deechMar 4

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/116170661640263540

Purely by necessity I started my career working 24/7 tech support for a few years.

It didn't seem that way at the time but it's hard to overstate how formative that experience has become.

Show thread∴ esoterik ∴Mar 4
@deech i wonder if that's a trend. i spent a few years doing help desk work and traveling to people's homes to fix their computers.
Show threaddeech
@d6 Do you consider it formative?
Mar 4 at 3:14pmWeb
Show thread∴ esoterik ∴Mar 4
@deech certainly gave me an appreciation for the diversity of how people used their computers and optimizing for what they wanted them to do (vs what software makers wanted them to do)
Show threadRoss A. BakerMar 4
@d6 @deech Circa 1995, third shift support at the local ISP. Customer can't check her e-mail. We go through a few steps until establishing she didn't have access to a computer. But she had a pretty good idea what she'd have done with one!
Show thread∴ esoterik ∴Mar 4
@ross one house i go to they are having a lot of strange problems and data loss. at one point i joke that maybe someone has been storing powerful magnets next to their computer. the husband says "you mean like this?" and pulls a huge magnet out of his pocket. turns out he works in salvage and uses the magnets at work testing for ferrous metal @deech
Show thread∴ esoterik ∴Mar 4
@ross @deech (i'm not sure if the hard drive problems were actually due to magnets or not, but it certainly surprised me!)
Show threadRob NorrisMar 4
@d6 @ross @deech When I worked at Radio Shack in high school there was a customer who kept losing data and it turned out he had been hanging his 8" floppies on the door with refrigerator magnets.
Show threadRob NorrisMar 4
@d6 @ross @deech My most consistent general observation about tech support is that users often don't have the language to describe their problem or ask coherent questions. They simply don't know what anything is called, which is very disempowering and demoralizing. Tech people kind of chuckle about "computer literacy" as a thing but it's honestly a huge barrier for people.