[ori_prior]

This level of dependence on certain tools is neither rare nor unprecedented.

Your run-of-the-mill business drone will be trained on Word/Excel/Outlook and be hard to impossible to retrain on anything else (either because of actual stupidity or resistance to change). This already starts at school where "Informatik" is often just learning where to click in Microsoft products.

Similarly, tradespeople often specialize in certain tools and products. Your average car repair guy will often be forced to specialize in one brand of car. Your home appliance guy will preferrably sell and repair one brand of washing machine, dryer, dishwasher.

[jhartwig]

'actual stupidity'... gotta love the general disdain of the 'run of the mill business drone'... It's funny my wife is a run of the mill business drone. She thinks IT is a bunch of assholes. I would say she is probably right. Way to keep things going.

[majesticglue]

and IT "assholes" think the run of the mill business drones are "assholes" as well. Their inability to be effective at their jobs tend to make IT lives worse because they can't understand what IT workers do but IT workers can understand what the basic run of the mill business drones do...and their work tends to be a bunch of pointless meetings.

Yeah, I work at a corporate office and have made it a mission to see what kind of work they do, and majority of the time...it's pointless meetings and meetings that involve pointing to IT workers and saying "do this". I check many of their daily schedules, and see what kind of stuff they talk about in meetings...just wow. Am I an "asshole"? Sure you can call me that, but I can call them useless in turn because I wonder how many more qualified people out there who can replace these workers.

[jmye]

> but IT workers can understand what the basic run of the mill business drones do...and their work tends to be a bunch of pointless meetings.

What an ironic comment.

Sorry, any early-career worker looking down their nose at anyone else (or pretending to have any idea what their job entails, especially because they “looked at a calendar”) might as well go back to middle school. They definitely need to grow up.

[photonerd]

While true, it’s very fair to say that many (possibly most) meetings in a corporate environment contain a lot of absolutely pointless time wasting.

I say this with the perspective of someone who has slowly had to have many more of these meetings added to his calendar over the years.

Some are very important, some are reasonable but often bloated, but so many are a waste of time.

At the very least: they’re 5-10 mins of work spread over an hour. It’s occasionally maddening.

[ryan_lane]

I find that a lot of engineers don't understand good communication, and definitely don't understand the value of relationships.

When I was really junior, I'd go to meetings and think that the vast majority of the time was wasted. As I became more senior, I realized that a lot of that wasted time is for providing context, relationship building, and alignment. You may not need those things for your current task, but your leadership and partner teams may need these things.

Yes, a lot of meetings could be emails, and a lot of meetings could be better run (agendas and objectives in the invite, action items assigned at the end), but unless you're working somewhere awful, most meetings probably have a reasonable purpose and aren't all filler. Lots of jobs require way more meetings, and probably aren't filled with context relevant to you.

Looking down on non-engineering positions is a personality trait I associate with inexperience. It's absolutely something I'd consider when denying a promo.

[jmye]

> When I was really junior, I'd go to meetings and think that the vast majority of the time was wasted. As I became more senior, I realized that a lot of that wasted time is for providing context, relationship building, and alignment. You may not need those things for your current task, but your leadership and partner teams may need these things.

100% agree. In early or IC roles, it's easy to think "just let me go do X" (or worse, "talking about X or Y is a waste of time when X is the obvious answer") without seeing the bigger picture that there's tremendous value in making sure other teams are aware of what X is, why it's important, and having a chance to weigh in or ask questions. Certainly there are valid complaints about some people's meetings, but those shouldn't overshadow the alignment/communication value meetings can have.

[belorn]

> I realized that a lot of that wasted time is for providing context, relationship building, and alignment.

A lot of that seems to be about office politics, which historically been something which engineers and office workers in general has disliked. It is a generally unhappy fact that relationship building and office alignments is what dictate who get promoted, who get raises, who get the desired assignments and who don't.

It might be true that those who refuse playing that game is associated with inexperience. In my experience, employees who get tired of it generally leave large companies, which leaves behind only inexperience employees or those who enjoy the game.

