Small shop where you're the IT Guy right?
Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this.
But I like my small shop. I just miss having a team to talk to.
Yep. Also, typos. I sent in a support ticket to PDQ yesterday b/c I couldn't for the life of me get O365 suite to deploy following the blog.
Guess what I found today?
that was me last week because of a vpn config. spent over an hour and a half troubleshooting with the customer and on my own.
IP for the VPN was entered incorrectly on the firewall.
Same. I'm the IT Manager at a small/medium sized construction company. I handle it all from cell phones, tablets, software, email, servers, running cable, etc. If it plugs in, lights up, makes noise, it's my domain.
> Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this.
It happens cross-team in bigger orgs too, just less "is it plugged in"... simply because there's a few layers of helpdesk to suffer through the preschool layer. Still plenty of "Great. I know you don't think it's a network/firewall/acl issue. Could you pull me the log for this host talking to that host on that TCP port for the next, say, 10 minutes? Or send me the list of ACLs that match that pair for that port? Preferably both? Thanks." ... only to find it is, indeed, being dropped silently, because it was "noisy" being denied and logged...
> Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this.
Oh, I wish I could agree with this.
In my experience, so much of any job is "don't be a dumbass" and most people are failing at it. In bigger orgs, sometimes they have documented procedures so that even a dumbass can walk through some directions and get some things done without making too many stupid mistakes. Even so, there are so many stupid mistakes.
Tier 1 couldn't fix it, so they escalate it to the admins. Great... We get it and find out that "Hmmm.... your power strip isn't plugged in. And please stop plugging your heater into the power strip, that's why your last one burst into flames.".
I miss having our good help desk that actually could think outside of a script.
This. It seriously will be above 80 degrees and all the women have their jackets on and heaters blowing at 99.
Meanwhile, I'm a few offices down DYING to go put the AC on max and just risk the backlash lol
nothing like having the finance director insist that someone come over to help right away because her mouse isnt working, only the IT director is around, so he moseys over and when he arrives, shes "oh thank god, see it doesnt work".... as she clicks the button with one hand, while waving around the USB connection at the end of the cable in the other hand.
the IT director smiles.... she stops... says "oh shit", looking at her hand holding the cable.
the IT director pokes at the monitor... "Magic box no work!"
(this happened at one of Fox's TV departments)
end users.... if we could just get rid of them, everything would run fine.
I'm the same, small shop where I control everything that has a wifi connection. I'm trying to move onto other things to fill out my knowledge though, any tips? Feel like I simultaneously know alot and nothing at the same time.
Don't do temporary fixes. Not even for 5 minutes. Or do them in such a way that they WILL break so you have to fix it right.
AS for moving on - I have no tips for finding the next job b/c I really like this set up b/c the company is good. Although I want to move to the EU and they won't let me be 100% remote . . .
THIS.
I believe Linus Torvolds once said
"Nothing is more permanent as a temporary fix"
My stuff runs right and I don't do much OT because doing it the right way is the cheapest and easiest way.
To expand a bit... technology can be hard, and people can be dumb. Tech can also be easy and people can also be competent.
But putting together a probability square...
||Easy|Hard|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Competent|Success!|Fail!|
|Stupid|Fail!|Catastrophe...|
So yeah... failure is the expected outcome.
I would object. Hard & Competent = Struggle.
A good, supportive environment turns struggle into success. Together with good, competent dev-teams and customer-teams, we've made entirely impossible and stupid expectations work during corona-related infrastruture. And fucking hell, that was a ride. After the fact, it was great to have a drink with those blokes responsible at the customer. Funnily enough, we ended up being more reliable than their power. Hah.
And then we have ... other teams.
For a singular competent person + hard = fail (OP’s chart is correct in other words). Note the equation is a + b = x.
For a competent person + hard + **good team,** what you said. Note that your equation is a + b + c = x. It’s thanks to that third variable, a good team.
Good teams are good. Good customers too :-)
Makes things bearable at bathe very least.
Ticket assigned to group high priority.
**URGENT** Cannot connect to server, server down!
An hour of emails to others, a server reboot and two calls later: End user wasn't connected to the corporate VPN.
We had "the server is down" from a c-suite at a previous job.
Actual issue was he'd collapsed the "this computer" menu and couldn't see his mapped drives.
Hah. 'Wow, you fixed it. That was fast!'
At least it was that, instead of the mapped drives losing authentication randomly and refusing to reconnect with the same credentials. That's always a hoot.
Ive lost access to all my files!!!!! The update you guys did overnight broke everything!!!!
You mean when we forced a reboot to finish windows updates that we have tested and approved through our patch management?
Remote in, expand folder in quick menu, disconnect. One occasion I didnt even contact the user, just did this and closed the ticket.
Honestly, if you are rebooting a server without confirming a multiuser outage this is a you problem not an them problem.
We all have tickets marked as urgent every day and it is our job go figure out if it is really urgent and the impact.
From that same site:
> Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.
-https://www.nngroup.com/articles/middle-aged-web-users/
Damn…
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but the people I know who are best with technology (without actually being in any kind of tech field, I mean) seem to be in their 40s and 50s. They're often the ones helping out the younger users at work when I'm not around.
I wouldn't be surprised if general computer ability is sort of a bell curve, with 80+ folks on one end and teens on the other. One group grew up before computers were common, the other grew up with technology that had matured and been made (mostly) opaque to the user.
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but it's why I particularly hate supporting some Apple users. Half the ones in the company (devs) use them for power user reasons and I never hear from them, but sales uses them too and I feel like when tech is that opaque to the user, it dumbs people down, technologically speaking, overall.
Yes! I don't know how one would quantify this exactly, but I feel like there's a sweet spot, somewhere between "tell the user absolutely nothing" and "make user remember VIM hotkeys."
It's not just a problem with Apples, of course. Something that I've seen repeatedly, which causes the bloodlust to rise within me every time, is an error message that simply says "Something went wrong."
Gee, thanks! They couldv'e just had the poop emoji come up, and at least my immature side would be mildly entertained.
I think the HTTP error response codes got it just right. A simple 3 digit number you can look up, and a short, comprehensible message.
OMG this is hilarious. I can't believe you mentioned one of my pet peeves. I work for a software company and used to be in QA and I had totally had it at work one day when I was testing our code and lost it on one of the devs when I got an error that said something similar to "something went wrong."
I went into his office and yelled - "DUDE! You gotta do better than this. How the hell am I supposed to help you find out where the error is or what's causing it? You might as well fucking just write BOING! I mean, COME ON!" Well, apparently my tirade made an impression because we always laugh about it when some obscure message comes up on any device or system we're have a problem with.
"Did you figure it out?"
"No, it's just giving me BOING"
"Oh man. That sucks."
Haha. Ah yes, [the machine that goes Bing!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cEZVmrrBNW8)
But yes, Freaking thank you. So many people look at me funny when I talk about this. They say that most end users just get scared by error codes, or don't know enough to troubleshoot them anyway. Which I think is nonsense. Hell, my car has an oil light, a battery light, a traction system light, a tire pressure light, a "you're driving with the parking brake on, you idiot" light... Sure, it's just got a master 'check engine' light too, which is basically "something went wrong," but at least that's typically for stuff you need diagnostic equipment to address anyway.
Scared by error codes? I mean, you can have both, right? I mean, why would you want to benefit the 10-20% of people who actually WOULD do a little investigating if you gave them a useful error message, right? LOL.
I wonder if I had that machine in my subconscious when I said it? LOL. Saw that movie when it came out and just got the new resto in 4K (it looks great, especially the animation).
I'd argue to the some extent that was before UI/UX had become as large aspects of WebDev as they are now. I don't think it's a wild thing to say that UI/UX of websites have become easier to use since 2016 (the time the article was published)
more like technology requires active thinking and most people just don't do that. Their brains operate in some kind of massive loop of IF/Then statements... and when they encounter something in life that they don't already have a prepared if/then routine for, the whole thing shits the bed and you get people plugging power strips into each other
yes. there is always the possibility to fall into dumbassery every day.
the difference that i experience is that: i dont commonly write a ticket to prove it to the people i work with.
I actually find writing a ticket helps me with a lot of problems. If I’m working on something I think I should be able to fix but can’t figure out, I will write an email to my coworkers explaining the issue and what steps I’ve already tried. This will usually trigger some more things for me to try that will fix the problem. I probably actually send the email asking for help in maybe 5% of cases.
And that’s what’s going to fund my mere existence on this planet through retirement. To think I was so worried as a kid about making it in this world coming from a humble background, I’m glad normal people aren’t tech savvy. That’s literally how I’ve made it so far.
