Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
Just saw a recruitment post for a female speaker to join a female panel at a "women in tech" event. And it's by an organisation called "codelikeagirl". 😒
As a female developer, it gives me the upmost cringe to hear about any #women or #girlpower events. Do you really need to validate your ability and support because of your gender? Men don't go to #menInTech events, so why do you need to go #womenInTech events?
On the surface it seems all friendly and gender equality fluff. But if you segregate yourselves into an all exclusive group, isn't that the opposite of what your trying to "achieve"?291 -
*computer fell, broken in pieces*
Me calling [Microsoft] tech support: hey can you check my warranty on this computer, I think I broke it?
Tech support: yes sir but we must first go through the troubleshooting steps,
Me: no, no I just-
Tech support: have you tried pressing F8 sir?
Me: umm… no, look I'm just -
Tech support: sir please press the F8 key sir
Me: okay… I pressed it, now can you just check my-
Tech support: sir please what happened when you pressed F8?
Me: it's broken, now if you could just check my warranty -
Tech support: sir I'm sorry sir I think you did it wrong. Please press F8
Me: no just check my-
Tech support: sir I think you do not understand, sir it is at the top-
Yup.14 -
UPDATE: I have my dream job.
About a year ago I commented on Devrant that I was having some hard luck interviewing for development jobs.
Shortly after my post I decided to lower my expectations and took a job at a tech support call center.(3 month contract)
After getting a little experience(Not just a degree) I was able to land a hardware support job at a fortune 500 company.(Not what a programmer really wants 😂)
I worked hard and started writing tools at home to help with the job. I started giving them out to the other techs and put them on a little internal website for easy access.
About 3 months ago I just became a software engineer within the company.(after 6 months of hardware repair.) The main reason I got the job was because I showed them how much overtime and extra work I had done and that the techs relied on my software to do there jobs and that I was dependable.
It was hard work but it was worth it. And I built software that I never would have done if I hadn't taken this "lower job"
So keep your chin up and your fingers on the keys, I was in your shoes a year ago. 😉12 -
"Turn it off and on again."
Great for Wi-Fi routers and office appliances.
Life support, not so much.9 -
It's depressing how true this is
Me: "Tech support, how can I help you?"
Them: " I'm not able to log into the website!"
Me: "Okay, what message is it showing when you try to log in?"
Them: "Sir, I am NOT a computer person so I don't know."
Me: "Do you know which web browser you're using?"
Them: "I don't know what that is!"
Me: "Okay, when you want to go on the internet, do you click on a blue E, or a mulicolored circle, or..."
Them: "SIR I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT I AM NOT A COMPUTER PERSON, YOU'RE REFUSING TO THELP ME SO I'M GOING TO HANG UP"12 -
So I maintain a open source PHP app that wraps youtube-dl, providing an UI for it basically. Some guy on a forum DMd me saying it's not working for him. I asked him what php version he used and if the file permissions are correct (the script makes and switches directories, so the permissions can't be root but need to be www-data).
He answers with PHP 7.2 (the newest that's rare) and says the file permissions are correct.
After 2 weeks the problem still persists and ofc I am doubting my code here. We finally get online together and I can use anydesk to work on his machine.
I discovered 2 things.
1) File permissions were just completely wrong.
2) PHP WASN'T EVEN INSTALLED
So what did I learn?
Never trust the user and I am glad that I work as a dev, not as a tech support.10 -
Cleaning lady just asked me what OS I use. "Well, Linux" I replied. Oh, she said, I'll ask my husband if he knows about it. He's also good with computers (probably tech support chap or something like that).
I figured that she might not remember the name "Linux", so I thought about writing it down. But it was so hard to resist the thought of instead writing down "btw I use Arch Linux"! 😆
15 -
!rant
A few days ago a friend of mine rang me up complaining about internet issues with his computer. As usual I did the "is it plugged in, turn it off then on again" sort of thing to waste time while my pasta was cooking. After a while he asked if I had another bogus solution, so I suggested flushing his toilet.
He runs off, I hear the flush, comes back and viola - it fucking worked.
The point of this is: if it don't work, flush the toilet. You're welcome, tech support out ✌️11 -
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!
This was something which my tech lead used to tell me when I was so obsessed with nosql databases a few years back. I would try to find problems to solve that has a use case for nosql databases or even try to convince me(I didn’t realise it back then) that I need to use nosql db for this new idea that I have, without really thinking deep enough whether the data in question is better represented using an sql schema or not.
Now, leading a team of young developers, I come across similar suggestions from few of my team members who just discovered this new and shiny tech and want to use it in production projects.
While I am not against new and shiny, it’s not a good practice to jump right in to it without exploring it deep enough or considering all the shortcomings. The most important question to ask is, whether some of the problems you are trying to solve can be solved with the current stack.
Modifying your stack requires more than just a week’s experience of playing around with the getting started guide and stack overflow replies. This is something which need to be carefully considered after taking inputs from the people who would be supporting it, that include operations, sysadmins and teams that are gonna interface with your stack indirectly.
I am not talking about delaying adoption by waiting for long list of approvals to get some thing that would bring immediate value, but a carefully orchestrated plan for why and how to migrate to a new stack.
Just because one of the tech giants made a move to a new stack and wrote about it in their engineering blog doesn’t mean that you need to make a switch in the same direction. Take a moment to analyse the possible reasons that motivated them to do it, ask yourself if your organisation is struggling with the exact same problems, observe how others facing the same issue are addressing it, and then make an informed decision.
Collect enough data to support your proposal.
Ask yourself again if you are the one holding the hammer.
If the answer is no, forge ahead!
9 -
Me: "My PC is sad what should i do? "
Tech-Support: "what do you mean your PC is sad"
i wonder whose(developer) idea was it to put just smiley instead of meaningfull error...
8 -
Storytime!
This customer comes in and practically throws a computer on the counter.
Customer: This computer isn't working. I've ran the diagnostics and it says it's software. *places a dvd case with a 32 bit Windows 7 disk in it on the counter* It had Windows 10 on it, but I want Windows 7 on it.
Me: Well, you may have issues with the drivers if you put Windows 7 on it--
Customer: I don't care, I just want Windows 7.
Me: You SHOULD care. That means no wifi, no display, no mouse... Windows 7 doesn't like Windows 10 hardware.
Customer: Then... check to see Windows 7 compatibility!
Me: Alright.... *makes notes to check for Windows 7 compatibility*
Me: So has this Windows 7 been used before?
Customer: Yes, it has.
Me: On how many computers?
Customer: I've installed it on two computers and it works just fine.
Me: That's weird because Windows license keys are for one computer only. Are both of them connected to the internet?
Customer: Yes.
Me: Well, okay then... *finishes up ticket*
Customer: I work in this field and I just don't understand why they don't come with the disks anymore. How much is a Windows 10 disk?
Me: *gives price*
Customer: And do you have any?
Me: Let me check *I go to where they are, find some and come back out*
Me: Unfortunately we're out at the moment and would have to special order some back in.
Customer: OK. So then how much to fix this computer?
Me: *price of installing Windows and backing up data*
Customer: That's halfway to the price of a new one of these!
Me: Well yes, an HP at Walmart... But you do have that option if you want to take it.
Customer: Well, why does it cost that much?
Me: Well, it's $labor1 to install Windows, $labor2 to do some basic setup and drivers, and $labor3 to backup and restore data.
Customer: Oh, well I don't want data.
Me: Okay, well then it would be $total - $labor3
Customer: ...Okay, fine
Me: *updates the ticket*
When she finally left I put it on the bench and the first message said "SMART ERROR." I then did 4 different tests that said "lol, the hard drive is failing."
If you "worked in this field," you would know that a SMART error is hard drive related.
If you worked in this field, you would know that Windows is only a 1PC license, so why are you lying about installing it with no issues on other computers?
If you worked in this field, you would know you would want a 64bit Windows on your computer.
If you worked in this field, you would know how to find a Windows 10 installation media online.
If you worked in this field, you would know that HPs are not good computers to get.
IF YOU FUCKING WORKED IN THIS FIELD YOU WOULDN'T BE SUCH A FUCKING CUNT.17 -
I’m the tech support of my family and I’m proud! 😎
I only hate it if other people treat me like their personal tech support9 -
My ISP advertises themselves as IT-nerds. I once contacted the support, not tech support, just the usual support. I wanted to use my own router instead of theirs, and the supporter actually knew how I should configure my vlan and a lot of other technical stuff.
Why aren’t all ISP’s like mine?8 -
I do tech support for our platform for real estate agents. Today I got a call from a user saying she can't find her files.
Me: "are you logged into the platform?"
Her: "Yes, but I hate this whole technology thing. Why is it so complicated and unintuitive"
Me: "which part exactly, we welcome feedback"
Her: "when I download my pictures from your site, I don't see them on the desktop..."
Me: "...ummm... have you checked your 'downloads' folder?"
After 5 minutes of explaining how to get to it...
