One of the most relatable panels from an already very relatable series!
And on the flipside, the sense of kinship and generosity I feel towards someone who solved their issue and needed nothing more, and yet out of nothing but a sense of kindness and a respect for posterity they return to share their wisdom with whoever may come after...
> 33% having seen the same error from a different user.
And this is why you write your own docs.
I know "you guys have documentation" is a meme, but seriously, it is really important.
1% [The Machine Spirit calming itself in your presence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gIMZ0WyY88). No joke, shit sometimes "just works" when you show up to fix it.
Several of my coworkers call me over when having computer issues for what they call my "sage"; i dont fix the computers, they just start working in my presence 😆
I read a story once where an engineer was flown out and paid thousands to fix a machine - he then proceeded to tighten a screw and was done. Next day the hiring company was complaining about how much the pay for some guy to come tighten a screw - the reply from the engineer was that he was paid not tightening the screw but to know which screw it was that needed tightening
Right on. He could've faked spending hours looking for the issue, but for what. He's spent time and money to get to where he is. Now you pay for his expertise.
Lol.... But he's right tho...
Society has so many 'legal' or 'politically correct' rorts xD
It's actually so good.
I watched a qualified plumber come into my house, hold a little reset button on the central heating unit and that was a $100...
He had to come your house not knowing what the issue was, and prepared to fix anything, would you rather pay some 20 buck an hour to have no tools and have to drive around getting them? (If you did know what was wrong you could have fixed it yourself)
How much of this is just turning it off and back on because this has fixed so much where I work. They think I'm great woth electronics to the point I've gotten a raise but I haven't told them I'm just turning shit off and back on and it works so far
> How much of this is just turning it off and back on because this has fixed so much where I work
Kubernetes Controller programs: oh the pod can't pass health check? Stop it and restart a new one... Ta-da...
I think it should be a capital crime if you make a post fix a bug then comment 3 months later, "I found the solution " and then select answered.
ME 10 YEARS LATER: AWHAT DID YOU DO OLD MAN??????
>being able to make sure you googled the exact error message
Man, the number of times I've had to be "IT" for friends and family who have tried "everything" and have "no clue whats wrong", only to look at the issue, see there's an error code, and just google '*application name* error *(insert code here)*' to immediately find the solution is staggering.
People will do everything **except** read the pop-up that tells you all the info you need.
I've come to the conclusion that it's a learned helplessness. They "aren't tech people" so they won't even try. Or more frustratingly will just be like "no no it's too hard!" when you try to teach them.
If it's an embedded software written in C++ with no documentation and you get a random build error in the main branch it's suddenly all about who you ask on MS Teams and how helpful they are
Do IT people actually code, though? I know the lines can get blurred in smaller companies, but isn't IT usually just for desktop support and maybe running a mail or file server and R&D/Engineering has the programmers?
In my opinion, you are mostly correct. "IT" generally refers to the team responsible for the data and communication, such as file servers, firewalls, voip equipment, etc...
they would not be writing lines of code and likely wouldn't know how. Just like a software developer would never be tasked with replacing a firewall or managing user access to data, etc...
I disagree with this. 75% of everyday IT is google based. Once you get into actual in-depth IT things it’s important to know how to google yes but even more important to understand how to interpret what your seeing. I can find a banging article on rocket science but dosnt mean I’ll understand it
Yea research is big in IT for sure but also there has been times where I learn through straight up testing trial and error and just plain having to ask "the SSL guy on why this particular cert isn't liked" or something like that.
Unfortunately in IT knowledge hoarding is a real thing.
> Unfortunately in IT knowledge hoarding is a real thing.
Being the only one who knows how to fix and work on an archaic system ensures a high salary and bulletproof job security.
Holy fuck SSL certs are the bane of the devil. Nothing is standardized and everything is all over the place. One application wants to be pointed to a pkcs12 pem file. Great! Another wants an encrypted pfx. Not great but whatever. Another yet expects a JKS keystore. Honestly the reason he can't give you a good answer is because unfortunately there is no standardized good answer. And that's just with the certificate formats. Some expect a pem with the trust chain included, others expect it separately, etc. And the only tricky part about any of this is the piss poor (if any) documentation from the side of the application.
I second this. I work in IT Support, handling all the software and hardware for my company. It's extremely important to know your way around the system and not take everything at face value. For example, if there's an error in Excel saying someone is using a file but they insist they’re not, just hit that remote connect to the server and remove the session. If you take it at face value, you’ll end up stuck digging through Task Manager.
Before I worked for this company, they once had an incident where some workers tried to Google a fix themselves, and it ended up causing two days of ransomware trouble for the entire company because the 'fix' they tried opened a big hole in network security.
and also what to google
to compare it to a physical machine,
its like googling "how do I balance a drive shaft on a xyz machine?"
Sure, you "just googled how to do it"
But the people that called you probably just said "our machine isn't working and its making a funky noise"
You had to know enough about to machine to know what type of machine part might even make that noise, to start googling for it.