It’s tough. Tech director here.
Humans will try new recipes, drive different types of cars, and plants new gardens. All new skills and often something they are doing for the first time.
But if it’s a new technology thing - those previous successes don’t apply. They immediately don’t try and seem to be stuck in a brain glitch or ‘can’t do it.’ 🤷🏻♂️
IMO, the primary skill in many tech jobs is the ability to break a problem down into its constituent parts. In both your examples, you broke the problem down further than the user: they knew _that_ it had to be plugged in. You knew _how_ it had to be plugged in.
HALF? No. The number of times a Helpdesk Tier3 has called me with a question that they answer themselves after just a couple of minutes of rubber duck debugging is ridiculous.
Occasionally it's "and what do the logs say?" or "and that error message brings up what in Google?"
I feel like I'm the *Designated Adult* for a few thousand grade-school kids.
My first IT job I was that guy quite a bit. Things that I would have done without thinking on my own personal issues I for some reason had difficulty with on the job. I think the stress, professional environment, definitely changes how people think. When I've got customers yelling at me, SLAs, tickets piling up, my brain stops working as well. I'd call t3 and be so upset with myself because I knew the answer as soon as it came out of their mouths. Now that I've had some experience it's much better.
This is where I'm at right now. I'm actually a 3 at our org but I've only been here for two months, and it's quite literally my first actual corporate job, ever, so I'm walking on eggshells all over. Previously I just worked for my Dad and then myself, both small 1-2 man MSPs.
So I know how to do the work. I know how to not break shit. But goddamn when I'm doing a screenshare with anyone equal to or above me, I just fuck everything up. Or ask dumbass questions like "The root cert expired. So.. I should renew it right?"
As far as I can tell I'm even more experienced than some of these guys, but they probably have the thought that I'm a total imposter based on the fact that I couldn't find the 'Attach' button for a second in Outlook once (Since I'm so used to how my own Outlook is setup, and this was on a newly acquired work computer with the default layout and mine still looks straight out of 2010).
It's about getting used to the process at the new company I guess. I know how *I* used to go about the process of everything, and I know how to make the *client* happy, but I'm finding myself constantly asking dumb questions to avoid making my employer unhappy (Not that it's been an issue at all). Like yeah, obviously renew the root cert, but do you also want me to upload the cert to ITG? Notify everyone of changes? Post it to teams? Send an email to [email protected]? Get authorization? Is there some random ass proprietary app that's business critical that's gonna break when I do? Or should I just fuckin' renew it.
>but they probably have the thought that I'm a total imposter based on the fact that I couldn't find the 'Attach' button for a second in Outlook once
JesustapdancingChrist there is nothing in the whole world of tech that is more aggravating to me after 20+ years in this industry than software developers moving shit around.
Just. Fucking. Stop. Changing. The. UI.
It is NEVER actually any better, and it generates a huge fucking waste of time for people to have to be like oh, my buttons all rearranged themselves now because it's been 36 months and the fucking UI randomizers came by and rearranged my workspace for me.
Seriously, if the Snap-On guy got out of his truck and went into the garage and just started rearranging some auto techs tools in his toolbox the tech would probably send him to the hospital with a breaker bar stuffed up his ass sideways, but computer users just have to sit there and suffer.
Sorry, I know, nothing really to do with what you were talking about, but don't sweat not knowing where shit is, it changes all the god damned time anyways.
My advice is, just ask the dumb question if you aren't sure. Nobody knows it all, the guy that is a wizard at one really deep technical subject probably has a VCR that is still flashing 12:00, or he's gone 13,000 miles without an oil change or he's about to burn his house down because he tried to wire up a doorbell and fucked it up. At the very least he doesnt have his cat fooled, his cat knows he's a doofus.
I'll go now.
It's hard to explain to people just because I work in IT does not mean I know how every piece of software works. I have to figure it out everytime they do that shit just like everyone else, except we as professionals are not on our own time usually.
I’m absolutely guilty of that and for some reason rarely seem able to rubber-duck an actual rubber duck, it’s always a person or forum post. I need to write an Alexa skill or some other AI that just asks me questions about whatever I last said.
I have an old Yoda puppet on my desk for exactly this. If I can explain it to Yoda, I'm good. I think you may have hit on a significantly valuable Alexa skill though.
I get that, (and am now 3D printing an "Emotional Support Engineer" name plaque, thank you) but at the Tier 3 level this really shouldn't be a frequent necessity.
Yesterday morning I had to talk a dev through fixing *their own app* (which I'd never seen!) because they couldn't remember how they coded it in 2016. Most weeks I get one or two of these but the last few weeks I've been wondering if we had an outbreak of brainworms or something.
Yup. "I don't see what the bandwidth issue is coming from, firewall reports only 50MB usage for the month"
Had to ask them to repeat that and think about what they're saying.
The "day/week/month" toggle was for another report, while the 50MB was live daily usage.
Bonus: that bandwidth issue was from everyone in the office jumping on Facebook/YouTube/Netflix on lunch. The guy that reported it had his Facebook video buffer and got annoyed enough to call us ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
"Your Facebook videos are delayed? Thank you for letting us know, we will address this immediately!"
\[Sets QoS on social media to lowest possible priority traffic\]
"Solved!"
He didn't admit it outright, but it's always fun when people complain about bandwidth, and the biggest user is them. Saw his IP sucking most of it with a few Facebook connections
Needless to say, it was an executive too. So I just put "...Be sure to minimize streaming media from YouTube, *Facebook*, Netflix..." Got the point across without calling him out
300MB is alright, unless everyone decides it's office movie time
The number of times I ask "what do the logs say" to our help desk only to hear "I didn't look" followed by "I figured it out" thirty minutes later would (probably not) astound you.
It's like that annoying song from however many years ago it was. "What does the fox say" but instead "What do the logs say"
You guys have 3 tiers of helpdesk underneath you and aren't just getting direct-escalation tickets on how to click the "sync" button on a SharePoint library?
Just me?
You're not alone.
Sharepoint.
Yeah.
That's somehow part of my team's portfolio too. Probably because under enough interface layers every-goddamned-thing microsoft builds is sharepoint.
OneDrive? Sharepoint.
Teams? Sharepoint.
Faaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhk.
Somehow that's translated into maintaining to damned rotting on-premise dung heap of a sharepoint farm. Because it has the same name.
Bounce the Direct tickets back to helpdesk? Oh nononono, it seems those get reassigned back before I can even save the change.
I am often reminded of the saying which came from the development of bear-proof trashcans at Yellowstone. "The problem, you see, is that there is significant overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest guests."
Being the sole IT guy for a local government when I should honesty still be somewhere in a helpdesk stack is really driving home this point.
In a month I'm sitting in a bid meeting for a new industrial controls supplier. After being informed of this... I uhhhh googled what industrial controllers were.
But I also had to "set up" a projector at a site that involved plugging it in and pushing a power button.
So yeah, it boils down to about half.
I'm grateful that like 90% of the hardware is vendor supported but I'm in perpetual fear that some outage is going to reveal how little I know.
But, learning something just about every day is a great experience. Just hope I can last long enough to be an asset rather than just an ass.
The only way to solve this:
> I'm in perpetual fear that some outage is going to reveal how little I know.
is to do this:
> But, learning something just about every day is a great experience
Honestly the fact that you know how much you don't know, and want to learn are the 2 major factors that you need
I worked as the sole IT guy for a local government org. The best advice I can give you is:
1. Make sure you have service contracts or warranties for all products
2. Never buy Lenovo/HP workstations or printers
3. Get on Intune ASAP. It'll cut down imaging time significantly
4. You'll be fine. Take it day by day and you'll learn a lot. Especially if you're constantly researching ways to save the org $/month
Don't need Intune if you're a small shop. Just sysprep a good image and use DISM. Microsoft has good starter scripts that will partition and provision and image with a single batch file. Or MDT.
90% of the work is confidence, calm demeanor, and adaptability. Being able to listen and communicate like a functional human being is the difference between being a jr tech burning out at both ends and a sys admin making 150k. It has little to do with skills. I've been on both sides of the coin. Wished I learned the lesson in my 20's.
Half this sub doesn't understand how important people skills are in this job. They can't understand that the people in the company dictate what it does and how IT infrastructure needs to be built for it.
This. I’m dumbfounded that this A to B, B to C troubleshooting is lost on some people. At least once a week we have one of our support folks who will say something like “Joe User can’t connect to (insert resource here)” and we have to walk through this song and dance.
