Someone said you tell them to turn it off and unplug it, because you need a number from the plug side going into the computer. Then you coach them through the process to find the right plug, and they don’t feel stupid because this is a strange process.
Then when they say there’s no numbers on the plug, you pretend like this is new and useful information, tell them to hold the power button and make sure no lights come on, and then you tell them to plug it in and turn it back on
Now, not only have you confirmed they definitely turned off the computer without asking a bunch of potentially insulting questions, the showmanship makes them feel like this is arcane knowledge you’ve taught them
This is why it is not at all unreasonable to envision future IT people as basically being Comstar or the Mechanicus. People already think we do magic, just wait a hundred years and we can convince them of anything.
What do you mean? I already believe I do magic. Granted, I’m not IT, I’m a dev, but I literally type words and runes and the lives of thousands of people change.
The customer will call me and say “I need to do this, I have this problem, help” and I either say “it will be done” or I tell her to go through a series of arcane actions, maybe asking for strange sequences of actions or ask for special numbers I leave around that mean nothing to anyone aside from me and my coworker
I literally sometimes say “this feels fucky, can you restart X or Y for me?” And my team lead is just like yeah, ok, that makes no sense let’s try it. And vise versa
You have no idea how superstitious you get as a senior dev. And it works. It’s just better and faster to accept rituals that work than to dig into every problem
I’d opt to just explain how restart and shutdown/power on works if they needed all that but most users I’ve worked with don’t want to be involved in the fix, they just want it fixed.
Someone said you tell them to turn it off and unplug it, because you need a number from the plug side going into the computer. Then you coach them through the process to find the right plug, and they don’t feel stupid because this is a strange process.
Then when they say there’s no numbers on the plug, you pretend like this is new and useful information, tell them to hold the power button and make sure no lights come on, and then you tell them to plug it in and turn it back on
Now, not only have you confirmed they definitely turned off the computer without asking a bunch of potentially insulting questions, the showmanship makes them feel like this is arcane knowledge you’ve taught them
This is why it is not at all unreasonable to envision future IT people as basically being Comstar or the Mechanicus. People already think we do magic, just wait a hundred years and we can convince them of anything.
What do you mean? I already believe I do magic. Granted, I’m not IT, I’m a dev, but I literally type words and runes and the lives of thousands of people change.
The customer will call me and say “I need to do this, I have this problem, help” and I either say “it will be done” or I tell her to go through a series of arcane actions, maybe asking for strange sequences of actions or ask for special numbers I leave around that mean nothing to anyone aside from me and my coworker
I literally sometimes say “this feels fucky, can you restart X or Y for me?” And my team lead is just like yeah, ok, that makes no sense let’s try it. And vise versa
You have no idea how superstitious you get as a senior dev. And it works. It’s just better and faster to accept rituals that work than to dig into every problem
Praise the Omnisiah.
I’d opt to just explain how restart and shutdown/power on works if they needed all that but most users I’ve worked with don’t want to be involved in the fix, they just want it fixed.