The number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over after someone asked a question they shouldn’t have and didn’t want the answer to, is too damned high.
Also, sometimes, I’ll go into a ridiculous level of detail just to intellectually beat someone over the head with how much I know so they’ll stop asking questions. They seem to think they’re being clever and trying to “prove” that tech guys don’t know much more than the rest of the “tech literate”.
I’ll tell you, the amount of information in my brain from working IT support for a decade would make most people’s head spin for hours. And that’s not including the countless years of time in college, and doing personal/independent research, simply because a fancy new technology captured my ADHD hyperfocus.
I’ve gone from being a novice with a technology, discussing it with someone who seems to know a lot about the topic, to researching everything about it, and the next time I meet them, they don’t have half of the knowledge of the subject that I do by that point. It happens… A lot.
If you don’t want a lecture, and just want things to work stop asking questions, just tell me what you expect as the outcome and I’ll figure out everything in-between.
When someone asks me a very technical question, I provide a vague and ambiguous response. I learned this habit in grad school. No one unless they are a knowledge domain expert in the field cares about the specifics. Often people ask me about AI. I say that it’s worrying for many reasons but mainly that AI demands so much energy. This is enough for them to pick up and carry the conversation. I could lecture them on many aspects of AI. But you’d have to pay for this torture. 😁
I generally explain to people that the current state of technology for LLMs is that they’re larger and more complicated versions of the text prediction on your phone, you know, when it guesses what word you want to put next, but with whole sentences using the entirety of the public Internet as the base of reference for that information.
And they basically burn through kilowatts of power per inquiry.
Generally they’re users with just enough information to be dangerous.
They know some things, but don’t have a knowledge deep enough to know that there are serious downsides to (insert whatever they care about this week here).
I’m pretty sure I’d be more neckbeard nerd than techbro.
Yup. Most of the time, policies are in place because someone tried what you’re trying and it let them do that thing… And because Windows let that thing happen, something bad happened for everyone.
So now nobody can do that thing.
The prosumer tech bro that’s never touched enterprise equipment or dealt with operational requirements are the worst.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that something works fine at their home but doesn’t work while they’re at work. Sometimes that’s intentional, sometimes that’s because the network in the office is about 80,000x more complex than the Linksys you plugged in at home, set a password on once that you immediately forgot, and has been doing little more than source Nat and L2 bridging every since, with no regard to what the traffic is, just sending it out regardless, and creating a goddamned mess in the process, but because it’s only you and your spouse and maybe a kid or two, that doesn’t really matter.
Suddenly when you’re dealing with hundreds of endpoints on a LAN, you don’t want every broadcast packet being sent out over the dozens of access points you have dotted around, so no, your multicast discovery won’t work Brenda. So you can’t use Chromecast in the office, okay? I don’t care how important you think it is, it would take hours to get this to work properly and I have more pressing concerns at the moment.
I used to work a little bit of IT-support for my city and this made me have flashbacks.
Another stereotype besides the techbro is the graphic designer gal.
Regards we once drove through the city to plug her scanner in… after we prodigiously made her make sure all the wires are connected.
Not exactly the same level of issue but it’s just something I’ll never forget. And nowadays it would be a completely understandable mistake to make, as USB’s can actually power things. But not in 2006, lol.
Why are you describing me so well?
The number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over after someone asked a question they shouldn’t have and didn’t want the answer to, is too damned high.
Also, sometimes, I’ll go into a ridiculous level of detail just to intellectually beat someone over the head with how much I know so they’ll stop asking questions. They seem to think they’re being clever and trying to “prove” that tech guys don’t know much more than the rest of the “tech literate”.
I’ll tell you, the amount of information in my brain from working IT support for a decade would make most people’s head spin for hours. And that’s not including the countless years of time in college, and doing personal/independent research, simply because a fancy new technology captured my ADHD hyperfocus.
I’ve gone from being a novice with a technology, discussing it with someone who seems to know a lot about the topic, to researching everything about it, and the next time I meet them, they don’t have half of the knowledge of the subject that I do by that point. It happens… A lot.
If you don’t want a lecture, and just want things to work stop asking questions, just tell me what you expect as the outcome and I’ll figure out everything in-between.
When someone asks me a very technical question, I provide a vague and ambiguous response. I learned this habit in grad school. No one unless they are a knowledge domain expert in the field cares about the specifics. Often people ask me about AI. I say that it’s worrying for many reasons but mainly that AI demands so much energy. This is enough for them to pick up and carry the conversation. I could lecture them on many aspects of AI. But you’d have to pay for this torture. 😁
I generally explain to people that the current state of technology for LLMs is that they’re larger and more complicated versions of the text prediction on your phone, you know, when it guesses what word you want to put next, but with whole sentences using the entirety of the public Internet as the base of reference for that information.
And they basically burn through kilowatts of power per inquiry.
But this kind of sounds exactly like the rationale these tech bros use to claim they know more than everyone and “these plebs just don’t understand”
Tech Bros drive me up the wall.
Generally they’re users with just enough information to be dangerous.
They know some things, but don’t have a knowledge deep enough to know that there are serious downsides to (insert whatever they care about this week here).
I’m pretty sure I’d be more neckbeard nerd than techbro.
“Hey Windows won’t let me…”
No, it’s actually me who doesn’t let anyone on the network do that. For a reason.
Yup. Most of the time, policies are in place because someone tried what you’re trying and it let them do that thing… And because Windows let that thing happen, something bad happened for everyone.
So now nobody can do that thing.
The prosumer tech bro that’s never touched enterprise equipment or dealt with operational requirements are the worst.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that something works fine at their home but doesn’t work while they’re at work. Sometimes that’s intentional, sometimes that’s because the network in the office is about 80,000x more complex than the Linksys you plugged in at home, set a password on once that you immediately forgot, and has been doing little more than source Nat and L2 bridging every since, with no regard to what the traffic is, just sending it out regardless, and creating a goddamned mess in the process, but because it’s only you and your spouse and maybe a kid or two, that doesn’t really matter.
Suddenly when you’re dealing with hundreds of endpoints on a LAN, you don’t want every broadcast packet being sent out over the dozens of access points you have dotted around, so no, your multicast discovery won’t work Brenda. So you can’t use Chromecast in the office, okay? I don’t care how important you think it is, it would take hours to get this to work properly and I have more pressing concerns at the moment.
I used to work a little bit of IT-support for my city and this made me have flashbacks.
Another stereotype besides the techbro is the graphic designer gal.
Regards we once drove through the city to plug her scanner in… after we prodigiously made her make sure all the wires are connected.
Not exactly the same level of issue but it’s just something I’ll never forget. And nowadays it would be a completely understandable mistake to make, as USB’s can actually power things. But not in 2006, lol.