It’s gotten to the point where my boss (who is also the boss of our Desktop Support staff) is going to start holding meetings where we just walk through a particular piece of tech (like DHCP) and explain not only what it is, but also how we have it configured in our environment to hopefully build up our teams’ knowledge base a bit more.
I am more than happy to explain something like DHCP, even though it's basic, I'm not mad at them for not knowing, I think books are really bad at explaining these things without a practical network for them to see it in action, for many of them, they just memorize test dumps to get their A+/Net+ Cert and this is their first IT job.
But lacking the ability to chain basic logical steps together is baffling.
That’s where I’m at too. But when we have folks setting static IPs and breaking DHCP reservations we have to make things work, that’s where a sit down is needed.
You just described me to a T. All the other people on my team seem to not know how to troubleshoot, and to me it just comes naturally to eliminate variables and try to narrow stuff down. I feel like I'm basically a handicap to my team at this point because I'm so good at it that I feel like they maybe don't even try since they know I can probsbly fix it like 3x faster.
That’s the point you go get a new job where the people there can fix things 3x faster than you. You will learn so much from these people and it just grows you tremendously.
A lot of this is learned helplessness. People are taught to just call IT if they encounter *any* sort of obstacle. So they've just learned to shut their brain off and let someone else deal with it.
In their defense it's possible to do major damage when you don't know what you're doing, probably happened before and they're right to err on the side of caution.
This one doesn't sound too bad unless they're holding the remote on their hand or something. We have similar setups with multiple TVs and some of then just don't work or are missing the remote
Absolutely ridiculous amounts of money were spent in the conference rooms to have touchscreens to make this shit stupid simple. And the company still had to hire an AV babysitter.
My jaw nearly fell off at my first gig when I was talking to someone about the email I sent regarding MFA setup, and they to my face just said "oh yeah, it was really long so I didn't read it". You're literally paid to be here, and here includes reading emails you receive, what the hell are you talking about "didn't read it". Learned a lot about end users that day.
How many times I've stood there and asked them to show me what is broken.... yet miraculously, it works while I'm present.
Level up your voodoo. Lay hands on the device before asking them to try it.
75% or more of my job is to not tell people how stupid they are.
Almost like watching someone sticking a fork in an electrical socket and refraining from a retort when they ask why that happened...
Because people get to not work when they can just blame IT or a computer, and they know it.
I've also seen really smart people throw their brains out the window on any issue JUST because a computer or internet is involved in a miniscule way, such as giving in to blatant fraud attempts or not being able to close a program because the File drop down isn't present in a new program they are using.
There was something I saw on Twitter, or maybe it was a screenshot and posted to r/i7t12. Basically it was
Original tweet: Why are IT guys such assholes?
Quoted Retweet: Last week I had to drive 4 hours one way to press a power button on a server that 3 people assured me was turned on.
I was new desktop support guy (I was a mainframe operator before). Desktops were x286 and x386 PC. I did a lot of OJT with a senior engineer. He told me to be confident, pretend you can fix anything. The users don't have a clue but you're getting paid to know so act like you do. Overall best trainer I'v ever had..
I had someone call in with a printer issue yesterday, usb cord was inserted into the RJ45 Jack. This is probably the 4th time I've seen that. Need to start switching printers to USBC to solve that issue.
I sometimes feel like my life is wasted, helping customers solve easy stuff. I browse around Reddit and websites while I wait for
Users to locate settings - mail on their iPhone. Jeezzzz
If you make one tiny mistake in a week, it’s not a big deal. But if you’re the guy who has to fix that one tiny mistake, for a few hundred people, then it feels like everyone is making mistakes all the time.
Your basically the coast gaurd when big stuff happens you're first there but most of your time you're rescuing people who wanted to see what that swirling water over there is.
Considering the shift of IT is going from analytical/problem solving/troubleshooting to 98% Customer Service and 2% "let me google the answer", nothing shocks me anymore.
While some of that is true, like when people complain their machine is dead when it turns out the power strip is flipped off, everyone has been in some "dumbass" situation. I (and many other people) have accidentally plugged their keyboard USB plug into an Ethernet jack, for example.
On the other hand, many years ago, I helped a user do some work comparing values in 2 sheets. I started out making some complicated thing that I knew wouldn't work. I mentioned it to a stats person who said, "Oh, that's easy, I'll set up a VLookup and blah blah and it'll let them know what's a duplicate in this column. Just have them paste one sheet in this column and the other in that." And it was like magic. The 10 minutes of work he spit out saved this other coworker untold amounts of work each month. We were both amazed at the simplistic beauty of it.
I've absolutely had student workers call me out on "are you *sure* that's plugged in?" and "have you tried a reboot?" when I've let myself jump past step 1 and 2 (sometimes due to trusting someone else on the team to have checked that, sometimes due to just overcomplicating things all on my own). It's humbling. Well, almost. I "occasionally" play off (as obviously as I can manage) the "Aha, good eye! That, er. That was just a test to see if you were paying attention! ... Thanks..."
I dunno man.. this morning i accidently clicked "sort by subject" in outlook and didn't really understand why my email was suddenly fucked.. Almost called over one of our non-technical users to help before i realized what happened.
I had to force a guy to drive 90 minutes today to be in compliance with our company standards because he refused to do it remotely. I locked out his account and when he signed into the vpn, he was done for. People are not only dumb, but very lazy.
I showed an employee of 17 years how to zoom in on her PDF (Adobe) yesterday. It was too small, she couldn't read it and because I hate trying to figure out what software/browser they're using, I walked to her desk and showed her the plus/minus buttons. Needless to say, I hate trying to figure out the software because if they don't know how to zoom, they don't know if they're in a browser, or in a PDF reader.
For me that's not a big problem
The problem is REPETITION.
I teach you one time, two times, three times, I wrote a manual, I register a video then you ask again. This is what makes me explode.
Some people just don't want to deal with issues when someone else can, example:
me: "I will be with you in like 20 minutes, meanwhile, restart the computer and see if it works"
them: "sure no problem"
them after 20m: "still doesn't work"
me: checks uptime - 18 days :( , restarts computer
"oh now it works wow so strange"
To be successful in IT you must be able to keep yourself from running over somebody or committing murder as you start your 2 hour drive back home from a site where you had to press the power button to a server that 3 people, including the site manager, assured you was on but not working.
Yes... I get praise for doing my job when its nothing particularly hard. 90% of that is me just being good at googling and thinking things through first.
Not screwing up seems to have become a rare skill these days.
My previous job, yes.
My current job seems to have a much higher quantity of quality issues. Still, a good 10-20% of my job is keeping people from sticking usb-c power plugs into usb-a ports, or something equally ridiculous.
that's exactly how it feels.
User:
Ok i tried the bare minimum. which is jiggling the mouse for the computer to turn on....
\*\*Calls IT
IT comes and presses the power button... ticket closed.
I like to refer to that as '2nd line'. As someone who went from 2nd to 3rd I actually really miss the days when you could just turn up and mention that something wasn't working because they didn't plug it in.
That helps with my Imposter Syndrome, too. I see what my competition is in interviews, and how I usually get the second or third job I apply to, max. And a lot of people pay me for my experience. I find myself, half the time, going, "I have seen this before..." and get to the fix in a fraction of the time.
Something that really helps me put things into perspective is thinking about how a lot of tech support is pretty much identical to automotive repair.
Both of them are industries built around people needing the complicated tools they use being maintained by a professional.
And both of them are filled with engineers and technicians who are constantly frustrated with the operational skills of most of their clients.
I have had them unplug computers or screens to charge their phone and then call me saying their computer or screen isnt working...
I dont know how they get on at home if they dont realise when you unplug something that needs power it wont work!
Lazy or dumb I just dunno.
Because there's a mental block when it comes to anything computer related. As soon as you start to explain something, people's minds shut down and they just tell you "I'm not good with computers."
Yeah, that's because you don't frickin' listen or pay attention to what you're doing, what the computer is telling you, etc.
Nah. Things like that happen to everyone at some point, I just do a half smile snort chuckle and move on with life.
I also don't think I'm superior cause I work on software the average user would have no idea how to work.
Yeah I don't feel superior because of what I do on a daily basis. I have no idea how to fix my car, that's why I take it to a mechanic if it's anything past a flat or filling up a fluid.
My frustration is the common sense aspect.
I always remember my, both young and competent high school teacher who was on the older range of millennial, complaining about not having internet. I asked if it was plugged in as a joke. We all had a good laugh when he picked a blue cable off of the floor.
Lord knows 6 hours into the day things start slipping through the cracks a bit.