Then even when you get the google answer, a non-mechanic wouldn't necessarily be able to read those instructions and do anything with them
Car guys and computer guys understand that feeling when you find that one hyper specific post on that incredibly niche forum thats dated 2004 but solves your problem right away.
or whats worse is when When u try to find a solution to a semi-common problem & everyone gives you the most basic solutions that never work, but that ONE reply from a youtube video 3yrs ago with 30 likes fixes it perfectly
This is also why the 'Dead Internet' Theory scares me. I'm already seeing bits of it coming true in my job. It used to be that I could reliably find answers to niche (but not super-niche) IT issues via Google, Stack Overflow, Reddit.
So much of these searches now points to SEO bullshit, advertising/commercial bullshit, and increasingly common, AI (LLM) bullshit. It's because of this that I think we're actually headed *back* to a world where knowledge is king, as the ability to research is getting kneecapped.
I see a potential future where you have to prove that you are human before creating an account on a forum/website, if only to try and suppress the bot-driven content drivel.
Even for scientists it's true to an extant. If your not good at googling your gonna accidentally repeat a study and not get published or use a method that is not the best for the current use.
Googling is just the modern version of going to a library or going through your classmates' notes or entering a study hall and listening in when someone asks how do you do X? The knowledge base for IT and really any career is the same that it would have been without the internet, it just has a much quicker and far more convenient interface: the search engine.
In the old days, you wouldn't say "being an engineer is 75% looking up the answer in a library book" because *i)* most people weren't there to witness the engineers slowly research the answers to their questions, and *ii)* it looked and sounded like the sort of thing an intelligent person ought to do.
I'm an IT guy whose specialty is a Finance system (ERP). I wish they'd use Google to find all of the very standard documentation on how to do everything in the system. I get hit up on Teams constantly asking how to do basic stuff. Why are they asking the IT guy about the Chart of Accounts structure or which Business Unit to use when posting a transaction? 😭
Help desk tech here: yes and……
We understand what to google, and what the solutions mean. Sometimes it’s an easy “go to options and click here”. But other times it’s deleting the tpm and rebooting to get intune to sync.
As far as sites, Reddit is by far the best for common issues.
Back in 3rd grade, the teacher would start every ICT lesson with a class googling competition to find some piece of information as fast as possible, and I think that really taught me how to search for something as concisely as possible.
Yes, there's a lot of Googling involved, but you still have to know *exactly* what you're doing.
We can Google and fix our problems, but as IT professionals we also know what we should and shouldn't be screwing with. Average Joe does not.
Its more 15% googling, rest is actually figuring out what the problem is, then ya google the problem, skip the fixes you already tried, and find a forum post from 2004 of someone who had this problem in 2004 and then a year later necroposts with "Fixed it", with no solution listed, and the account havent been logged into since 2008.
I've always felt the key is to be a stubborn son of a bitch. All the people I've worked with who I didn't want to continue working with were those who would give up on a problem after 20 minutes because "They couldn't figure it out."
It still surprises me, the lack of internet literacy even among the newer generation. A friend of mine (a solid 5 years younger than me) is about as savvy with google and obvious scams as my grandmother used to be....
Yes and no the more responsibilities you get the more you are thinking about the business aspect and this is such a case to case problem, of course the programming of it is a lot of googling but also not because standard endpoint making you really know by heart of how to set up your orm if you did it 100 times before it's a matter of knowing or looking at references projects. So yes and no simply said
A good portion of being good in IT is not just googling it, but when you’re really in the deep end, is writing docs for other people to refer to
[I’ve open sourced all my internal documentation since 2016](https://documentation.breadnet.co.uk/?utm_source=Reddit%20IT%20is%20googling&utm_medium=Comment&utm_campaign=It%20is%20googling) for that exact reason.
Not so
You can google, but do you understand what your reading? If so, your not most people. 75 comes from being able to learn faster than most people and a better reading comprehension. It wouldn't matter if it was a book or a search result. It also takes an interest in doing this work.
Most people can't understand it what they google regarding technology. If the words used are not the 500 most common words in English (can't speak for other languages or countries) they don't understand it.
Functional computer skills in developed nations is ZERO. Large parts of the population struggle with tasks no more complex than creating a calender invite. They can't handle context switching between to apps. (Thus all apps are slimline trash for power users as a result)
This doesn't include the large part of US adults that can't read beyond a 4th grade level. We dont see them because they are skilled at hiding it.
I would site a 2019 2018 report from a design organization but I can't find thr link right now. They asked adults from many different countries to complete different tasks on a computer. It also highlight the myth that it's only old people. Most couldn't create a calendar invite.
Since reddit requires reading, it's likely selection bias. It's one reason R slash on YouTube has an guaranteed audience.
Support based roles, yeah. The ability to apply solutions to specific areas, departments, structures and ecosystems are generally the product of experience. Knowing when to apply IdP solutions based on set up of employee splits is an example, how Azure, AWS and GCP have their advantages and build such is a reflection of experience.
How to reset a router or fix a printer issue? Purely google.
75% percent of IT comes from Googling when the average Joe doesn't so that you know things the average Joe doesn't care about---until you tell him how much you're paid :)
This statement is somewhat true in the modern context, where the ability to find and use information available on the Internet plays an important role in developing information technology skills
Yep. My role has nothing to do with IT and I have no formal training, but lots of people come to me before the IT guy because he’s tough to get ahold of. And about 90% of their issues I can fix with some googling. Of the 10% I can’t, most of those are issues with not having admin permissions.