Her: "you see, this is exactly what I mean, why does it have to be so unintuitive... your web site is poorly designed"
😑🔫
Should I just delete her "FREE" account?11 -
I used to work in a role that was basically tech support for engineers. Folks would call, we'd look at their code and see where things were going wrong.
One customer calls in, they're having timing problems with a satellite control system.
I dig down through their code, and buried in one of the modules is a comment to the effect of:
"Once we upgrade to Windows 98, we'll need to change this call to the precision counter"
They never did.
This system was running XP.
Somehow, they'd avoided destroying satellites despite having the code run on Win98, and ME without fixing that call. It wasn't until they upgraded to a multi core system and XP that their gyros stopped responding correctly.
Holy shit.9 -
Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.
If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.
First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)
So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.
What the fuck, Dell.
As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?
Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.
Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.
VS Code is pretty good, though.20 -
Family reunion weekend. I'm just wondering for how long this will stay a 'family reunion weekend' before it turns into a 'first person tech support weekend'5
-
Damn I hate when people ask me to stop coding just because Excel doesn't work or the Antivirus license expired, even worse my boss gets mad at me when I tell him that I'm a coder that we have tech support people, who apparently do nothing, to all the PMs and Lead Devs
Please stop telling me about the freaking deadline if you also ask me to install your stuff.
Sorry for the negativity, had to get it out12 -
Friend brings over a Windows 8 all in one laptop.
Friend: Can you fix my laptop
Me: I'm a programmer
Friend: I thought you worked with computers.
Me: I do... but I'm not tech support
Friend: Please?
Me: (reluctantly) Fine.
*many hours later after attempting to get the PC to boot from a USB. WHY DOES THIS PC NOT HAVE A KEY TO ENTER THE GOD DAMNED BOOT MENU AND HAS NO BOOT ORDER SELECTION?????!*
Friend: Have you fixed it?
Me: No
Friend: You suck at computers
Me: ....
Never spoke to him again.8 -
// family tech support
Dad: *Opens Microsoft Word*
Dad: *Writes stuff*
Dad: *Saves the file as "Doc1.docx" (every time)*
Dad: Son, where did I save my file? I can't find it.2 -
Don't apply for a job that you don't like. You're gonna hate your life.
Don't ask for a salary you know you're not worth.
Work in a tech company as much as possible. If you don't, you're gonna be treated as a powerpoint presentation expert, office installation expert, video editor/movie maker expert, IT support guy, loose plug/broken headset repairman, facebook hacker, and a dark magician all at once. Most (not all) tech companies know who you are better. They understand your needs better.7 -
So people need to learn how to use a car in a safe manner and without pissing off other users before they get a license and are allowed to actually use one in the real world.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish this also applied to computers.2 -
Sometimes I feel I'm the live version of stack overflow for my family and friends...
Mom: The printer is acting up, how do I fix it?
Brother: I can't login to Netflix, help!
Grandparents: could you fix the radio/TV?
Gf: Apple can't validate my .uk mail
All to which I replied with the answer to life, the universe and everything...
FUCKING GOOGLE IT! Have you googled it?!
And the inevitable reply: no.
The only ones who get a free pass are my grandparents they were born in the 40's and think YouTube works on voodoo.7 -
Freaking tech support.
Freaking sparkhire.
Their 'one-way interview' bs only supports flash. Flash. in production. in 2019. Flash died years ago, and its support ends next year. What the crap?
Anyway, I finally decided I should do the interview since they already have all of my information anyway. Thanks, "privacy-conscious" third party. Totally appreciate it.
I spent half an hour and couldn't get flash working on their site (but all other sites were fine), so I contacted their support. I gave them all the relevant specs (inc. ofc browser), the steps to reproduce, and all of my attempts at fixing the issue.
To their credit, I recieved a response within a few minutes. To their discredit: their response was: "What browser are you using?" This question was followed by my report (including, ofc, my browser and all the other overlooked details), immediately followed by a "debugging info" section appended by their support service that also included my browser, os, and other specs.
Learn to fucking read.
Their suggestion? Use google chrome. Barring that: record your 20-30 minute video by holding your phone in front of your face the entire time. I am so not kidding.
They also asked what page i was having difficulty on. You guessed it: the page url was also included within that "debugging info" section.
It wasn't a form letter, either. I'd understand if it was all automated, but it was a real person who was really typing up the emails, and really didn't bother reading a damned thing.
I did end up getting flash working, but their "tech support" (script-reader) was entirely useless.16 -
The link between one of the server units and our router has been disconnected and the sales dept. has gone completely offline,
Just because of this piece of crap:
6 -
Around 27 hours at new customer location.
They had a server failure due to incompetence.
They had fired their own IT guy and called us 6 months later because the server stopped responding.
First diagnostic. 2 drives are dead in a raid 5 with one hot spare. Raid controller then proved to be broken once the disks was replaced.
Waiting for new raid controller and installing.
Backup non existing, no one changed dat tape during the 6 months without IT. The tape was just a transparent plastic band, no media left.
Raid config is stored in static ram on controller, no backup!
Several hours in tech support to find out how to rebuild raid config from existing disks.
Proves to be impossible to rebuild raid set due to some checksum failures.
More hours with support to enable some diagnostic read only mode to mirror low level content to external drive.
Then many more hours to copy parts of the tree until it gets an error, restart after that and go on.
In the end we got around 70% back.
During this time I manage to be in contact with the raid manufacturers all support centers, one in europe, one in the us and one in Taiwan, switching each time one if them closed for the night.
The customer later declined a steady support contract due to us being to expensive ;)
Some just don’t want to learn.6 -
I once worked Tech Support for a point of sale software package. There was really no internal help desk, so we got all of those questions as well.
One day our front receptionist that her computer is being really weird and she can't type - it keeps inserting 3s in the middle of what she is typing.
I take the short walk down the hall to her desk and see that, indeed, a never ending string of 3s is being input to her screen.
"I can't figure out what's wrong." she says.
Then I reach over and remove the edge of an open binder whose edge was resting on the 3 key and enter key on the num pad.
"That should fix it."
Walked back to my desk.1 -
Tech support: we need to install backup software on your laptops.
Devs: what for?
TS: to backup all your important files, like word docs, excels, etc.
Devs: we don't use those. everything is on git/confluence/etc
TS: my boss told me to install it everywhere, so I have to do it.
Devs: well just disable it. uses too much tam, disk time and such
TS: whatever.
So he installed it on each laptop separately, took half a day, then we just disabled it and proceeded with our tasks. Now we get a question every other week why nothing is being synced from our computers. "We paid for the system and we want you to use it".
yeah..7 -
Most of things I'm about to say are experienced by almost 99% of developers in Africa including my country so I'm going to make it a more general rant.
As an African developer, life is both exciting and frustrating at the same time. Some of the challenges that make life difficult for developers in Africa include:
1). Slow Internet Speed: The internet in Africa can be extremely slow and unreliable, making it frustrating to work on projects that require large file downloads. This is a serious challenge for freelance developers who work from home.
2). Unstable Electricity: Frequent power outages due to inadequate infrastructure, insufficient investment in energy production and distribution, and political instability makes it difficult for developers in Africa to work consistently. Most times I get frustrated because you can experience black out at anytime of the day which could last for hours to days automatically rendering you useless if you have no power backup generator at home.
3). Low Pay: While the opportunities for software developers in Africa are quite high, the salary is often disappointing. Many talented programmers end up seeking better opportunities overseas. In fact I quit my full-time job because of this reason.
4). Lack of Support for Tech Start-ups: There are few venture capital firms in Africa willing to invest in new ideas, which makes it difficult for tech start-ups to get off the ground. It's just sad, you can have an idea and just die with it.
So in summary, it's not a walk in the park to be a developer in Africa, but despite all of that I am glad to be a part of the African journey, having the opportunity to had work at a tech agency firm on various projects ranging from healthcare to finance, I find it rewarding to know that my work has contributed to a better future for my continent. 🤞6 -
Tech support for Friend...
Again...
Ok...
A friend ran down the hallway to my Appartement, I opened the door for him and asked him "What The Fuck... Is wrong with you?!" He was just coughing like...
My... Laptop.... Is... Slow...
When he then eventually came to the point where he could Breath normally again I asked him to login into his by then super with shitty software bloated PC... It was a mess... A Desktop full of Shit... only Shit... I
then opened Chrome and Task Manager...
and holy shit... EVERYTHING! Literally ANYTHING was under 100% Load... Yet his shitty Fans werent spinning up... Shutdown the Laptop and opened it... not to my surprise it was full of Dust... I cleaned it and booted it again... still 100% Load... I couldnt do shit without being bombarded with porn and Hentai Ads... So... I asked him "Did you make any backups to this machine?" He was like.. "*Really long explenation* No *Really long Explenation*"
Great... i thought to myself... Then I said to him his PC was so trash that i only could Reset it to 0... He was like DO ANYTHING YOU CAN LITERALLY ANYTHING!
