[whalesalad]

Working at the Apple Store as a sales person has helped me IMMENSELY in my career, not only in terms of understanding how human beings approach technology but from a sales standpoint as well. In the first startup I was a part of, every single member of the 3 person team did email support for our school teacher userbase. Do it. Everyone needs to do it. Doing this kind of work is very grounding and humbling.

When you box yourself into the "But, I'm an engineer" corner and decide it's beneath you to talk to customers, you limit yourself. Don't do that. Become a more well-rounded person. Talk to your users. Understand them. Empathize with them. It will make you a better engineer. And if you're a solo founder or part of a small team, it's even more critical that you do this.

[SyneRyder]

To emphasize "don't think it's beneath you to talk to customers", there's the story of when William from Microsoft took a phone support call:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=...

[amelius]

It's easy to have a good attitude when it's not your main line of work.

[dogles]

OTOH, he was too busy to take the follow up call.. ;)

[javajosh]

Yeah, I totally agree with this. Too often we forget the wide-eyed innocence with which people approach technology, their half-knowledge which secretly terrifies them. They understand, somehow, the intricate pattern they control, and fear messing it up. (Which is actually a very good place to start learning to be a good sysadmin, but I digress...)

One way to empathize with users is to recognize that, to them, your software is a combination of an IRS form and the game Myst. It's filled with inscrutable, unknowable, questions, each of which, in any combination, produce arbitrary state changes in the rest of your program - and perhaps even the rest of the machine (or the internet). What's incredible to me is that this is not an unreasonable state. Real-world software has been forged in the fire of market forces, and contributed by remarkable individuals. Many of them have known computer science theory, but more than a few did not. Indeed, many computer science PhD has gone to his grave without writing a single useful program for other people to use! This, to me, is quite sad.

But I digress.

[reificator]

Compared to the average adventure game that came before it, Myst was actually fairly straightforward in how all of its pieces interacted. Especially because players had basically no inventory.

King's Quest seems a more fair comparison IMO.

[danso]

Or if you can't switch jobs just yet, and you have time to kill at an Apple store, sit in on one of their daily tech sessions. I once went with my mom to the "Basics: iPad" session and couldn't believe how basic the topics were in the description [0]. But the attendees had even more fundamental issues than could be covered, such as file management, e.g. how to move a photo from the iPad to their home desktop hooked to the printer. I know that is actually not simple (it may even be covered in the Intermediate version of the class), but it's the kind of everyday feature that users expect to be simple.

[0] https://www.apple.com/today/event/ipad-basics-63381241581444...

[heartbreak]

I don't personally have a wireless printer (mine is networked though), but I've noticed that all of my non-techie relatives have bought a $50 HP in the last 2 years, and somehow they all have it hooked up to WiFi as the only connection. The printers must also implement AirPrint, because they show up on my Grandma's iPhone when she tells an email to print.

Printing photos directly from an iPhone was solved for everyone else and I barely even noticed it happening because I still print from my laptop.

[PetahNZ]

As a developer, a backend app developer for that matter, I still don't know an easy way to do this. I would either sync it to my Google Drive, or fire up a local FTP server on my phone to do it.

[lwansbrough]

> fire up a local FTP server on my phone to do i

I see you’re an Android user!

Simple joke, don’t get flame baited. I’m sure there is something similar on Android but on iOS all you have to do is AirDrop to your computer. Takes 2 seconds.

[slfnflctd]

What if your computer is a PC? ducks

[ep103]

email it : )

[snuxoll]

I spent 4 years working customer support, technical support and service desk gigs before I got a chance to enter software development (and now DevOps). As much a slog as these jobs could be at times, the soft skills and years of practice walking anyone from a total novice through a power-user through a problem has been invaluable.

I don’t call people users anymore, every employee at my company that I support is a customer of mine - I’ve learned over the years that the vocabulary change can really affect how you interact with people. My team writes internal LOB applications, we’re a medical billing company and not some hip startup; when you call every employee in the company “user” there’s a certain level of animosity (unconsciously best case) - they USE what you provide, it’s the same reason I’ve grown to hate the term “consumer”. A customer is someone you have a relationship with, respect and trust go both ways - ultimately the goal is to have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Being human even I have moments where my level of empathy drops below acceptable levels, when people keep reanimating dead tickets with unrelated issues I can get a little curt (don’t do that, now I’m going to send this to the service desk since development doesn’t work with the spam filter) - but overall I really enjoy the relationships I’ve built with everyone I support. When I get 20 tickets in the morning because a critical application is down I’m not racing because we’re losing $10,000 a minute or to meet an SLA - it’s there’s over 800 people, many of whom I know individually, who are relying on me to get it working again so they can get back to work (and for a production-focused company we have a shockingly low turnover rate, our employees generally love what they do).

[caio1982]

I consider this to be a very valuable advice no matter you work with software engineering or not; it's useful for any slightly complicated business from a costumer POV.

[hindsightbias]

I remember a Myers-Briggs-ish consultant taking 40 devs in a room and putting all the INTP/J types on one side and the 3 or 4 of us in the middle or other side and the hanging jaws when he pointed to us and said "Those people are all your CUSTOMERS!"

[iDemonix]

My jaw would be hanging if a company thought Myerrs Briggs was anything other than garbage.

[unlikelymordant]

sorry, who is 'us' in your story?