People are amazed, even when they watch me do the googling.
I have colleagues that are struggling with googling and their performance suffer because of it. I also have colleagues that are good at Googling but terrible at problem-solving. They suffer as well as soon as they do not find a one-to-one response on Google.
It's a baseline of understanding everything involved (experience) so that you even know what terms to google, and so that you understand the results to know which is relevant, and to understand how to use the result.
That's why it often feels like it is "just" googling. We don't realize how much more we know about these systems, because it becomes obvious and common knowledge for us. But try to tell your parents to just google it and use that...
Or try to just google something about a different complex topic you don't know anything about (still works for "simple" topics, but with complex topics you have no Idea what every second word even means).
Though really being able to find what you need only really works if you understand what you need. The average joe might be just as good as googling, but if they don't have a clue about IT then it doesn't matter how good their googling skills are.
Well, you not only need to be able to Google, but you have to have a bad to work from.
I'm in IT and there are times I Google something and get an answer, but it only makes some sense because apparently I didn't know s much as I thought.
It's not just about using the correct search terms, but about comprehension of your findings, then application of the same in the correct context.
You'd be surprised at how many stumble at the search term phase, let alone the latter phases!
I have my current job in large part because I was honest about that. They did a tech interview over the phone before I came in. One of the questions was where something is in the registry. And who fucking memorizes registry locations?
So I told them, I know it's under HKLM (because that sort of thing is computer-wide and not user-specific), but I don't memorize the exact locations like that, I would honestly just google the exact location if I need it. And the people interviewing me loved that answer. It showed I knew enough to know what to look up and could quickly get the answer if I need.
Haha, I’d contend this is similar in almost any field. Most would be shocked how many professionals and experts google things on the regular. They just have a good foundation of basic knowledge and know what and where to look.
Funny enough I had this conversation with a coworker last week. I always kind of kick myself for not going into it.. I went to a tech school for graphic design and because of a teacher leaving the other teacher had to couple graphic design with her computer business class. And I feel like half the time I was going around troubleshooting all the business side’s excel and computer problems.
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
— Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
Being better at googling and being better at reading menus. A surprising (and depressing) number of people are terrible at reading and categorizing. It is not hard to find the amount of RAM or storage capacity you have and yet so many people can't figure out how to do it themselves.
75% only ? More like 90%. The other is just a mix of plugging it back in, or reinstalling drivers, and a last percent is just "idk man just buy a new computer"
This can't be true. This means that I could have avoided a 20 minute phone queue, and 4 minutes of raging incoherently at the IT guy, by just googling the problem to find a solution myself in 9.3 seconds. Where's the catharsis in that?
Knowing what to Google is a big part of it, too. Knowing how to interpret the result is also crucial. IT is a big field and most people specialize, but the basics are important to almost everyone.
And 25% is having the soft skills and patience to handle a raging customer that despises you for the issue happening and themselves because they needed help.
There's definitely a way to google properly. Most don't know you can use quotes to search for exact phrases(perfect for error messages), add "site:reddit.com" to only search a specific site (really helpful because reddit's search sucks), search only between certain date ranges, and a whole host of other operators you can use while searching.
Exactly I have so many friends and family who think I'm like a programmer or something because I'm always helping them with various tech related problems
No I just know how to fucking Google things and have just enough knowledge on these topics to know how to filter through the answers
Plus as much as people like to joke about it just turning it off and back on honestly does solve like 99% of problems and you'd be surprised how many people don't actually try it before begging for help because they just think its too easy for that to be the solution or something
Or just having the time to Google the answer & sift through & do what you find. Could I do that when I'm at work? Well yea, but my company pays an IT dept to do that for me, so I just put in a ticket & let them do what they get paid to do (ie Google crap & do what it tells them to do.....)
Not really. If you really think this and work in IT, you're probably a low paid worker bee engineer.
The real skill is knowing how to read man files, documentation, api references, and source code.
plot twist: "being good at ~~google~~ *any search tool*" **IS** a legitimate, and uncommon job skill.
how many people in your work office aren't even comfortable with boolean?
I think it just FEELS like 75% to you because the other skills required, the ones that are more difficult for people in general, are ones you have innately.
Everyone googles. You think doctors don't Google? Literally any job you could have can be done better by googling. Me? I Google at least twice a day. Once in the morning after my workout, and once on my lunch break. I don't Google because I want to, I mean I do, I Google because I *have* to. If you don't Google enough? You implode. I've seen it before, it's ugly. You don't want that.
Most people's technological ignorance comes from not wanting/caring to understand how to use their own device. Their googling skills may be on point when they actual care about the topic at hand.
There was a time that you could program a computer by reading one book The principles of operations and writing assembly code do whatever you want. The principles of operation was something that you could largely keep in your head with the assembler doing the trivia of mapping a mnemonic to a hex code.