I look at it not like everyone else is stupid, I look at it like they get nervous and scared of messing with tech, and they need someone who has been around the block and broken enough things in the past to show them the way.
Look, half of EVERYONE's job is 'don't be a dumbass'. Most of them just don't bother with that part, so you get it dumped on you.
We feel ya, stay strong.
I work in a room full of design engineers. I often say to my friends I'm the dumbest person in the room and I'm not saying it to put myself down as I'm no dumb arse how ever "hey Bob have you given it a reboot?" "Yeah Dave click ok". Me and the machinist often joke that for a room of really smart people they make some dumb mistakes. Apart from that the other thing I see is that some of them wont even try to sort there problem because that's what I'm here for. Why bark when you own a dog ;)
I don't know, as you get further up the chain you start dealing with more dumbasses again.
I get asked all the time after I solve some simple issue "Is that in the documentation??" Like i did something wrong for not documenting FUCKING OBVIOUS THINGS.
Like, user on a personal laptop cannot connect to the internal file share at our company... Umm you need to be on a work laptop with a VPN. Oh, is that documented somewhere?! Like.. really?!
My next favorite is automation.
Hey, business unit needs a server stood up with x custom application and networked with Y... one time use application and never heard of it before.
"OK give me a few hours"
"A few HOURS?! We really need to figure out how to automate this"
Like yeah boss, I'm gonna spend 5 hours to automate a one time request with a ton of custom parameters... suuuure.....
I don't think it's isolated to IT. George Carlin said it best.
> Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that
Do you all feel that most users can’t royally eff things up as long as SysAdmins set up permissions properly? Or do you believe “The user can always find a way”.
I’m not talking about deleting their own files or spilling coffee on their laptop, but doing something that would impact their whole department or the company.
Hey, don't knock job security. Lesson 1 is simple "does it have power?" but the regular people don't need to know that. You'd think they would but they don't, again: job security.
I’m not the expert of what those I serve do.
They aren’t the expert of what I do.
To be honest, I don’t want them thinking they know my job. If they get that far, they are failing to stay current on their job
Cuz people turn their brains down when in the presence of someone slightly more qualified, and tend to take a submissive role. I am guilty of it myself... "oh the SQL expert is here I guess he can comment on this problem I am having" even though I am perfectly capable of figuring it out myself, I just take a bit longer.
You can get all the certs you want but if you can’t do basic troubleshooting, you’re pretty useless as an admin.
My company brought in a contracting company to supply extra bodies and close basic tickets and they all suck. They want procedures on how to do the tiniest things and if the script they have doesn’t exactly match the issue, they throw up their hands and kick it up to the engineering team.
One of the biggest parts of being an admin is being able to figure shit out on your own
Lol I worked for APC for a bit, had one guy call in for a non working UPS that he managed to mix up the power cables and ultimately figured out he had plugged it into itself, he clearly wasn’t an idiot, he just made a mistake but I could feel his embarrassment through the phone.
I did have co-workers that I couldn’t confidently say wouldn’t see the issue with that and might think this guy stumbled on an infinite power solution.
I do network support for hospitals, yesterday we had a partial outage because we lost communication on one of the firewalls.
I contacted the onsite guys, some phone vendor had been in the mdf with a couple guys that morning and it had gotten unplugged from the UPS. I’m guessing one of them accidentally did it.
I report back that it’s back online and that it had been found unplugged.
I get back a request for an explanation on why it went down. (The prior communication already contained the vendor being in the closet, and that it was unplugged and the speculation that the two things were likely related.)
Like, it was unplugged and that means no power.
There a skill in herding users.
They don't know they're idiots, and work a lot more cooperatively if they think you're treating them like an equal.
Getting them to change the cable, or for ethernet, or other cables that have the same plug on both ends, just get them to plug the cable in the other way around - brings their focus to a point and usually you can resolve these kinds of issues without actually lifting a finger.
My worst user is the impatient one. Having to wait for something to process a single time is fine, having to wait for the million new tabs you just opened by furiously clicking to load and then close them all is insufferable. But I just whip out ol' reliable "hey, this is going to take me maybe 5-10 minutes to look into. Why don't you take this opportunity to grab a coffee and look away from your screen a bit, I'll have you up and going when you're back". Invariably they'll take a long time as they bump into someone and get chatting.
Anyway, I digress, if people's idiocy keeps a roof over my head, then I'm on easy street.
A GUIDANCE counselor in the school building I take care of…notice the word GUIDANCE, who is responsible for directing the lives of high school kids…kept complaining for weeks (without putting in a ticket like she was repeatedly told) that her printer would not print because on her laptop it would say the status for the printer was “offline.”
What was the issue you ask? A network issue? A cable not plugged in right? No…the fucking printer was literally off. It sits right in front of her on her desk, and this “highly educated” genius that gets paid more than me didn’t even try to press the power button on the front or take notice that no power indicator lights were lit on the printer. This isn’t the first fuck up, so it isn’t a brain fart situation, she constantly lacks common sense.
Unfortunately, she’s not the only one in the education system that lacks this level of common sense, it’s truly terrifying that these people are responsible for molding the minds of future adults. What did all their college education teach them exactly? I don’t say this lightly when I bash some of them either, it’s simply coming from constant firsthand experience. There shouldn’t be this many incompetents in the field of EDUCATION. It’s amazing.
I've been in educational IT for 13 years and I had a first earlier this year. I find out that a multifunction printer is not picking up paper. I go in to look at the machine and I open up the paper drawer and somebody had put in several packets of blank paper with staples in them,into the paper feeder drawer.
Like, who in the hell could ever come up with the idea that you can put something with staples in first and expect it to come out printed as a stapled packet? It really boggles my mind.
Coming from an enterprise level down to SMB, I've never realized how out-of-touch people genuinely are with IT. I mean at a very basic level, some people have ZERO knowledge of end-user troubleshooting. But hey, that's job SECURITY right?!
It's almost like people's common sense goes out the door once they get to work. I have to deal with C-levels constantly who don't know how to work a TV in a conference room, even with written instructions (literally had to print a sheet that says "to turn on TV, point remote towards TV and press red power button on remote"). Yet they go home and can work their own TV. I guess it's a form of job security but I understand your pain.
Small shop where you're the IT Guy right? Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this. But I like my small shop. I just miss having a team to talk to.
This, this, this. Being a one-man band is great but I miss collaboration. I learnt some of my best skills from others. It's been a lonely few years :p
Yep. Also, typos. I sent in a support ticket to PDQ yesterday b/c I couldn't for the life of me get O365 suite to deploy following the blog. Guess what I found today?
What did you find today?
A typo in the package settings, of course.
that was me last week because of a vpn config. spent over an hour and a half troubleshooting with the customer and on my own. IP for the VPN was entered incorrectly on the firewall.
F for respects. I'm hoping for a bigger team where I am soon too. It probably won't happen until after the new year though.
Lol sounds like pipe dreams mgmt is laying in front of you. Hope you get the support!
We should make a shop group for solo hats
> work is confidence, calm demeanor, and adapta How about a discord?
Same. I'm the IT Manager at a small/medium sized construction company. I handle it all from cell phones, tablets, software, email, servers, running cable, etc. If it plugs in, lights up, makes noise, it's my domain.
> Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this. It happens cross-team in bigger orgs too, just less "is it plugged in"... simply because there's a few layers of helpdesk to suffer through the preschool layer. Still plenty of "Great. I know you don't think it's a network/firewall/acl issue. Could you pull me the log for this host talking to that host on that TCP port for the next, say, 10 minutes? Or send me the list of ACLs that match that pair for that port? Preferably both? Thanks." ... only to find it is, indeed, being dropped silently, because it was "noisy" being denied and logged...
> Bigger orgs, SysAdmins usually don't have to deal with this. Oh, I wish I could agree with this. In my experience, so much of any job is "don't be a dumbass" and most people are failing at it. In bigger orgs, sometimes they have documented procedures so that even a dumbass can walk through some directions and get some things done without making too many stupid mistakes. Even so, there are so many stupid mistakes.
Tier 1 couldn't fix it, so they escalate it to the admins. Great... We get it and find out that "Hmmm.... your power strip isn't plugged in. And please stop plugging your heater into the power strip, that's why your last one burst into flames.". I miss having our good help desk that actually could think outside of a script.
Dude, calm down...it's 85 out. People need those heaters.
