilled, and have to manually call and check every day to see when those orders have been shipped.
he user should have got a simple, understandable message that the printer was out of paper. That's a failure of the OS designer and printer driver developer.
Have you ever looked at any HP printer made in the last 7 years? It states in plain english on the LCD screen, "Tray empty, load paper in tray 2". The users have had those printers for years. If they do not know how to determine that message after working there for all of those years or understand that a printer may be out of paper, they should not be there. Are you suggesting an IT person stand by each printer? The problem is they never looked.
The user's email software should have picked up the typo and suggested a correction (in fact, most email clients do)
There are no typos in an email address. Here is my address, put it through your email client and see if it fixes it. jackass02341@allnett.br
The user is employed by your company to work. They generate income for the company.
Sorry but 50% of our users are secretaries, they are support staff just as the IT staff is, they are not generating income. On that note, my real point was even after finding the problem and trying to contact the user for clarification, the user could not be bothered which is fine, but do not send an email to the VP or a department head claiming no one has responded to your problem when two attempts were made to respond. If the IT department was not needed, the IT department would not be there, a cost indeed but a cost that is justified because the others do not know how to use technology. Electricity is a cost as well and does not bring in income, you can not get rid of that either. The company has two choices, get rid of all computers and work like they did in the 50's, or use technology and the associated support structure that comes with it.
I have another note with your "cost". The company executives determine the IT budget and staffing for the year. It all looks great and daandy while cutting the funds but those some executives are also the first and loudest to complain when they need IT support at 10:30PM on a Sunday night we do not have 24x7 coverage and they have to lower themselves to having to call an oncall pager and wait 10 minutes for someone to call them back. They also complain that we do not have 19in LCD monitors and they may have a printer that has more then a 500K page count.
The user needs to get a 75MB file to the customer. Stop whining and arrange for it to happen.
Agree there, problem is the user already determined they want to email the file. They have emailed attachments in the past (not that large though) and view the problem now as MY fault it does not work. Alternatives are given but none are convienent as email and they do not want to deal with it.
You obviously have never been in a real IT support job before. IT in a local office does not make MS Office products, does not make policies, does not set the working hours, does not procure equipment, does not determine what software and OS we use, does not choose vendors, has no control of anything outside that ofice, can not magically bring up a web site that a user used to use that is down, can not fix a URL that gets a 404 error from some government web site, can not bypass the companies retention requirements and can not retrieve your 2 year old mail that got deleted from tapes we no longer have. You seem to think it is okay for a user to be justified in yelling at me and claiming I am worthless because 15 years ago HP made a LaserJet that stated "PC load letter" and no one understands what that means.
You get the other end of it..
For example.
1. Network goes down in my area.
I phone IT who tell me to reboot my machine. I explain the network is down in the whole area where they tell me to reboot every machine.
2. Locked out of my machine because password is expired and domain is down.
I phone IT who tell me someone will be back to be in a day. A day later someone rings me to get the same details again. Despite numerous calls I get my password reset and domain back up 3 days later. I had to break the IT rules to work during that time.
3. Printer needs new toner. IT look after it. Put an IT request in to ask for toner replacement. Following day someone from India (did I mention we outsourced our IT) calls to ask me the exact same things as what I wrote in the request but also wants to know my machine spec and operating system (Why!). Next day I get a call from another country who said the call had been routed there and would be routed to my location. A few hours later a guy who sits across the way from me gets up and changes the toner. He wouldn't move his ass until it was official.
There are just as many lusers working in IT tbh.
If I was ever in IT I could so easily see myself organizing myself out of a job.. that would be my only goal to do everything I could so that I would have no work at all. Ok it never works that way but looking back you can at least say how long it used to take you to deal with x or y comes up less often because I worked on a,b and c.
People in IT who bitch about lusers are generally being reactive rather than pro-active. You might hate me for saying that but in my experience its ususally the truth. If you take some time to get to know people who dislike you, ask them what problems they have or how you can improve their computing experience. Show them you care even if you don't and they will tend to treat you with more respect.
Many of the standard email issues can be cleared up by taking some time to educate "your customers".
Paper levels/printer status can in many situations be monitored by software/SNMP. Imagine what people would start thinking of you if on your way to lunch you stopped by the printer and put more paper in the two printers your monitoring app told you was out or low.
Proper labeling of printers or even signs pointing at the nearest one (think star trek walkways) might solve many such problems.
