The sheer volume of people I’ve encountered through numerous jobs that are on high wages but lack basic skills astounds me.
They have other skills you don’t have, that are more important for those high paying jobs.
Like faking genuine interest in the shit their higher-ups blather on about, convincingly laughing at racist and misogynist jokes, backstabbing their peers when a position opens up, and doing the most demeaning tasks with a smile and a “thank you”.
“Soft skills”
I mean, yeah. You ever ask an average software “engineer” to have a constructive conversation with someone a different department? It’s a nightmare.
The people with the worst virtual meeting presences are the VPs and above. They expect us to shovel their shit. Like, buy a fucking mic and a light, pay for more than DSL broadband, and shut the fucking door so I can stop hearing whatever your teenage asshole kid is doing.
EDIT: FWIW managers at most levels aren’t much better, they live by the example set by the superiors they so idolize.
I had a group virtual interview during the pandemic and saw someone take a bong toke, then found out they got hired for the job.
I work in IT. I usually call my job “IT support” but I’m also technically the system admin, and network admin.
Today, I had someone ask me to delete a calendar for them in Outlook. It wasn’t a shared or special calendar, it was literally just a calendar in their normal outlook.
Bear in mind, they didn’t ask how to do it. They asked me to do it.
That’s a skill issue right there. I’m not in the business of doing other people’s work for them. Now and then I’ll entertain the odd request of “how do I do x” and show someone how to get something done, mainly because it’s a lot less effort than telling them that I didn’t go to university for teaching, and all the ensuing arguments thereafter, because there’s always arguments.
But this was straight up “do my job for me”.
Lol, no, I have my own shit to do.
“skill issue” ticket closed
Whoa, I wonder how you worded that. Was it a straight up no? Lol
The short version is that I explained that we have a company policy that we are support, not education.
This is not a support issue because no technical issue is preventing the user from getting this completed.
I think that’s honestly worded really well.
Tell me you send them a link to the product support page
The number of people who think that IT is supposed to know how to use every program and fix everything within those programs is a lot. I’ve had several engineers, programmers, designers, accountants, executives of who knows what consistently ask to fix their work or how to do whatever it is. I always try to point them in the right direction or help but other people in my field hate even that because it sets a precedent that the next time they need help they think they can ask again.
If I knew all of their jobs thoroughly like they seem to think, I wouldn’t be getting paid half what they are. I would need to be paid twice what they are, to support all of those positions in that way.
They get paid more because they know everything there is to know about agricultural law or some shit and you know how to screen share.
Some millionaire in my office: “Hey, Sanctus, what’s my password for my computer again?”
Me, who can barely afford to fix my car: fights the urge to use a letter opener as a weapon
That’s a really long password no wonder they forgot it.
Sick entropy, though.
Horse battery staple moment
Correct
As someone who had to struggle in a meeting because I’d never shared my screen in Teams before and they put it in some weird place, I feel attacked
Microsoft: “Here, have some shitty arcane dysfunctional software.”
Me: “Damn, this is hard to use.”
IT Guy: “Damn, I can’t believe you get paid to work here.”
Also IT Guy: low whisper “Fuck, they moved the button again. This is going to take me a minute.”
Yes, networking skills are more valuable than service desk. It’s amazing how many service desk folks have a chip on their shoulder because they never moved on.
