I’m pretty good at IT work. I’m quick, perceptive, and can hold a lot of that sort of info in my head at once.

There aren’t many people who can troubleshoot complicated systems as quickly as I can. That’s not bragging; that’s just fact.

But I’d be just terrible at jobs that executive and operations assistants do. I don’t have the engineeritis-caused belief that because I am good at one thing I am good at all of them, nor do I think I am any better than people who rely on “soft” skills.

If I had to do any of these things, much less all of them at once, the building would burn to the ground and the company would go out of business: schedule meetings with and for multiple important people; arrange travel; coordinate corporate events; greeting visitors and answering phone calls, and solve problems related to all of them and more.

I’ve known people with those skillsets, who are impressively good at those things, and I have no illusions about it. I simply could not do what they do, even if I wanted to.

I’m glad there are IT jobs for people like me, because if there weren’t I wouldn’t even be living in a van down by the river. I’d be huddled in a drainage culvert, licking grease off a McDonald’s wrapper.