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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway.

Recently I had a corporate installed process maxing out my CPU so I went to the help desk to see the techs (the triager at the front desk thought it might be a fan issue and that I didn't know what was wrong). Since I was able to tell them the exact process and other details, they immediately recognized it as a specific issue they had seen before and we skipped the whole diagnosis back and forth. If I had gone in there and said, "the fan is running really high" I'd probably still be there.

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I do support along with my usual dev work and interface with users daily. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "I'm pretty sure it's because of..." followed by something completely unrelated, along with a stubborn resolve to not try the professional's recommended solution

That's exactly what I try to avoid. I try to focus on the facts as they present themselves. Computer is hot, fan is running full speed, process X is hogging 90% of CPU resources, and to not offer what I think the problem is (because I might be wrong or there's some nuance I'm not aware of). I assume the people who manage our tech know its idiosyncracies, but at the same time I don't want them thinking it's because I keep every browser tab I've ever opened running at the same time.

Well, that goes both ways. My wife is a social media editor and former web editor, so she is not a technician but she knows browsers more than her average colleague. Whenever some internal application has issues, she has to go through the same 10 minutes of explanations that it must be Firefox's fault, every time she calls tech support, after which they agree that it is usually what she suspected the issue to be; or if she had no clue and all she could tell them is "I have tried both Firefox and Chrome" guess what, it's not Firefox vs. Chrome.

Do you find that developers, system administrators and other IT professionals (the typical HN crowd) are just as guilty of this?

I think I’m about 50/50 on thinking their solution is absolute bull and being right, and having made a retarded mistake and their solution solving everything.

This seems like a very scalable sane default presumption, in any case.

Or they give you a log snippet and fail to say _what_ log it came from. Context, people!

A screenshot of part of a log snippet. Followed by "can I phone you?"

Dear users everywhere: the point of the exercise is not to prove there is a problem. I believe you when you say there is a problem. I need enough context to understand what the problem is.

I did similar recently. I emailed the support team with a screenshot of task manager showing what process it was, and I identified (with 30 seconds of googling) what product it was associated with. I like to think that saved everyone an hour of pointless fucking around.

I send a LOT of screen shots these days. Grab (OS X) to the clipboard, paste in text message or email. The screen shot usually has everything I want to point out while leaving out the unnecessary.

If you're ever in this situation again, taking a performance trace is easy to do and potentially helpful for the triaging team.

wpr -start GeneralProfile

do something, or let process spin

wpr -stop foo.etl

Include foo.etl with your bug report. Be aware that it will include personal information from your machine (machine config, user paths, process names, etc.).

As always, there's an XKCD for this: https://xkcd.com/806/

We know. This XKCD is why this Twitter thread exists in the first place.

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