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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.)"
Nothing for you to see here, please move along
See, it's attitudes like that....
The real litigious bastards...
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.... )
Of course it is. And companies are starting to get wise to the fact that things could be better - when applying for jobs after college, not one but two of the interviews I had were filling spots of IT admins who'd been fired for this kinda crap. And the interviews were all questions like "What do you think of users who know absolutely nothing about computers?"
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.
GROLIES: Guardian[1] Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt
LOBNH: Lights On But Nobody Home
CNS-QNS: Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient
[1] UK left wing newspaper
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?
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.
What, all doctors aren't like House?
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
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 *
Most people who flock to IT support are technophiles. Technophiles like technology, not people. Dot boom brought many more people into the tech industry - that really had no apptitude but were there for the boom - and these people really don't care but are trapped in IT - so you have misanthropes and people who hate their jobs in IT. Nuff said?
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Two of the three people I've ever had to fire in my 25-year carreer
were BOFHs. They were both replaced with talented, socially well-balanced
guys who treated users like customers and actually enjoyed finding
solutions to problems that were right both for the user and for the IT department.
I don't think it's the bad attitude of some IT people that's doing the damage,
it's management toleration of that attitude. Plenty of good people out there
if you go looking.
I'm more than familiar with some perceived stereotypical behavior in some IT people. Some of my least favorite attitudes are those displayed when the "IT Pro" is protecting his ignorance. Gone are the days, I think, when IT people were looked upon as techno-god figures... and feared as such.
I'm an IT manager and I'm all about helping business work better through IT. Some of my favorite endorsements are along the lines of "you don't make me feel stupid." What would be the point in that? I don't do what they do... which is most often making money for the company. In my job, I spend the company's money, so I do my best to make sure they feel they are getting their money's worth.
But back to the topic of jackasses: I hate people who hide their ignorance and attempt to put up some sort of "I won't share what I know" front as if he were the exclusive container of knowledge. Further, I hate it when people attempt to "secure their jobs" through obfuscation and indirection of information. In my opinion, the latter complaint amounts to malpractice. And I have a close friend who is presently suffering the worst of all scenarios -- the knows less than nothing boss who got where he is because he lies on his resume. (This moron thinks that if you block port 80 on the firewall that users will not be able to surf the web!!)
I see these offenders as a dying breed, fortunately... but they aren't dying fast enough.
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
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).
I heard a saying one time. I don't know the origins:
"Accounts departments love IT Departments. For before there was IT, everyone hated Accounts. But now everyone hates the IT Dept."
This seems to hold some truth from my experience.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
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).
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
Given a sufficiently large group of people, some of them will be wankers.
Wah! Some IT people are nasty! Yeah, isn't humanity a horrible thing? Ever met an unpleasant doctor, lawyer, bus driver, teacher, plumber? But let's forget about reality and hurl some ill-considered generalisations instead.
Or better yet, let's not. I've worked in IT for ten years or so and the vast majority of my colleagues have been professionals who behave...well, professionally. Some users are easier to interact with than others; a particularly incalcitrant customer will provoke the odd grumble back in the IT office. A member of staff who publically insults/intmidates/ridicules/humiliates a user should, and usually will, get a smack from the management stick.
Of course attitude problems will sometimes arise and fail to be corrected, and the appropriate manager should be bludgeoned with the aforementioned stick. More often, IT staff will work with their user base to achieve a mutually satisfactory goal. Painting the entire industry as a bunch of ill-bred sociopaths is wrong, stupid and insulting.
Typical fucking user.
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.
It's generally thought to be part of the reason why so few female schools students do not apply to study computer science at university ("why would I want to spend my career working in a culture like that?").
More recently I've noticed a worrying trend -- a lack of social skills has become an expected trait for programmers by a few employers (whereas most employers value social and communication skills very highly). 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". If even a few employers are actively reinforcing the all-too-common stereotype, then that cannot be healthy for the industry.
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.
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."
