Tech Savviness

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"I was not difficult at all, and I still Google what I need to know, and I'm the guy you call to fix your machine."

This is the misleading statement in the Original Post--it is very rare for someone in sales to be "go to guy in tech support."

Inexperience kinda pays my salaries. I've never worked in a call center, though several of my friends did at an IBM one down the road here. I'm the guy people call to solve problems which they lack the time and/or trivial knowledge to explain to me. Software teams generally bring me in to help with big pushes and to squash bugs, bridge gaps and generally highlight pitfalls in established workflows. I work to learn. Sometimes that means teaching as well.

Hence my statement that this discussion never truly ends; it's always being continued somewhere. Either it centers on the myriad reasons engineers/hobbyists found for ceasing to follow some aspects of computing or rationalizations for some really clunky means to an end. Anyone who's had any contact with technology, however minimal, seems to have their place in this cycle. Sometimes the unlikeliest of people show me surprising acclimation to some highly advanced stuff, simply because of how they learn. My grandmother for instance was far more at home on an Android tablet than her daughter (my mom) simply because she taught kindergarten. At my last contractual job, my 'savvy' was unfortunately beyond that of the business majors that ran the show, which created a rift. If I don't end up elsewhere they'll probably hire me back for their next crunch month(s)...

I consider myself "tech savvy" and stuff changes so fast it's an effort just to try and keep up with it.

Most people just don't use tech enough to get to know it that well. Every time I want to build a new PC I have to do a crash course on what's the current tech standards.

BTDT- I apologize for that. I work the night shift on the sales team, and for some reason, tech support closes at night, so I end up having to deal with people who need tech support, despite it not being part of my job description. And I would also like to apologize again for my spiteful attitude in the original post. It was a bad day, but most days I am fine with helping people who need it. And mystified by people who call in about something my company doesn't sell, like Google Chrome or iPhones :/

Also, part of my problem is due in part to my unique world views. For one thing, I dislike the products I sell, as I know of freeware that does the same thing. I also tend not to give bad comments (unless I'm really angry), as my opinion is my opinion, and therefore any critiques I have that are3 not constructive should stay hidden. Also, until I began to work here, it literally never occurred to me that I could call someone when I need support. I simply looked up how to fix the issue, and therefore became tech savvy. So there is still a little part of me that just can't understand why others can't do the same thing.

I turn to google as a first resort but that has its pitfalls too.

Google for an answer
Pros: avoid the phone tree and the wait time (which can be very long) to speak to a human, don't have to explain your problem which can also be lengthy and involve miscommunication, also frustration of the tech support if you don't immediately understand their answer

Cons:picking through the ads masquerading as answers and the message boards with people who know even less than you can take as long as a phone tree, sometimes the answers involve changing the registry which for a non-tech savvy person can make things even worse, the diversity of answers can make it very hard to know who is right


For my part I now go first to answers embedded in blogs because those seem to 1)not be ads 2)avoid having to scroll through pages of a message board trying to find your answer. But even getting to that point took me a lot of googling. Many people just aren't about to invest in the amount of time it takes to gouge an answer out of google if you don't half know the answer already (and just need the other half). And I once even had to call itunes tech support because even though there are about 10 million pages about itunes, nobody had addressed my problem specifically (no, I don't remember what it was but tech support was very helpful).

Thanks for the info, you guys. In the end, my issues spawn from my utter ignorance of NTs. They just make no sense!

Anyways, I found the REAL issue, and it doesn't have to do with age or lack of information. Its the Dunning-Kruger Effect. For those who don't know, it's the scientific term for someone who lacks information, but thinks they are an expert in whatever they lack. Basically, they're dumb, but think they're smart.

In this case, its people who either call in and start babbling about science-y sounding terms that only serve to confuse those with knowledge on the subject, or those who apparently want information, but think they know better than I do.

Is that wrong of me? I mean, if they call in because they have an issue, and don't like what they have to do to fix it, or what their options are, then it really just sucks to be them, right? I had someone call in about an issue with his account. I told him he could do Option A or Option B, and that was it. He insisted I didn't know what I was talking about, and wanted to talk to my manager. And we get people like that a lot.

Comments?

Some people just don't get computers or other forms of technology. Somehow, that's an area I happen to be gifted in, but even I find myself cursing at my computer sometimes.

Goodness, the other day I broke what was otherwise a decent CPU fan just because it was making this annoying rattling sound, and I tried to take it apart to lubricate it, destroying it in the process. Later, when I was playing around with the fan configuration on my heatsink, as I was temporarily using a fan I stole from an old power supply, I managed to partially strip one of the heatsink's mounting bolts. Right now, I'm using my old heatsink, which is less than half the size, and not nearly as suited to overclocking, but it's what I had to do to continue using my desktop. Shame, because I almost had all the parts set aside to build another machine, which I was planning on giving to a friend.

Anyway, people tend to think I'm a genius with computers, but the truth is, I'm not THAT good with them. I know a few things, like how to wipe a hard drive and install Windows, how to assemble a desktop, how to look up error messages on Google, and how to splice together various types of wires, but it's not like I could design a CPU architecture or do even simple programming. Hell, there are plenty of otherwise common things that still stump me sometimes, especially pertaining to hardware and software that I don't use on a daily basis, and there are plenty of things I don't use for various reasons, the main one being that I haven't been able to afford a lot of "new" hardware. I'm not a computer scientist, I'm just a guy with a little bit of knowledge, some hands-on experience, a penchant for troubleshooting, and way too much free time on his hands.