I then explained him, Resetting this PC Means literally 0 A Fresh start, nothing of your data will be there literally nothing...
He again Was like DO IT!
So I did... When it was done i showed him the result... He FREAKED OUT LIKE THE WORLD WAS GOING TO FUCKING END, HE SCREAMED AT ME WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE? REVERSE IT! REVERSE IT NOW!
I Then said to him, I reset it to 0, I said this would happen...
He then took his now perfectly running Laptop and Ran away...
tl;dr
Tech support for friend, Reset PC to 0, Freaked out AF...3 -
99% of our server-side code is Python and PHP (legacy applications).
Asked a junior dev to make a small update to a PHP site so we could have it run some cleanup server side. Plenty of existing PHP code to look at and piece something together. Should be 50 lines max.
Did he use the existing PHP code to do this task? Nope. Did he at least use Python? Nope.
Node.js
His response?
"I couldn't figure it out and Node.js seemed to have good support for mongo so I used that instead."
We have 0 lines of server side javascript. Never had node installed. Literally none of the devs use node here. Not only is this completely outside of our tech stack, but he had to take the time to learn Node and JS just because he thought it was easier.
Much would of rather he put in twice as much time to learn the tools of our stack.8 -
This is not an interview test just an awkward experience in general regarding interview.
This happened two years ago when I was a fresh university graduate looking for a job in UK as an immigrant (Im EU national).
Went to an interview for a web dev+tech support position. Two fat guys with tshirts met me and started interviewing me for a sysadmin position. Started asking me about disaster recovery and stuff.
Turns out recruiter messed up not only companies but positions as well. Also these two guys didnt bother to check anything.
I pulled out the job ad for which I applied originally, interviewers had a look at it and still proceeded questioning me while knowing that I prepared for completely different position interview.
Needless to say, it went terrible and I didnt get the job. I dont know if its just me or Im unlucky, but I had a lot of encounters in UK with so many incompetent recruiters.3 -
Me: *reading work order* Customer states Mac does not have sound
*Me turns on Mac, it makes the signature "BONNNNG" sound*
Me: Uh huh...
Coworker: Rule No. 1 of tech support: The users always lie
Me: True, but still! How do you miss the start up Mac sound?!3 -
the fuck kind of manager are you that you tell your leads not to fucking answer their damn phones when services need restoring????? If your fucking team member can do his damn job like a grown ass adult, but sees that you (his lead) made a change and has questions, your ass better answer the phone, or i will rocket launch it up your ass, straight into your brain so it's the newest, latest, fucking hippest trend and hooked into your system so you answer every fucking call hands-free. Even when fucking "Windows Tech Support" calls you every 30 minutes because your keep expired.
There are people counting on you, worthless fuckwipe. Get. The. Fuck. Over. Yourself. And do your fucking job.
Edit: phone tried to censor me5 -
So, as a programmer, I'm basically the go-to tech support guy for my family (and now my gf's family).
So, my gf's mum updated windows and her computer stopped playing around through headphones, asks me for help.
I've got no fucking idea, I don't even use windows.
She's like "if your computer did this what would you do".
"I'd google the problem and randomly try solutions until it started working again. And hope I didnt break anything else."
She didn't seem happy with my debugging technique...11 -
Became an uncle to two beautiful girls the other week. But the plan to make them the future tech support of the family is already in play! Hopefully they will exceed me in about 10 years, I'm a front-end dev so it shouldn't be that hard...
-
Dad called me over for "tech support". He'd bought a wireless mouse and keyboard and couldn't for the life of him get it working. The issue with my dad is that he never lets you touch the computer when he needs help. 20 minutes and 20 questions later, I finally ask if he plugged in the USB receiver. Answer? "It's wireless, it should just... work!"2
-
Saw this on Facebook and couldn't help but share here! 😂
A young woman submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship to her husband) presumably did it as a joke…
The query:
Dear Tech Support,
’Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as: Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1.
Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?
Signed,
Desperate
The response (that came weeks later out of the blue):
Dear Desperate,
“First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: I thought you loved me.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.
However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.
Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)
In addition, please, do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0.Good Luck!’
Good Luck!3 -
So, now that companies are used to "WFH", maybe we can agree upon a better office for tech companies?
I do actually think the more "ideal" tech company office wouldn't have to be expensive.
It can be smaller. Any tech company worth it's salt should have discovered in the last few months that it's not just devs who can work from home. Sales, support, management — you really don't need to fight your way through highway traffic or cram yourself into a sweaty subway every day.
There's value in having an office. Not everyone can fit a good workspace in their apartment.
But we could at least center it around:
1. A bunch of small, completely soundproof isolation booths, for those who need a focus space, and can't find a silent spot at home.
2. A social lounge space, a communal living room with couches, a bar, creative relaxing stuff, whiteboards, etc. WFH can become depressing even for the most antisocial employees, chilling on a couch with some coworkers to brainstorm ideas or chat about random tech is valuable for building good relationships with your team.
The "open plan office" with rows of desks and monitors, no matter how luxuriously decorated with vertical gardens and hipster desks from reclaimed wood, can go die a fiery painful death.
I either want to work, or socialize.
Open plan offices (and it's even more dystopian suicide-inducing cousin, the cubicle) are like being unable to choose between fucking and a blowjob, so you end up humping a navel.
Oh, and conference rooms, go fuck yourself as well. I want to be able to minimize your ugly face if you plan to talk about company financial reports for 2 hours.2 -
Weirdest coworker was at a tech support job I had when I just graduated from college. I was training this guy and he could listen in on my calls and my wife called and he heard the conversation (nothing there) and later he suggested I should encourage her to work in the phone sex industry cause she had a sexy voice. One time I saw pornography on his screen and with the supervisor's permission we did a search on his work desktop and found a lot of it - some that was really sick!2
-
My boss keeps trying new tech with important new projects instead of trying the fucking new things with anything other than important shit.
I support this let's try better options approach but cmon, be rational about it.2 -
Disclaimer: Long tale of a tech support job. Also the wk29 story is at the bottom.
One time I was working tech support for a website and email hosting firm that was in town. I was hired and worked as the only tech support person there, so all calls came in through me. This also meant that if I was on a call, and another one came through, they would go straight to voice mail. But I couldn't hang up calls either, so, sometimes someone would take up tons of time and I'd have to help them. I was also the "SEO" and "Social Media Marketing" person, as well; managed peoples' social media campaigns. I have tons of stories from this place but a few in particular stick out to me. No particular order to these, I'm just reminiscing as I write this.
I once had to help a man who couldn't find the start button on his computer. When I eventually guided him to allowing me to remote into his computer via Team Viewer, I found he was using Windows XP. I'm not kidding.
I once had to sit on the phone with a man selling Plexus Easy Weight Loss (snake oil, pyramid scheme, but he was a client) and have him yell at me about not getting him more business, simply because we'd built his website. No, I'D not built his website, but his website was fine and it wasn't our job to get him more business. Oh yeah, this is the same guy who said that he didn't want the social media marketing package because he "had people to hide from." Christ.
We had another client who was a conspiracy theorist and wanted the social media marketing package for his blog, all about United States conspiracies. Real nut case. But the best client I've ever had because sometimes he'd come into the office and take up my time talking at me about how Fukushima was the next 911 and that soon it'll spill into the US water supply and everybody was going to die. Hell, better than being on the phone! Doing his social media was great because he wanted me to post clearly fake news stories to his twitter and facebook for him, and I got to look at and manage all the comments calling him out on his bullshit. It was kinda fun. After all, it wasn't _me_ that believed all this. It felt like I was trolling.
[wk29] I was the social media and support techie, not a salesperson. But sometimes I was put in charge _alone_ in front of clients for status meetings about their social media. This one time we had a client who was a custom fashion-type person. I don't really remember. But I was told directly to make them a _new_ facebook page and post to it every day with their hot new deals and stuff. MONTHS pass since I do that and they come in for a face-to-face meeting. Boss is out doing... boss things and that means I have to sit in with her, and for some fucking reason she brought her boyfriend AND HER DAD. Who were both clearly very very angry with me, the company, and probably life. They didn't ever say anything at first, they didn't greet me, they were both just there like British royal guards. It was weird as fuck. I start showing them the page, the progress on their likes goals, etc etc. Marketing shit. They say, "huh, we didn't see any of these posts at home." Turns out they already had a Facebook page, I was working on a completely seperate one, and then the boyfriend finally chimes in with the biggest fucking scowl, "what are you going to do about this?" He was sort of justified, considering this was a payed and semi-expensive service we offered, but holy shit the amount of fire in all three of them. Anyway, it came down to me figuring out how to merge facebook pages, but they eventually left as clients. Is this my fuck up? Is it my company's? Is it theirs? I don't know but that was probably the most awkward meeting ever. Don't know if it comes across through text but the anxiety was pretty real. Fuck.
tl;dr Tech support jobs are a really fun and exciting entry level position I recommend everybody apply for if they're starting out in the tech world! You'll meet tons of cool people and every day is like a new adventure.2 -
Me: Hello! Welcome to {Company} tech support. How can I help?