[photonerd]

Looking down on, yes. Suffering nonsense meetings silently? No.

My entire point was that there is a major difference between the two & that while the instinct to look down on others for this organizational symptom is immature, it’s not unfounded or without basis to highlight the issue: they’re blaming the wrong thing however.

And I often find that in those types of meeting communication & relationship building is the absolute last thing that is happening. Most of these meetings are CYA, checklist, type meetings.

Meetings that literally only exist to allow someone to demonstrate they had a meeting about something.

Worse, the actual communication that is happening is usually in side channels.

[totallywrong]

> and IT "assholes" think the run of the mill business drones are "assholes" as well. Their inability to be effective at their jobs tend to make IT lives worse because they can't understand what IT workers

Have you ever dealt with an average IT department in a non-tech company? This attitude doesn't help anyone and I really want to believe that only a small minority of tech people think of any other worker anywhere as an "asshole".

[yesco]

I'm a Sr. SE at a large medical device company and can confirm that our IT dept is filled with assholes. We do everything we can to keep systems out of their hands because they are so difficult to work with compared to every other part of the company.

I get they have to deal with a bunch of technical inepts constantly falling for phishing attacks and occasionally teams will make outrageous requests to them that simply can't be done, but their attitude is terrible.

If you ask for something simple but "scary", like a firewall or internal network change, they will immediately assume you are just some idiot and speak dismissively to you in a very obvious manner. It's extremely frustrating because they won't even bother to read your emails that justify the change and will just invent some unrelated excuses about why they can't or say they will get back to you later (they don't).

Ironically the only way to get anything done through them is to have my team members create a bunch of duplicate tickets (1 per person), and schedule multiple pointless meetings with them that essentially just consist of me reading my emails to them out loud.

Non-technical teams in the company get the same treatment but lack the technical background to counter them. Frequently I've had team leaders come to me to get a second opinions on the stuff IT tells them and it bothers me how much they seem to clearly exaggerate the difficulty of things. To the point where I can't help but wonder if they are just pretending to know what they are doing, and use their better-than-you attitude to mask their own ineptitude.

So overall I feel the negative reputation of IT departments is earned.

[mschuster91]

> and it bothers me how much they seem to clearly exaggerate the difficulty of things.

Scotty Engineering principle at work. I'm no stranger to that, it's often enough the only strategy keeping higher management from completely swamping you with work.

[ori_prior]

It's not that it usually is the Scotty Engineering principle. It is more often a hedge against unforeseen complications, because if you give a realistic estimate that would be true for 90% of the tickets, the 10% will come to bite you. So to not get chewed up for providing realistic 90%-true estimates, you give 99.9%-true estimates that are far higher, but with just a .1% chance of being screwed instead of a 10% chance. Which is, at 10 tickets per day, getting chewed up daily vs. once every two weeks or so.

[Bloating]

reminds me of the saying "don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that guy behind the tree".

Its always us vs them.

[Dylan16807]

I someone can't be retrained, and it's not because they're being stubborn, what other reason do you have?

Is it better or worse to assume they're being a problem on purpose?

I won't say 'average' but I will say 'common enough to make changing software a huge issue'.

[PhasmaFelis]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36601986

[ramranch]

Many devs are the same, hence loyalty to a language

[tourmalinetaco]

Unless its Webdev, because from the outside looking in it seems there’s some new fad moving through every few months.

[DropInIn]

Who's the a-hole:

The person trying to make things better and seeks out knowledge at great cost

Or

The person who is willfully ignorant and actively refuses knowledge handed on a platter?

Because one of those is the typical IT pro and the other is the worker drone....

[mr_toad]

Don’t worry, the people in IT don’t like the other people in IT. Devs think that security are a bunch of a-holes, DBAs hate the devs, etc etc.

[username135]

lol

Seriously, some looking down the nose comments

[dragonwriter]

> Your average car repair guy will often be forced to specialize in one brand of car.

Not because of skill issues, but maybe forced because they work for a dealership that sells a particular make exclusively or, less often, a specialty shop; most “car repair guys” outside of those environments have to be generalists.

