Yesterday I nearly said, "No, you're right, let's go on pushing the
buttons, hooting like chimps and maybe bashing at the thing with a rock
instead of actually looking at the actual hardware so we can begin to
actually find out what's actually wrong."
Will someone please explain to me the attraction of standing around spinning fanciful
theories about what might possibly be wrong has over laying hands and
meters and tools on the broken whatever and finding out what's wrong?
I have been doing this stuff, at one level or another, since 1973,
and I have never figured out why people can't shut up and put their
bodies, senses and clever minds in productive motion instead of standing
around trying to be cut-rate Hollywood scientists.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
11 comments:
Well, one of the rules of thumb for debugging is, "Do the easy tests first." I suspect they're trying to think of easier tests to do first.
"Will someone please explain to me the attraction of standing around spinning fanciful theories about what might possible be wrong has over laying hands and meters and tools on the broken whatever and finding out what's wrong?"
Because it's easier than actually working?
Maybe that's just terribly cynical of me, but I believe it does have a lot to do with it.
Preach it, sister!
Half the sites I support are covered by 'technicians' with minimal troubleshooting skills. the other half, well, if one of THEM give me a call, I have to start thinking on the way out the door because I know they've done all the easy stuff and the hoofbeats in the street may well be zebras.
One bunch, heaven help me, is a 'Did you push the reset button' fix at the end of a four hour drive. The other is liable to require the laptop, analysis of historical (commonly referred to as 'hysterical') data, and possibly the work of specialty contractors with esoteric test equipment.
But it's all part of the game.
MC
People have different aptitudes. Some people are good with their hands. Some people have the gift of gab. Gab is what gets people promoted.
'Gab is what gets people promoted' never was a truer word said, absolutely spot on
just plain human nature - be lazy - let someone else do the work - don't take action, you won't get blamed if it goes wrong, etc.....
Merle
At least there wasn't a conference call to discuss scheduling a meeting to have another conference call to troubleshoot.
An airy-fairy theoretician is always right, any of their imagined conditions could be the cause of the current problem.
Thing is, the hardware usually has a different opinion on what is wrong, too many times it is 'I didn't do anything, I only did this one thing over here and that can't have broken anything!'
The other one is 'of course I plugged everything back in the way I found it.'
Or they might be on an hourly rate with a basic service call charge to boot. After all wizards dont come cheap and to the clueless what you does look like magic. Cynical perhaps but in some peoples minds there is a balance to be struck between efficiency and profitability.
As someone who works in Geek land, most of the time when I end up bloviating to that extent I'm stuck in a meeting having to explain what might be causing something.
Its a real pain in the ass. Get the work team together for the problem, sit down, and *work the problem* don't make me spend 3-6 hours a week talking about it in meetings.
Please.
Jon:
meetings occur simply to justify the existence of managers. Any meeting that actually accomplishes something useful is accidental, and not intended, and probably embarrassing to the involved management. It is simply office combat between managers, either direct or indirect.
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