Caller: I'll just run through the situation. I got locked out of my apartment and my friend is still inside. I tried calling him but his phone is either off, Do Not Disturb, or something. Anyway, I've tried remotely SSHing our desktop computer from my laptop and using the say command to get the computer to tell him to unlock the door. Unfortunately the volume is too low. I tried Googling how to increase it via command line. But I found nothing. Is there a way to do that?
M: I suppose the doorbell doesn't work?
C: *click*2 -
I study software engineering, so that obviously means I'm also free family tech support right?
Apparently some lady that lives nearby believes this, but she replaced family with vague acquaintance.
This lady is very computer illiterate, so much that I have to describe the wifi icon as a dot with two waves above it.
So one day, she calls me because her Outlook isn't receiving mail. I ask her if she has any internet and she confirms she does because she can visit Google. After trying a bunch of possible solutions in Outlook, I ask her to download a remote access program so I can look at what's wrong.
She didn't have internet. Visiting Google means seeing the Chrome logo apparently.4 -
When your parents expect you to be tech support and then fucking can't fix it, they get all like "You suck at programming". What does that have to do with fucking anything?!?!?!5
-
Even if you unplug the router when Verizon tech support says they are going to run a test on it, they will say everything looks good and is running perfectly anyways.
Also, a tip. They will also try to sell you their newest router. Say you have that one already in every room and the speed is even lower than it was before, and then demand a refund because they sold you defective product. 9 times out of 10 they will unthrottle you instantly.1 -
To people who have done tech support:
Shoot me. Do you know what it is like to teach kids to use a mouse? Or even type in a keyboard? They don’t even know how to double click. Gotta call google chrome the circle of colors for them to understand. Some think the video that is giving the instructions is actually them doing it. So when it ends they are like alright done.
FYI: working in an internship currently where we teach kindergarten up until 5th graders from scratch to Minecraft modding. Btw it is an unpaid internship.10 -
Spent the last days trying to reach paypal tech support, hung on the phone across the globe, with people at paypal CS, who weren't even familiar with their own terminology, read tons of VERY 'straightforward' documentation and it kept me up two nights straight.
ALL because I REFUSED to believe that it is like I understood it between the lines that I read.
Today I got my answer. You can create Billing Plans (rules on which you'll base your subscriptions, i.e. amount, intervals, duration..) ONLY over the rest api, and only when a customer purchases a first subscription, you're able to EDIT the plan on Paypal dashboard!
What fuckery is that!? You have a edit form, but you can not provide a create form?! TY paypal for making me build a whole billing plan manager for usually a one time transaction per website.
I AM SENDING YOU MY PHONE BILL.1 -
On my last project the customer gave really high reviews and asked me back as a senior engineer. First day back I meet the new PM and ask what I'll be working on.
He responds, "We have a printer that's not working..."
Of course I'm like wtf but then it quickly becomes apparent I'm writing the interface instructions between the software and printer....
Still, I'm back as over priced tech support to fix a printer! -
I watched this video today about the new Xbox adaptive controllers. I had heard about it before, but never knew how capable or functional it actually was.
And watching that video made me realise exactly how much the tech we build , and support helps many people live the lives they wanted.
All the rants about languages , editors , frameworks aside , things like this were built with an idea and an inclusive intension to help. And that's exactly what we all are here for :)
do check the video out it made my day and I'm sure it will make yours too ..
https://youtu.be/MHOYQQTvQu4
Ok now let's get our pitchforks back and go hunt some vim users down.
Bye
1 -
I asked the VMware crew at work when we were going to virtualize our network. This was about 5 years ago. I got basically laughed at for suggesting it. I asked when we were going to adopt Azure AD to ensure us being ready for moving to teams etc. Got insults back with how bad the cloud is.
Guess what two projects are getting finalized now? Glad I left that company. Going to enjoy some nice mellow weed, enjoy my 30 day x-mas vacay and jump fresh at a new position. New upstart with a security maker for the maritime sector. A company that embraces new tech by making it them selfs. New day with aiding in the development of an IoT based solution with cloud support.
Happy holidays peeps.
2 -
A guy came to me with a laptop that wouldn't boot. After some poking around, I opened the machine just to find everything submerged in coffee. No sh*t your computer doesn't work..3
-
Almost all my family think I'm free tech support.
My dad knows what I do and he's proud because I finished uni (he didn't), he sometimes asks for help (he repairs electronic stuff) and I try as hard as possible to be useful (it's fun!). He knows that (most of the time) I'm working when I'm in my laptop, so he doesn't bother me, he kindly asks if he needs help with something.
My brother's studying the same I did, he's doing fine. I think better than me when I started.
My sister knows that I can repair her phone/laptop but she asks me to do it whenever I have free time and how she can avoid to "damage" it again.
My friends think I'm awesome, but I'm in constant stress (thanks imposter syndrome!).
My dog, he just barks and smiles whenever I'm around and he thinks I'm awesome, so I have that going on for me, which is nice.
🐶3 -
Pro Tip: If you're working Tier 1 tech support, before you start reading your script to the caller, be sure to let the caller complete at least one sentence to tell you what steps he's performed and what the error message is vs. what you're thinking it is. That'll save you from a lot of grief with your boss who will ask you why the customer was screaming at you on the call recording to SHUT UP FOR A SECOND SO I CAN FINISH TELLING YOU WHAT THE PROBLEM IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!8
-
I once had to deal with GoDaddy customer support telling me their servers only support putty for SSH.
Well, fuck you! I use Linux and I SSH with a single command in terminal, no doubt putty is great but get your senses straight that putty is not the only way to SSH when you are being customer support for a tech company, don't just fucking recite a phrase list. Besides, they should understand Windows with putty is not the only way to SSH into servers, juicessh via Android, openssh via Linux, etc...
*btw, before you all rant about me buying from GoDaddy, I was lead dev for a startup few years back and they had already bought it from GoDaddy. Ofcourse they also provide free offers along with an order, which often includes email addresses, annoying support, gut-wrenching quality of service access...1 -
Whenever tech support answers "yes, i can help you with that sir",
what they really mean is "no, but i will google it for you" -
Someone wanted me to make a full system from zero with good UI/UX, for 2 different user types (think marketplace style), admin area, and cool features that could only be done through phones because the tech is not available in web. All of this with good security due to the delicate information it would handle. Also of course subscription support as well.
By myself, within a year.6 -
Honestly, this is me anytime I have to give legitimate tech support that is more than the wifi being down.
It sucks but I'm learning and Google,/DDG helps the process hahaha
-
I feel guilty for using YouTube Vanced and being unable to support content creators.
Shouldn't there be a feature that allows you to toggle ads on certain channels you want to support?
I really want to support such folks who are creating valuable educational content but Google being the biggest piece of corporate shit, makes me angry when it comes to compensating the creators fairly when they make Billions off their hard work.
The world is a better place because of such teachers who spend time, energy, and efforts to create valuable and useful content for rest of the world.
Funnily, back in days when we had awesome stuff, the tech was shit to document all of it. Now when we have advanced and easily accessible tech, we have shitty TikToks.
Why can't the creators of good content get more visibility and why is the world so fucked?13 -
!rant, but kinda
My new director wants to buy a solution for a portal environment that my institution currently has. I have no qualms over it. My only issue was the company that sells it to be known to provide close to 0 fucking support when shit arises.
During a presentation we were told that they were using state of the art JAVA technology to render items on the page and that their ApI was easy for devs to grasp. This caught my attention since I know of very few and obscure Java frameworks that work with frontend tech (as in, your frontend logic is legit in Java)
The sales people proceed to show us React. Obviously thinking that no one knows what REact was. The dude continues with "This is new Java tech" all proud and shit prompting me to interject that it is "Javascript" the dude brushes it away saying "same thing" to which I reply with "Negative, please make sure that you properly discern Java from Javascript since Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet, completely different environments" the dude sarcastically says that "oh well, didn't know one of the people here was more aware of our own technology than we are" to which I say "and not only that, but the final say in us adopting your tech is mine, so I would rather you keep the sarcasm and the attitude to yourself, bring in a tech person if need be and learn these distinctions since we don't work with Java"
My new director later on went to talk to me since he apparently thought that Java and JS were related in some way. I can't really fault it, last time the dude touched programming was in the early 2000s, previous boss was a C and COBOL developer, but the previous dude would ALWAYS take my word no questions ask, this dude was there asking me if I was sure that Javascript and Java were really completely different environments asking me to show him.
