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Five Things Your IT Guy Wants You to Know
1. You aren’t an auto-mechanic, either…
… but you know how to drive your car. That’s why we call you “users”: because you use the computer and that doesn’t mean you have to be a computer expert. Some things you should know how to do: find an application that isn’t on your desktop, create a shortcut, know the difference between copying files and moving files, clear jammed paper from a printer. It isn’t our job to teach you to use Excel. If you don’t know how vlookup works, consult Google. We don’t use excel, except once a year to calculate 1.5% of $21.
2. There’s nothing you can break…
… that we can’t fix. So try new things. We promise you, if you break it, we can fix it. And if we can’t fix it, it probably wasn’t you that broke it. So click around on stuff. Figure out how it works. We like users who know what they are doing, and are willing to figure stuff out on their own. In fact, this is why we often don’t get back to you on simple stuff. Because we know you’ll get tired of waiting, and just figure it out.
3. We don’t care…
… what your brother-in-law (or insert any family member here) said about how to fix whatever problem it is that you have. We also don’t care how they did it at the last place you worked. They have their network, and we have ours. And while there may be some things similar, there are always a great many differences. So just sit back, check Facebook on your phone, and you’ll be back to checking Facebook and Ricochet on your work computer in no time.
4. Which brings me to…
Yes, we actually have the time to sit and monitor what you do on the Internet. Just kidding. We don’t. And it isn’t our web filter. It is management’s web filter. Nine times out of ten — no strike that: ten times out of ten — when your boss brings you a report saying you spend too much time on Facebook at work, it’s because your boss thinks you spend too much time on Facebook at work. And he asked us for a report. Which we hate, because it takes time away from us checking Face… um … checking for updated drivers for “the server”.
5. The problem with 5 is …
… there are actually a million other things we want you to know. Like, the fact that disk space isn’t cheap. That backups are tough. That the network isn’t slow. That, if we had all the money in the world, we’d buy you whatever computer you think you need but we don’t, and that you don’t get administrative rights to your computer because — if you did — you’d install software that infects your computer, causing more work for us …
Published in Culture
We had a couple. I think it could mostly be chalked up to a small, community-oriented enterprise that was committed to hiring from within, and occasionally misoverestimated the capabilities of the applicant. Your point is good, though. Finance departments are usually full of good computer users.
I’ve known many what I’ll call ‘business unit managers,’ though, who needed to have some accounting/math expertise in order to know if their department was pulling its weight, and who couldn’t understand why the PC on their desk didn’t confer magical analytical expertise on them every time they clicked on the Excel icon.
My Ricochet profile has long said much the same thing. You are correct.
It sounds like you passed the interview
The president of a mid sized public university gave the faculty and staff convocation talk at the beginning of the fall 2014 semester. In it she outlined several initiatives, including that she was going to outsource IT within 6 months. The only problem was that she hadn’t told the IT people yet. It was news to them. Cue a mass exodus of IT followed by the Learning Management System crashing for a month at the beginning of the term. Oy.
Oh Jude you have to give me more details on this. I need this one in my back pocket for school.
I would say that the reason MS won that fight was not because of windows itself, but because of the products MS was offering on Windows, namely MS Office, and most specifically MS Excel. Up until recently there has been nothing even close.
I still have one or two apps on my Mac Mini that use X Window for their graphics display.
Way fewer today (OS X Yosemite) than when I first returned to the Macintosh (OS X Tiger), since most of the open source apps I use frequently have been properly ported since then, but there are still a few stragglers.
(gliv, gftp, and, um, that’s all I can think of at the moment ackshully, everything else has been ported…)
I use ackshully all the time, but only with bitmeister. I find the command interface to be easy and carefree.
You’re not familiar with the history. Microsoft added secret api’s to MSDOS and then Windows to force the leading and superior competitors (Lotus 123, Wordperfect) out of the market. Microsoft won using anti-competitve business practices and anti-competitive contracts, not through competition.
I would like to see more details here. I was around and in IT when the world switched from Lotus and Wordperfect to Exel and Word. Most people did it because the Microsoft products were better. Now, it may be that they were better because of the secret APIs. But, I would like you to provide some more information on that, if you don’t mind.
Yeah mark me as a skeptic jet.
Because of the api’s. DOS ain’t done until Lotus won’t run.
Do have documentation of the secret APIs? Or is this conjecture?
Windows 3.1 checked for DR DOS, if DR DOS was running Windows displayed an error message – Non-fatal error detected: Error number. Microsoft was sued for this little shenanigan.