Nowadays almost everything that you program with a computer is really programming your code to somebody else's code. A compiler or some middleware or a framework or whatever. That means you're writing code to match the decisions made by someone else. Lots of decisions made by lots of different people. So being able to Google to find out what decision they made becomes really important because you can't deduce their decision typically, and there's far too much to remember, and I got other things to use my brain cells for.
There's also understanding how things in general work so you can tell when they deviate from what is expected.
A lot of my time is spent looking at logs and visualisations of those logs and will frequently reach out to other members of IT who look after specific systems and to coders and ask them "should this be doing this?" and eventually we'll find a misconfiguration or some bad code somewhere.
It amazes me to no end how even in IT, there are few people who will start by looking at the logs of a system to see what is going on. I honestly couldn't manage my network without my ELK stack and custom dashboards, the best thing about it is if someone blames a switch or a firewall of mine, I have the data to show them that proves it isn't.
I work as a software engineer at a pretty prestigious company and also have horrendous short-term memory... like lowest 10% of all people. I'm one of the most competent coders because I'm awesome at Google; I can "learn" how to work with a new database or use a new language or debug something or figure out a system design in less than 3 minutes.
The real skill is knowing how to interpret the right fix and how it works together and which google results are garbage. You have to understand the systems in play.
Well one of the defining features of IT is having access to all of Human knowledge with the internet. Googling something in IT is like a blacksmith using a hammer to make a hammer
I guess I could put average joy in front of computer, google and my daily task, give him a month and have fun watching the company burn.
But yes finding stuff skills are important.
I hate this. I'm so tired of this meme.
Yeah, if you're new you look stuff up, ok.
But if you're good, you know stuff.
Tech workers that Google everything are slow underperformers that only get away with it because demand is high... Was high.
Half true, 33% googling, 33% being able to make sure you googled the exact error message...
33% having seen the same error from a different user.
And just a slight seasoning of “this worked a year ago, fuck it let’s see what it does now”
A year ago is ideal. Now the solution from 8 years ago. That’s a spicy one.
Always reminds me of this [super relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/979/)
Extremely relatable 😂
One of the most relatable panels from an already very relatable series! And on the flipside, the sense of kinship and generosity I feel towards someone who solved their issue and needed nothing more, and yet out of nothing but a sense of kindness and a respect for posterity they return to share their wisdom with whoever may come after...
Those are the the people that deserve raises.
"Nvm fixed it"
I hate this lol. They just fucking teasing me. Flaunting it in my face
"Nvm fixed it DM me for answer" The best troll move :)
Check their profile > last activity also 13 years ago
I hate this. Ohh heres my exact problem and potential solution.... fuck, its from 2008. Sigh... search tools, "last year"
And the solution has the dev replying: fixed in v1.8.2 and you are on 3.7.4
Ah yes the Spidey senses.
"Nevermind, I solved it. You can close the thread." And not a whisper about *how* he solved it.
And 100% reason to remember the name!
> 33% having seen the same error from a different user. And this is why you write your own docs. I know "you guys have documentation" is a meme, but seriously, it is really important.
That doesn't leave room for fucking around until it works.
33% Google, 33%knowing what to Google, 33%same error.. what's the last 1%?
1% [The Machine Spirit calming itself in your presence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gIMZ0WyY88). No joke, shit sometimes "just works" when you show up to fix it.
Several of my coworkers call me over when having computer issues for what they call my "sage"; i dont fix the computers, they just start working in my presence 😆
15% concentrated power of will.
I read a story once where an engineer was flown out and paid thousands to fix a machine - he then proceeded to tighten a screw and was done. Next day the hiring company was complaining about how much the pay for some guy to come tighten a screw - the reply from the engineer was that he was paid not tightening the screw but to know which screw it was that needed tightening
Old engineering joke. The saying goes, and they asked for an itemised invoice. $1 for a screw. $9999 for knowing where the screw goes.
Ah I like this version more haha
Right on. He could've faked spending hours looking for the issue, but for what. He's spent time and money to get to where he is. Now you pay for his expertise.
Lol.... But he's right tho... Society has so many 'legal' or 'politically correct' rorts xD It's actually so good. I watched a qualified plumber come into my house, hold a little reset button on the central heating unit and that was a $100...
He had to come your house not knowing what the issue was, and prepared to fix anything, would you rather pay some 20 buck an hour to have no tools and have to drive around getting them? (If you did know what was wrong you could have fixed it yourself)
You paid to get your heating bit fixed and you got your heating unit fixed. You paid for a result. Not the time or effort.
33% having the right access permissions.
Sudo or sudont There's is no try ... ... Without catch
How much of this is just turning it off and back on because this has fixed so much where I work. They think I'm great woth electronics to the point I've gotten a raise but I haven't told them I'm just turning shit off and back on and it works so far
> How much of this is just turning it off and back on because this has fixed so much where I work Kubernetes Controller programs: oh the pod can't pass health check? Stop it and restart a new one... Ta-da...
This is the perfect software engineer comment. "um actually.." and then exactly what the first person said but in a different way.
33% being able to read through related error messages that google also found instead of the exact message, and still identify the common reason.
I think it should be a capital crime if you make a post fix a bug then comment 3 months later, "I found the solution " and then select answered. ME 10 YEARS LATER: AWHAT DID YOU DO OLD MAN??????
