I miss so very much when Firefox used to work right.

We didn’t know those were the days. But they were.

What was the most challenging issue you solved?

Figuring out how to get a critical (couldn’t go live without it¹) call reporting Oracle database to work on Solaris after the vendor’s top-level tech support and half a dozen other people could not get it to function. I did this mere hours before the deadline.

No Google. All brain (and some man pages).

I later phoned the vendor and told them how to fix their own misconfigured garbage.

I miss working in Solaris and using CDE. Don’t want anything to do with Oracle ever again, though.

1. Due to regulatory requirements.

From over 20 years of working in IT, I’ve learned these things:

1) Users don’t read. No matter what it is or how simple they won’t read it. And if they do read it, they won’t understand it.

2) Users won’t learn, or even try to learn. No matter how much it’d benefit them or save time, they simply will not.

3) Any users you force to learn will hate and resent you forever, and might even attempt to get you fired.

And note here that I am not talking about teaching a user to build a server or to design a network. That would be a fool’s errand. No, I mean actions such as trying to attempt to get the user to learn the name of the application they are actually using and have been using for 10+ years, or how to find the Start menu reliably. That’s all. Similar to teaching a new driver to locate the brake pedal.

Working in IT — and specifically on helpdesk — made me into much, much more of a misanthrope.

I will never not be angry about how when I attempt to search my own goddamn computer, Windows gives me web search results first and foremost. Fuck anyone who had anything to do with that. They should all go to jail. And I am actually 100% completely serious about that.

TikTok does not give me what I want because most of what I want are things that the algorithm thinks I don’t want. So if you develop an algo that’s impossible to create and cannot exist, it’ll work great.

Also, TikTok is a full-on propaganda arm of the CCP and is uniquely harmful from this perspective as well. And should be nuked from orbit.

The 5K iMacs cannot be used in target mode so is useless as a screen for anything but the OS installed on it. Unless you’re a god-tier hardware hacker, that is, and can do a lot of soldering and re-engineering.

Oh, that is absolutely 100% true. With overseas folks (especially India) it’s around 30% apparitional. I’ve worked with these “ghosts” in person so I do have direct experience. They do nothing and produce nothing and then move on to the next job or contract in 3-9 months.

Nice gig if you can get it and have no self-respect.

This is also true:

We end up with every problem. Developer code problems, putting together BBQ grills¹, electrical issues, lighting, copiers, doors, staplers, and any complex business task no matter how little it has to do with actual systems — it all winds up in my department eventually. I’ve done a lawyer’s job, an accountant’s job, an engineer’s job, an insurance adjuster’s job, a graphic designer’s job, a developer’s job, a DBA’s job, a lecturer’s job and many many others. And no, I am not talking about making sure their computer works and that they have access to the tools they need. I mean actually doing the work they should be doing ².

The peril of being the only team that can troubleshoot and reliably solve problems is that you end up as the dumping ground for all problems. And then are hounded ceaselessly about them even if they have nothing to do with you or your department.

It is not fun.

1. No, I am not making this up.
2. I absolutely refuse to do this anymore. I’d rather be fired.

These are indeed the main problems with working in IT. It’s so oddball how everyone expects you know everything about anything that runs on electricity of any kind. I will never understand that. I don’t even assume a tax attorney knows anything about contract law. However, the hoi polloi believes that because I know how Linux works, I can troubleshoot an issue involving some obscure code they wrote in 1998 or fix a coffee machine.

It is completely mystifying.

It’s not every day in my field that you get to run a regression analysis on survey data, but some days you do.

Please stop lying to people about Cybersecurity being in high demand and graduates getting jobs.

This high demand is only true for people with a lot of experience. For newbies, there is no demand. The reason is that you have to have seen a lot of things to be any good at cybersecurity, and someone with only a college degree hasn’t seen and doesn’t know shit.

I’m not even a cybersecurity specialist, but I do have 20+ years experience in my field. And with that knowledge I can run rings around the new-grad cybersecurity people without even the least little effort. IMO no one should be allowed to go into cybersecurity without at least 10 and preferably 15 years of experience in IT Operations and/or programming.

Is it normal for admins to never follow up with users?

The service desk/help desk should be handling contact with users, especially in large orgs. This is for a variety of reasons, among them that it’s simply not time- or cost-efficient to have those making high salaries and with more important business priorities spending an hour helping a user find their start menu or use Excel.

In addition, once the users have the contact info of someone like me they start reaching out directly about issues like the above. It’s insane for the business to spend what I make an hour to help Jen from Accounting figure out how to format a PowerPoint slide.

For instance, a project I’m working on now matters a whole lot to our existing and our potential large enterprise customers. If I complete the project (which I will, I fucking rule) it will mean millions of dollars in potential revenue is easier to acquire and to retain.

Now, all that said, how does me spending two hours on the phone helping someone learn to bold items in Word make any kind of sense?