> Your home appliance guy will preferrably sell and repair one brand of washing machine, dryer, dishwasher.

IME, the sales are done by shops that carry many brands, and delivery, installation, repair donw by firms that often have relations with the retailers and handle whatever you get from them, including multiple unita of different brands that come together with the same team. They may also have relations with the manufacturers, but those don’t seem usually to be exclusive.

[ori_prior]

> Not because of skill issues, but maybe forced because they work for a dealership that sells a particular make exclusively or, less often, a specialty shop; most “car repair guys” outside of those environments have to be generalists.

Yes, I'd expect any car guy to be able to change your tires. Or change your oil. But even resetting the oil-change alarm or tire-pressure sensor can be a hurdle here:

Manufacturers also use skill issues to their advantage to bind tradespeople. Modern cars do need manufacturer-specific diagnostic devices that used to be unobtainable for independent shops. Since that practice has been largely forbidden by the authorities, now the software, cabling, and diagnostic output are made intentionally hard to understand without having taken the corresponding lessons that the manufacturer provides for a modest fee.

[TheCapn]

Perhaps you're using a broad/generic example to try and make the point but I'll say this:

If a seasoned mechanic is unable to figure out how to reset the Maintenance Reminder or look up how to sync Tire Pressure sensors, run away.

In the same way that one can use knowledge of one programming language as a means to leapfrog into other languages, other skilled trades are similar. Perhaps there's something that could be said about an ICE mechanic trying to dabble on Electric but that's not the point you're making. So yeah. I know you're trying to make a point about lock in, but when I think of people I want to hire for tasks who might say "Oh, sorry, you have a Volkswagen and I only know how to work on GMC" I wouldn't take my GMC to them either. It shows a fundamental lack of skill in that they don't understand the broader concepts and their universal applications. If I, a programmer, can figure out my Volkswagen, my GMC, my Mazda, my Nissan, certainly a mechanic can. If my appliance repair specialist can only do Whirlpool when I ask for help on a Bosch that's red flags.

One might specialize. Sure. But to refuse? Weird. But I fear I might be getting lost in the weeds here because its all about the approach. "Sorry, too busy to take on work on things that aren't my specialty": yep, understood. "Sorry, I don't know <model> I only know <other model>" bad.

[hakfoo]

I know mechanics in particular can be quite chauvinistic.

In the US, for a very long time, you had to find an "import specialist" mechanic, even long past the point where Japanese brands had gone mainstream. Part of this might have been because of the availability of metric tools at the time; my family had a set of metric wrenches specifically because they had to do occasional light maintenance on their early Datsuns and Toyotas.

I can recall that the mechanic in my neighbourhood was decidedly unwilling to service a new Hyundai in the late '90s. He complained they were 'disposable'.

[imchillyb]

Mechanics are in business to be profitable.

Specialized items require specialized tools. Specialized tools, like all other tools, require maintenance and they change.

A shop dealing with domestic produced automobiles can significantly reduce profit-bleed by not servicing vehicles that require special tools, special diagnostics, special machines, etc.

It's simply a math equation. Do I serve enough of these vehicles daily/quarterly/yearly to make these expenditures profitable for me? The shops you're referring to answered no to that question.

[ozim]

Try to get a French car in Poland, most shops are used to deal with VW, Audi.

It is not impossible but if you try to go to a random shop you found on Google and fix your Citroen or Renault you might be surprised.

[wisty]

It could just be a parts issue. A lot of mechanics will work on pretty much any car, if they have the parts, but if it's not a popular model then they don't want it sitting in their shop for a week while they order parts.

I guess some mechanics will prefer to work with a smaller number of models, because they're much faster if they're familiar with the model, but new models come out every year, and they need to learn how to fix those. If a mechanic can learn to fix the newest VW, they can learn to fix the newest Renault, it just might not be worth their time if they have enough work to do.

