IT dorks, who we are, what we do, and how to manage us.
By: Ryan
2009-03-26
This is an open letter from us, that is, IT nerds, to you, management, users, and everybody that has to deal with us and our sometimes very bizarre behavior.
Lets get some things out of the way to start...you probably don't like us very much. There is a good chance that you have come to one of us at one time or another asking us to fix your laptop and thought that we were short with you, or mean, or that we sounded like we didn't talk to you. You've probably called us more than once because you JUST wanted us to fix your email only to have us make you look like an idiot and STILL not fix it.
Guys, look. First, with the laptop thing...We aren't gods. Something to understand about a computer (especially it seems, a laptop computer) is that it is very much not in any way like a hammer, or a lamp. That is to say, there is no on button, no secret magic that we can do to it to magically make it work for you. At no point will any of us being doing any sort of dances or sacrifices of goats over your laptop to make it work again. They're complicated machines, horribly, horribly, frighteningly complicated machines. We can fix you work laptop because we were the ones who set it up to begin with. We know all the ins and outs of it. Remember when you went to install that neat-o purple gorilla thing that talks to you and the machine wouldn't let you? You were pissed off at us, weren't you? Don't lie! Yes you were! You thought to yourself "stupid IT guy thinks I'm some kind of idiot or something! What like I'm just going to break this something! I've been using these for longer than he has been walking! I'm marching straight down to his office on Monday to give him a piece of my mind!"
Well guess what. That box popping up, mocking you, telling you that the IT gods from down the hall had decided that the talking purple gorilla was not a worthy piece of software was actually making sure that your laptop, the tool that you use to do your job and to make sure that our paychecks cash every month, doesn't stop working. See, like I said, computers are complicated. Think of it like a maze, okay? When we "lock you out", or prevent you from installing non-approved software, what we're doing is making sure that that maze of a computer you're using keeps the same route from the inside to the outside.
I'll let you in on a little secret. We actually don't know as much about your computer as we act like we do. It is like those funny puzzles with the horse-shoes that you can get at tourist shops along route-66. Remember when your nephew solved one of them on his first try! What a genius! Well....he actually cheated, he had spent hours, days, in our cause, maybe even YEARS OR DECADES memorizing the very specific set of steps that he had to follow to free the steel ring from the clutches of the evil horse-shoes.
We're doing the same thing. We aren't geniuses, but when you come to us with a problem and we fix it in a jiffy, there is a good chance that we've seen the same problem 100 times before. That is how we fix it so fast!
So back to your laptop that we were short with you about fixing. We don't know the secret to its puzzle, don't know how to get to the exit of its maze and don't want to spend the hours and hours and hours that it will take us to find it. Us taking your laptop home to fix isn't going to require the 5 minutes it takes us to fix your email, there is a good chance its going to take us all night!
So...that is why we were short with you last tuesday about your laptop.
Next thing...please don't assume that just because it is a gadget of some sort that we are going to know how to fix it for you. Yes, there is a very basic set of steps that we can follow that fixes most problems (is it turned on? Are there any error messages? If so, what are they telling you?)
Please don't ask us to fix your cellphone, or the fax machine, or the postage-stamp-applicator that you got from skymall...we have got no idea how it works. In FACT, the interface was probably designed for people like you, not people like us.
Now that that is out of the way. Please, don't refer to us as "The IT guy", we really don't like it. We don't ever refer to you as "The sales gal", "The phone answerer guy", or "The Boss yeller man". If you're introducing us, say something like "This is John, he manages all the computer systems"...we will probably blush a little and say something to the effect of "Yeah, i'm the resident dork!"...this is not an invitation for you to tell us about your cousin who plays world of warcraft and how we should talk to each other.
What do we actually do at the company? Are we....programmers? Reset button specialists? Network engineers? Sys-admins? (the beard is a dead give-away)...show us a genuine interest in what we're doing and I'll bet we look the other way when you spend half of your day on ESPN.
Since we're on the topic of your ESPN addiction, we don't monitor your web-surfing habits because we've got it out for you, we do it because it is our job. We don't care that you spend all day on zombo.com, what we do care about is that zombo.com isn't getting cached properly in squid, or the the content filter is stripping out some javascript that it shouldn't be. Don't worry, your secret addiction to 1960s era russian dancing dolls is safe with us!
