Two Youtube videos, and a look at users' perceptions of IT

College Saga
Astor Piazzolla - Adios Nonino (Live)

I think both Youtube videos can speak for themselves. The first one is just jaw-droppingly hilarious, so much so that I think I fell off my chair more than once or broke out into loud, raucous laughter (at 3 pm). ^^;;

The second one is a live performance of Astor Piazzolla and his Second Quintet (I believe - someone correct me if I'm wrong?) performing Adios Nonino live, with him on the bandoneon (the organ grinder-like instrument). Adios Nonino was dedicated to his father (Nonino) who had just passed away, and who introduced him reluctantly to the tango genre.

It Ought To Be Simple: I'm an Idiot...

I saw this article referenced on Slashdot as Is a Bad Attitude Damaging the IT Profession? and read it. Having been on both sides of the field (both as an end-user and as someone involved in supporting others), I can understand where the article's viewpoint - about how users are ridiculed for being unable to have the same skill level as techs - comes from:

But making a decision governed by a code of ethics? That would be a challenge. IT is objective – either a program works, or it doesn’t; either you can ping the network, or you can’t. Ambiguity is antithetical. You can’t assign a value to “special care.” There’s no network protocol that supports it, and no function call that returns it.

So start with the basics: Don’t call users idiots. I don’t know if that qualifies as “special care,” but it is common courtesy. That’s a good start.

On the other hand, I also agree with some of the comments expressed in the comments on Slashdot, such as this one:

You have people who are forced into using IT because everyone needs to use it for their job nowadays, only some people don't want to so they purposely make moan and make out the situation is worse than it is just to satisfy their own technophobic paranoia - people like this are extremely frustrating to work with.

Then there are people who treat IT workers as their own personal slaves, requests such as "change my printer cartridge too" - things that frankly, even a monkey could be trained to do, this type of thing is completely demoralising. If you had a mechanic out to look at your car, what do you think their reaction would be if you turned round and say "Oh go and fill it up with gas for me too".

There's the people who simply ask too much, most IT departments are staffed okay for looking after the business but there are those that seem to feel that the IT staff should deal with the home too... There's plenty more reasons, but it seems more generally that IT has an identity crisis - users aren't entirely sure what we actually do, where the line is drawn as to what a user issue is and what an IT worker issue is.

as well as this quote:

This is the biggest bunch of nonsense that I've heard in a long time. Virtually every time I try to get help from my helpdesk on anything beyond pulling a cable or rebooting a server, I'm told that they can't help me, even when what I'm trying to do is required by policies that the IT people have put into place in the first place. My favorite reason for not helping is that I don't have a "supported configuration", even though I'm running name-brand hardware and software. My feeling about my IT people is that they're really great at running the network and server farms, but beyond that they don't care about their customers.

Ultimately, I think it's down more to individual tact (or the lack of it) and CRM (customer relationship management) on the part of IT workers, and a willingness to learn and go outside one's comfort zone on the part of end-users. Where that balance lies depends on each individual organization/group.

No biting, please!

From chibi_nasu, yet again, we have another meme!

Reply to this post, and I'll tell you one (or more) reason(s) why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love, baby. <3