I'm on my way to change my career just because of how IT people conduct themselves. After being an Infrastructure geek for 7 years I went to business school and in the past 5 years I've been more engaged in other aspects of the business. Now I can clearly see how relatively close-minded my attitude was when I only dealt with technology. I used to think that business people made bad technical decisions because they were dumb, but ultimately businesses are there to make money and respond to many forces (including politics and power). For us IT People, the sad thing is, that although some of us mature and change, others just become more set in their ways and it's harder and harder to work with them because with years of experience comes "technical or SME power" that can be leveraged as a political tool. And just when you think you have your peers figured out, some new arrogant kid with tons of energy and a fresh mind from college comes in with the same attitude. Sadly we circumscribe to the same template. I used to get upset at users when they made mistakes, but now, as I become less of an SME, I can feel the pain that a "regular person" has. I know this may vary from organization to organization, but also IT today still doesn't have the visibility to the business as it should. I work for a reputable Tech company, and those who have the opportunity to influence the business ecosystem from IT are very few; although I hear many good ideas in the halls of our IT department every day. Soft skills are hard to come by in IT people, but those who have it can get ahead. In my case, I'm am really tired to deal with the same type of people (and I've done it Internationally and in the US... it's all the same folks). Let's try and be better.
Nah ... couldn't be. Developers fix their own problems, set up their own system configurations, run their own servers, and can fix most hardware issues with a rubber band, duct tape, a screw driver and a post-it - and when that fails, a sledge-hammer, 'cuz it was broken anyway.
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.
Why yes, I am.
I'm assuming from your self-richeous point of view that you take that attitude whenever dealing with IT too.
It's not self-righteous to try to get things done on behalf of my customer. I have people asking me to do things, and in turn I need the support of IT. If you don't like the fact that I'm trying to do things for my customers then you should take it up with them.
I'm sorry if that angers you, but either you want to do it yourself and should be expected to support yourself, or you want us to support it for you, and you need to use what we provide.
I don't think that you really want me doing everything myself. Seriously. In the case that I cited, I needed to connect to our corporate wireless network that requires a special cert to be on the machine. Can I do it myself? Sure, but if you're really telling me that I should do whatever I want then I'll just plug an unsecured wireless access point into the network in my office and solve the problem that way. I don't think that that's the right solution to the problem, and I'm sure that's not how my IT or security people want the problem fixed.
What I don't understand is why this has to be an "either-or" problem. Sure, IT is going to spend time fixing a problem that my configuration creates, but if they don't then I will. From a perspective of which is cheaper for the company, it's probably much less expensive for the IT department to at least be involved in helping me fix the problem than it is for me to be fixing the problem all on my own.
Did you stop to wonder why they called you "unprofessional"?
To be honest with you, the only reason that I can conclude is that they don't care about their customer. I didn't call the guy that I was talking to unprofessional because I've tried really hard to understand where IT is coming from. I understand that supporting untested configs costs them a lot of time and energy. I understand that it often costs less to push everyone into the same solution. What I would appreciate from IT is a little understanding in return. I need my IT department to understand that my job is to push the envelope and come up with new ways of doing things. It is what my customer demands.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
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!
_Unlocking the Clubhouse_ talks about the experience of CS undergrads at CMU. They conclude it was a "death of a thousand cuts" phenomenon. No one thing drove talented hard-working women out of the field, it was the steady drip of one problem after another. The culture was only one of the problems, but a real one. A lot of the women looked at it and figured that they'd given up parties and sleep to get into CMU, but no way were they giving up showers to become a "real" geek.
Ug. Your prof was/is a total schmo. The whole "he or she" thing drives me bonkers! Writing drivel like that is a sure fire way to cause your audience to lose track of what you're actually saying, and perhaps even count you as a class A moron.
The word "they", while not proper English, is a grammar tool used to overcome a deficiency in the English language - namely, that a singular, gender neutral pronoun doesn't exist. When I read "he or she", it's just plain awkward. Likewise, when I read the word "she" when not referring to a specific female, the stench of political correctness makes the sentence unbearable. "They", while not *proper* English, is the only non-distracting way to express a singular, gender neutral pronoun and I'd even go so far as to say it should ALWAYS be used in place of "he", "she", and "he or she" for this purpose. Everyone should write this way until whomever it is that decides what constitutes "proper English" gets tired of being beaten with a giant clue stick.
