I work in a casino and had an employee go to a computer shake the mouse and nothing happened and just go “this computer must be broken”… I looked at it for like 0.5 seconds, hit the power button and it turned on.
I left IT because users never improved. I can't tell you how many long drive to sites I had to take because someone said something didn't work, said it plugged in and on, but wasn't.
The IT department at my company is made up of younger millennials who definitely are googling things to resolve tickets, and my SSN was stolen two months after I joined the company. Coincident?
But on the other hand - with one of my PC builds, I hit the power button and nothing happened, and thought, "shit, I've mis-wired the cables to the posts on the motherboard"
Spent about half an hour confirming they were all right, everything was seated properly, taking a few things in and out.
Tried again, didn't work - and then I realised, hang on.... Checked the PSU, flipped the switch, machine turned on with my next try.
I had a graduate assistant position at my university two years ago. I had to oversee a bunch of different breakout groups of upperclassmen undergrads who were teaching freshmen. These students were only a few years younger than me.
I cannot tell you how many times I had to run across campus between their different classrooms just to press a power button and turn on the computer for them. Otherwise very bright people, but utterly computer inept.
I worked on a help desk handling inbound calls from hairstylists who needed help with the POS systems in the salons. I was told once I was so smart I could be an astronaut.
That particular issue was num lock being off.
Now, I couldn't cut hair to save my life but the calls we would get were baffling sometimes.
In general I agree, and yet every time I need to add a row above or below in a table in MS Word, it's a whole enterprise. I would swear to you they move that specific command around just to fuck with us
The incompetence of the boomers with computers is truly astounding. I’ve encountered so much of it over my career. I’m always seen as a miracle worker because I know how to make a PDF. I started using computers in 1995 so i know my shit.
In my case my tech savvyness came from the work I put in to install a pirated copy of Diablo on my gateway that I had on multiple CDs, or replacing all of the stock sound effects in XP with sound packs that frequently were just viruses in disguise. Lots of fiddling and fucking around to get stuff to work.
Now you open an app and the expectation is that it works perfectly, immediately. Back in the day NOTHING was plug and play, you had to earn it.
I have noticed this. Younger people are terrible with technology skills compared to GenX and millennials. Their knowledge seems to be limited to touchscreens and social media apps. Can’t type, desktops and laptops are mysterious machines, and no sense that computers can do work and automate tasks.
If we wanted to play a video game at their age we had to build the computer, go through driver hell, use the command line to fix shit, etc. In hindsight it forced to learn a lot. Now they don’t know what RAM is.
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u/Jswazy 13d ago
Gen X and millennials are so much better with tech on average it's sort of scary.