Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.
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
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.
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"
"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
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 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.
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.
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.