I do not like to be questioned. I shoot the shit here and don't really involve myself with more technical aspects under this platform unless it involves concrete architecture discussions and even there I really don't care with engaging on a forum concerning that. But concerning my job I really.......really do not like to be questioned by people that know way the fuck less than me. I started coding when I was 17, I am 30 now, with a degree and years of experience. I really hate to be questioned by this dude.2 -
What is this 'cutting edge dev tech' y'all talking about? Does it count if I somehow manage to add support for MS Edge?? 🤔
Hell.. I'm stuck with COM+ & activex, so if anyone who gets to use fancy pants new techs would be so kind to ping me and let me know how it even feels to code like it's 21st century, that'd be great..2 -
While I'm not a dev, I do love computers and I do know my way around them, so friends/family often ask me for tech support.
Friend: Please fix my computer!
Me: what's wrong with it?
Friend: *sends me pic of blue screen of death*
Me: ...
Me: I don't think you understand -
So, by a cruel twist of fate I ended up on the front line of tech support for the app we've built. It's aimed at non-IT professionals, in general people who are not expected to know too much about computers but who should have at least two neurons to bash together in their pretty little heads.
No.
It really makes me drop my faith in humanity considerably. Clicking a confirmation link is too much. Filtering an excel sheet is too hard, despite it being their technically main work tool. Tickets are basically "shit's broken go fix". What is broken? How to reproduce it? Why do you expect the person on the other side of the screen to be a fucking diviner? I recently ran all out of dove guts to search for the answers of your questions.4 -
So, today in the office we all decided chipotle for lunch. We create the team order and sent it out to the entire office.
First thing we noticed: online ordering looks really good and has finally been updated.
Second thing we noticed: it never got tested and it doesn't work
Result: 7 angry developers who just wanted some burrito bowls start emailing chipotle tech support3 -
Why would some companies advertise a job post as Software Engineer, and only to find out deep in the process after doing multiple interviews, that it’s actually a support job??
Seriously why the fuck do that? That’s disingenuous and misleading as fuck?
And why would a dev be dropping a dev job and experience to do tech support ? Is it even worth it?
Even if it is, can you easily switch back to an actual dev job afterwards?
Wow the things some of these companies do 😶🙄😑🤦🏾♂️3 -
Father's friend ask if I'm gonna open printing and scanning press when I'm done with IT degree.
I said yes to avoid been his tech support1 -
!dev but tech related...
Got a device configured in a location that is fairly far away from me. It operates only through a cloud service specifically for these devices, with one of the most unreliable web interfaces and smartphone apps I have ever used.
I email my issues to the tech support who don't seem to understand the problems and can't fathom the difference between "reset settings" and "restart device".
Eventually they need to log in to my account to find out whats wrong. I explicitly state that under no circumstances should any settings be changed.
Today I find that the device has been removed from the cloud account. I physically must be near it to register it on the account again. Tech support don't seem to know what happened and the best explanation is that it is "a glitch". They have no way to add it back themselves. I have to travel to the device.
Funny how this happened after I let them access the account... -
Storytime!
(I just posted this in a shorter form as a comment but wanted to write it as a post too)
TL;DR, smarts are important, but so is how you work.
My first 'real' job was a lucky break in the .com era working tech support. This was pretty high end / professional / well respected and really well paid work.
I've never been a super fast learner, I was HORRIBLE in school. I was not a good student until I was ~40 (and then I loved it, but no longer have the time :( )
At work I really felt like so many folks around me did a better job / knew more than me. And straight up I know that was true. I was competent, but I was not the best by far.
However .... when things got ugly, I got assigned to the big cases. Particularly when I transferred to a group that dealt with some fancy smancy networking equipment.
The reason I was assigned? Engineering (another department) asked I be assigned. Even when it would take me a while to pickup the case and catch up on what was going on, they wanted the super smart tech support guys off the case, and me on it.
At first this was a bit perplexing as this engineering team were some ultra smart guys, custom chip designers, great education, and guys you could almost see were running a mental simulation of the chip as you described what you observed on the network...
What was also amusing was how ego-less these guys seemed to be (I don't pretend to know if they really were). I knew for a fact that recruiting teams tried to recruit some of these guys for years from other companies before they'd jump ship from one company to the next ... and yet when I met them in person it was like some random meeting on the street (there's a whole other story there that I wish I understood more about Indian Americans (many of them) and American engineers treat status / behave).
I eventually figured out that the reason I was assigned / requested was simple:
1. Support management couldn't refuse, in fact several valley managers very much didn't like me / did not want to give me those cases .... but nobody could refuse the almighty ASIC engineers. No joke, ASIC engineers requests were all but handed down on stone tablets and smote any idols you might have.
2. The engineers trusted me. It was that simple.
They liked to read my notes before going into a meeting / high pressure conference call. I could tell from talking to them on the phone (I was remote) if their mental model was seizing up, or if they just wanted more data, and we could have quick and effective conversations before meetings ;)
I always qualified my answers. If I didn't know I said so (this was HUGE) and I would go find out. In fact my notes often included a list of unknowns (I knew they'd ask), and a list of questions I had sent to / pending for the customer.
The super smart tech support guys, they had egos, didn't want to say they didn't know, and they'd send eng down the rabbit hole. Truth be told most of what the smarter than me tech support guy's knew was memorization. I don't want to sound like I'm knocking that because for the most part memorization would quickly solve a good chunk of tech support calls for sure... no question those guys solved problems. I wish I was able to memorize like those guys.
But memorization did NOT help anyone solve off the wall bugs, sort of emergent behavior, recognize patterns (network traffic and bugs all have patterns / smells). Memorization also wouldn't lead you to the right path to finding ANYTHING new / new methods to find things that you don't anticipate.
In fact relying on memorization like some support folks did meant that they often assumed that if bit 1 was on... they couldn't imagine what would happen if that didn't work, even if they saw a problem where ... bro obviously bit 1 is on but that thing ain't happening, that means A, B, C.
Being careful, asking questions, making lists of what you know / don't know, iterating LOGICALLY (for the love of god change one thing at a time). That's how you solved big problems I found.
Sometimes your skills aren't super smarts, super flashy code, sometimes, knowing every method off the top of your head, sometimes you can excel just being more careful, thinking different.4 -
!rant
Coworker: I yelled at Sony for the PS3 having 7 USB ports... I said that devices only need 2 USB ports. But now, I have this laptop here that has two USB ports and I'm yelling at it! So who's the hypocrite?
Me: You?
Coworker: Sony. Though to be fair, this laptop was made back before we really needed a lot of USB ports. Keyboards and mice were PS/2.
Me: What about printers?
Coworker: They have printer cables....
Me: WHICH ARE USB!
Coworker: ....Oh yeah...2 -
Going back home for the holidays means becoming tech support for pretty much the whole family, unluckly.
As soon as I enter my grandparent's home, my grandpa says "Could you print some emails?". I open his laptop, and I start sweating as soon as I see the Windows XP logo popping up. He (obviously) doesn't remember his password, and the only way to access his (mostly defunct) web mail service is Outlook 2003. For some reason, the web mail provider's POP3 server dies, and i spend half an hour trying to explain it. I ended up leaving with him saying "Why are you even going to a computer engineering university."
Ah, family.1 -
I think I've reached some kind of job nirvana. My coworkers and I all complain about our work. We're overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and and have to deal with all sorts of bullshit all the time. Pretty much everyone who has been on the team longer than a year is talking about quitting.
But I started at this company as a level 1 tech support phone technician before I transferred into the DevOps side of things, and that tech support job was SO much worse. Way more stressful, way less pay, mandatory overtime, horrible scheduling, being forced to remain calm while people hurl insults at you over the phone, and it was a dead-end job with a high turnover rate and almost no opportunities for advancement of any kind.
And every time I think back on that job, I realize that what I have now is actually pretty great. I'm paid well (still underpaid for the job I do, but catching up really fast due to my current boss giving me several big raises to keep me from quitting lol). I deal only with other tech people like developers and data scientists so no more listening to salesmen insult me on the phone. I'm not in any sort of customer service role so I can call people on their bullshit as long as I'm professional about it. I'm salaried so they can't make me work horrible shifts. 99% of my days are a normal 9-5 workday. I actually have a reliable schedule to plan around.
People treat me like the adult that I am.
I'd get a similar experience at other, better-paying companies, for sure, but what I have now is still pretty great.
I'm sure I'll be back in a few days to rant about more nonsensical bullshit and stress, but for now I'm feeling the zen. -
New years resolution: no more tech support period. No one appreciates it and if anything breaks in the future youre expected to fix it. Lol, no thanks2
-
Just reminiscing about the time I needed to recover my ldap password and the procedure consisted of an asthmatic tech support dude showing it to me in a giant spreadsheet.
-
Older tech support story, but still a frusterating one.
Sister was running Windows 8.1 (ew) when Microsoft was ramming Windows 10 down everyone's throat.
Her laptop decided to update to Windows 10, and after waiting awhile, she decided to unplug the laptop's battery and power chord.
This did what you expected, corrupted her install, leading to a bootloop. I then got to deal with that to try and recover it.
