Why do you guys hate us so much?

[schooltech]

There is no real "hate" going on, but rather it's a two-way street with regards to respect. Although I do repair office equipment, I've been a network admin and help our district IT department with district "issues," so my passion is to stay around IT as much as I can. I will be a network admin again once I get out of the industry that continues to suck me back in due to my experience (and the fact that once one has experience in the office machine field, it's really easy to quickly get a job).

Anyway, what I meant by a two-way street is that 'most' IT people I've dealt with and worked with do not have very great personalities. It was as though they are pissed off at -life- for dealing them a bad deck of cards. Now, I'm making a generality of THOSE I HAVE DEALT WITH AND MET and does not apply to all IT people, as I have met some great IT individuals.

Sometimes, it's as though as soon as they know someone is not in their exact computer field, they try to be condescending and talk-over the other person, throwing out acronyms to try to prove to the other person that they know so much. Why? Why do they have to feel as though they need to PROVE to someone else how smart they feel they are? Just do the work, as the other people probably know something, like accounting, that the IT person doesn't know.

I would think that there could be a more cohesive relationship between all techs, yet it's like the tech/salesman relationship most of the times. Again, this is not an absolute, as I am generalizing here.

When I was an auto mechanic, people would come in and say, "Well, my car is doing xxxx so it HAS to be this problem." This is where it's easy to do the eye-roll, as it was pretty much always something different causing the problem. I believe that many IT people want to eye-roll others if the other person does not know exactly what the IT person is talking about at THAT MOMENT.

Well, this is why we all are specialists in one area or another I guess.

Anyway, what I meant by a two-way street is that 'most' IT people I've dealt with and worked with do not have very great personalities. It was as though they are pissed off at -life- for dealing them a bad deck of cards. Now, I'm making a generality of THOSE I HAVE DEALT WITH AND MET and does not apply to all IT people, as I have met some great IT individuals.

So, not only are "most" of us incompetent and arrogant, but apparently we lack social skills as well.

Nice...

[schooltech]

When did I say that anyone was incompetent? I was being objective, not defensive, yet it sounds as though someone is getting pissed off. It was only most who I have met and dealt with, and it was only Mac people.

My point is that there can be people in ALL industries that will have a chip on their shoulders, and unfortunately attitude is something not taught, but rather a life-long skill that is constantly being challenged on a day-to-day basis. But, the IT industry seems to have a stereotype attached, similar to how the auto industry has a stereotype attached to the sales process, or the stereotype involving ethical issues surrounding some areas of politics.

I guess I've been dealt a bad deck of cards, because I must be the only person who has dealt with someone who tried to one-up me with their knowledge. When I was a dedicated network admin for a company, I had no reason to be that way, as many other people who worked there were very knowledgeable in their specialty.

Again, I'm just being objective. There are IT professionals who are very smart, there are doctors who are very smart, and there are mechanics who are very smart. Any industry can have people who are very smart. I've just found that, in my personal experience, being humble can elicit more respect in the long-run, that's all.

Schooltech,

Despite the fact the I quoted your post, I was only referring to your statement regarding our social awkwardness. The incompetent and arrogant references were from the multitude of other posts from other posters. Relax, I'm not going to get pissed over what some faceless guy on the internet says about my profession. This is more a source of amusement than anything else.

[schooltech]

What!!! FACELESS????? OUCH!!!!!

Actually, it would be to everyone's benefit to keep it that way, and my avatar will reflect that.

No worries, as I just wanted to clarify where I was coming from.

[TonerMunkeh]

I will admit IT technicians get a certain stigma from copier engineers. After all, let's face it - about 80% of the IT people I deal with are complete shagwits who blame the copier / printer / fax rather than their network. That irritates the shit out of me. The best lines they come out with are things like:

How hard can your job be?
Can you not fix it?
What do you mean you have to order parts?

Obviously it's not just IT techs that say things like this, however some do say it with a certain venomous quality.

cboucher - you are in a VERY lucky position, you have experience of both so I envy you slightly, you know what you're talking about. You know to check the standard stuff before the service call goes in and I bet your supplier loves you, no wasted calls for silly network faults, just genuine ones.

Mind you, filling out the chargeable call form usually cheers me up a bit. The look on the customer's IT's face when they are presented with a bill for a couple of hundred notes is well worth the wasted call.

[Shadow1]

Don't you guys pay attention to management? We're all stupid, we suck at our jobs, we're overpaid, underworked, and we could be replaced by chimpanzees if only they made good scapegoats.

[Scott_Lewis]

Don't you guys pay attention to management? We're all stupid, we suck at our jobs, we're overpaid, underworked, and we could be replaced by chimpanzees if only they made good scapegoats.

Now you just had to bring that up.

Our service manager/tech decided he had had enough of being responsible with no authority. So, our store manager announced he would manage service as well. Nothing like having a 'service manager' whose only interest is in sales, couldn't care less about the extra needless work heaped on service caused by the sales people not following procedures like assessing access for machine deliveries, coordinating people actually being there for those deliveries and getting the network surveys done.

Today, we had a 'simple' delivery of a rental. Oh, by the way, they want printing and scanning. "They already have e-mail, so that is what we will do." Come to find out e-mail doesn't and hasn't ever worked. Well, 4 extra man-hours later after learning about the network in dribs and drabs we decided to scan to user box and get outta there. Oh, and to top it off we gotta work around the training that is going on while we are trying to get the damn thing setup/configured.

Nothing like having a 'service manager' whose only interest is in sales, couldn't care less about the extra needless work heaped on service caused by the sales people not following procedures like assessing access for machine deliveries, coordinating people actually being there for those deliveries and getting the network surveys done.

You guys get network surveys? Lucky...

That used to be a running joke among all the techs when I was doing the field tech thing.

Salesman: "Don't you guys just carry network cables and switches with you?"

[msaeger]

I tried IT for a short time and have no plans on going back.

The thing that I don't like about many IT people I have encountered both inside and outside has been the arrogance. I think IT is supposed to be there to serve their users needs but they act like they run the place. Like when they say no you can't put that printer on "my network" only this kind well it's not your network and if it's what your users want you should try to accommodate them. And yeah the calls for it can't be the network and the cable is unplugged or a password changed.

They come up with crazy restrictions passed off as security then don't inform the users that whatever they wanted disabled was IT's decision not mine so I get called when something doesn't work.

I also see places where everything has to go through IT so when a machine breaks they have to call IT first so they can take six hours to call us. Then when I get out an hour after the call comes it looks like it took me seven hours and they users blame me for the machine being down the whole day.

I have found many IT people that are intelligent and helpful in fact my largest account has a very good IT department. There are a lot of bad ones though.