Why IT People Become Jerks

      by Wyatt Walter

It seems that IT and technical support staffers are constantly at war with end users and other branches of their companies. I’ve read several articles and best practices on how to deal with end users in the past. Heck, I even wrote a blog entry with tips for how tech support people can deal with end users more effectively. Inspired by a discussion on Slashdot, I decided to compile a list of things to keep in mind when dealing with your IT staff. None of these are in any way attacks on certain people or certain situations. They’re merely observations of frustrations that I’ve experienced time and time again.

Just because I’m not panicing, that doesn’t mean I don’t care. As a system or network admin, we deal with far more emergencies than you probably realize. Just because there’s not panic or urgency in my voice doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of the urgency of any given situation. I may also not work on your specific issue the moment that you report it. I may have higher priority issues that have to be dealt with first. Another thing to keep in mind is that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Don’t abuse this principle or you’ll make things worse, but check in with me once in a while.

Don’t ask me general questions and expect anything different than general answers. Questions like “My Outlook doesn’t work, what is causing that?” Could be answered by any answer ranging from “your network cable is unplugged” to “Outlook is misconfigured” to “the datacenter is on fire”. Often this can be one of the biggest frustrations as the IT staff really have no road to run on but are expected to produce results.

Expect technical answers to technical questions. If you ask me about something technical but don’t really care, get ready to be bored out of your skull. All too often I get asked very technical questions and then get called a ‘nerd’ because I give some long explanation. I’m just trying to answer your question.

Don’t use terms you don’t understand. This is probably one of the most frustrating things for me personally working with non-technical people. Trying to look smart by using fancy words will only either 1) make you look like an idiot and waste both of our time, or (2 it will make me spend time coming up with a politically correct way of calling you an idiot. Seriously, this is bad for both of us. I’m not going to think less of you because you’re not technical. That’s not your job. It’s my job. But please don’t waste our time by pretending to know something that you don’t.

Solving problems requires time and testing. I can’t just make changes willy-nilly without testing or this giant pendulum of frustration will swing back the other way in the form of more problems caused by the changes I made. Making adjustments to systems can often cause other problems that I didn’t anticipate, let alone the non-technical user. I can’t tell you enough how important proper testing is to my sanity.

End users lie. Whether they intended to or not, they lie. This can go back to the correct terminology point, but some end users will knowingly lie to technical support people to get what they want. If I don’t believe you that something very unlikely to happen does happen, don’t be offended. I’ve been lied to enough times to make me suspicious of anything out of the ordinary.

I don’t need emotion, I need error messages. This may be more of a guy thing than a quirk about IT personnel, but when a user describes a problem to me is not “I wonder how it felt that the mail server rejected my message”. My initial thought is going to be “I wonder what’s causing that”. Please forgive me if my initial response is immediately a question rather than listening. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that you’ve piqued my interest and hurled me straight into problem-solving mode.

While not every “techie” is this same way, these are some great perspectives to keep in mind while dealing with your IT staff. Our minds often work very differently than those who don’t care about technology. If we can each understand why the other is the way they are, we can mitigate the notorious tension between the end user and support personnel. What about you? Are you a jerk IT person? If so, how can we avoid making you the way you are? Have you learned anything on how to deal with people from technical support?

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Filed under How-Tos / Tips : Comments (0) : Jun 11th, 2009

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