[% END RANT %]
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.
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.
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.
Doctors are pretty condescending.
Nowadays, people expect pills. Pills to fix everything.
So, one day, I was in front of that specialist, and he chicken-scratches me a prescription.
So I ask him what is it. What it does, how it works.
He was befuddled.
-- You can tell me, I have a master's degree in science, so I'll understand (better than Joe Sixpack anyways).
THEN, he explained me what his pills would do (they were't much effective, I healed myself).
* * *
Fortunately, it's not always like that. Once, I was having glasses made, and the oculist proposed me a custom-crafted lens. He started to make a diagram and explain the light rays through the lens, and when I talked about refraction indices, his eyes lighted-up and he obviously was delighted to meet a client who understand his work.
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.
the geeks are right.
/. but if they did, I'd tell them, ask your IT guy where you can learn more about to software or fuction you're using so you don't have to call him every 5 minutes. I guarantee you he'll help.
the article's analogy of a car's pedal's changing function is faulty.
the driver would have been tested and licensed to use those pedals by a driving instructor.
computer use requires no license but that doesn't make it easy.
if you want to use a computer and use this software, then you have to learn how! \
that is what is necessary to be a user that doesn't have to call IT every 5 minutes.
You must familiarize yourself with the tools you're being paid to use.
How would you feel if your plumber asked you how your toilet worked?
How would you feel if your lawn guy asked how to use the lawn mower?
you wouldn't blame the manufacturer of a band saw for making the controls different from another manufacturer.
you also wouldn't use a band saw without learning how first.
though, a computer can't take off your fingers, your refusal to think and learn what the IT guy already has annoys him.
not that users read
They're using their grammar skills there.
This whole article out to be modded flame bait. Just like this post.
in any profession where people deal with the general public, be assured that these professionals are saying exactly the same kinds of things about you (as in the diary submitter) to each other that we say about them when we fix their self-induced problems. You got high chloresterol brought on by too many McBurgers and fries and you keep going back to your doctor to get some pills? Guess what? That doctor is probably calling you "that idiot" and "meathead" and even less flattering things about you the minute you walk out of the examining room. And he'll be just as right as you are when you slam him because he installed Yet Another Malware-Loaded screensaver on his box.
The only difference with respect to "public" exposure is that you hang out on IT-oriented blogs so you consider this "in public". Go find some medical professional-oriented blogs if you want to find out what these professionals think of you.
This is a good thing. We WANT our professionals to blow off steam at each other, because we won't like the results if they blow it off at us... they don't want us telling them "Open a DOS prompt. Type format C: and then type "Y" and all your computer troubles will be over" any more than we want them "accidentally" screwing up our prescription meds.
One doesn't become a professional anything because we want to kiss the asses of our clients all the time. Anybody who's any good is going to get pissed off at our clients / fellow workers who don't have our specialized skills... and they're going to be pissed off at us because we don't get it right in their areas of expertise in a way that causes them unnecessary trouble. There's some reason why IT pros should have any more humility than they do?
And yes, you are an idiot. That doesn't mean the rest of us are going to follow your lead.
Though the biggest idiot here is whoever thought your article worth posting on slashdot.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
...A physical plant needs management too, companies have janitors, cleaning people, and general maintenance staff on hand (though in a large, multi-company office building, it's usually covered at a building level and so you may not see it directly in your company). They use plumbers, electricians, etc all the time. It *is* constantly maintained. Try living with unmaintained office building for a couple months and see how well you do. In large buildings, it's not even out of house (a state which IT may be reaching in some cases btw), they have a full maintenance staff on hand, not on call the way you have with your plumber.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
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.
i'll admit it, i've done my share of luzer-bashing over the years. however, i've also learned that there are two main problems with most of the people that we call "luzers"...
