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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I do want to point out that you're talking about employees of a company that has a shared file server... That peop

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I do want to point out that you're talking about employees of a company that has a shared file server... That people use! I have several family members, that I consider highly intelligent, who work blue colar, manual labor jobs, for which they don't have email addresses, even as they were promoted to more senior and leadership roles. My uncle hates his computer. He loves his iPad. Furthermore, I know several more folks who have business email addresses, some kind of web mail, are not issued company machines, and maybe only check that email once a month. Consider service industries, like restaurants. The number of people that work these sorts of jobs likely outnumber tech savvy office dwellers 10-to-1. You live in a bubble. Most of us here on HN do.

scrumper 14y ago
Not unreasonable. The bubble in this case is pretty big though: it's anyone who works out of an office. Not necessarily 'tech savvy' by any means: I'm talking about Excel/Word/Powerpoint jockeys, HR managers, sales reps, designers, producers etc. These people's primary tool is the computer they sit in front of all day so there's at least a little familiarity there. The computer turns their thoughts into bits: letters, spreadsheets, presentations, emails. They work mainly in the ephemeral, acting as links in a chain of information, passing it from one person to the next and maybe massaging it a bit in between. They are used to flipping concepts around their heads and are fluent in the 'language' of information. This means they don't suffer much cognitive dissonance when dealing with multi-layered folder hierarchies. Your blue collar kinsfolk have different tools: hands, for the most part, boosted by some array of domain-specific instruments. Those tools turn their thoughts into furniture, or repaired cars, or pipework, or cabling; I'd widen the group from traditional blue collar to include people like surgeons, too. They work in the arena of the tangible, so - and here I speculate - obviously tortured metaphors like nested folders grate on them and are much harder to adopt. As to your numbers of waiters vs. office rats: there is probably some data from the Bureau of Labor/ONS. Work calls though :)

scrumper 14y ago

Not unreasonable. The bubble in this case is pretty big though: it's anyone who works out of an office. Not necessarily 'tech savvy' by any means: I'm talking about Excel/Word/Powerpoint jockeys, HR managers, sales reps, designers, producers etc. These people's primary tool is the computer they sit in front of all day so there's at least a little familiarity there. The computer turns their thoughts into bits: letters, spreadsheets, presentations, emails. They work mainly in the ephemeral, acting as links in a chain of information, passing it from one person to the next and maybe massaging it a bit in between. They are used to flipping concepts around their heads and are fluent in the 'language' of information. This means they don't suffer much cognitive dissonance when dealing with multi-layered folder hierarchies. Your blue collar kinsfolk have different tools: hands, for the most part, boosted by some array of domain-specific instruments. Those tools turn their thoughts into furniture, or repaired cars, or pipework, or cabling; I'd widen the group from traditional blue collar to include people like surgeons, too. They work in the arena of the tangible, so - and here I speculate - obviously tortured metaphors like nested folders grate on them and are much harder to adopt. As to your numbers of waiters vs. office rats: there is probably some data from the Bureau of Labor/ONS. Work calls though :)