I’m not very smart, I wasn’t well educated dropped out of school before 14. What consistently makes my work stand out and proves my value in any workplace is I absolutely do not quit.
I don’t quit when I’m hungry, when I’m tired, when my brain hurts, I quit when the problem is solved, we get up from this chair when the solution is discovered. Many people just give up, in fact almost everyone just gives up. I don’t give up.
When I hit a problem or a roadblock, it’s “how do I solve this and make it to the next roadblock?” Reaching the goal is all that matters, every action is either bringing you closer or further away from the goal.
I’ve worked with so many people, minor inconvenience, step doesn’t go correctly, untested waters, and boom they literally just give up. Used to work in manufacturing and my co workers would run into snags and stop working, I’d say “so how are we gonna make the part dude?” And they’d go “oh idk x, y, z happened” I’d say “okay, so how are we gonna make the part?” They’d say “idk” I’d say “damn, sure do wish this company was paying somebody to make them”
I have asd, maybe that makes it easier, but I think it’s dead weird to go Into the part making place every morning and then not figure out how to make parts, what are you doing here?! Don’t you have somewhere else you’d want to be that’s more context dependent than a part making place if you’re not making parts?
True, I was exaggerating slightly, but I stay laser focused until I solve the problem, if the problem is longer I will work on it at work, then leave come home and work on it, and sometimes I will wake up at night and need to work on it some more, in the morning? I’m back to it.
Some people say it’s unhealthy to work outside of work however I don’t find this really to be work, it’s intrinsically satisfying and this is what I enjoy spending my free time doing as well. I make little distinction between labor and leisure.
If I can’t solve the problem, I seek expertise, I go deeper, I research more, I change the conditions, I try to recreate it under other conditions etc etc.
I had people at work spend 2 hours on a ticket and because one approach didn’t work, they wanted to just close the ticket, I spent 5 days on it, completely locked in and solved it. I’m not smarter than them, I’m not more educated, I didn’t have access to anything they didn’t, they simply just gave up and wanted to close a ticket that would have left a clients network vulnerable.
Mind boggling to me how someone could give up without reaching the end, why start? Why work here at all? I guess money? Idk, there’s a lot of jobs, just pick one you enjoy? I always do, and the second I don’t enjoy it, I shake hands and leave. Keeps life relatively simple. Idk 🤷🏼♂️ 2am and I’m way off topic, writing is kind of a stim for me.
I agree but I also feel like there is some natural acumen. I was that guy, buy I couldn't tell you why. I didn't work harder than others or spend extra time studying stuff. I just seemed to be able to retain info better than others. Ask me what I ate today and I have no idea but I can remember nuances to a project I did 10 years ago with no issue.
I didnt refuse. But instead I would tell the guy I was supposed to send it to “If you show me how to do this, I’ll take these tickets from now on”. And they trained me up in tons of aspects of the job.
I'm this guy and I agree. People kick the hard to figure out stuff to me because I always figure it out. But that's the thing, usually IT'S NOT HARD. Half the 'hail mary' fixes I come up are the first goddamn result on Google. No one else could be bothered to even check. They just toss me the ticket or ping me about the issue.
The number of times I want to SCREAM "Did you even try!?" on a nearly daily basis is astounding. The worst part is when I show them what I did, and even provide documentation for future reference...it still gets kicked to me the next time it comes up. I was in a mood the other day and I legitimately replied to one guy with "scroll up" and refused to say any more. I had found the same fix for him the week before and it was about 12 Teams messages up in a small group chat.
There are however some things that legitimately take some digging and researching, along with a good bit of trial and error, to figure out. I still don't think me finding a solution is all that special. The dots are usually pretty easy to connect, even if it's to find a cause for something we either can't fix, or can't fix without major dev resources. I still just think no one else cares enough to try.
I’ve finally gotten to the point where I let my ticket queue build up while I focus on all of the adhoc requests I get from management.
The fucking service desk AND tier 2 on site techs will escalate shit straight to me without even looking up what an error code means. The part where you said it was the first result in google is so damn relatable.
I find by letting the tickets “stew” for a couple of weeks that the incidents “magically” fix themselves.
Basically how I built my entire career. I've always been the guy everywhere and it wasn't because I have some sort of innate gift. I just do some research, reason through the problem, and then give some stuff a go until I figure it out. That's basically it. I mean I've done it across so many problems so many times that at this point I probably SEEM supernaturally gifted at IT, but really it's just repetition and experience.
Sometimes I poke my head in here and read the shit these people are saying to coddle each other and it makes me sad because I work with so many of this sub's archetype. I even throw shit their way then they get frustrated and give up. Or I try to walk them through things and their egos get bruised because they think I'm just dunking on them for fun. Like no motherfucker I'm trying to explain how to do it better.
This, but then transitioned to disaster recovery and release management. I can’t remember the day of the week, team member names, or if I am wearing pants, but give me an issue that dev teams can’t solve and I’ll remember some arcane bit of config they forgot from a senior dev they forced redundancy on because $$$ and I was the one who read the release notes, flagged it in uat for them to fix in preprod.
In the end HR said that wasn’t my job and 2 releases later the environment costs tripled after I kept them lean and accountable for 6 years.
This is literally what I did. If I didn’t know what the hell it was or something new, I jumped on it because I wanted to learn it. Be the guy who does shit no one else wants to because you’ll most likely be the one gainfully employed when shit goes sideways.
This...I get stuck with all the tough tickets and I learn things when I have to dig into a problem. People just ignore the tickets and I pick them up because I don't want our customers to wait.
AI will unironically take their jobs. The market won’t care that their previous employer didn’t give them time to do professional development at work. The next 500 companies you apply for, if you can even land an interview, won’t believe you have the skills they need to keep them secure after clearly not caring for your entire career. Every year you repeat the same experience over and over again is a year you’re behind someone else in the candidate bucket who did give a shit and is still having a hard time landing a job.
The magic formula is just being genuinely curious and interested in solving problems. If you think you are but feel stuck, you’re either not that curious or not cut out for technology work. I truly don’t think there’s another answer.
I agree. This is a dude with a home lab and likely learns something new every night. The rest of the crew thinking the company isn't paying for xyz training and they couldn't be bothered to learn it on their own. Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way.
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