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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.... )
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
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.
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* 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
> And the interviews were all questions like "What do
> you think of users who know absolutely nothing
> about computers?"
Speaking as a business manager, I think that is quite appropriate. For an interview conducted in 1986, or perhaps even 1996.
My question to that organization is, why in the year 2006 do you have employees who do not possess the skills to use basic, standard tools to process basic business information, and to extend their own skills by themselves moderate amounts (not to learn a new ERP system by themselves, for example, but to figure out the fairly minor differences between AP module 5.5.7 and the new 5.6.1 version now in pre-production testing)? Why do you still have employees who believe that an inability to do a basic search in their own e-mail box merits a deskside visit from an ultra-qualified, ultra-patient analyst who will provide 4 hours of no-charge tutoring? Can you name another support department that does this? Does Finance provide remedial tutoring in financial accounting to sales managers, not just once upon promotion but over and over and over again over 20 years? Is the CFO on call 24x365 to provide personal tutoring on how to read sales reports? Why not?
Again, I am speaking as a business manager who has been through this entire cycle 3 times since the 1970s and who spent tremendous amounts of time in the 1980s providing basic business (computer) skills tutoring.
sPh
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
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.
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!
I don't get angry at ignorance, but at wilful negligence. Too many people not only do not know, but they demand help _without wanting to know_, and being very rude about it. When the customer prides himself on his ignorance, it's high time for niceties to stop. JM2c.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
"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."
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.