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This 💯 I've spent over a decade of my life in support, phone & on site. The floor for technical knowledge is very low.

Support staff play a huge educational role in helping people understand the technology they are using. Their role is so important that it's almost a social service. I don't know if those who work in that role realize what an important and wholesome job they have, even if it can get insanely frustrating.

The amount of times I was told it’s a PIC issue is legendary and ima okay wit that

There is no greater teacher of patience than a support role.

That’s because most people don’t understand magic.

depending on setting it's mostly dealing with people who have learned helplessness and don't want to try things on their own. mom always cleaned the customer's mess

I work at Walmart. Most people don't realize how non-people people are.

This is a much more fun public conversation than some of the 2025 topics we've endured. What's curious is many people don't even have the intuition to plug things into the hole they fit in. I assume technical literacy has only gotten worse as usb-c has become more standard and bluetooth more streamlined. View quoted note →

it's so easy, i don't understand. i've only been using linux for 10 years and everything works flawlessly for me

I'm not technical, but I can't know how much I'm not technical

Believe me I know, because I am one of them! 😬 Slowly getting better but it took me a bit to get NWC to work 😂

Profoundly true. Every aspiring software engineer should start in tech support.

CAN CONFIRM View quoted note →

You know, most of us just

I consider myself above average in technical abilities but I was humbled hard the other day at work. I had to get a HDMI to DP replacement cable for my monitor and when I plugged it in nothing happened so I assumed it only worked one way and told IT I needed a new one. The IT guy came to my cubicle, switched the input and it lit right up 😂. I was so ashamed, he must’ve thought I was a moron.

I used to work in an airport and it’s hard to grasp just how retarded most people really are.

Or that caller saying my screen is dark and you try to troubleshoot till the point, well there is no light, so I cant see if the power plug is plugged in… back in the days a landline phone did work without power…

Recurring topic of frustration amongst the so called tech people of all levels. And a way to distinguish themselves from so called normies. Having worked in various so called tech support roles over many many years on different levels with different demographics and educational backgrounds I can only observe that people think differently. And that’s normal. And people (re-)act in different ways when stress level rise. And that’s normal. Even though with my experience I’ve caught myself sometimes with the simplest of seemingly easy to solve tech situations not getting anywhere. Also the magic of just being present with the client/normie often just solves the tech issue. It happens to the best of us and my attitude by now is to stay humble because other people are better at other things than me/us. 💥

The anecdotes in this thread are making me feel like a tech genius 😂 (by Nostr standards, I most certainly am not) View quoted note →

I was half the asshole once. I was working a Network Operations Center helpdesk for a while, and one of our field techs called in (after hours on a weekend) saying his laptop is busted. Now, I was no rookie, I'd been building my own computers for a decade, but this was one of our top field technicians, so I dutifully created the ticket. When he typed, it just printed garbage on the screen. He went online, found his motherboard, and found a post discussing the same problem, which turned out to be a KB9 keyboard chipset error. The laptop needed to be replaced immediately for an important job tomorrow. I called the on-call manager and conferenced him in. After 10 seconds of the tech explaining, the manager asked if he checked NumLock. It was fixed. Scariest words I ever heard: "Gentlemen, we will discuss this on Monday morning. *click*"

I think this is why I suck at job interviews. I assumed people who work for Bitcoin companies know more than me, but I'm like a decade ahead of them and get the feeling they often have no idea what I'm talking about.

Does being the tech support for my mom counts?

Have you tried switching them off and then back on again?

I concur. Good design can help with this. No im not talking about rounder corners. It’s about relentless testing and iteration. View quoted note →

I had to learn to use a lot of non-tech terms. Success rate was much better. View quoted note →

I worked internal tech support at a tech company. No amount of technical illiteracy surprises me anymore. Senior engineers turning their monitor off and back on thinking that it was rebooting the computer was fairly common.

Thats me

and not trending up View quoted note →

I can relate. My wife like everyone spends way too much time on her IPhone and cannot do anything outside of scrolling. I’m shocked every time I need to do something so basic for her.

As someone that manages a service desk, in addition to how non technical most people are, don't discount the levels of malicious compliance they'll stoop to in being lazy to boot.

It’s more like people give up before even trying. I regularly do service calls where people refused to even open a box and plug in the router

One of my first jobs was remote help desk. I got really good at assuming they know nothing and walk them through each and every single click Or push hard to remotely connect when they can't follow basic instructions. One time i picked up my personal phone like with a greeting like a work call, It was at that moment i realized i had to move to something else or risk turning into a robot.

But… the people… they are, retarded

Yes and large software corporations tend to have UX departments with focus groups that come in and give feedback. Also, they can take advantage by being highly centralized.

As someone who does legal tech and works with attorneys. Yes 😂 View quoted note →

I rang a sauna yesterday to ask why it was closed. I was actually stood in front of a random closed bar 2 doors down from the sauna house. The guy on the phone kindly said the sauna was not called “oysters and wine”. Sometimes humans are also simply insanely stoopid / overtired. View quoted note →

Hello Mista, please install AnyDesk.

Left click with the mouse...."er but I'm right handed"

💯 true. I find it very disheartening how people think that others think the way they do. There are still majority of people who are scared to touch software icons let alone installing one. Empathy goes a long way. 🫂

Younger people today are as bad as older people were a decade ago. Smart phones, Chromebooks. These kids don't even know what a folder is, they don't know how to navigate files, and google don't work the way it used to, on YouTube nothing but slop that comes up when you're looking for tutorials. It must be stressful for tech support with this new generation. I can imagine them saying things like "but chatgpt told me it wasn't that so I'm not checking that" Or just not understanding how to navigate things and needing to be hand held the entire way

I haven't but I know. Then again neither are the people who answer the tech support calls. Everyone I talk to reads from a script.