Realized today that I’ve seen so much in the IT world that I can help junior staff resolve helpdesk tickets with only a few words of their description, without ever having logged into the computer/server of the person having the issue, or really even thinking about it at all.

I’m right 95% of the time. That’s because most problems are the same problems over and over, even if they cloak themselves differently. A lot of expertise is being able to see the shape beneath the cloak.

The junior staff think I am sort of wizard because they work on issues for hours and I’m just like “Delete this obscure .dat file, that’ll fix it right up,” but it’s just that I’ve seen everything and remember most of it.