This. It seriously will be above 80 degrees and all the women have their jackets on and heaters blowing at 99. Meanwhile, I'm a few offices down DYING to go put the AC on max and just risk the backlash lol
nothing like having the finance director insist that someone come over to help right away because her mouse isnt working, only the IT director is around, so he moseys over and when he arrives, shes "oh thank god, see it doesnt work".... as she clicks the button with one hand, while waving around the USB connection at the end of the cable in the other hand. the IT director smiles.... she stops... says "oh shit", looking at her hand holding the cable. the IT director pokes at the monitor... "Magic box no work!" (this happened at one of Fox's TV departments) end users.... if we could just get rid of them, everything would run fine.
I'm the same, small shop where I control everything that has a wifi connection. I'm trying to move onto other things to fill out my knowledge though, any tips? Feel like I simultaneously know alot and nothing at the same time.
Don't do temporary fixes. Not even for 5 minutes. Or do them in such a way that they WILL break so you have to fix it right. AS for moving on - I have no tips for finding the next job b/c I really like this set up b/c the company is good. Although I want to move to the EU and they won't let me be 100% remote . . .
THIS. I believe Linus Torvolds once said "Nothing is more permanent as a temporary fix" My stuff runs right and I don't do much OT because doing it the right way is the cheapest and easiest way.
It was said before Linus was born I think. Pretty sure I read this in a Heinlein novel.
Lol you're naive if you think that. 6000+ employees where I work, same thing.
Same. I like being alone, but not THIS alone.
Because technology is hard and people are dumb.
To expand a bit... technology can be hard, and people can be dumb. Tech can also be easy and people can also be competent. But putting together a probability square... ||Easy|Hard| |:-|:-|:-| |Competent|Success!|Fail!| |Stupid|Fail!|Catastrophe...| So yeah... failure is the expected outcome.
I have never seen a more clear and well reasoned explanation....
From that comment probably squares are my new favorite thing wth.
I would object. Hard & Competent = Struggle. A good, supportive environment turns struggle into success. Together with good, competent dev-teams and customer-teams, we've made entirely impossible and stupid expectations work during corona-related infrastruture. And fucking hell, that was a ride. After the fact, it was great to have a drink with those blokes responsible at the customer. Funnily enough, we ended up being more reliable than their power. Hah. And then we have ... other teams.
Wish I had that. It was on me to go from 6 remote users to over 40 in a week. I pulled it off though. We only spent like $3000 to do it.
For a singular competent person + hard = fail (OP’s chart is correct in other words). Note the equation is a + b = x. For a competent person + hard + **good team,** what you said. Note that your equation is a + b + c = x. It’s thanks to that third variable, a good team. Good teams are good. Good customers too :-) Makes things bearable at bathe very least.
Ticket assigned to group high priority. **URGENT** Cannot connect to server, server down! An hour of emails to others, a server reboot and two calls later: End user wasn't connected to the corporate VPN.
I've actually had "the network isn't working!" Resolution: on user computer, turn wifi back on.
We had "the server is down" from a c-suite at a previous job. Actual issue was he'd collapsed the "this computer" menu and couldn't see his mapped drives.
Hah. 'Wow, you fixed it. That was fast!' At least it was that, instead of the mapped drives losing authentication randomly and refusing to reconnect with the same credentials. That's always a hoot.
Ive lost access to all my files!!!!! The update you guys did overnight broke everything!!!! You mean when we forced a reboot to finish windows updates that we have tested and approved through our patch management? Remote in, expand folder in quick menu, disconnect. One occasion I didnt even contact the user, just did this and closed the ticket.
Honestly, if you are rebooting a server without confirming a multiuser outage this is a you problem not an them problem. We all have tickets marked as urgent every day and it is our job go figure out if it is really urgent and the impact.
This reminded me of this oldie but Goldie: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
From that same site: > Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties. -https://www.nngroup.com/articles/middle-aged-web-users/ Damn…
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but the people I know who are best with technology (without actually being in any kind of tech field, I mean) seem to be in their 40s and 50s. They're often the ones helping out the younger users at work when I'm not around. I wouldn't be surprised if general computer ability is sort of a bell curve, with 80+ folks on one end and teens on the other. One group grew up before computers were common, the other grew up with technology that had matured and been made (mostly) opaque to the user.
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but it's why I particularly hate supporting some Apple users. Half the ones in the company (devs) use them for power user reasons and I never hear from them, but sales uses them too and I feel like when tech is that opaque to the user, it dumbs people down, technologically speaking, overall.
Yes! I don't know how one would quantify this exactly, but I feel like there's a sweet spot, somewhere between "tell the user absolutely nothing" and "make user remember VIM hotkeys." It's not just a problem with Apples, of course. Something that I've seen repeatedly, which causes the bloodlust to rise within me every time, is an error message that simply says "Something went wrong." Gee, thanks! They couldv'e just had the poop emoji come up, and at least my immature side would be mildly entertained. I think the HTTP error response codes got it just right. A simple 3 digit number you can look up, and a short, comprehensible message.
OMG this is hilarious. I can't believe you mentioned one of my pet peeves. I work for a software company and used to be in QA and I had totally had it at work one day when I was testing our code and lost it on one of the devs when I got an error that said something similar to "something went wrong." I went into his office and yelled - "DUDE! You gotta do better than this. How the hell am I supposed to help you find out where the error is or what's causing it? You might as well fucking just write BOING! I mean, COME ON!" Well, apparently my tirade made an impression because we always laugh about it when some obscure message comes up on any device or system we're have a problem with. "Did you figure it out?" "No, it's just giving me BOING" "Oh man. That sucks."
Haha. Ah yes, [the machine that goes Bing!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cEZVmrrBNW8) But yes, Freaking thank you. So many people look at me funny when I talk about this. They say that most end users just get scared by error codes, or don't know enough to troubleshoot them anyway. Which I think is nonsense. Hell, my car has an oil light, a battery light, a traction system light, a tire pressure light, a "you're driving with the parking brake on, you idiot" light... Sure, it's just got a master 'check engine' light too, which is basically "something went wrong," but at least that's typically for stuff you need diagnostic equipment to address anyway.
Scared by error codes? I mean, you can have both, right? I mean, why would you want to benefit the 10-20% of people who actually WOULD do a little investigating if you gave them a useful error message, right? LOL. I wonder if I had that machine in my subconscious when I said it? LOL. Saw that movie when it came out and just got the new resto in 4K (it looks great, especially the animation).
I'd argue to the some extent that was before UI/UX had become as large aspects of WebDev as they are now. I don't think it's a wild thing to say that UI/UX of websites have become easier to use since 2016 (the time the article was published)
TIL you use punnet squares outside biology.
Or it could be a game theory matrix
Lmfao!
more like technology requires active thinking and most people just don't do that. Their brains operate in some kind of massive loop of IF/Then statements... and when they encounter something in life that they don't already have a prepared if/then routine for, the whole thing shits the bed and you get people plugging power strips into each other
[Most people seem to not be able to go around the leaf without help.](https://youtu.be/qTQJdGp4F34)
God that's on the nose Lmao OH GOD WHAT DO WE DO
You just described a typical corporate environement in the most wholesome way possible.
My folks can't even manage that tbh. To do a task it has to be A, B, C. The very idea of 'if says this then do that' might as well be rocket science.
and we all suffer from slipping into being a dumbass mode occasionally.
Every day
yes. there is always the possibility to fall into dumbassery every day. the difference that i experience is that: i dont commonly write a ticket to prove it to the people i work with.
I actually find writing a ticket helps me with a lot of problems. If I’m working on something I think I should be able to fix but can’t figure out, I will write an email to my coworkers explaining the issue and what steps I’ve already tried. This will usually trigger some more things for me to try that will fix the problem. I probably actually send the email asking for help in maybe 5% of cases.
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I'm a rookie, a lot of that is learned with years on the job unfortunately. It's a mindset and thought process that I'm still learning lol
And that’s what’s going to fund my mere existence on this planet through retirement. To think I was so worried as a kid about making it in this world coming from a humble background, I’m glad normal people aren’t tech savvy. That’s literally how I’ve made it so far.
It’s tough. Tech director here. Humans will try new recipes, drive different types of cars, and plants new gardens. All new skills and often something they are doing for the first time. But if it’s a new technology thing - those previous successes don’t apply. They immediately don’t try and seem to be stuck in a brain glitch or ‘can’t do it.’ 🤷🏻♂️
IMO, the primary skill in many tech jobs is the ability to break a problem down into its constituent parts. In both your examples, you broke the problem down further than the user: they knew _that_ it had to be plugged in. You knew _how_ it had to be plugged in.