And the other 33% is being able to look at answers and understand what's going to actually fix it and what's nonsense.
>being able to make sure you googled the exact error message Man, the number of times I've had to be "IT" for friends and family who have tried "everything" and have "no clue whats wrong", only to look at the issue, see there's an error code, and just google '*application name* error *(insert code here)*' to immediately find the solution is staggering. People will do everything **except** read the pop-up that tells you all the info you need.
I've come to the conclusion that it's a learned helplessness. They "aren't tech people" so they won't even try. Or more frustratingly will just be like "no no it's too hard!" when you try to teach them.
can't ever copypasta that lil bitch
If the company is using something that's industry standard yes. If it's spaghetti code that has no comments very much yes.
Hello! I see you work for my company:. How's that legacy app treating you?
If it's an embedded software written in C++ with no documentation and you get a random build error in the main branch it's suddenly all about who you ask on MS Teams and how helpful they are
Do IT people actually code, though? I know the lines can get blurred in smaller companies, but isn't IT usually just for desktop support and maybe running a mail or file server and R&D/Engineering has the programmers?
In my opinion, you are mostly correct. "IT" generally refers to the team responsible for the data and communication, such as file servers, firewalls, voip equipment, etc... they would not be writing lines of code and likely wouldn't know how. Just like a software developer would never be tasked with replacing a firewall or managing user access to data, etc...
Your basic L1 call center IT won't. But the higher up that chain you go, the smaller and more specialized the teams get.
If you use a language you can't Google, no.
I disagree with this. 75% of everyday IT is google based. Once you get into actual in-depth IT things it’s important to know how to google yes but even more important to understand how to interpret what your seeing. I can find a banging article on rocket science but dosnt mean I’ll understand it
Yea research is big in IT for sure but also there has been times where I learn through straight up testing trial and error and just plain having to ask "the SSL guy on why this particular cert isn't liked" or something like that. Unfortunately in IT knowledge hoarding is a real thing.
> Unfortunately in IT knowledge hoarding is a real thing. Being the only one who knows how to fix and work on an archaic system ensures a high salary and bulletproof job security.
If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted
Holy fuck SSL certs are the bane of the devil. Nothing is standardized and everything is all over the place. One application wants to be pointed to a pkcs12 pem file. Great! Another wants an encrypted pfx. Not great but whatever. Another yet expects a JKS keystore. Honestly the reason he can't give you a good answer is because unfortunately there is no standardized good answer. And that's just with the certificate formats. Some expect a pem with the trust chain included, others expect it separately, etc. And the only tricky part about any of this is the piss poor (if any) documentation from the side of the application.
I second this. I work in IT Support, handling all the software and hardware for my company. It's extremely important to know your way around the system and not take everything at face value. For example, if there's an error in Excel saying someone is using a file but they insist they’re not, just hit that remote connect to the server and remove the session. If you take it at face value, you’ll end up stuck digging through Task Manager. Before I worked for this company, they once had an incident where some workers tried to Google a fix themselves, and it ended up causing two days of ransomware trouble for the entire company because the 'fix' they tried opened a big hole in network security.
Gotta love local admin.
Exactly. The stat makes it sound like if you google, you're a developer. Granted, I've worked with some of those types, but it's not true.
and also what to google to compare it to a physical machine, its like googling "how do I balance a drive shaft on a xyz machine?" Sure, you "just googled how to do it" But the people that called you probably just said "our machine isn't working and its making a funky noise" You had to know enough about to machine to know what type of machine part might even make that noise, to start googling for it. Then even when you get the google answer, a non-mechanic wouldn't necessarily be able to read those instructions and do anything with them
Car guys and computer guys understand that feeling when you find that one hyper specific post on that incredibly niche forum thats dated 2004 but solves your problem right away.
And they know the pain when the poster just said nvm fixen it.
Why’s that so relatable arghhh
or whats worse is when When u try to find a solution to a semi-common problem & everyone gives you the most basic solutions that never work, but that ONE reply from a youtube video 3yrs ago with 30 likes fixes it perfectly
This is also why the 'Dead Internet' Theory scares me. I'm already seeing bits of it coming true in my job. It used to be that I could reliably find answers to niche (but not super-niche) IT issues via Google, Stack Overflow, Reddit. So much of these searches now points to SEO bullshit, advertising/commercial bullshit, and increasingly common, AI (LLM) bullshit. It's because of this that I think we're actually headed *back* to a world where knowledge is king, as the ability to research is getting kneecapped. I see a potential future where you have to prove that you are human before creating an account on a forum/website, if only to try and suppress the bot-driven content drivel.
That goes for most careers tbh (also see: Finance)
Even for scientists it's true to an extant. If your not good at googling your gonna accidentally repeat a study and not get published or use a method that is not the best for the current use.
Googling is just the modern version of going to a library or going through your classmates' notes or entering a study hall and listening in when someone asks how do you do X? The knowledge base for IT and really any career is the same that it would have been without the internet, it just has a much quicker and far more convenient interface: the search engine. In the old days, you wouldn't say "being an engineer is 75% looking up the answer in a library book" because *i)* most people weren't there to witness the engineers slowly research the answers to their questions, and *ii)* it looked and sounded like the sort of thing an intelligent person ought to do.