Also a web page people can go to check the status of the network systems that might be down systems that have known problems..workarounds. (Use printer b..etc)
As far as software pushes... Unless everyone is still running windows 95 and a login script is the *only* avenue why make your "customers" wait several minutes before they can start using their computers and if I had to check in I would be pissed too having to sit there picking my nose *without being paid* for it. Why not have them run in the background automatically...perhaps in the middle of the night. Most computers built within the past 4 years or so have WLAN and a management system can actually turn on even computers that are *turned off* (Yes I mean turned off not in suspend mode) for update purposes by sending magic ping packets.
'IT professionals think nothing of wearing their scorn on their sleeves'
... even though I was a Sys. Admin at the time and NOT PC support. Or the guy who typed format C: to see what it did, as he'd seen it in a book ... well, at least he was trying to learn].
... but the mechanic I take it too who does find it seems to think I should have known it, as though it is 'common knowledge').
... after all, that's what backups are for ... right?]
... I often tell the users, you wouldn't take your car to a Civil engineer and expect them to be able to fix it would you? And you wouldn't call the car mechanic to come fix the traffic congestion you've been having near your place, would you?
It all depends on the Department. I know a lot of the PC support guys I used to work with were pretty lazy. [Blaming everything on the Network]. Plus they loved to ridicule users who didn't know solutions to the problems which occurred with their PC's. [And let's face it, as far as the user is concerned the PC is just a tool that should work].
Now, admittedly some of those users were probably too 'untrained' or too thick to use a computer, [like the manager who couldn't get his floppy disk to work as he'd put it in upside down, or the manager who minimised his desktop in Win 3.1 and never thought of clicking on the little icon in the lower right hand corner to get it back. Or the manager who deleted his files and wanted me to get them back for him
But, at present one of the many things I do is train people who have never used PC's to use PC's, and a lot of them are very afraid of:
1. the PC itself [in case they cause it to melt down], or they destroy it somehow.
2. doing something mind numbingly stupid in front of other students or me [the instructor].
3. some think if they learn to use a computer it will forever change them into a computer slave. [Yes, yes, we all welcome our new computer overlords.]
When I go to one of our other sites in order to do PC support [because apparently when PC support is needed it's easier to call the Network Engineer rather than the PC support guy, as they want the issue resolved], they often appolgise to me for the stupid things they MIGHT have done. After all, it's only a tool.
Though, to be fair, you get it from a LOT of other trades as well. Like when my car malfunctions and a motor mechanic gives me a stupid look because I was supposed to know the cause of my car engine constantly stalling was some stupid electrical thing sitting on the engine. (Even though the last five mechanics I took it too couldn't find the cause
I've never found Developers / Programmers to be too bad with users [I mean, some of them are naturally arrogant, but the ones I knew from BEFORE they became programmers were already that way.]
I've never meet too many Network Engineers to be too arrogant (though they do develop a hatred for PC support guys who always blame the network for everything). I've meet some arrogant Sys Admins, but I know from talking to their friends/other halves etc that they were arrogant before getting into Sys Admin.
Then, of course there is the problem that most NON IT people don't know the difference between one section of IT and another. I'm forever explaining that I don't actually DO PC Support, as I know very little about registers and DLL's etc, but becasue I'm in IT I seem to be the first port of call for almost everyone I know [except the PC Support guys who seem to think that any problem can easily be solved by blowing away the contents of a hard drive and re-installling everything
But, the lack of distinction outside of IT for the different aspects of IT can be confusing for the users. I normally try to explain that PC support guys are like motor mechanics, while network engineers are like Civil engineers who design and look after the roads people drive on
Alas, it do
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
No he isn't. However, you sir have just made his case all the stronger. If that's the best response you can come up with as the first line of your reply, he's already won the argument.
Your response is wrong. Mainly because your focus is on what users 'should' be doing.
The parent poster was completely ignoring what users should be doing, which is a good idea because in the IT department you have minimal control over other peoples actions. You only have control over what you do yourself.
There's a problem. The user has provided you with enough information to know what it is and how to fix it. Maybe the user has done so without following the proper forms of courtesy, maybe they didn't buy you dinner, no body cares.
The IT departments job is to keep the IT things running smoothly. Yes you have to manage time between important things an unimportant things, but it all has to get done, refusing to help someone because they don't ask nicely or because they 'should' know how to do it themselves is the opposite of your job.
On top of the IT dept specific job everyones job is to make it easier for everyone to get their work done. If you can take 5 minutes to save someone 3 hours then you should do it. I don't think there are many people who can legitimately claim that if they helped people even a tiny bit more than they do at the moment then their own deadlines would be missed.