I’ve worked as a functional consultant with supply chain systems for 18 years. Being a “functional” consultant means I understand the client’s business and how to configure the system to address their needs, but I’m completely clueless on code, hardware and network setup.
Which has led to conversations like:
1. Client: Why doesn’t your company idiot-proof your system? Me: You’d just find a better idiot.
2. Family Member (usually my MIL): You work with computers – why isn’t my internet working? Me: <Sigh>
I will say, however that I’ve worked with fantastic client IT folks, and I’ve worked with horrid client IT folks. A fantastic one makes my job enormously easier. A horrid one can make the implementation impossible. Had one guy who changed all of the user profile permissions one night and then proceeded to deny that he had done so for the rest of the week. ARRRGGHHH!!!
Documentation please?
He should be fired.
Documentation? Are you, kidding? This all happened over 25 years ago, I have no interest dredging all of that sordid nastiness. You can learn from what I’ve posted or not. If you’re not familiar with the above quote, you weren’t involved with the computer industry at the time. If you want to research it, Nicholas Petreley at Infoworld is a source as would be old copies of Computerworld.
Well, see, that is sort of how it works. You say “Here’s this thing that happened” and then you provide some links to articles and such that show that what you are saying is true. Or at least true in someone’s opinion besides yourself. You don’t say “Here’s this thing that happened, and if you want to know if I’m right or not, go search the Internet.”
Believe whatever you want. I’ve passed along personal knowledge to you, I don’t care if you don’t believe.
I sort of figured that was coming.
I know more than a couple of guys who refuse to switch away from Excel because there are VisualBasic addons they rely on for their jobs which they cannot port to other office suites. I don’t have an answer for them.
These add-ons are not of the the “secret” persuasion, I wouldn’t think. Otherwise they would know to use them.
Some interesting back and forth here on the “dos aint done” business:
http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
Two reasons I saw for making the switch back in the day:
1) Lots and lots and lots of students learned about word processing and spreadsheets on an old B&W Macintosh running Word and Excel, so when they entered the real world and bought Windows PCs they gravitated to MS Office because that’s what they learned on in school.
Workplaces that used 1-2-3 and Wordperfect could either switch to MS Office or try to retrain all their new hires.
2) I worked at one place that first bought licenses for Wordperfect Suite, but the Lotus fans didn’t like to spreadsheet (Quattro), so then it also bought Lotus Suite, but the WordPerfect fans didn’t like the word processor. It was a huge waste of money putting two entire office suites on every computer.
When they put MS Office on the computers, on the other hand, almost nobody complained that much about losing their “preferred” application. They mighta grumbled a bit, but they could still get their work done. It was far and away the most cost-effective compromise.
No, not secret at all. I don’t think I was implying that they were.
Some can be quite expensive, and the folk who develop these sorts of industry-specific add-ons only seem to do so for MS Office.
If you’re a real estate agent that has spent a metric oodle on VB tools that your staff rely on, it’s way cheaper to just keep buying MS Office than to switch to OpenOffice and then have to hire some developers to try and recreate the tools as Java/C++/Python extensions.
I was being a smart a–.
Also, never forget that the vast majority of users are complete [redacted] morons. I mean, my gawd, the number of support requests I get due to people forgetting where they saved a document is mind-boggling.
“My file disappeared!”
“Well, where did you save it?”
“How should I know? I just hit save and it saves.”
“You are a waste of [redacted] carbon.”
Try throwing an application they’ve never seen before, even if it’s 90% identical to MS Office, and they’re lost in the [redacted] woods. If a single icon or option isn’t in exactly the same place as in MS Office, you end up spending more on IT support time than you saved on software.
And another thing! When competent computer use is a central part of your [redacted] job, if you think “I’m just not very good with computers” is a valid excuse then you have my permission to go play in [redacted] traffic!
And another thing! If you are a university graduate under the age of, oh, let’s say, 40, “I’m just not that good with computers” is not an acceptable [redacted] excuse. My 80-year-old father is smart enough to read a “…for Dummies” book. Get off your lazy [redacted] ass and use some basic problem-solving skills!!!
True story:
The lady called and said “I have a file I need restored from backup. I don’t know the name of it, though. And I don’t remember where it was stored. And I don’t know what program it was made in. Do you think you can find it?”
My response: “How do you know this file ever existed in the first place?”
She had a printout. It was a one page document that had emergency procedures, to be posted next to all phones. She didn’t want to retype it.