Also “maintenance manager” lol
Also brain surgeon.
I'm an IT guy whose specialty is a Finance system (ERP). I wish they'd use Google to find all of the very standard documentation on how to do everything in the system. I get hit up on Teams constantly asking how to do basic stuff. Why are they asking the IT guy about the Chart of Accounts structure or which Business Unit to use when posting a transaction? 😭
This is why a lot of college is built around teaching students how to research. Pretty much every field benefits from knowing how to do your research.
True for most jobs, at my old job (not IT related) I was considered the Excel master just because I knew how to google the formulas
THIS. I'm much more likely to use it with Excel than with programming.
Half my career has been watching a green bar move across a screen, that other half was spent googling “why won’t the green bar move”.
Help desk tech here: yes and…… We understand what to google, and what the solutions mean. Sometimes it’s an easy “go to options and click here”. But other times it’s deleting the tpm and rebooting to get intune to sync. As far as sites, Reddit is by far the best for common issues.
Reddit and tomshardware got me the answer to a solid 90% of things I didn’t know the answer to and couldn’t find in the kb
Back in 3rd grade, the teacher would start every ICT lesson with a class googling competition to find some piece of information as fast as possible, and I think that really taught me how to search for something as concisely as possible.
The other 25% is working with the vendor
Unless it’s microsoft, in which case 20% of that time is just trying to get escalated to a fucking T3
20%? You must have a fast track, it feels like it takes longer getting to T3 than fixing the issue half the time.
Yes, there's a lot of Googling involved, but you still have to know *exactly* what you're doing. We can Google and fix our problems, but as IT professionals we also know what we should and shouldn't be screwing with. Average Joe does not.
I start all my searches with “ dear google “
My doctor just turned and straight up googled my symptoms once 😂 didn't even try to hide it.
This is true. I googled it.
Knowing how to describe what’s wrong to a computer, so that it can tell you how to fix it **IS** IT skills.
Its more 15% googling, rest is actually figuring out what the problem is, then ya google the problem, skip the fixes you already tried, and find a forum post from 2004 of someone who had this problem in 2004 and then a year later necroposts with "Fixed it", with no solution listed, and the account havent been logged into since 2008.
Well those project completion timeline estimations aren’t gonna Google themselves, are they?
Might be why they say Gen Z lacks computer skills. Google search has become so awful no one can solve anything.
Kind of, yeah. I think it a mix of that and actually just *trying* to Google. Some people just instantly reach out for help without investigation.
I've always felt the key is to be a stubborn son of a bitch. All the people I've worked with who I didn't want to continue working with were those who would give up on a problem after 20 minutes because "They couldn't figure it out."
It still surprises me, the lack of internet literacy even among the newer generation. A friend of mine (a solid 5 years younger than me) is about as savvy with google and obvious scams as my grandmother used to be....
Do I click the next button?
Yes and no the more responsibilities you get the more you are thinking about the business aspect and this is such a case to case problem, of course the programming of it is a lot of googling but also not because standard endpoint making you really know by heart of how to set up your orm if you did it 100 times before it's a matter of knowing or looking at references projects. So yes and no simply said
A good portion of being good in IT is not just googling it, but when you’re really in the deep end, is writing docs for other people to refer to [I’ve open sourced all my internal documentation since 2016](https://documentation.breadnet.co.uk/?utm_source=Reddit%20IT%20is%20googling&utm_medium=Comment&utm_campaign=It%20is%20googling) for that exact reason.
Tell that to Pennywise.
It is 10% luck, 20% skill
Yeah except you can’t Google things for enterprise specific applications. So no, not everything is just Google for IT….
I would say the 75% is knowing your software/hardware your working with and the other part % is Google. Well for me it is on my job lol
Not so You can google, but do you understand what your reading? If so, your not most people. 75 comes from being able to learn faster than most people and a better reading comprehension. It wouldn't matter if it was a book or a search result. It also takes an interest in doing this work. Most people can't understand it what they google regarding technology. If the words used are not the 500 most common words in English (can't speak for other languages or countries) they don't understand it. Functional computer skills in developed nations is ZERO. Large parts of the population struggle with tasks no more complex than creating a calender invite. They can't handle context switching between to apps. (Thus all apps are slimline trash for power users as a result) This doesn't include the large part of US adults that can't read beyond a 4th grade level. We dont see them because they are skilled at hiding it. I would site a 2019 2018 report from a design organization but I can't find thr link right now. They asked adults from many different countries to complete different tasks on a computer. It also highlight the myth that it's only old people. Most couldn't create a calendar invite. Since reddit requires reading, it's likely selection bias. It's one reason R slash on YouTube has an guaranteed audience.
Nah, I've been programming long before that was possible, even though I do avail myself to it now, I wouldn't describe it as 75% ever.
Support based roles, yeah. The ability to apply solutions to specific areas, departments, structures and ecosystems are generally the product of experience. Knowing when to apply IdP solutions based on set up of employee splits is an example, how Azure, AWS and GCP have their advantages and build such is a reflection of experience. How to reset a router or fix a printer issue? Purely google.
