Computer terms 'confuse workers'
Most office workers find computer jargon as difficult to understand as a foreign language, a survey suggests.
Three quarters of workers waste more than an hour a week deciphering what a technical term means, the poll found.
Phrases like jpeg, java script and cookies are among the problem terms highlighted by Computer People.
The recruitment firm, which questioned 1,500 workers, says effective IT professionals "understand the need to tailor their levels of jargon".
My opinion... Go on guess. That's right. If these people are too lazy (or dumb) to learn the basics of the tools that they use every day, then maybe they should consider a career change. As far as I'm concerned, that's like a car mechanic saying 'I don't know what a sparkplug is' or a chippie saying 'A saw? What's that?'.
I have people in my office who simply refuse to learn how to sort a column in excel, or print double sided or use the tab key in word rather than lots of spaces. Doesn't matter how often I show them this stuff, it just slides right off em.
I don't subscribe to this 'I'm just not a computer person' gibberish that they spout when you challenge them with it. And I definitely don't appreciate the ones that say 'Well if they'd train me...' Frankly I've had almost no IT training at all in my life. I once went on a Visual Basic course only to find that I already knew everything they tried to teach me. I'm entirely self taught.
And this hour a week to decipher technical terms like cookie or jpeg means? If the numpties just typed em into the help search, they'd find out in about 5 seconds.
I'm not even tech support. I do a little bit of developing and tinkering and stuff, but mostly I read e-mails sleep through tele-conferences and go to meetings. I'm still, apparently, the most qualified person to repair everyone's computers and answer their questions, despite that fact that we have an IT helpdesk and an on-site engineer.
I love it when people walk up to me and start the conversation with 'You're a techie person, aren't you..?' Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
we have a nice little intranet based system at work that allows you to reactivate your network password if you get locked out. It works really well and is nice and quick and easy to use... if you bother to take the 10 seconds to register for it.
There was a lovely e-mail that went round about a year ago, which explained it all, nice and simply, told you how to register and suggested that you do it as soon as possible.
Guess who the only person to bother registering was. Go on guess.
On of the guys down the end of the office locked himself out after his 2 week break this morning. Since it's before 8am, the IT helpdesk isn't open (actually 8am is just their official opening time - you'd be lucky to get an answer before 8.30) so he was cussing and moaning because he couldn't get his password reset.
So I said... "Why don't you use the password reset system on the intranet?"
"The what?" he asked, with a confused expression on his face.
"The password reset system," I explained, "that allows you to reset your password with great ease and even greater speed without having to involve the IT helpdesk. It was set up for just this scenario."
Needless to say, when he received the e-mail about a year ago, not to mention the monthly 'reminder' mails that we've had since then, he's simply hit the delete key, rather than actually read it. The result being that he now has to twiddle his thumbs at his desk until the IT helpdesk opens...
His colleague who had similarly disregarded the e-mails (to the point that he was insistent that they never existed) read up on the system this morning on my insistence. His reaction? "Well I have to fill out a form. I don't have the time."
He then spent half an hour at the opposite end of the office looking at someone's holiday snaps.
No sympathy. No patience. Sorry.
There. Rant over for the day!
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