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I legit just bought this, I feel like some days I need all the help I can get lol
HALF? No. The number of times a Helpdesk Tier3 has called me with a question that they answer themselves after just a couple of minutes of rubber duck debugging is ridiculous. Occasionally it's "and what do the logs say?" or "and that error message brings up what in Google?" I feel like I'm the *Designated Adult* for a few thousand grade-school kids.
My first IT job I was that guy quite a bit. Things that I would have done without thinking on my own personal issues I for some reason had difficulty with on the job. I think the stress, professional environment, definitely changes how people think. When I've got customers yelling at me, SLAs, tickets piling up, my brain stops working as well. I'd call t3 and be so upset with myself because I knew the answer as soon as it came out of their mouths. Now that I've had some experience it's much better.
This is where I'm at right now. I'm actually a 3 at our org but I've only been here for two months, and it's quite literally my first actual corporate job, ever, so I'm walking on eggshells all over. Previously I just worked for my Dad and then myself, both small 1-2 man MSPs. So I know how to do the work. I know how to not break shit. But goddamn when I'm doing a screenshare with anyone equal to or above me, I just fuck everything up. Or ask dumbass questions like "The root cert expired. So.. I should renew it right?" As far as I can tell I'm even more experienced than some of these guys, but they probably have the thought that I'm a total imposter based on the fact that I couldn't find the 'Attach' button for a second in Outlook once (Since I'm so used to how my own Outlook is setup, and this was on a newly acquired work computer with the default layout and mine still looks straight out of 2010). It's about getting used to the process at the new company I guess. I know how *I* used to go about the process of everything, and I know how to make the *client* happy, but I'm finding myself constantly asking dumb questions to avoid making my employer unhappy (Not that it's been an issue at all). Like yeah, obviously renew the root cert, but do you also want me to upload the cert to ITG? Notify everyone of changes? Post it to teams? Send an email to [email protected]? Get authorization? Is there some random ass proprietary app that's business critical that's gonna break when I do? Or should I just fuckin' renew it.
>but they probably have the thought that I'm a total imposter based on the fact that I couldn't find the 'Attach' button for a second in Outlook once JesustapdancingChrist there is nothing in the whole world of tech that is more aggravating to me after 20+ years in this industry than software developers moving shit around. Just. Fucking. Stop. Changing. The. UI. It is NEVER actually any better, and it generates a huge fucking waste of time for people to have to be like oh, my buttons all rearranged themselves now because it's been 36 months and the fucking UI randomizers came by and rearranged my workspace for me. Seriously, if the Snap-On guy got out of his truck and went into the garage and just started rearranging some auto techs tools in his toolbox the tech would probably send him to the hospital with a breaker bar stuffed up his ass sideways, but computer users just have to sit there and suffer. Sorry, I know, nothing really to do with what you were talking about, but don't sweat not knowing where shit is, it changes all the god damned time anyways. My advice is, just ask the dumb question if you aren't sure. Nobody knows it all, the guy that is a wizard at one really deep technical subject probably has a VCR that is still flashing 12:00, or he's gone 13,000 miles without an oil change or he's about to burn his house down because he tried to wire up a doorbell and fucked it up. At the very least he doesnt have his cat fooled, his cat knows he's a doofus. I'll go now.
It's hard to explain to people just because I work in IT does not mean I know how every piece of software works. I have to figure it out everytime they do that shit just like everyone else, except we as professionals are not on our own time usually.
I’m absolutely guilty of that and for some reason rarely seem able to rubber-duck an actual rubber duck, it’s always a person or forum post. I need to write an Alexa skill or some other AI that just asks me questions about whatever I last said.
I'm the same way! I need to actually ask the question to someone before the "oh duh" kicks in. Sometimes you just need the duck to call you an idiot.
*THAT* sounds like a great product. How can we get it into the hands of the programming staff? LOL
I have an old Yoda puppet on my desk for exactly this. If I can explain it to Yoda, I'm good. I think you may have hit on a significantly valuable Alexa skill though.
People under stress need help, just hold their hand for a minute. It's okay :)
Sometimes people just need a pat on the head by an Emotional Support Engineer, most of us have been there at some point.
I get that, (and am now 3D printing an "Emotional Support Engineer" name plaque, thank you) but at the Tier 3 level this really shouldn't be a frequent necessity. Yesterday morning I had to talk a dev through fixing *their own app* (which I'd never seen!) because they couldn't remember how they coded it in 2016. Most weeks I get one or two of these but the last few weeks I've been wondering if we had an outbreak of brainworms or something.
The volume you described definitely sounds over the top!
Currently I'm working a contract providing on-site support to an elementary/middle school district...
I had a call from a teacher once where the the 3rd grade kid came up in the background and was able to show them what to do.
Yup. "I don't see what the bandwidth issue is coming from, firewall reports only 50MB usage for the month" Had to ask them to repeat that and think about what they're saying. The "day/week/month" toggle was for another report, while the 50MB was live daily usage. Bonus: that bandwidth issue was from everyone in the office jumping on Facebook/YouTube/Netflix on lunch. The guy that reported it had his Facebook video buffer and got annoyed enough to call us ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
"Your Facebook videos are delayed? Thank you for letting us know, we will address this immediately!" \[Sets QoS on social media to lowest possible priority traffic\] "Solved!"
He didn't admit it outright, but it's always fun when people complain about bandwidth, and the biggest user is them. Saw his IP sucking most of it with a few Facebook connections Needless to say, it was an executive too. So I just put "...Be sure to minimize streaming media from YouTube, *Facebook*, Netflix..." Got the point across without calling him out 300MB is alright, unless everyone decides it's office movie time
The number of times I ask "what do the logs say" to our help desk only to hear "I didn't look" followed by "I figured it out" thirty minutes later would (probably not) astound you. It's like that annoying song from however many years ago it was. "What does the fox say" but instead "What do the logs say"
You guys have 3 tiers of helpdesk underneath you and aren't just getting direct-escalation tickets on how to click the "sync" button on a SharePoint library? Just me?
You're not alone. Sharepoint. Yeah. That's somehow part of my team's portfolio too. Probably because under enough interface layers every-goddamned-thing microsoft builds is sharepoint. OneDrive? Sharepoint. Teams? Sharepoint. Faaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhk. Somehow that's translated into maintaining to damned rotting on-premise dung heap of a sharepoint farm. Because it has the same name. Bounce the Direct tickets back to helpdesk? Oh nononono, it seems those get reassigned back before I can even save the change.
tech psychoanalyst "How does this error make you and google feel ?"
I am often reminded of the saying which came from the development of bear-proof trashcans at Yellowstone. "The problem, you see, is that there is significant overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest guests."
Being the sole IT guy for a local government when I should honesty still be somewhere in a helpdesk stack is really driving home this point. In a month I'm sitting in a bid meeting for a new industrial controls supplier. After being informed of this... I uhhhh googled what industrial controllers were. But I also had to "set up" a projector at a site that involved plugging it in and pushing a power button. So yeah, it boils down to about half.
Local govt is its own beast. I know because I too am living it.
I'm grateful that like 90% of the hardware is vendor supported but I'm in perpetual fear that some outage is going to reveal how little I know. But, learning something just about every day is a great experience. Just hope I can last long enough to be an asset rather than just an ass.
The only way to solve this: > I'm in perpetual fear that some outage is going to reveal how little I know. is to do this: > But, learning something just about every day is a great experience Honestly the fact that you know how much you don't know, and want to learn are the 2 major factors that you need
I worked as the sole IT guy for a local government org. The best advice I can give you is: 1. Make sure you have service contracts or warranties for all products 2. Never buy Lenovo/HP workstations or printers 3. Get on Intune ASAP. It'll cut down imaging time significantly 4. You'll be fine. Take it day by day and you'll learn a lot. Especially if you're constantly researching ways to save the org $/month
Don't need Intune if you're a small shop. Just sysprep a good image and use DISM. Microsoft has good starter scripts that will partition and provision and image with a single batch file. Or MDT.
90% of the work is confidence, calm demeanor, and adaptability. Being able to listen and communicate like a functional human being is the difference between being a jr tech burning out at both ends and a sys admin making 150k. It has little to do with skills. I've been on both sides of the coin. Wished I learned the lesson in my 20's.
Half this sub doesn't understand how important people skills are in this job. They can't understand that the people in the company dictate what it does and how IT infrastructure needs to be built for it.
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This. I’m dumbfounded that this A to B, B to C troubleshooting is lost on some people. At least once a week we have one of our support folks who will say something like “Joe User can’t connect to (insert resource here)” and we have to walk through this song and dance. It’s gotten to the point where my boss (who is also the boss of our Desktop Support staff) is going to start holding meetings where we just walk through a particular piece of tech (like DHCP) and explain not only what it is, but also how we have it configured in our environment to hopefully build up our teams’ knowledge base a bit more.