Applies to essentially 75% of every skill in existence.
Hmmm disagree. 15% google skills. 80% remembering that thing you googled last month 5% dumb luck Source: Former IT guy
As an IT guy, I would amend this by saying that %75 of IT is knowing how to research and applying that research to your problems
I think it's closer to 90%
That's my whole life, all of my jobs and anything I eve did or build in my life.
75% percent of IT comes from Googling when the average Joe doesn't so that you know things the average Joe doesn't care about---until you tell him how much you're paid :)
Use bing or dogbox if google won't give you the answer
Can confirm, my mom used to work tech support and pretty much her entire job was just looking things up for people
I'm a programmer by profession. My role name is "Professional Googler".
82.5% of quoted stats are made up on the spot
Most people are now using ChatGPT
More like 90% the way google search manage to bring up the most useless result despite of clear and concise query
No, it’s being curious.
This statement is somewhat true in the modern context, where the ability to find and use information available on the Internet plays an important role in developing information technology skills
75% of all skills, really
Yep. My role has nothing to do with IT and I have no formal training, but lots of people come to me before the IT guy because he’s tough to get ahold of. And about 90% of their issues I can fix with some googling. Of the 10% I can’t, most of those are issues with not having admin permissions. People are amazed, even when they watch me do the googling.
Having the ability to look up information you need to complete your task is a life skill. A shocking amount of people lack it.
I have colleagues that are struggling with googling and their performance suffer because of it. I also have colleagues that are good at Googling but terrible at problem-solving. They suffer as well as soon as they do not find a one-to-one response on Google.
It's a baseline of understanding everything involved (experience) so that you even know what terms to google, and so that you understand the results to know which is relevant, and to understand how to use the result. That's why it often feels like it is "just" googling. We don't realize how much more we know about these systems, because it becomes obvious and common knowledge for us. But try to tell your parents to just google it and use that... Or try to just google something about a different complex topic you don't know anything about (still works for "simple" topics, but with complex topics you have no Idea what every second word even means).
Not in IT or any field close to it, but same.
33% google, 33% bullshitting, 33% basic IT knowledge.
I thought 75% of it was owning a fursuit.
Googling is the easy part… it’s reading the 3 year old post were some guy describes your problem and the posts the the follow up “never mind I fixed”…
Though really being able to find what you need only really works if you understand what you need. The average joe might be just as good as googling, but if they don't have a clue about IT then it doesn't matter how good their googling skills are.
I tell this to everyone I work with but I'm still the first to call when anything doesn't work as intended.
Well, you not only need to be able to Google, but you have to have a bad to work from. I'm in IT and there are times I Google something and get an answer, but it only makes some sense because apparently I didn't know s much as I thought.
true. guy who was teaching me some backend stuff called it[ google-fu](https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/235/23522.gif)
Annoying guy I hate told me something I take with me everyday I go to work. "The hard thing is leaning how to read, everything else is written"
It's not just about using the correct search terms, but about comprehension of your findings, then application of the same in the correct context. You'd be surprised at how many stumble at the search term phase, let alone the latter phases!
I have my current job in large part because I was honest about that. They did a tech interview over the phone before I came in. One of the questions was where something is in the registry. And who fucking memorizes registry locations? So I told them, I know it's under HKLM (because that sort of thing is computer-wide and not user-specific), but I don't memorize the exact locations like that, I would honestly just google the exact location if I need it. And the people interviewing me loved that answer. It showed I knew enough to know what to look up and could quickly get the answer if I need.
Software engineering too. It's not just googling in either case, but also a decent memory to solve the same problem "for free" the second time.
if stackoverflow ever went down the entire IT world would crumble
Not even better, just more willing to try it.
Haha, I’d contend this is similar in almost any field. Most would be shocked how many professionals and experts google things on the regular. They just have a good foundation of basic knowledge and know what and where to look.
Funny enough I had this conversation with a coworker last week. I always kind of kick myself for not going into it.. I went to a tech school for graphic design and because of a teacher leaving the other teacher had to couple graphic design with her computer business class. And I feel like half the time I was going around troubleshooting all the business side’s excel and computer problems.
Shhhhhh, don't give the game away 🙂
You know, you can memorize things
The other 25% is being capable of carrying on a conversation with another human.
It takes so many more skills to understand those google results that to just Google it.
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. — Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
Sure, if youre a noob lol.
Also patience to just click around until it's fixed...
The more I do tech work, the more I think it's actually the ability to read the manual/documentation.
50% Googling 50% Understanding that data and electricity can only move between connected parts of a system.
As a biologist also yes
Being better at googling and being better at reading menus. A surprising (and depressing) number of people are terrible at reading and categorizing. It is not hard to find the amount of RAM or storage capacity you have and yet so many people can't figure out how to do it themselves.
I've been the IT guy at work for the past 30 years. Google and WebCrawler before that are my main qualifications.
