Right in the general case. Wrong for your individual case. Management will look at the escalating cost of providing the same answers to the same problem, and find someone who will provide that solution cheaper. It will not involve you (not you specifically, but "you" as the general individual in IT).
The entirely history of IT (and just about every other industry) has been about vendors providing more "out of the box" functionality to solve the most common problems, whilst service providers find cheaper ways to meet common problems. Else everyone would still be working with DOS (or something) and there would be no outsourcing/offshoring. Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 21 June 2011 8:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Stupid user tricks End user difficulty with technology is a problem that *CANNOT* be solved, in the general case. That is because if you make the computer simple enough for an untrained person (or worse, an unthinking/unmotivated person) to use, you will have removed its ability to do anything beyond a small set of simple tasks, and it won't be much of a computer after that. Hell, you can't even get everyone to understand how to manipulate two light switches (at the top and bottom of stairs, for instance) that control the same light, let along something as complex as a computer. It's not going to happen, so you either make it an income stream to be exploited, or find a way to get rid of the load, how that balances out depends on how annoying you find them vs. the value of their income stream to you. OTOH, those who are so inclined will end their "newb" stream of income from them to you - and if you're smart, you'll pay attention and help them as they do so, so that you can get them and you to the next level of income stream, and you'll both be better off. Fortunately, the latter are outnumbered by the former, but the unthinking/unmotivated/untrainable are a significant fraction of the universe of computer users The hardest problem is differentiating between the useless ones, and those who just need a different approach, or maybe just a little more TLC. And, lest you think the problem will evolve away, consider that the tasks performed will only get more complex over time, so that even those who have been raised with computers will divide themselves into the competent and those who are not. Ever thus it has been. Kurt On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 15:45, Crawford, Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > > “Maybe if you're manning the helpdesk.” > > > > That is exactly the reason people say it. > > > > End-user difficulty with technology is a problem to be solved, not an income > stream to be exploited. As IT pros, we should be figuring out how to make > things dead simple. Imagine if we had a light switch support department whose > job consisted of moving around from office to office helping people get their > lights on. If we had users that continually needed help with this, it > wouldn’t be viewed as job security. It would be viewed as an opportunity to > get a new user or educate the existing one, thereby eliminating the support > department. > > From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 3:05 PM > > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: Stupid user tricks > > > > >>stupid user tricks = job security. > > > > > > Why do people say this? Maybe if you're manning the helpdesk. > > My job is secure because people want to get new things done, not > because they routinely forget how to do old things... That leads to > outsourcing (we're spending XXX monthly for password resets?!? Move > that offshore...) ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