The problem that the original article addresses is specifically the arrogance voiced in your post. If you have a job in an IT department then you need to eat some humble pie.
As a complete aside, any organisation that needs to manage their employee's time down to the minute level using automated systems is a bad company that should not exist and should definitely not be permitted to employ people.
Assume the customer was once right, but has been made bitter and defensive by repeated arrogant IT messages (YOU have performed an illegal action and will be shut down...)
You shouldn't be using the most complex device humankind has ever created if you are going to get all upset about a few error messages. You should be fucking gratefull that you get to use such a piece of equipment at all.
The user should have got a simple, understandable message that the printer was out of paper. That's a failure of the OS designer and printer driver developer.
Actually it's a failure of the purchasing officer who doesn't know anything about printers (or which brands give you simple understandable messages that the printer is out of paper (like my $150 Lexmark which has the incredibly cryptic message 'Printer is out of paper')
The user's email software should have picked up the typo and suggested a correction (in fact, most email clients do).
And so when the software changes naol.com to aol.com (to help you) then I'm sure you will be on the phone whinging about that too. Why don't you type more carefully? Or double check your message before clicking send? Does an envelope correct your spelling when you write out the wrong address? Does your telephone automatically correct the number you are dialling?
The user is employed by your company to work.
Exactly, so they shouldn't be wasting time by being too fucking lazy to check their work (or the address of an email) before they send it out to a client. In fact, any employee that wastes their time and the IT department's time and the company's time because they are a lazy moron should be fired.
The user needs to get a 75MB file to the customer. Stop whining and arrange for it to happen.
Hey tell that to the post office when you try and send a Datsun through the post. Hey! I'm the customer. Stop whinging and arrange for the transport of my Datsun.
You have been a problem for so long that people believe they can use you as an excuse for their own failures.
Yes, and lucky for you IT people are not very good at office politics or your lazy incompetent ass would have been fired already.
- Nothing to see hear.
Automotive analogies are a bad habit, but I think I should mention this:
I believe the law in Iowa is, to get a driver's license, you have to score reasonably high on a test that shows you know about driving. Things like how far before the intersection to signal, and right of way, and so on.
If you're below the age of 18, I believe it also requires that you take a Driver's Education class. Or maybe this is required at any age.
Now, consider what Driver's Ed teaches. I have never in my life actually used a real manual transmission, but I had to learn on their simulator -- the example given by the teacher was someone who had his finger sliced off, but he put it on ice and his brother drove him into town, and he got it reattached. So, in an emergency, I might have to use a manual transmission, and "It's not my area" or "It's not my interest" isn't an excuse.
Then there's interfaces. The article asks "What if Ford decided to switch the positions of the brake and the accelerator?" Or something to that effect. Well, just about every car has a different Cruise Control system, and different environmental controls (AC/heating), the hazard lights are in different places, some have the brights as a separate button, some have the gearshift as yet another handle on the steering wheel, while some have it by the armrest, sometimes the seat has some simple, physical controls on the side or under it, and sometimes it's all electronic, sometimes the gas tank can just be opened, and sometimes there's some sort of catch by the driver's seat...
Need I go on?
And we're not required to learn ALL of those, just enough that we can learn the rest as we need to. Frankly, humans are capable of this -- I don't know anyone who is completely confused by a desktop environment alone. Sit them down at Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu, and they can generally at least get to the Internet.
Let's make it simpler: A doorknob. Sometimes it's a knob that you turn, sometimes it's shaped differently, sometimes it's a handle you push down, sometimes you just grab a handle -- or some groove in the door -- and pull the whole mess to the side, sometimes you just walk up to it and it opens for you. Or locks on a door: Sometimes the key goes one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it's a deadbolt, sometimes it's a flimsy thing screwed to the door...
You are human, and presumably intelligent, or you wouldn't be using a computer for work in the first place. That means you have the capacity to learn, so "I can't" is no longer valid. And while it's not a life-or-death thing like a car, common decency means you should. And just as there is Driver's Education for a car, I think all computer users should be required to take an introductory course on how to sanely use a computer -- including things like choice of OS, choice of web browser, why not to download random EXEs, how to upgrade your drivers, how to use simple antivirus/antispyware scans, how and why to do backups (your hard disk WILL fail), etc.
I mean, I get it, there are some cases of IT treating users like idiots when it's not really their fault. However, as a user, you should first be sure that it really isn't your fault before you go looking for others to blame.
