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Those hairdressers have chosen that job. Tech support people have chosen a job that is not like a hairdressing job. So I'm not sure why the rules of one would a
by untog 11y ago
Those hairdressers have chosen that job. Tech support people have chosen a job that is not like a hairdressing job. So I'm not sure why the rules of one would apply to another.
> The tech world, for all our declarations of being so progressive, is extremely prurient and repressed.
I disagree. I think that it is a lot more difficult to read any kind of social cue in a text-based technical support chat, and that the instinct to assume the other party wants to keep the conversation professional is sensible and prudent, not "repressed".
- DKnoll 11y agoI've been working support for total 5+ years now... I think I could draw a lot of parallels with hairdressing actually.
- toyg 11y agoAs an ex-support guy, lemme tell ya: like most low-paying low-skills jobs, it's very rarely a vocation. It is also eminently a "people skills" job, not unlike hairdressing or waiting tables. Of course supporting developers is different from supporting Joe Sixpack, but any random bugzilla record will show how tech support without people skills is a huge bag of fail. Btw, when talking about being repressed, i referred more to conferences and other gatherings, including twitter. We go from "SURPRISE- PORN SLIDE!" to "OMG THAT GUY CRACKED A SEXIST JOKE LETS RUIN HIS LIFE" with nothing in between. That's repression in action: since nobody is supposed to talk about it, nobody knows how to talk about it, or how to react in ways the rest of the world would find normal.