Saturday, January 05, 2013
It's rough being The Computer Guy
Reason #9—Every Conversation You Have Is Roughly The Same
When the computer guy dares to mention what he does for a living, the typical response is, “I have a question about my home computer”
Or when the computer guy first hears about a widespread problem within the computer network he's responsible for, he can barely begin to assess the problem before a dozen other people call to report the same problem.
Or when the computer guy explains a certain process on a computer to a user who is incapable of retaining the process, he will inevitably need to reinstruct the user of this same process—indefinitely.
Via The Endeavour, 10 Reasons It Doesn't Pay To Be “The Computer Guy”
When I read this, I was taken back to Gregory's rant about the user community (which was more of a rant about people who ask the same questions over and over again).
What really struck home, though, was this comment at The Endeavour:
No thank you. I dropped residential support and told all my businesses we put file servers in their business and we re-image workstations at the first hint of trouble. I also emphasize to businesses that work machines should be work machines.
Those jobs began to actually be worth the time.
It doesn't pay to be the computer guy
Fortunately, my exposure to residential support was brief (back in the mid 90s I worked at a local ISP and I was stuck on the front line of support) and since then, I've been able to obtain jobs where talking to residential customers isn't a concern—it pays to be a programmer.
