10 things your IT guy wants you to know. | Hacker News Reader

10 things your IT guy wants you to know.

javameblog.com

9 pointsedw51910 comments

I've seen this around before - but basically this article is a good example of how not to communicate to users... The tone is wrong, it's condescending and it's elitist...

If you take that blog entry, and instead of being the IT guy - imagine this is a Doctor... You'd be appalled if this was "10 things your Medical guy wants you to know".

It's frustrated comedy. I'm sure doctors have a "10 things we want our patients to know" inside joke about us, too.

Yeah true - Although - I have seen cultures that take this as more than a joke.

But they probably do a better job of saving it for when they're talking with other doctors, rather than posting it on the internet where everyone can see it.

Also: Spending most of your time complaining about how stupid users are, etc., makes it a lot harder to empathize with them and not sound like a standoffish IT guy. (Most people are probably not as good at compartmentalizing as they believe.)

If memory serves, _Time Management for System Administrators_ (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007836/) has a good chapter about how to be helpful and reasonably polite with non-technical people when you're being constantly interrupted and the server closet is on fire (with an emphasis on little things that show you're actually trying to fix things and not just blowing people off, since many people won't necessarily recognize e.g. scowling at firewall logs as working on their problem).

"Frustration comedy" is a good term, by the way.

Quality of the article aside...."But they probably do a better job of saving it for when they're talking with other doctors, rather than posting it on the internet where everyone can see it." Huh. Thing is, they didn't put it up where "everyone" could see it. Not even YCNews can do that. They put it up where "anyone" that found it could see it. Which is kinda part of the idea of an internet, isn't it? Otherwise how would they share it with other "techies"? (Or doctors or whoever) Well, some subsets of everyone won't find my post worthwhile so... I shouldn't allow it to exist? Seems like that would rule out all content ever, more or less.

Of course, beyond that, I suspect we need to have more inter-discipline discussion where techies and doctors can come to understand one anothers gripes in the search for a "better way"... but I don't know how well that could ever really work given human nature.

> They put it up where "anyone" that found it could see it. Which is kinda part of the idea of an internet, isn't it? Otherwise how would they share it with other "techies"?

Agreed. "Anyone", rather than "everyone". (I tried different phrasings about how, unlike doctors, "techies" are likely to communicate semi-publicly on the internet, but I stumbled with words and decided the other aspect was a more important point to make.)

And about inter-discipline discussion, absolutely. It's often difficult, but very necessary.

I wasn't advocating actually behaving like that. My whole point was: it's a joke.

As for the "posting in public": http://politedissent.com/archives/603

edit: Added the link.

Ok, conceded. (My other point is more important, anyway.)

By the author's admission, this was apparently reposted without permission. As he doesn't mention any license permitting his posting, I get the uncomfortable vibe of content theft.

Now why won't my boss let me put this on the support page? :)

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