You're so annoying

[andrewducker]

Following on from discussion elsewhere about why so many people in the IT industry are pedantic and charmless (in which I claimed it was because (a) pedantic means 'right' and (b) if you're right you don't need to be charming), an amusing Slashdot article

Are You Annoying? asking why people in IT are so pedantic and charmless...

Comments

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

Saying that many IT people are pedantic and charmless is like saying many users are vague and clueless. They're undoubtedly both true.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

That article didn't ask why IT people are so pedantic. ;-)

You have to be pedantic with computers, which expect you to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, and I guess it just carries across - but people aren't as stupid as computers.

[andrewducker]

Naah, people think for themselves. Which makes them much harder to predict than computers.

[red-cloud.livejournal.com]

I'm with the users on this one. In my experience users are very clear about what they want but unsure of the detail. It is part of the IT function to tease out the detail and present choices to the users in terms they can understand. Developers who scoff at this process are probably in the wrong profession (and are 100% responsible for users being wary of, if not actively hostile to, IT departments).

[andrewducker]

I'm with users who aren't proud of their ignorance. I have no problem with people saying "I'm not sure how to do it, but I need X.", but people who say "I don't know much about computers." in a way that indicates that this is a good thing annoy the hell out of me.

[red-cloud.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's also particularly irksome to users when an IT developer consistently fails to grasp a basic business concept. I have been in the position many times where a bond trader has patiently explained the basics of, say, tri-party repo trading for the umpteenth time and I've still come away more confused than when I started. (Or maybe that's just me).

[andrewducker]

But do you stand there proudly displaying your ignorance? Or are you slightly sheepish at your lack of understanding?

[red-cloud.livejournal.com]

Neither attitude would particularly help to get the job done. At the end of the day I have to understand this stuff, so we might try to find a simplification or an abstraction or an analogy or just some other way of transferring the knowledge. We always succeed in the end. (Although a few years ago one poor developer who was supposed to be taking over some of the work from me utterly failed to get a handle on some of the more obscure trading regimes and was "let go" only weeks after joining the bank. I felt terribly guilty, thinking I had failed to impart things correctly, but I found out later that she was being paid as a senior analyst, not as a junior developer, so I felt better).