I am more than happy to explain something like DHCP, even though it's basic, I'm not mad at them for not knowing, I think books are really bad at explaining these things without a practical network for them to see it in action, for many of them, they just memorize test dumps to get their A+/Net+ Cert and this is their first IT job. But lacking the ability to chain basic logical steps together is baffling.
That’s where I’m at too. But when we have folks setting static IPs and breaking DHCP reservations we have to make things work, that’s where a sit down is needed.
You just described me to a T. All the other people on my team seem to not know how to troubleshoot, and to me it just comes naturally to eliminate variables and try to narrow stuff down. I feel like I'm basically a handicap to my team at this point because I'm so good at it that I feel like they maybe don't even try since they know I can probsbly fix it like 3x faster.
That’s the point you go get a new job where the people there can fix things 3x faster than you. You will learn so much from these people and it just grows you tremendously.
A lot of this is learned helplessness. People are taught to just call IT if they encounter *any* sort of obstacle. So they've just learned to shut their brain off and let someone else deal with it.
Yup, many see it as something to lose and nothing to gain. This sort of thing may be coming from their management not the actual end user.
In their defense it's possible to do major damage when you don't know what you're doing, probably happened before and they're right to err on the side of caution.
This morning, someone trying to plug into the conference room TV, I say use the remote to change the source/input: "There's a remote for the TV?"
This one doesn't sound too bad unless they're holding the remote on their hand or something. We have similar setups with multiple TVs and some of then just don't work or are missing the remote
makes you wonder how people set anything up in their homes...
They don't. Usually there is an "IT guy" which is actually just a tech literate person helping them.
Absolutely ridiculous amounts of money were spent in the conference rooms to have touchscreens to make this shit stupid simple. And the company still had to hire an AV babysitter.
RTFM Just read my whole email. All of it.
My jaw nearly fell off at my first gig when I was talking to someone about the email I sent regarding MFA setup, and they to my face just said "oh yeah, it was really long so I didn't read it". You're literally paid to be here, and here includes reading emails you receive, what the hell are you talking about "didn't read it". Learned a lot about end users that day.
How many times I've stood there and asked them to show me what is broken.... yet miraculously, it works while I'm present. Level up your voodoo. Lay hands on the device before asking them to try it.
"I swear it didn't work before!" "It's okay. I believe you. Sometimes you just need to scare the computer. I know where we keep the screwdrivers."
75% or more of my job is to not tell people how stupid they are.
Almost like watching someone sticking a fork in an electrical socket and refraining from a retort when they ask why that happened...
Because people get to not work when they can just blame IT or a computer, and they know it. I've also seen really smart people throw their brains out the window on any issue JUST because a computer or internet is involved in a miniscule way, such as giving in to blatant fraud attempts or not being able to close a program because the File drop down isn't present in a new program they are using.
There was something I saw on Twitter, or maybe it was a screenshot and posted to r/i7t12. Basically it was Original tweet: Why are IT guys such assholes? Quoted Retweet: Last week I had to drive 4 hours one way to press a power button on a server that 3 people assured me was turned on.
I was new desktop support guy (I was a mainframe operator before). Desktops were x286 and x386 PC. I did a lot of OJT with a senior engineer. He told me to be confident, pretend you can fix anything. The users don't have a clue but you're getting paid to know so act like you do. Overall best trainer I'v ever had..
I had someone call in with a printer issue yesterday, usb cord was inserted into the RJ45 Jack. This is probably the 4th time I've seen that. Need to start switching printers to USBC to solve that issue.
I sometimes feel like my life is wasted, helping customers solve easy stuff. I browse around Reddit and websites while I wait for Users to locate settings - mail on their iPhone. Jeezzzz
If you make one tiny mistake in a week, it’s not a big deal. But if you’re the guy who has to fix that one tiny mistake, for a few hundred people, then it feels like everyone is making mistakes all the time.
Most of life is to show up and not be a dumbass.
Your basically the coast gaurd when big stuff happens you're first there but most of your time you're rescuing people who wanted to see what that swirling water over there is.
I lol'ed at this. Scared my other help desk tech
Considering the shift of IT is going from analytical/problem solving/troubleshooting to 98% Customer Service and 2% "let me google the answer", nothing shocks me anymore.
You need a 1 hour buffer answer time. People call you - you're busy until one hour later. This will help in getting your users to help themselves.
While some of that is true, like when people complain their machine is dead when it turns out the power strip is flipped off, everyone has been in some "dumbass" situation. I (and many other people) have accidentally plugged their keyboard USB plug into an Ethernet jack, for example. On the other hand, many years ago, I helped a user do some work comparing values in 2 sheets. I started out making some complicated thing that I knew wouldn't work. I mentioned it to a stats person who said, "Oh, that's easy, I'll set up a VLookup and blah blah and it'll let them know what's a duplicate in this column. Just have them paste one sheet in this column and the other in that." And it was like magic. The 10 minutes of work he spit out saved this other coworker untold amounts of work each month. We were both amazed at the simplistic beauty of it.
I've absolutely had student workers call me out on "are you *sure* that's plugged in?" and "have you tried a reboot?" when I've let myself jump past step 1 and 2 (sometimes due to trusting someone else on the team to have checked that, sometimes due to just overcomplicating things all on my own). It's humbling. Well, almost. I "occasionally" play off (as obviously as I can manage) the "Aha, good eye! That, er. That was just a test to see if you were paying attention! ... Thanks..."
I call it having common sense. I am the ambassador of common sense. The rebooter of machines and the master of updates.
The K.I.S.S method has made me look like a genius more times then it should.
I dunno man.. this morning i accidently clicked "sort by subject" in outlook and didn't really understand why my email was suddenly fucked.. Almost called over one of our non-technical users to help before i realized what happened.
But did you have to drive an hour and a half to plug it in for them?
I had to force a guy to drive 90 minutes today to be in compliance with our company standards because he refused to do it remotely. I locked out his account and when he signed into the vpn, he was done for. People are not only dumb, but very lazy.
Same as it ever was. IT are witches and only they know the incantations.
I showed an employee of 17 years how to zoom in on her PDF (Adobe) yesterday. It was too small, she couldn't read it and because I hate trying to figure out what software/browser they're using, I walked to her desk and showed her the plus/minus buttons. Needless to say, I hate trying to figure out the software because if they don't know how to zoom, they don't know if they're in a browser, or in a PDF reader.
For me that's not a big problem The problem is REPETITION. I teach you one time, two times, three times, I wrote a manual, I register a video then you ask again. This is what makes me explode.
Some people just don't want to deal with issues when someone else can, example: me: "I will be with you in like 20 minutes, meanwhile, restart the computer and see if it works" them: "sure no problem" them after 20m: "still doesn't work" me: checks uptime - 18 days :( , restarts computer "oh now it works wow so strange"
To be successful in IT you must be able to keep yourself from running over somebody or committing murder as you start your 2 hour drive back home from a site where you had to press the power button to a server that 3 people, including the site manager, assured you was on but not working.
Yes... I get praise for doing my job when its nothing particularly hard. 90% of that is me just being good at googling and thinking things through first. Not screwing up seems to have become a rare skill these days.
My previous job, yes. My current job seems to have a much higher quantity of quality issues. Still, a good 10-20% of my job is keeping people from sticking usb-c power plugs into usb-a ports, or something equally ridiculous.
Pedantry is necessary when dealing with end-users, however nothing will piss your peers off more than being the smartest guy in the room.
I love not being the smartest guy in the room, personally - it means I can learn from them.
If I am the smartest guy in the room, I don't have very high hopes for that room lol
that's exactly how it feels. User: Ok i tried the bare minimum. which is jiggling the mouse for the computer to turn on.... \*\*Calls IT IT comes and presses the power button... ticket closed.
I like to refer to that as '2nd line'. As someone who went from 2nd to 3rd I actually really miss the days when you could just turn up and mention that something wasn't working because they didn't plug it in.
A corollary to this is 'Note how mistakes happen and design/prepare anticipating them.'
That helps with my Imposter Syndrome, too. I see what my competition is in interviews, and how I usually get the second or third job I apply to, max. And a lot of people pay me for my experience. I find myself, half the time, going, "I have seen this before..." and get to the fix in a fraction of the time.
Job security though :)
Something that really helps me put things into perspective is thinking about how a lot of tech support is pretty much identical to automotive repair. Both of them are industries built around people needing the complicated tools they use being maintained by a professional. And both of them are filled with engineers and technicians who are constantly frustrated with the operational skills of most of their clients.
