[macintologist]

http://www.slash7.com/pages/vampires

It's so regular you could set your watch by it. The decay of a community is just as predictable as the decay of certain stable nuclear isotopes. As soon as an open source project, language, or what-have-you achieves a certain notoriety—its half-life, if you will—they swarm in, seemingly draining the very life out of the community itself.

They are the Help Vampires. And I'm here to stop them.

Here's a blog called AfterApple where the guy talked about what it was like to work at Applecare and how degrading it was

http://www.afterapple.com/adam-knigh...-and-applecare

You can only work in a technical service position for a limited amount of time before it loses its luster and shine, and you start to follow. Once you've performed a job for several years, you get into the groove and know how it's done. The knowledge is all there, somewhere, and it becomes routine to just look it up and spit it out on demand. You keep doing this, time and again, and eventually become a fixture: unchanging, unmoving, static.

The problems compound when this job involves the general public. Any technical job that involves helping masses of uncensored human beings understand technology will eventually wear the average man down, causing him to go bat-**** crazy and scream at the top of his lungs while trying to take out a swath of them with a surprise barrage of old SCSI cards. The largest catalyst for such violent behavior and general mental breakdown is best described by stating, simply, that most people exist at a significant intellectual delta from that burnt-out husk of a technology worker.

This doesn't have to pose a problem in an ideal world. In an ideal world, common people would be willing to accept advice from anyone capable of delivering it. In this real world, however, half of those that acknowledge that they need such assistance will turn violently against anyone they seek help from with such winning phrases as: "What do you think I am, stupid?" In most of the remaining cases, the user is a support vampire and that simply ruins those willing to try and help as badly as being berated for offering the answer. This behavior is evident in forums, mailing lists, in person, and most especially on the phone with technical support.

As a technical support agent, you develop mental calluses that help you move on and through the chaff and treasure the customers that are amiable, acknowledge that they need help, and are happy with the answer they're given. Genuinely happy. A good number of calls are actually like that and make the job bearable. A similar number are very, very far from it.

However, the core reason of why I recently quit my job in AppleCare is that in commodity technical jobs there's only so far you can go before you arrive at the end of the career path for the masses of technical agents and hit the lid where only five or ten pass upwards. Ever. When you get there, you have two choices for moving ahead: wait for the person in the cushy job you want to leave or die to make room and pray that it's you among the masses that applied that gets it, or move ahead elsewhere. After waiting for someone to bite it in a freak keyboarding accident for four years, it was time to go with Plan B.

So one day, when I had a life outside of the company set up and ready, I walked up to my manager and said: iQuit.

[analogika]

A big part of being in tech support is being able to cope with customers.

If that's a problem, you simply suck at your job - regardless of how good your technical expertise is.

I'm sorry he didn't have the competence to rise through the ranks.

Cry me a river.

[dampeoples]

Yeah, no kidding. There's a job at Mcdonalds waiting for him, oh wait, my bad, he can't deal with people...

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by analogika

A big part of being in tech support is being able to cope with customers.

If that's a problem, you simply suck at your job - regardless of how good your technical expertise is.

I'm sorry he didn't have the competence to rise through the ranks.

Cry me a river.

That's a bit like saying, "Working with heavy, dangerous equipment is part and parcel of working in a factory. If you can't handle it, you suck at your job. Now go make my **** with your two little bloody stumps."

There's no particular competence involved in taking needless abuse. If you can do it, fine, but berating someone for not liking being abused seems pretty silly to me. I think a very good number of people probably don't like being abused, and I don't blame them for moving on to another job that will be less unpleasant to them.

[analogika]

I don't blame him for moving on.

I blame him for complaining about not moving up through the ranks on a job he's not cut out for.

I work in retail. I enjoy it because of the nice customers; the ones that give me abuse are politely seen to the exit. I'm probably never gonna be a store manager because I'm simply not the type for it (nor would I want to).

Now excuse me while I go whine on my blog about it.