[Dah00n]

I'm not from Poland but I hope this is hyperbolic. Parts delivery is once or twice a day delivery in most cities in Europe, no matter if it is Renault, VW or a Kawasaki motorcycle. Of course a part can have longer delivery time but not because it is a Renault instead of a Audi. At least not at any reputable delivery business in modern parts of Europe (which I would think Poland is a part of even though I haven't been there since the 90's).

[ozim]

So that is circling back to original topic.

I believe person learning GA could learn any other analytics tool. It is just not worth their time.

[MSFT_Edging]

That's often certain German cars in the US. IE some shops will just not work on modern Minis. Plenty of shops will avoid weird, niche cars.

Any mechanic can fix a Citroen, but is it worth the floor time it'd take to get the parts and figure out french quirks vs working on something they know that they'd make the same money in a third the time.

Having done shade tree work on various cars, I'd totally turn down any Subaru engine bay work if I was already close to swamped.

[ChainOfFools]

Once upon a time I was the proud owner of a third gen RX7, proud that is until the powertrain warranty ended and I had to go outside the dealership network for minor repairs. Basically your options were... go back to the dealership and pay unsubsidized warranty rates (double or triple what independent mechanic charged for "normal" engine work), or go to questionable looking characters running "performance" shops who wanted to side port everything they could get on a lift. And still pay double or triple the normal mechanic rate.

[MobiusHorizons]

I think you are missing at least one important point. The reason the mechanic can’t work on the other brand of car is not knowledge or skill, but equipment. It costs money to buy the full suite of equipment required to correctly service a particular manufacturer’s vehicles. It often makes much more sense to specialize and make more use of fewer expensive tools than to have tools for everything and have only marginally more business.

[Dah00n]

Well, that's a very American way of doing things that most places simply don't do. The norm is for tools to be compatible with all brands and at best it is an added option to unlock or a pay per use. You can do 99% of the diagnostics with a Wish Bluetooth dongle and a free android app if you wish, since by law it is an open standard.

Most specialty equipment costs less than a mechanic can earn in a day. You even order the parts from the same company no matter if the bumper is for a Mazda, VW, or an Alfa. Or a Kawasaki motorcycle for that matter. This lock-in behavior is, luckily, mostly illegal.

[MobiusHorizons]

Diagnostics yes, but try to reset the warning light on a German car after fixing the fault. This can apply even when replacing seemingly purely mechanical parts (I think some suspension parts on bmw/Mercedes). You will need vag-com for any vw/Audi and something else proprietary for Mercedes or bmw

[kenjackson]

There’s actually a far better reason they don’t retrain. There aren’t better tools. Or the tools are basically carbon copies (Google Docs and Sheets).

Show me a product that provides so much more value for my team than Excel that it would be worth a retrain.

[Falkon1313]

My first office software was WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS. Then Lotus Smartsuite, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, now LibreOffice, with occasional bits of Google Docs. I never had to be retrained.

Here's the thing, for 90% of use cases, those are all effectively equivalent. You really shouldn't need any retraining whatsoever. A spreadsheet's a spreadsheet, and a word processor is a word processor. You type the text in the box and then hit print or whatever. Nothing new to learn.

Now admittedly, there are some power user features which are different, which is why I said they're only 90% equivalent. But most people don't use those anyway. Yet they will intensely oppose using a different but 90% equivalent thing because they haven't spent years being trained to use it - even though it's almost exactly the same thing they're using.

It's just a weird and bizarre mental hangup that seems to be natural to many humans.

If you're in tech, you will see the same thing with programming languages, frameworks, applications, etc. And it's on both sides, not just the users, but also the people hiring them too. "Oh, you've only worked with WordPress, you haven't been trained in Drupal?" "Oh, that's PHP, I only work in Python." "Well we're looking for a Ruby developer, not a C# developer." "That's React, I only know Vue.js"

It's mostly all general-purpose programming languages, libraries, and frameworks. Sure some details are different. There's a bit of a learning curve. But if you are actually capable with one, then picking up another nearly equivalent alternative should not be viewed as some impossibly complex thing that will take years of retraining.

[ori_prior]

You are both right and wrong. It depends on the intelligence of the person you are dealing with.