Once I got into the recovery mode, it wanted her password to restore from a system image, guess what she forgot?
She tried her PIN, and gave up after a few attempts, and I got to reinstall Windows for her.
Lesson learned from this? If you're the IT person of the house, make sure that you have an account on all machines that you may administrate. That way you don't need to deal with this shit.1 -
This morning I got a reply to my tech support email:
The problem was that the dynamic pages on my website are no longer being served as dynamic pages and so IIS is throwing errors on every page load. Seems to me like they've done something their end because I didn't touch it when it happened...
The tech support email essentially told me to rename all my files from .cshtml (ie. a dynamic page) to .html.
I'm not expert, but I doubt this is going to solve the problem...4 -
Continuing my rant from Yesterday....
As I was strolling though Walmart yesterday...
Tech Support 1: $Customer is having issues with their tablet they bought from us.
Tech Support 2: tell them to shut it off and shut it back on
Me: ❓4 -
Devs with young kids: how the hell do you do it?
I am a foster parent for my cousin who is 4 months old and I don’t know how in the fuck to make this work. How do you do it? How do you balance code and kid?
For reference I work full time at a tech support place, I go to school full time, and I’m trying to pivot into software development, which means any free time is spent coding/studying code/building a portfolio. Problem is I don’t have free time because of the baby. How in the hell do people do this.3 -
I was recently asked to do tech support for an event being designed by webdesign and business students
All they asked me to do was generate a qr-code to their site. -_- took 10 seconds on a website. I even matched their color theme
Yet their rsvp system is to email an event account and they count the number of emails. Why wasn't I asked if I could set up a better system rather than a simple qr. I just learned about this and it's too close to the event to setup a better system and pitch it to them -
public static void BackStory () {
Before i started working as a developer, I was working in tech support at a larger school environment.
In the department there was 8 employees, all youngsters like myself, so pranks was a daily thing(who needs to actually get some work done, right?).
}
One day we found a wireless mouse and decided to plug the dongle into my co-workers pc, and keep the mouse.
A couple of times a day, i would just wiggle it, click it or start scrolling.
The following weeks this guy was going absolutely insane,mumbling and ranting, thinking his computer had been infected with a virus or was about to break down. -
Today started off like a normal day and then i got a call from my aunt and she asked if i could set up her new iPhone 8 plus. and once i got there i did and it was no biggie. and then she pulls out four more boxes and has me set all of them up for family members.
WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK IM TECH SUPPORT. it’s just so fucking annoying.3 -
WTF IS THIS? Been popping up all day.... I tried googling but official support says to uninstall Office and Visual Studios....
WTF MSFT!!!! Quite frankly it feels even tech support at tech companies aren't very competent.... just staffed by a bunch of call center monkeys?
5 -
More tales from University Tech Support:
Haven't been able to get ahold of this staff member for weeks to do required maintenance. Emails, VMs, surprise office visits, she's never anywhere to be found.
Finally my boss emails her with the subject line "Free Money", and gives her some sass in the email about calling IT back.
Yeah, she responded in minutes...2 -
I used to work in a Tech Support department where everybody was constantly pranking each other.
In one of the iterations of such events one of the guys actually forked the source of a login page, in one instance of the app that was running in a VM, and edited the code so it would redirect the user to a lemon party'ish website.
It was quite an upgrade to the old M.O. where people would just email themselves messages with seemingly bureaucratic call to actions containing hyperlinks to the same lemon party'ish websites.
And the most direct approach, which is to type those directly into one's browser if the laptop is left unattended & unlocked due to a trip to the toilet.8 -
i often do tech support in chat rooms in my free time (because i like spreading good will,) so here's a tech horror story
"""
"hey, can you help me fix something?"
sure?
"so i dug my old XP machine out of my closet and replaced the bad Ethernet card with a different one and when i plug in the ethernet cable the PC bluescreens."
# oboi
did you install the drivers? Sounds like it needs drivers
"no"
then install them
"no"
why not?
"it doesn't need any"
why do you say that?
"it said \"This device is set up and ready to use.\" in the balloon in the corner"
it has generic drivers to deal with devices before the real drivers can be found
"shouldn't they work?"
some devices need the extra support provided by the intended drivers, so the generic ones cause issues in those cases
"ok, well, where do I find them?"
do you have a model number?
"yes, it's " # scrubbed for... privacy? i dunno
gimme a few minutes
<insert 45 minutes of aggressive Googling for (str(DEVICE_MODEL_NUMBER) + " xp drivers")>
alright i have the drivers, go here:
# again, removed for... idk.
"they don't work"
# oh here we go
why not?
"These drivers are not compatible with your system architecture."
what version of XP are you using?
"XP Pro"
x86 or x64?
"x64"
# fucking...
ok so this is gonna get real complicated real fast: use x86 XP or I can't help you, none exist for x64 XP.
"oh ok"
<User left the IRC channel.>
"""4 -
Story Time: About Priorities and Sales
So at this point I'm working tech support for a company that makes some super cool networking equipment, think big data / data centers and such.
This company had grown at a good pace but the the support team had not (thus is the way for all tech support evetually). So I get a call from a frantic sales guy:
Sales: "OMG, where are with this ticket?!?!? It's a P2 ticket!!!"
Me: "Well the ticket came in 30 minutes ago, I emailed them some questions, but just so you know I have 8 P2 tickets, and 4 P1 tickets.... so it will be a while."
Sales: "OMG! Make my customer's ticket a P1!!"
Me: "Sure."
-call ends-
-30 minutes passes-
-sales calls again-
Sales: "OMG, where are with this ticket?!?!? It's a P1 ticket!!!"
Me: "Well I haven't gotten to them yet... just so you know I have 7 P2 tickets, and 5 P1 tickets.... "
Sales "ARGH!"
ʅ（´◔౪◔）ʃ1 -
So I gave my younger brother my OnePlus One since he is now using an even older Google Nexus and don't care much for phones. The camera is slightly better basically.
Asked him to test drive it:
Me: so did you set it up yet?
B: nope, what's the rush?
Me: well you see it's running a custom OS (Lineage) as it technically doesn't support it. You need to test drive it and make sure it works with your SIM? May need to change some configs
B: sounds like a pain, should I just get a new phone?
Me: ... yes probably...
He's a just graduated CS major that doesn't like tinkering with tech...
(Well can I have it back then so I can play around with it?)9 -
Got pulled away from the beauty of code yet again today to moonlight as tech support. Two people in my office got "bitlockered" in the same day... Imagine turning on your computer and finding out it needs a bitlocker recovery key when you never enabled bitlocker. Thanks Windows 10 + Dell.11
-
I give software support to Rugged handhelds in a company and everyday some IT support moron comes to me with a crazy request. The day just started and...
IT Tech: "Hello, C, can you improve the touchscreen sensibility? It's not so responsive and sometimes we have to click more than one time to something work"
**breath in**
Me: "That's ok, the rugged ones that you have are very old, besides they have resistive screen, so your fingers won't do a good job"
IT Tech: "THERE'S NO WAY TO FIX IT? I guess I'll open a ticket for you to study more calmly about the issue"
**NGGGGGGGGGHHHH**
Me: "If it's not a software thing, I can't do that, I don't have hardware skills, I guess you'll have to call our provider about that, but, before you do something, try to recalibrate your handhelds, the majority of the users don't do that at the system's start and the touch experience really can become a mess"
IT Tech: "Hmmm, I'll try that, otherwise I'll back to you, thanks!"
OMFGGGGG
I am open to suggestions of a magic batch file/ .NET CF 2.0 software that will turn their handhelds into a Galaxy S6 touch experience. THANKS!1 -
My boss don't give me any information about the project in 2 months ... Then the application need to run in 1 week ... Im the only developers in this faculty .. suprise ! I said to him the project cannot be delivered in such small time ...
Boss : but you having so mutch time to do it !
me: but you tell me to fix some PC screen and printer and is not my job to do that im a programmer.
Boss: but you have certification in programmation and tech support
Me: yes but you hire me to code your project not to fix your forest !
Boss: if you don't want to work just say it
Me: never mind ...
Results: i change faculty in the university -
How 2018 brings an aww bug.
At my company, we've a reporting application. Which kind of provides analysis of client's weekly business. When you open the application it shows their business trend starting from Sunday to day of week.
As usual their is an endpoint to get the data basis on start date. As soon as date changed to 1st Jan, it stopped showing data. Given that it was a long weekend, no one was available from the tech. Support team got tremendous amount of tickets for this. Later on Tuesday while debugging we got to know while forming the date in the application the logic was like this
- get current year
- get the date and month on start of week
Combine these 2 and request the data. All the time it was fetching data starting from 31 Dec 2018.
😒😒😒2 -
I've always wanted to do something in IT Support, but I didn't know where to start. I've been helping my co-workers optimize their system and even helped retrieve photos from a tablet that had a broken screen; her service plan said along the lines of "if they weren't there they were lost," I was able to retrieve them in a matter of hours (Really guys! I'm shocked! It was just a broken touchscreen, the storage was just fine. I think I'll remember this moment).
