TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#97 – Not a Geek

#97 - Not a Geek

It wouldn't be right to end my tour of essaying here on the site without a general discussion about technology and doing it for a living.  Information Technology is a job like any other, it's got plusses and minuses.  I suppose if I grew up to be a car mechanic or a carpenter, I'd be telling you about idiots who don't change their oil often enough or the morons down at the union hall.  But I work in IT and so...no jokes about Nick Burns, please.

It took me about three seconds to realize that I liked computers the first time that I saw one.  The Apple IIe machines that permeated my school district in the Eighties (anyone ever figure out how that deal was sealed?) pretty much guaranteed that I'd be using one before I got out of third grade.  I didn't mind of course, who didn't want to be the kid who got to play "Oregon Trail" while everyone else went over their history homework?

Computers came late to the Woolery household.  Dad couldn't see the appeal and didn't want me to grow up in front of a CRT.  I still got the chance to be around them - John's Texas Instruments console that combined Atari-2600/type games with a basic I/O was my other introduction to the computing world.  I remember one afternoon a long time ago where we spent hours writing a simple BASIC program to display information about the Lightcycles in Tron (since I'd just seen it and thought it was uber-cool).  John spent hours on that program which was erased after we shut off the console because the TI wasn't set up to save anything to disk.

I would have to describe my fascination with electronics and video games as 'unhealthy'. I was a fiend for any complex-looking electronic toy.  Remember Marty McFly in Back to the Future as he turned on the Worlds Biggest Amplifier?  All the toggle switches and pots that he turned up before being bodily ejected at the back wall - I sooooo wanted that thing. Not for the music, just to turn it ON.  I used to check out the electronics aisle at Dale Hardware, wanting to buy a bunch of those lighted duck-bill toggles and switches and build something - just so that I could have some awesome buttons to press.  Again - my parents didn't see the appeal and were concerned about my fixation on anything that was tech.  I guess it's part of my genes - before I knew computers, I was thoroughly fascinated by trains.  And garbage trucks...I wanted to ride around on the big truck and pull the lever that made the big press come down and eat all the trash.

But still, it's important to make a distinction.  I love tech but I don't consider myself a 'geek'.  Actually, it's a pejorative term that isn't really used in the technical world unless you're being ironic.  I never hear other people in my office refer to each other as 'geeks' (or 'hackers' or 'crackers' or '1337 Haxxor' - those terms are just stupid).  The only persons I hear still using terms like that are people who have no idea what the terms imply.

There are negative stereotypes for every profession; Nurses have that lady from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", nuclear safety technicians have "Homer Simpson".  I'm sure everyone in a chosen field has dealt with people looking in from the outside who, with not a small amount of glee, go "Hey, you're like that guy!" and then do a really bad impression of whomever your particular stereotype is.  I don't mind having my wife explain it to other people when she says, "He works with computers."  Nobody cares if I say 'Data Center Operations' or 'Deployment Engineer'.  To say those things is to immediately invest an additional 2-5 minutes of your life while you explain the particulars of your job.  Then you wind up the spiel and they say, "Why didn't you just say that you work with computers?"

But I can deal with that.

To talk about people who work with computers as 'geeks' makes about as much sense as calling all doctors 'sawbones'.  The inaccuracy of the terms coupled with the out-dated terminology says a lot more about the person executing the epithet than the person they're attempting to define.  I could live with that, except for when it is people who should genuinely know better. You know who I'm talking about.  People who work in IT, people who rely on the tech to do their job.  If I were a carpenter, or worked in the home-building field, the last thing I'd want to do is let everyone know how much I didn't know about the job by referring to all carpenters, electricians and plumbers as 'laborers'.  Just for fun, walk into the union hall and call everyone you meet a laborer - see where that gets you.

I was reading an article in the Merc, discussing the Stanford University support people that are called out when someone in the dorms needs computer help.  The figures from the article were interesting but not surprising - 99% of the kids on campus have at least one computer.  People clearly see a computer as a necessary tool in their education process.  Yet, for all that necessity, there still exists a support department to answer relatively simple issues.  Why?  Because while people recognize the necessity of the tool - nobody seems interested in learning how that tool works.  That's what bothers me.

I've said it before, would you hire a carpenter that didn't know how to operate a skill saw?  How about a baker who couldn't work the mixer?  If you're planning to go into a particular field, it should be your job...a core fundamental task...to learn how to use the tools that make your job possible.  If you feel that a computer is a necessary part of your education experience, learn a few things about it.  Learn how to make sure your computer can get to the Internet.  Learn how to set up your e-mail client (Outlook, OE or Thunderbird) to get to the mail server.  Be able to fix the minor stuff or at the very least, learn how to look up things on fixing the minor stuff (because I guarantee you someone has posted a web page about it somewhere) by typing a few relevant keywords into Google.  It's staggering to me how many things I've solved where no one else has bothered to try by following this simple resolution path:

1.  Figure out what's broken - to the best of your ability - and be able to explain it in a few sentences.

2.  Type some simple phrases into Google that explain what the problem is - "Printer out of toner" or "Can't connect to Internet".  Check out the first few pages and see if someone hasn't already written a great web page located on a server somewhere to explain just how you go about fixing a certain problem.

3.  If that doesn't help, check out the support pages for the product - companies do everything in their power to avoid having you call their support line and invest quite a bit into the on-board help files or support knowledge bases.  Take 10 minutes and see if they haven't already posted a fix.