And one more thing: When dealing with techs, no matter how socially inept they may be, start off with the assumption that they've had a really bad day, and that they've had to deal with a lot of uninformed idiots, and just do whatever you can to make their job easier. That means that when I call for tech support, I already have my serial number in hand, and I've already checked their website, but I'm also going to follow their instructions to the letter (unless it's actually dangerous), even though I know they're just running through a script, and I know it won't help. And when we're done, no matter what the outcome, I thank them for their time, and tell them to have a good day (before they can follow their script and say that to me), instead of screaming at them and blaming everything on them.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They owe you politeness out of common decency, but common sense suggests you should avoid interrupting their work."
Um, no. I'm part of an IS organisation that actively saves the business money right,left and centre. We're providing new tools that let you do your business workflow in half the time. We're providing new ways of working whilst you're on the road, with access to all the office systems. We're decommissioning a fuckload of old systems that duplicate each other's functionality, don't talk to each other and are costing the company a fortune in licence fees - and replacing them with one that requires one guy to look after it, rather than the 5 bodies you're currently paying for.
The view that IS/IT support is a pure cost center is archaic. Lumping us in with the guy who dusts the plastic plants and fills the vending machine is, frankly, insulting.
Circuit diagrams are not arbitrary and capricious and if the circuits they describe are behaving in a manner I do not understand I can take down a book, read quietly for a little while and figure it out. It will not punish me and it behaves according to physical laws. It will not throw me into Kafka's bureaucratic meatgrinder for something I said or did today that would have been perfectly fine if I said it a day earlier or later. Humans, it turns out, are arbitrary and capricious and that's why sometimes they frighten me.
This is not my sandwich.
Yup, nothing says "my attitude is not the problem" more clearly than "If you want good IT support then show your IT people RESPECT and get the FUCK out of our way"
2. The reciprocation of customer service, come on, They need to get their jobs done, and they dont care whats on your plate. Just like when you walk up to payroll and ask WTF is up with my paycheck being $220.14 for two weeks, you dont care what theyre up to, you want that fixed now. Scheduling people is an art and takes real practice.
3. Its not fine for an employee to blame something un-related on being late. However the opportunity shouldnt be there for the employee in the first place. If an IT issue can be valid excuse then it will be abused. Its not right, but its a fact of life.
4. As far as the printer goes, you shouldn't need to walk over to the printer(s) and figure out if there is enough paper to get your job done. It needs to be right there when you press print, it should give you a pretty legit idea of what the paper forecast is. Sure it might have 200 pages left, but is part way through a 500 page job, so really your going to need to submit and wait. Checking the printer is a waste of time, having a paper sensor is a no-brainer.
5. Double checking your own spelling.... since you brought that one up "seperate"
Once you stop whining about the users you might be able to help them.
Storm
"IT people" are ornery for the following reasons:
1. "What have you done for me lately" attitude. If you complete a big server upgrade making everyone's life easier most employees offer "its about damn time" as thanks.
2. If a system performs poorly it is automatically IT's fault, no one seems to know or care that management/accounting hasn't released the funding to upgrade/replace the system.
3. Users who have little knowledge of how to operate their computers and no desire to learn, they have the IT on speed dial and aren't afraid to call. These users, even though they may be completely polite, will call with the same questions day after day. You have to duck and roll Jackie Chan style past these user's cubes on your way to the restroom because they WILL stop you to ask some inane question that you've probably answered 5 times.
4. If a trucking company hires a truck driver the driver is expected to have knowledge of how to drive his truck and troubleshoot basic problems that may arise. Is he expected to be a mechanic? No. A competent and educated operator of an expensive piece of machinery? Yes. No so for computer users.
5. Users have no idea of what goes on behind the scenes in IT nor do they care. I can't think of the last time someone thanked me for the 3 months of uptime our Exchange server has had but the sales guy down the hall who brought on a single new account gets attaboys and back slaps galore.
If someone is mistreated and kicked around enough eventually they are going to avoid contact with their tormentors, this is why IT people get a rep as antisocial hermits.
For many IT people it is almost a tough love situation with their users. If someone is having a real problem or is the type of person who is willing to learn and try to resolve things on their own they are going to have a positive relationship with IT.
Users from the #3 category above are going to have a less than positive experience. They are going to receive less then cheerful service when they call for the 5th time because a 37GB e-mail attachment won't go through or because they are at home and their laptop won't connect to the neighbor's unsecured wireless network. It is human nature to be a curt with someone like this in order to convey a sense of frustration and hopefully train the user next time to use their common sense and training.