And because my growing impopularity, I started a new business called The Webnician. The company is split into two sections, the Technician, and the Web Developer. Hence, The Web(Tech)nician. I am proud of my name choice.
Then I wanted to become a certified technician, so I did some research on how to become one and found out I need to take the CompTIA A+ 220-901 and 220-902 exam and... I couldn't be more excited!
I've always loved computers, and maybe my late father had some say into it. Nevertheless, I am excited to begin my journey, even though it took awhile to find where I needed to go. I hope you all can follow me on my journey and support my new business.
I don't have anything else to say, so I'll just leave here.1 -
Used to work tech support at a school.
The sheer amount of people that would come from buildings away to ask for help with the mouse or keyboard not working was weird. The annoying part, most have probably guessed, was that it was always just unplugged. Teacher's did this too. -
I work for a particular tech company doing chat based support where I troubleshoot a certain email application.
And one of the most common phrases I get is: "Hey Mister IT Guy, I am suddenly missing all of my contacts and Calendars. This super sucks! I had to rebuild my email profile to make my email work again!".
I really wish when they teach computer literacy in school they drilled "Learn How To Back Up Your Junk" more so when stuff like this happens I can get them back up and running in 10 minutes instead of telling the user they are going to have spend hours rebuilding their calendar and contacts.1 -
I've been using Void Linux on servers for years. I decided to finally contribute some packages, and wrote a tool to make it easier to build packages outside of the standard repository. This post covers some useful tools in Void, my voidup package building tool, and many of the issues I encountered which make me wonder if I should keep support Void Linux.
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/...1 -
"So, my company made a Mother's Day video, with photos from mothers around the company, with their children and stuff. A while ago they sent an email asking for replies with photos from those who wanted to participate, blah blah.
Then the video came out, and some people were missing. They complained.
HR then complained to IT Support that 'some emails didn't arrive'.
Support then replied to the ticket with screenshots of the person's own email inbox, with all the so-called missing emails.
HR then called back, apologizing for having screwed up with their own email inbox."
And this is another story of injustice with the poor IT department.
Or another story about people who can't properly manage their inboxes.
Or both. Your choice.
I just received it from a friend (I guess I should bring him into DevRant).1 -
Do not buy Hostinger... They are so aggressive with caching that I ran out of devices to test the features. They probably cache based on userAgent because changing other parameters (IP, local cache) doesn't resolve the issue. I talked to tech support whole day, and although they were helpful few times I just got three same answers for the three different questions. Seriously, the only thing I like about Hostinger is their user friendly UI.
The rant goes on. I can basically DoS my website by clicking fast on it. That shit doesn't happen with some free hosting plans... My site goes down for a few minutes before I can visit it again.
THE RANT GOES ON
Using the file manager is tedious work as you get randomly disconnected after less than few minutes of inactivity.
I might seriously switch to Google's Cloud Console. It is more expensive, you have to do all the hosting config yourself using a virtual machine, but I guess it's more reliable and it gives you a lot more control.5 -
Recently, our COO left the company and we got a new one. He is, for some reason, a freelancer which I find very odd as a C-level employee.
Anyway, fast forward 3 months and we the scrum master (or project manager), 60% of our dev team, one tech guy responsible for installations and our intern IT support department all got fired.
Now they gave me the decision for a raise, extra training (that they pay) but I have to find/figure out or an e-bike. Does anyone have some advice?5 -
I like the idea of it but for tech support this won’t work. Ugh I just wish they could make a GUID for every NVR model.
-
GoDaddy. Is. The. Worst.
I'm working on an SSL cert domain verification for a client. The chat support tech at GoDaddy has no freaking clue what she's doing. She keeps telling me to follow the same help article I already knew about the first second I heard I needed to do this job. It didn't work. But she keeps going back to it, sure that I'm just a complete and utter moron who doesn't read. Never mind that I have screenshots to prove everything she's telling me is 100% wrong according to every error message this process is generating.
Now she's checking with the "SSL team". Which is code for "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing and I'm frantically searching the FAQ database to figure out what this SSL thing even is."
That's what the last hour of my life has been. And 20 minutes of that was waiting in the chat queue.5 -
Since everyone rants about interviews, I think that's the perfect time to ask this.
In a week, I'm going to have my first interview.
Its for an apprenticeship as "Fachinformatiker für Systemintegration".
For the non-german speakers, pretty much sysadmin,server-engineer, sometimes internal tech-support.
The company isn't a tech-company, but a logistics-company.
The interview will be done by the boss of the company's location and the lead of the IT-department.
So, what should I expect, what questions and such ?3 -
They know it has something to do with creating and modifying software. That is enough for them and so I am seldom bothered with requests for detailed information.
Also, most often, me working on hobby projects, or just viewing tutorial videos at home is looked upon as "Wasting time playing games".
Then there is also the perception of me being the family's in-house tech support guy. -
TL;DR
I just got a mail from our universities tech support for a ticket I openend a fucking year ago... They didn't respond for a whole year and are now working on it?
One year ago I had problems connecting to eduroam on my Linux machine. No matter what settings I tried I never got it to work.
So I decided to open a ticket at my universities tech support. Fairly fast they answered me and tried to find what the problem was. Somehow only half my username made it to their server which means their is no way I can log in.
The conversation went on for a few mails but we never managed to solve the problem...
Now after one year they send me a mail stating that I can call them if I still have this problem.
Wtf? Who answeres to a ticket from one year ago? Why is the ticket still open? Did they work on it or just randomly decide to reply to old mails? Why didn't they write anything in the meantime?2 -
From time to time our internet slows down to 10kbit and latency goes over 1000ms or just cuts out completely and everyone starts screaming at me to fix it, what am I?! The fucking ISP's tech. support?!!! When it goes down it goes down, I can't do anything about it, I keep reminding everyone to keep a copy of their stuff on the NAS so they have access to it when this happens, no one ever listens to me! The only person that uses the NAS is me...
-
My first gig was with an MSP doing tech support and eventually some proper infrastructure design and mangement.
Regularly myself and colleagues would find reasons why we should be doing things 'this way' and how we're doing wrong by our customers by not following best practices. (Things like firmware upgrades on routers, switches, servers)
We regularly got shutdown, just told 'no, it's not to be touched if it isn't breaking'. This obviously got us pretty worked up and kinda devided us.
The thing is, It wasn't until my next gig that I sorta realised they were kinda right to shut us down. There was clearly a risk to reward equation we weren't thinking about as employees with no financial stake in the company.
In an enterprise setting, sure doing those kinds of upgrades is necessary, and normally you have a team full of experts and tools to help you do those tasks whilst also mitigating as much risk as possible.
So at the time it felt like a bad experience, but looking back now I realise that from a business perspective it wasn't practical for us to constantly risk breaking things just because 'i read somewhere that we should do this'.
I think to be successful as a developer, IT tech, systems engineer, it's really important to get to know the other departments of the business and how the work you do affects them.1 -
Tech celebs
If you're unfamiliar with this term, tech celebs are certain people in tech who are actively followed by many people (especially on Twitter).
What are your opinions on tech celebs?
I think that only a few of them are worthy of fame because of their work(actual contributions) in the field of tech. Most of them seem to be famous because of (one or combination of such reasons):
1. Regular generic tech posts on Twitter including garbage questions (to draw engagement) like "what advice would you give to your younger self?"
2. Creating controversy and getting involved in a controversy (especially when it involves womenInTech).
3. Playing victim by posting screenshots of weirdos in their dms or people who blocked them because this engages a lot of hate from people as a sign of support.
4. Work at a FAANG.10 -
Spent three days banging my head against my desk trying to get an AWS Lambda function to work, only to finally discover that my code was perfectly functional and it was a security group problem. It was supposed to send a POST request to a load balancer's URL but couldn't resolve the hostname because the security group blocked a necessary outbound port for DNS requests.
That's what I get for not troubleshooting at the infrastructure level when experiencing connection issues. I did not spend two years doing tech support just to forget basic troubleshooting steps now that I'm in the DevOps field...1 -
Asus. I had an asus laptop and everything was fine for a year, but after a year it stopped working on battery and their tech-support representative was really rude to me + they refused to fix it.4
-
This poster is shite quality but I've transcribed the gold found on it:
The Technical Support Specialist:
- SEND US AN URGENT EMAIL IN UPPERCASE. We'll flag it as a rush job. Really.
- Loves it when a user calls screaming "the internet is broken".
- Gonna snap the next time a user asks why they don't have permission to install a George Michael screensaver.
- Last vacation: catching the first rays of sun from the back booth in Tim Hortons. Sweeeeeet!
- Most dreaded words: "I don't know what happened, I only opened the attachment".
- Has memorized over 100 access codes, but can't remember what day it is.