4.  If that doesn't work - call support; just do it.  Don't whine, don't cry about not having your little 'thingy' when you 'really need it to work'.  Listen, princess, get over the whole 'If-I-do-it-badly-enough-someone-will-come-and-do-it-for-me' attitude.   Being functionally useless in adult society only works if you're really really rich, or really really pretty (hopefully both).  If it matters that much to you, take the time to see how it works before you have that paper due by 10am tomorrow (Hello...thinking ahead anyone?).

It's really that simple - the reason why most people don't do it is that it involves committing to finding a solution; a path where none existed before.  Most people aren't comfortable with that yet.  Most people do not want to take the time.  Most people feel that they shouldn't have to go that route - they paid so much for the computer that nothing should ever go wrong.  And here is what I say in response:

Wrong.  Not just 'wrong', I mean "WRONG" the way that Dom Deluise said it when he was the gay director at the end of "Blazing Saddles".  Right next to your ear with a megaphone and a prissy voice:

WRONG!!!

That's correct, children.  Thinking that a computer should be both feature-rich and completely idiot-proof is just plain fuzzy logic.  Buying an F-1 car does not make you a race car driver.  Buying an airplane does not make you a pilot.  Buying an expensive oven doesn't make you Emeril Lagasse.  You can spend a hundred thousand dollars in tools and equipment but you are no closer to being Bob Vila than when you started.  Only now, you're the idiot who thought spending a hundred thousand dollars would make you Bob Vila.

There's a certain amount of unspoken hubris that goes into these exchanges between user and tech.  There's an unspoken assumption that everything should work perfect and if it doesn't, they're entitled to an immediate fix.  I'm pretty sure that it isn't that simple; I'm responding to how a large number of people have behaved when I approached them to help them resolve an issue.  I had to deal with the hostility and thinly-veiled sarcasm.  I know that people behave like that when they get frustrated and that it's important to remain objective - I just never understood how anyone could justify acting like that to a tech.

"Well, it was working when I brought it in!"

"I just have a quick question..."

"So what am I supposed to do now?  I need this to work!"

I've been in dozens of situations where an office user did something they shouldn't to their workstation and jeopardized their productivity right at the moment when a report was due, or an exec needed it, or it was the end of the month and they to get something shipped.  The tool broke, you know how to fix it and somehow all the frustration and bad vibes of the situation get focused on you.  It's no secret that some things that MN article said were true - techs have to be closet psychologists to do their job well.  We have to understand that the frustration being vented on you by a user isn't about you, it's about the situation.  We have to understand that our anger, while appropriate since you're being treated shoddily, isn't going to get you past this hurdle.

You troubleshoot, you research, you fix, you resolve - you ask the user what they did to cause this and, other than a small percentage of people, they will lie.  Nonono, they did nothing.  They weren't downloading a stupid screensaver or putting their ITunes on a LAN drive or clicking on that link that says "Do you like George Bush? Yes/No - Answer and Get a Free Laptop!".  They weren't doing anything, man - they were just sitting there minding their own business when KABLOOIE!...the whole thing just froze.

Right - and I wasn't doing 65 in a 25 officer, my foot just slipped.

I know that the majority of the conflict comes from a single source: people feel intimidated by the technology they’re relying on to live their lives.  Like anything else that people unconsciously compete at – there are always those knuckleheads that must compete at everything and just looove to show off how easy they can use their computers, iPods and cell phones.  For the most part, I ignore people like that, because at some point they come to me, almost in tears as they explain that their digicam or Internet connection isn’t working and they just don’t know what to do! But if you aren’t me and you can’t see the difference between a person like that and a genuinely knowledgeable technician, you feel like the entire world has somehow gotten on a bandwagon that you’ll never be able to catch up with.  You feel intimidated.  You feel fear.  You feel anger.  That anger is what I have to deal with when you apoplectically describe how fast I will lose my job because the system or tool or toy or whatever isn’t working as advertised.

Please don’t take this out on me.

When I was younger, my first computer teacher would regularly pull me out in the hall to talk to me about my attitude.  ‘You’re good at this and you’re making the other kids feel bad because of how you show it,’ she’d say.  It took me a long time to see that she was probably talking about herself.  It also took me a long time to see just what a load of garbage it was; you want me to apologize for being good at something for the first time in my life?  Where was this logic when I was the last kid to be picked for kickball?

There’s a certain amount of responsibility upon all of us to be pragmatic – to see things as they are.  Seeing things as they should be only lends itself to more frustration as the world slips inexorably further from your personal vision.  I know this is true, because it is what happens to me when I do it.  Nonetheless, technology is here to stay.  You benefit from it on a daily basis and at some point, you need to stop insisting that it also owes you some magic wand that you can wave to make everything easily understood by you.

If you want to drive a car, you must learn.

If you want to use a telephone, you must learn.

If you want to bake a cake, you must learn.

You’ve been learning how to do new things for your entire life.  That never stops and there is never a point at which you graduate.  To sit there like a spoiled child and insist the world rotate at the speed you are comfortable with is unreasonable.  To call me a ‘geek’ because I’ve taken the time to learn how the technology I rely on works is unreasonable.  All I am is the guy who was curious and who decided to find out.  I didn’t ask if it was easy.  I didn’t ask if someone could beam the knowledge into my head.  I saw something I didn’t know how to use and decided to find out.  I didn’t let my ego prevent me from seeing what else was out there.

I don’t see myself as having any particular advantage over anyone else when it comes to IT.  I love learning about new things – things like parkour, home improvement, child rearing and playing the guitar.  If that makes me special or worthy of being called a ‘geek’, well…not sure what to tell you.

Just remember that it says more about you than it does about me.

- Tim Woolery – 10/17/2006