Next, when you call us freaking out because your email is broken and we don't act like it is the end of the world, but instead respond calmly, this isn't because we don't understand the importance of your problem; we do. We're being calm because fixing the email is our job. You wouldn't want to lose your cool when talking to a customer, would you?
So...how do you manage us?
Well...that is a tough question. One major thing that will drive us nuts is the dress code. For us, it should be jeans and a polo or a t-shirt. Why? Why should we get special treatment? Well, because we spend half of our day unboxing servers, crawling under people's desks, disassembling dusty PCs, running cables through old walls and attics, crawling around in the datacenter (converted closet), and tracking down rogue access points. We get dirty...annnnndddd
Our job is tough, it requires creativity, it requires us to be comfortable and we aren't comfortable when we're required to wear a suit and tie, or khakis (which have a tendency to get caught on the edges of things and rip)...if you catch us in our office with our keyboard on our lap, slouched back in our chair, and with our feet up on our desk...we're not slacking off, we're probably in-the-zone coding. Please, we're not trying to be pricks, but leave us alone for a bit.
Also...keep in mind that we're on call 24 hours a day (most of us, at least). If we show up a few minutes late to work, or if it seems like we just spent half of the day reading blogs about cats, it's not because we're slackers, its because we were up until 1:00am last night working on the mailserver, or coding that must-be-done-now reporting tool that you asked us for.
Like with the users, take a genuine interest in what we do. Try to at least have a basic understanding of it...maybe it will make sense that we don't hop-to-it when you tell us your printer is out of paper and you need us to refill it for you.
(this is of course assuming that you're not a techie yourself)
Lastly, please don't assume that what we do is easy. That update you want for the website, you JUST want us to change the layout, or you JUST want us to hook into a vendors database and extract some info for you is probably not even nearly as simple as you think it is. It goes with understanding what we do, but we promise, we're not trying to waste time...if it is taking us longer than you thought it would...consider making a coffee run for us, not coming down and screaming.
Make sure you check the Front Page for some more interesting stories.
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Commander Cody | 2009-03-26 |
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Hey IT guy how do I install gibsonandlily on my Ipod, Will you please write a blog about it k thax. Have heard of this game called linux? I'm hoping it's like Super Mario but with a penguin. Should I get a blue ray player or is a superior red ray player coming out soon? Which guy are you?
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Ryan | 2009-03-26 |
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Have heard of this game called linux? I'm hoping it's like Super Mario but with a penguin.
That is pretty much exactly correct.
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Travers | 2009-03-26 |
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I think the important point to take out of this is that some things are easy to do, and others are more difficult. Difficult things take time, especially to do properly. Laymen--we are all laymen to many topics--eventually end up vocalizing the phrase: couldn't you just? This is of course an abstraction to what's going on behind the scenes. Without knowledge as to the specifics of implementing X are, you have to express your idea somehow. Thus, you go straight from idea to a working implementation skipping all the hard stuff in between. I seriously doubt anybody expects that things are actually that simple--obtaining a result without any means. Reality has a cruel, and thus readily remembered, way of dispelling such contradictions.
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That being said, laymen are laymen. Do not make assumptions about the ease of which something can be implemented, or what resources will be needed. Ask the people who know and stick with that. Everyone will end up frustrated if not enough time or resources are devoted to a goal, and your product will end up being crap. Additionally, you want to know what something is going to take to do, so you can plan effectively.
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Ryan | 2009-03-26 |
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Thus, you go straight from idea to a working implementation skipping all the hard stuff in between.
*DING*
People forget how their own head works...this is their though process..
......food...food...food...sex..food..food....OHIDEA!!!!11111111111foofd#!!1111
how get idea good win get good idea go food win get good food IDEA!!1
if idea...good winnng.....get...food..IDEA!!
IDEA....DONE...FOOOD....DONE.DOFOOODOOOFOOOFOODOOOFIDEAIDEA IDEA DONE IDEA DONE IDEA DONE.
Your (our) job is usually deciphering this mess and actually come up with a way to implement it.
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Ryan | 2009-05-26 |
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Actually...yeah. Their ideas are often along the lines of "we need to come up with some ideas".
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