- Is amazed a user can have five chatrooms and three celebrity sites opened at once - but reading an I.T. support e-mail sent with high importance - now that's a complicated request.
- When you call with a tech support problem and say you'll be back in 5 - I'll say "Great!" And try not to snicker.
- System crashed last Thursday. Haven't seen my wife and kids since.
2 -
Sometimes I think I am a weird nerd, one day I was writing something inside Ubuntu VM for practicing some DSP tech with Python environment on my office computer, someone DM me asking for tech support so I have to pause and go to figure it out. I wanna make some version control or backup stuffs to my little tiny cute .py files, so that I can pick it up when I was at home. And I just plugged my udisk in Ubuntu, copied those files to it, and switched USB port control permission to Windows, and finally git to commit. Actually the next time when I continued to write it at home, I hesitated for a while, should I pull it from git or just take out that udisk from my backpack? #IThinkShareFoldersAreUglyAndDirty
#ButWhyDidICommitUnderWindows? -
A Website where the user alterts us about a defect on his printer.
There are predefined categories (things like error messages in the printer display, issues with the prints, issues with paper jams, issues with noise and so on) maybe around 10 to 20 categories.
They decide which fields are shown when the user selects it.
Should I do a Dropdown? List field? Radio buttons?
Tech: PHP, Slim Framework, fontsawesome, resulting in a mail sent to our ticket system to pre-fill form items to avoid 1st level support...1 -
I don't get it.
The job listing is for a developer. I applied as a developer.
Why do they ask me whether I'd be willing to do tech support? What's their motive?6 -
Came across a book by Clinton L. Jeffery that details in programming language design, a topic that has always fascinated me. So I went ahead and bought the book knowing full well it uses an obscure language called Unicon (cool fucking name) devised in order to mimic the Icon programming language (obscure as well) which are languages that detail goal oriented programming. While I do not mind the language itself, seems pretty good for my taste, does not use curly braces or semicolons and a lot of other scripty things, gets compiled to bytecode and works well, but shit man, trying to find documentation for this outside of its own (I don't like it) book is a pain in the ass. To give some perspetive: you know you are dealing with some obscure shit when there ain't any youtube videos on the language. It has some interesting notions, but I just fucking hate the "documentation standard" book that it has for it, and yes, this is because the language has not taken any actual traction from the masses, there are some things that it does not have such as full utf8 support among other things, it really is a nice tech but I hate the lack of proper documentation/tutorials on it.
rant off2 -
I gave computer tech support to a tech support person.
I don't know how I feel about this...
Like, Yo dawg, I heard you like tech support, so I gave tech support to tech support. -
If there is tech support that is just plain awesome, it these:
1) Namecheap
2) Newegg
3) Nyko
The ones that are meh include:
1) Linksys
2) AOL
3) Microsoft7 -
What tools do you have access to at work?
I don't work a tech company, far from it. I love it but both the hardware and software at my disposal are so shitty I'm starting to lose it.
Running Windows locally, I'm not allowed any Linux distro because "security." Indeed, I don't even have admin rights on my machine. It was rejected. The excuse being that I am sudoer on a server, which (and can only be) physically located in our headquarters.
Today I found out this server's CPU from the dark ages does not support tensorflow, so here I will be building that shit from source tomorrow (no GPU of course).
And thanks for 4G of RAM on what you refer to as a "power" machine.3 -
There is no story of tech support for my mom. Because I don’t live with my parents anymore, and my father is Head of IT where he works. So he does all the IT support at home 😂
-
Part of my remote work is to have a daily call reporting in on what I have done yesterday and what I am about to today. My colleague calls me for it. She's hired as a tech support and is suddenly assigned to take note and report on my work activities to our boss. Several times, I caught her pretending to know what I'm talking about like with Puppet configurations, Firewall diagnosis packets, ActiveMQ, Regex, etc. Most of the time, I just let it go as its not my job to validate her knowledge on these different but many services. Just do the call, get the report in, carry on. How difficult was that?
Yesterday, our call was left sour because I somehow blew up. I think I've reached my patience with this woman's assumptions to how these services work. Now I feel guilty for yelling at a lady but goddamn she stoopid for fibbing through my ear. Somebody help! What do I do?
If I report to our boss about her technical incompetence (politely), she might get sacked. She's a good tech support as long as she still has her trusty manuals by her, she can fix specific problems. But when it comes to unknown tech to her, she assumed she knew.
If I tell her about her weaknesses, however constructive I can get and as politely as I can get, all the while complimenting something about her, showing her how to improve herself, maybe she'll do better not to ask silly questions like buying a Puppet certificate? At least getting rid of ignorance would definitely help but not sure how she would take it. The worst thing I would imagine is her backfiring and yelling at me and then we ended up fighting.
If I kept quiet and tuck it all into a can, it will eventually implode as we go on.
This is not about her gender. I don't see her as a woman. I see her as a tech support engineer who should know her stuff.1 -
WOW! WENDY! YOU ARE THE BEST TECH SUPPORT EVER!
So on my assignment i see a glitch in the course where i cannot get access to the last button.
i contact tech support
me: Hello *explains the situation*
maddie: *please wait i will check on that*
maddie: *are you logged in?*
me: OF COURSE I AM LOGGED IN THEN HOW WOULD I BE TALKING TO U???
maddie: will it be okay if i impersonate as you?
me: w h a t
me: *session timed out* JUST WOW!
next support: > Wendy
me: explains the whole situation and sends screenshot
Wendy: ah i see. wait on that a second
me: *waits ONE HOUR*
Wendy: Please clear your cache and cookies.
what does cache and cookies have to do with a html course bug that blocks access to the last button...
well i guess you can say im stuck in the mud
i can't get out and im stranded i miss maddie the tech support because i got timed out and she was about to spill the real tea but dummy wendy popped up and is talking about cache and cookies LOL
5 -
Dear Devranters,
I am once again asking for your knowledge support.
I've been working as a legacy dev for a couple of years now and that is... pretty much it. I am kinda of a mid guy. So I tried to apply here and there and ... I got a number of offers from junior to senior roles in ranges from +/- 50% of my salary.
I am kind of a pesimist. It does look tempting to go for the top senior position with the coolest tech and most salary... but there should be a catch.. right? I am not a great dev and some of the companies have noted that I should be more of a junior dev. I havent worked with most of the tech stacks.
Question: Have you had similar experiences and which job would u pick?
9 -
I hate BT.
Today, it started redirecting me to a page saying, basically, to activate their DNS server on the router for "BT Protect" and "Parental Controls" to work, despite the fact that my parents never turned it on. Their support lines appear to be staffed with Indians taught to answer very basic questions, and forwarded me to "tech experts" from BT, a service that apparently costs £8 a month, because "the issue is out of their scope".
How is this even legal?1 -
Where I work I'm close to the receptionist's desk so it means a phone ringing in my head all day.
I usually stay back later just so that I can work when it's quiet. You, other employee, have no soul if you caused a printer jam a full two hours after official quitting time and are now trawling IT for a support tech. -
Am I allowed to ask tech questions? Because I can't get my fucking Acer to dual boot a Linux distribution. Tried mint and lxle. Both require I go into legacy mode to boot them from USB, so I can't install them that way... Any ideas?7
-
partially tech
Is it just me or every single time* I call to some support after first 30 minutes I really want to ask question "can I talk with someone competent?". And no disrespect to these guys, many people call in with simple stuff, but damn, I try to solve stuff on my own and call in only when I need someone who actually can get somewhat technical and have some knowledge about the product/service/smh. Infuriating.
* one hosting provider proven to be exception. -
Not really sure it can be called "dev" technology but I think it fits rather well.
My problem is my 4K screen. You see, I bought this PC around 1 year ago (a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 of those times) and it had the possibility to have a 4K screen and I said myself "Why not? Everything will look so much better!"
Silly me.
Many apps do not work so well with such high DPI and their UI and icons are less then 0.5cm large. It definitely was not worth it.
So my worst dev tech is any app that does not support high DPI or has no ability to change icon size (TexStudio does and I just love it!). Next PC a good old FullHD will suffice.2 -
I'm currently a fresher and just got an offer for support reliability engineer( tech support in simpler terms) and it pays 5 times the average in my country with lots of perks. Also it involves no programming. I'm interested in programming, should I settle for a developer profile which pays less or a tech support which pays almost the double?9
-
which is the best cloud provider for a complete beginner (user/dev) in terms of community support, employer preference and user-friendliness?
i know that understanding the tech and concepts behind it matters more than getting familiarized with a specific platform, but i'm looking to build a more diverse profile and have noticed many positions asking for AWS/Azure experience.
since i'll be starting from scratch, any provider with easy-to-follow documentation, online help and certifications that don't leave you broke (would have to pay myself, earn very less as a student from a third-world country, parents/current employer can't support) would work.8 -
Form an Italian Tech support.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php/...
If we will find some moths it it also possible to talk of bugs.
Top Tags
Weekly Rant
View