Codedna.me

I.T. Work

Computers are simple. The people I help with their tech problems from time to time may not agree with me - heck, sometimes I don’t agree with myself - but compared to interpersonal relationships or biological organisms, computers are the simplest lever-and-pulley systems. One of the reasons they can cause so much frustration is that they function so differently from human systems. Humans have to identify important information and ignore everything else. Our brains erase the very evidence of our eyes. Computers have no such luxury. There can be no deviation or fudging, or it will not work. And so the systems collide, and our monitor will not turn on, even though we know it is plugged in. We call our friendly I.T. repairman, and lo, the monitor is not plugged in.

This means that 90% of I.T. work is thinking like a computer. You need to be methodical, ask even the stupid questions, and check everything twice, thrice. You must defeat your assumptive brain. The computer cannot be wrong, for it perfectly responds to all the information it is given exactly how it was told to respond. What is wrong is always in the interaction with the user, for the user assumes a universe of which the computer knows nothing, and then becomes puzzled when the computer is not operating in that universe.

However, it is the other 10%, the human 10%, that is the most important part of I.T. work. Solving the problem is only half the problem. You must be able to translate what the user wants so you can understand the problem in the first place. You must be able to translate the unbending error messages into softer words for the user to comprehend and learn. You must be able to fudge, to estimate, to deviate from your original thoughts and pursue new solutions when complications arise. In essence, I.T. work requires a duality of thought. You must be able to treat the human as a human, and the computer as a computer (NOT the other way around), and mediate between them.