Re: (OT) The Honest Cherry Bomb

Why are so many IT people mean?

It's very rare to have both an analytical mindset and a mindset suited for psychotherapy, yet IT seems to require both. IT folks are confronted on one hand with a vast array of exacting rules and requirements (not all well documented), and on the other with a horde of frustrated workers who are often afraid of and angry at the mysterious technology they need (NOW, dammit) to get their jobs done.

It's not a position I'd like to be in.

When angry, frustrated people are blaming me (because it's no fun to blame software if it doesn't react to being blamed), I tend to blame back unless I'm well centered. Empathy starts after the first cup of coffee, but ends somewhere after the third.

Comment on Re: (OT) The Honest Cherry Bomb

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: (OT) The Honest Cherry Bomb by rob_au (Abbot) on May 28, 2003 at 22:32 UTC
I'd just like to thank you for my new email signature ... :-) It's very rare to have both an analytical mindset and a mindset suited for psychotherapy, yet IT seems to require both. `perl -le 'print+unpack"N",pack"B32","00000000000000000000001001100000"'`	[reply]
Re: Re: (OT) The Honest Cherry Bomb by Anonymous Monk on Jun 02, 2003 at 05:14 UTC
I was reading System Performance Tuning, 2nd ed earlier. Your post reminds me of the following section: The most powerful tool available to you in order to control the workloads on your systems is user education. Enforcing strict CPU time or disk quotas, while effective, often adds to a "resentment of the mystery" phenomenon. This leaves users feeling rather like medieval serfs: there are certain things they just can't do, like encourage the rain in a dry season, and all they can do is go and beg some rather mysterious people who usually live in caves to try and fix the problem for them. The end result is that the users get very frustrated. A much better solution is to explain the problem to your users, how their actions induce it, and the solution to the problem. Many times, this sort of forthright discussion will produce the results you'd like, with much less of a headache. I thought that summed it up rather nicely. Educate your users/customers and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble and improve the arrangement for all involved parties. Consider their position/mindset before you react. The book also contains lots of excellent information on (you guessed it!) System Performance Tuning :).	[reply]