(1) they don't want to use a computer in the first place, or they know that they are lost and are therefore scared of the computer. either way, they try to avoid having to even touch the thing if they don't have to. these people i don't mind working with- because they generally know their limitations, and in many cases they actually listen when you tell them something. the trick is to tell them in a way that they actually understand- because just like they're scared of the computer, if you say something and they don't understand it, they're usually scared to ask you to repeat it or explain it in a way which is better for them... or they're afraid you're going to turn into one of these arrogant weenies that the article spoke of- the kind of people who would wear an "i see dumb people" t-shirt to a client's office.
in my current work (consulting) i have quite a bit of contact with these people. for the most part they "just want it to work", and they KNOW that they're not computer experts. these people make mistakes, but they almost always realize when they've screwed something up, and they ask for help. and unless they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place (installing software that the company doesn't want on the machine is a big one that i see) they will usually admit what happened. and after you explain to them that your service call was only necessary because of the software that they installed, and (in the case of installing unauthorized software) after their boss threatens to take my fee out of their paycheck, they usually won't do it again.
(2) companies like microsoft have convinced a lot of people that, just because they know how to use ALT-TAB to flip between outlook and solitaire when the boss walks by, that they are some kind of computer expert. THESE are the ones who piss me off- the people who think that just because they figured out how to turn on file and printer sharing on a windoze 2000 machine, that they are also qualified to handle everything from mail servers to cisco routers.
i don't normally have much contact with these people in my work, because when i find them, i make it a point to make sure their supervisors know exactly what kind of person they have on the payroll- and either the person starts improving, or they end up fired.
however, in my non-paid work (i maintain a combined patch file for qmail, and am a developer for vpopmail) i deal almost exclusively with these people who believe that, just because they can click the right buttons to make windoze do something, that they are also "computer experts" in general. these people are the ones who generally won't READ any more documentation than they have to- they'll just blindly follow along with some poorly written "qmail install guide" they found on the net, without understanding what they're actually doing. when they're done they'll usually have a machine which will move mail from one place to another, but it won't be secure, and they won't have any idea how it works, how to configure it, or how to fix it when something goes wrong.
THESE are the people who i freely admit to being rude with... the people who are in over their head but just plain don't care. (for me, "being rude" usually means referring them to ESR's "How to ask questions the smart way" page instead of answering the same questions over and over again.)
i think another problem is that many so-called "IT professionals" are afraid to use the phrase "i don't know" in front of a client or employer. i've found that being honest with my clients about my own skills and knowledge, as well as about the things i DON'T know, has worked really well- in a few cases the clients have even been willing to pay for my time to learn about whatever it is.
so when it comes to no
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.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
The use of "they" as a generic pronoun with a singular antecedent goes back at least to Middle English and has been used by many of the best writers of the English language. The idea that it is "incorrect" is a modern notion promulgated by people who believe there's some sort of Platonic perfect English out in the aether somewhere and only human failings keep us from reaching this ideal.
The better way to determine usage is to look at distribution in actual use (see The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language), not lists of pet peeves of Victorian and Edwardian era English professors and writers in book form *cough*Strunk & White*cough*.
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.
Sales people are a loss. Executives are a loss. HR is a loss. Janitorial is a loss. Production people are a loss. Administrative people are a loss. Accounting people are a loss.
Take away any of these functions, and the company cannot make money as quickly. Without accounting and HR, managers have to fill out their own forms, and employees have to deal with the insurance companies directly. Without janitorial, employees are emptying their own trash. Without IT, employees are back to pen and paper.
And guess what, they all have that holier-than-thou attitude. Sales people are the worst, because they think that they're the irreplaceable sole source of income for the company, and that one minute of their time is wasted money. And in a sense, that's true, but it is also true for every other department.
That "noob" who doesn't know anything about computers needs to be incredibly valuable to the company for your example to work. I'm not saying that the situation cannot happen. I'm saying that you'll have more instances where doubling the company's profitability will be more important than helping the "noob" learn how to operate a computer, on company time, at the company's expense, using company equipment and eating up your hours.
I used to work for a well-known mobile phone company, and basically every job description short of Janitorial included a requirement of "knowledge of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office." So when a salesperson comes on who doesn't know the first thing about a computer, I'm not going to drop everybody else's needs to show him how to use a mouse.
'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)
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!
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.