There is a thing called "intelligence". There are several definitions of it, the one I'd like to use here is "the ability to infer general principles and common workings from small isolated samples and apply those principles and workings".

So if you are sufficiently intelligent, you can infer, from observing a few (or even one) doorhandle being pushed, that his is the general way to open doors. You can then apply this principle maybe even to different doors, windows, rotating knobs, etc. The fewer samples you need to learn and the broader your application range after learning, the more intelligent you are. In the stupidest case, one only learns to open one specific kind of door in one specific way, like a cat might.

You are writing from the point of view of someone sufficiently intelligent to derive the working principles of software and apply it to other software packages that generally serve the same purpose. However, there are people who are not intelligent enough to do that. Those people do get by by just following instructions, learning by rote which buttons to click for which purpose. Those people are the "door opening cats" of the office application world.

Less intelligent people like those do exist (50% do have an IQ<100 after all...), they do get jobs and they can be successful within limits. Just as Stackoverflow/ChatGPT-copy&paste-programmers do get by somehow.

Which is why I'm also a fan of intelligence-test-type job application processes. The ability to learn, for higher-level jobs, is far more important than preexisting knowledge. And intelligence is the best known predictor for the ability to learn.

[max51]

Mathcad is the only thing that comes to mind. It is very unique and a massive productivity boost for engineering calcs.

[inetknght]

> There aren’t better tools. Or the tools are basically carbon copies

LibreOffice, free open source software. Just as good as Excel and... free.

[teamonkey]

LibreOffice is a perfectly functional spreadsheet for basic spreadsheet tasks. It is, however, not in the same league as Excel for more advanced spreadsheet tasks. Sometimes as a user you just want to be able to use the software that works better, you know?

[gitaarik]

Yeah, that is the trade-off; if you keep using the proietary software that you're familiar with, you don't have to relearn, but you'll be more dependent on 1 company. But if you spend some time up-front into learning a free software alternative, you won't be dependent on a single company.

But yeah, for some things there are not yet complete free software alternatives, but the gap is really getting small these days. I think for most common use cases for most people, LibreOffice is more than enough. If you need more advanced features that are only available in the propietary variant, try to find ways to not be dependent on that feature, or find an alternative way to do it with free software. If you are creative, there are usually many ways how you can do your work using free software.

But yeah it does take some dedication to this idea. But what you get back is probably, on the long run, gonna be of more benefit to you for the future than if you would invest it in learning the propietary software. Unless you really have a special love for the propietary software company, and you are sure you want to grow more and more into their ecosystem and have no need to have any personal freedom over the software you use.

[leksak]

Yeah, but for retraining to be worth it then in the future your people have to be better or more productive than they would be with Excel and it'll also impact every new hire you make that needs to do the same retraining. Just as good is not good enough. That the tool is free is rarely a strong enough reason especially if there are licenses around already.

[BizarroLand]

Home appliance repair is not a specialized job. Maybe you have some sort of memory about the Maytag repair man, but that is just branding, just like DeBeers with their diamond monopoly.

Home appliance repair is knowing the general layout of each major appliance, a bit of specialized knowledge on how to dismantle them without braking them, and which modules are responsible for which function, and finally knowing how to source the replacement parts and knowing which common items are best kept on hand for convenience.

Very few people are doing board level repair for appliances, especially when the replacemeent boards are typically very inexpensive for any modern machine (save for main boards and for induction plates in induction stoves, which are typically so expensive that it is smarter to replace the entire appliance rather than repair the broken module).

[PhasmaFelis]

> Your run-of-the-mill business drone will be trained on Word/Excel/Outlook and be hard to impossible to retrain on anything else (either because of actual stupidity or resistance to change).

Change purely for the sake of change is bad and people are right to resist it.

The vast majority of businesses have no compelling reason to switch off Microsoft Office. Would the world be a better place if there were more feasible options? Maybe. But that's not the concern of either a random business or its employees.

[Pxtl]

I'm old enough to remember when every young self-taught sysadmin was getting their MCSE or A+ certs.