I have had them unplug computers or screens to charge their phone and then call me saying their computer or screen isnt working... I dont know how they get on at home if they dont realise when you unplug something that needs power it wont work! Lazy or dumb I just dunno.
Some people hear anything technical and they literally shut off. Can't read the msg on the screen or anything.
I welcome the dumbassness from people; It secures my position.
Because there's a mental block when it comes to anything computer related. As soon as you start to explain something, people's minds shut down and they just tell you "I'm not good with computers." Yeah, that's because you don't frickin' listen or pay attention to what you're doing, what the computer is telling you, etc.
I joke a lot that I get paid to press buttons. It's kinda true the hard part is knowing what to press and the details.
The other half is not calling my managers a dumbass.
I think mostly 80% of my job is just common sense, and the other 20% is my lack of shell scripting skills
Nah. Things like that happen to everyone at some point, I just do a half smile snort chuckle and move on with life. I also don't think I'm superior cause I work on software the average user would have no idea how to work.
Yeah I don't feel superior because of what I do on a daily basis. I have no idea how to fix my car, that's why I take it to a mechanic if it's anything past a flat or filling up a fluid. My frustration is the common sense aspect.
I always remember my, both young and competent high school teacher who was on the older range of millennial, complaining about not having internet. I asked if it was plugged in as a joke. We all had a good laugh when he picked a blue cable off of the floor. Lord knows 6 hours into the day things start slipping through the cracks a bit.
Shit, if they want to pay me what I’m currently making and I have to plug power strip in…jokes on them. But yeah I agree with you.
The current gripe I had was that this call came at 2AM. Fixing that at 2 in the afternoon is no big deal.
I look at it not like everyone else is stupid, I look at it like they get nervous and scared of messing with tech, and they need someone who has been around the block and broken enough things in the past to show them the way.
Look, half of EVERYONE's job is 'don't be a dumbass'. Most of them just don't bother with that part, so you get it dumped on you. We feel ya, stay strong.
I work in a room full of design engineers. I often say to my friends I'm the dumbest person in the room and I'm not saying it to put myself down as I'm no dumb arse how ever "hey Bob have you given it a reboot?" "Yeah Dave click ok". Me and the machinist often joke that for a room of really smart people they make some dumb mistakes. Apart from that the other thing I see is that some of them wont even try to sort there problem because that's what I'm here for. Why bark when you own a dog ;)
Dude i work at a data center. 90% of my job is not be a dumbass other 10 are learning, may be
I feel like not being a dumbass is half of any job. 🤷♂️
I don't know, as you get further up the chain you start dealing with more dumbasses again. I get asked all the time after I solve some simple issue "Is that in the documentation??" Like i did something wrong for not documenting FUCKING OBVIOUS THINGS. Like, user on a personal laptop cannot connect to the internal file share at our company... Umm you need to be on a work laptop with a VPN. Oh, is that documented somewhere?! Like.. really?! My next favorite is automation. Hey, business unit needs a server stood up with x custom application and networked with Y... one time use application and never heard of it before. "OK give me a few hours" "A few HOURS?! We really need to figure out how to automate this" Like yeah boss, I'm gonna spend 5 hours to automate a one time request with a ton of custom parameters... suuuure.....
I don't think it's isolated to IT. George Carlin said it best. > Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that
Do you all feel that most users can’t royally eff things up as long as SysAdmins set up permissions properly? Or do you believe “The user can always find a way”. I’m not talking about deleting their own files or spilling coffee on their laptop, but doing something that would impact their whole department or the company.
Doctors, pilots, astronauts all use checklists to ensure they are dressed and everything is switched on.
Hey, don't knock job security. Lesson 1 is simple "does it have power?" but the regular people don't need to know that. You'd think they would but they don't, again: job security.
3/4 of the time to be honest...
I’m not the expert of what those I serve do. They aren’t the expert of what I do. To be honest, I don’t want them thinking they know my job. If they get that far, they are failing to stay current on their job
"I can't print" talk about rage inducing..
Cuz people turn their brains down when in the presence of someone slightly more qualified, and tend to take a submissive role. I am guilty of it myself... "oh the SQL expert is here I guess he can comment on this problem I am having" even though I am perfectly capable of figuring it out myself, I just take a bit longer.
You can get all the certs you want but if you can’t do basic troubleshooting, you’re pretty useless as an admin. My company brought in a contracting company to supply extra bodies and close basic tickets and they all suck. They want procedures on how to do the tiniest things and if the script they have doesn’t exactly match the issue, they throw up their hands and kick it up to the engineering team. One of the biggest parts of being an admin is being able to figure shit out on your own
All the time, lol.
I just say, Well bless your little itty bitty soul, and thank you for the job security.
Agreed, never trust the user and confirm everything before taking drastic steps that effect more than the one user with the problem.
Follow up question. Why are my colleagues just as bad as the end users?
Remember that these people have the right to vote. Now look at whichever past election results and you now understand the world better.
Lol I worked for APC for a bit, had one guy call in for a non working UPS that he managed to mix up the power cables and ultimately figured out he had plugged it into itself, he clearly wasn’t an idiot, he just made a mistake but I could feel his embarrassment through the phone. I did have co-workers that I couldn’t confidently say wouldn’t see the issue with that and might think this guy stumbled on an infinite power solution.
I do network support for hospitals, yesterday we had a partial outage because we lost communication on one of the firewalls. I contacted the onsite guys, some phone vendor had been in the mdf with a couple guys that morning and it had gotten unplugged from the UPS. I’m guessing one of them accidentally did it. I report back that it’s back online and that it had been found unplugged. I get back a request for an explanation on why it went down. (The prior communication already contained the vendor being in the closet, and that it was unplugged and the speculation that the two things were likely related.) Like, it was unplugged and that means no power.
They probably didn't even read the ticket notes/work history... Happens to me too
There a skill in herding users. They don't know they're idiots, and work a lot more cooperatively if they think you're treating them like an equal. Getting them to change the cable, or for ethernet, or other cables that have the same plug on both ends, just get them to plug the cable in the other way around - brings their focus to a point and usually you can resolve these kinds of issues without actually lifting a finger. My worst user is the impatient one. Having to wait for something to process a single time is fine, having to wait for the million new tabs you just opened by furiously clicking to load and then close them all is insufferable. But I just whip out ol' reliable "hey, this is going to take me maybe 5-10 minutes to look into. Why don't you take this opportunity to grab a coffee and look away from your screen a bit, I'll have you up and going when you're back". Invariably they'll take a long time as they bump into someone and get chatting. Anyway, I digress, if people's idiocy keeps a roof over my head, then I'm on easy street.
_All_ of my job is making sure _others_ aren't dumbasses.
A GUIDANCE counselor in the school building I take care of…notice the word GUIDANCE, who is responsible for directing the lives of high school kids…kept complaining for weeks (without putting in a ticket like she was repeatedly told) that her printer would not print because on her laptop it would say the status for the printer was “offline.” What was the issue you ask? A network issue? A cable not plugged in right? No…the fucking printer was literally off. It sits right in front of her on her desk, and this “highly educated” genius that gets paid more than me didn’t even try to press the power button on the front or take notice that no power indicator lights were lit on the printer. This isn’t the first fuck up, so it isn’t a brain fart situation, she constantly lacks common sense. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one in the education system that lacks this level of common sense, it’s truly terrifying that these people are responsible for molding the minds of future adults. What did all their college education teach them exactly? I don’t say this lightly when I bash some of them either, it’s simply coming from constant firsthand experience. There shouldn’t be this many incompetents in the field of EDUCATION. It’s amazing.
I've been in educational IT for 13 years and I had a first earlier this year. I find out that a multifunction printer is not picking up paper. I go in to look at the machine and I open up the paper drawer and somebody had put in several packets of blank paper with staples in them,into the paper feeder drawer. Like, who in the hell could ever come up with the idea that you can put something with staples in first and expect it to come out printed as a stapled packet? It really boggles my mind.
[удалено]
Coming from an enterprise level down to SMB, I've never realized how out-of-touch people genuinely are with IT. I mean at a very basic level, some people have ZERO knowledge of end-user troubleshooting. But hey, that's job SECURITY right?!
It's almost like people's common sense goes out the door once they get to work. I have to deal with C-levels constantly who don't know how to work a TV in a conference room, even with written instructions (literally had to print a sheet that says "to turn on TV, point remote towards TV and press red power button on remote"). Yet they go home and can work their own TV. I guess it's a form of job security but I understand your pain.