75% only ? More like 90%. The other is just a mix of plugging it back in, or reinstalling drivers, and a last percent is just "idk man just buy a new computer"
This can't be true. This means that I could have avoided a 20 minute phone queue, and 4 minutes of raging incoherently at the IT guy, by just googling the problem to find a solution myself in 9.3 seconds. Where's the catharsis in that?
And now those people are outclassed by the people who are better at prompt engineering ChatGPT. Seriously, it takes less time to get better answers.
15% better Google terms, 85% being able to work out which result actually will help.
Knowing what to Google is a big part of it, too. Knowing how to interpret the result is also crucial. IT is a big field and most people specialize, but the basics are important to almost everyone.
And 25% is having the soft skills and patience to handle a raging customer that despises you for the issue happening and themselves because they needed help.
There's definitely a way to google properly. Most don't know you can use quotes to search for exact phrases(perfect for error messages), add "site:reddit.com" to only search a specific site (really helpful because reddit's search sucks), search only between certain date ranges, and a whole host of other operators you can use while searching.
Exactly I have so many friends and family who think I'm like a programmer or something because I'm always helping them with various tech related problems No I just know how to fucking Google things and have just enough knowledge on these topics to know how to filter through the answers Plus as much as people like to joke about it just turning it off and back on honestly does solve like 99% of problems and you'd be surprised how many people don't actually try it before begging for help because they just think its too easy for that to be the solution or something
Or just having the time to Google the answer & sift through & do what you find. Could I do that when I'm at work? Well yea, but my company pays an IT dept to do that for me, so I just put in a ticket & let them do what they get paid to do (ie Google crap & do what it tells them to do.....)
Not really. If you really think this and work in IT, you're probably a low paid worker bee engineer. The real skill is knowing how to read man files, documentation, api references, and source code.
Yeah, understanding the question the ask is 90% of solving the problem.
People can be really, really bad at googling lol, well, problem solving in general
plot twist: "being good at ~~google~~ *any search tool*" **IS** a legitimate, and uncommon job skill. how many people in your work office aren't even comfortable with boolean?
I need that on a plaque with fancy lettering over a nature scene. "Let me google that for you"
Just imagine what I had to do when I started in the industry in 1983.
It's at least been that way for my IT course. If you use chatgpt, results vary.
I think it just FEELS like 75% to you because the other skills required, the ones that are more difficult for people in general, are ones you have innately.
Everyone googles. You think doctors don't Google? Literally any job you could have can be done better by googling. Me? I Google at least twice a day. Once in the morning after my workout, and once on my lunch break. I don't Google because I want to, I mean I do, I Google because I *have* to. If you don't Google enough? You implode. I've seen it before, it's ugly. You don't want that.
Most people's technological ignorance comes from not wanting/caring to understand how to use their own device. Their googling skills may be on point when they actual care about the topic at hand.
Damn straight. Did this for seven years, working multiple desks. We always joked that the company could not exist if Google charged 1 cent per search
Sure, you can always google how to blow glass. But then actually making a vase might take some time...
That's why I been so good at IT, i've mastered Googling without even realizing it during HS/college. & nobody really talks about it
There was a time that you could program a computer by reading one book The principles of operations and writing assembly code do whatever you want. The principles of operation was something that you could largely keep in your head with the assembler doing the trivia of mapping a mnemonic to a hex code. Nowadays almost everything that you program with a computer is really programming your code to somebody else's code. A compiler or some middleware or a framework or whatever. That means you're writing code to match the decisions made by someone else. Lots of decisions made by lots of different people. So being able to Google to find out what decision they made becomes really important because you can't deduce their decision typically, and there's far too much to remember, and I got other things to use my brain cells for.
There's also understanding how things in general work so you can tell when they deviate from what is expected. A lot of my time is spent looking at logs and visualisations of those logs and will frequently reach out to other members of IT who look after specific systems and to coders and ask them "should this be doing this?" and eventually we'll find a misconfiguration or some bad code somewhere. It amazes me to no end how even in IT, there are few people who will start by looking at the logs of a system to see what is going on. I honestly couldn't manage my network without my ELK stack and custom dashboards, the best thing about it is if someone blames a switch or a firewall of mine, I have the data to show them that proves it isn't.
I was this many years old when I learned I had advanced IT skills.
AI is the new google
I work as a software engineer at a pretty prestigious company and also have horrendous short-term memory... like lowest 10% of all people. I'm one of the most competent coders because I'm awesome at Google; I can "learn" how to work with a new database or use a new language or debug something or figure out a system design in less than 3 minutes.
The other 25% is the ability to beat your head against a brick wall until something works.
The real skill is knowing how to interpret the right fix and how it works together and which google results are garbage. You have to understand the systems in play.
No one ever tried to cover this up. This is a better-known "secret" than Israel's nuclear weapons...
It's now a mix of Google and AI
Well one of the defining features of IT is having access to all of Human knowledge with the internet. Googling something in IT is like a blacksmith using a hammer to make a hammer
I guess I could put average joy in front of computer, google and my daily task, give him a month and have fun watching the company burn. But yes finding stuff skills are important.
I hate this. I'm so tired of this meme. Yeah, if you're new you look stuff up, ok. But if you're good, you know stuff. Tech workers that Google everything are slow underperformers that only get away with it because demand is high... Was high.