The Background
Before I started my career, like many who came before me and many who will come after, I did a lot of dabbling with computers when I was young. I lived before the days of the Internet as we know it now, and computers were very different. As a youth, I played around on bulletin boards online before there were websites, on my family’s Tandy computer. No Windows, no web pages, just the exciting sound of connecting to the Internet with that fax-machine-like dial-up sound.
I think for anyone old enough, that started the myth that we are all “computer guys.” It was complicated in the beginning. Things rarely ever worked how you planned them too, and most of the “easy stuff” was actually so complex that it scared off the grownups (or so it seemed back then). For me, and my circle of friends it was about writing software. In our case, ultimate games and little utilities that would irritate our computer teachers in high school.
Amongst my friends, we knew that if you wanted to get time on the computer, you had to handy with it. There were few people to help you when there were problems. At home if problems started, you’d be the first source that everyone thought was a cause. So it was no question that we really were early amateur computer techs. Our parents asked us for help, our neighbors, and often our teachers at school.
It continued into my actual career. I worked at a travel agency as a web developer, but more often than not found myself working on some totally unrelated project. Map the network, Brian. Clone four computers for new hires today, Brian. I was becoming the myth, that every person who is proficient in a computer career is an IT guy. Don’t get me wrong, I highly respect the career field, and have a tremendous amount of experience (I actually worked as an IT consultant and in the career field for a number of years).
The Story
That being said, it seems to be something you never escape. Just yesterday I ran into a problem that I felt compelled to solve on my own machine. I have a Macbook Pro that I work on daily for most of my tasks and have a multiple monitor setup. The second external monitor had a major issue displaying windows from Parallels. Big surprise, I have to run Windows on my Mac to accomplish all my development chores. The windows were totally scrambled and looked more like a seismograph than what they were supposed to.
Like any annoyed person that sits behind a monitor and keyboard, I dove into solving the problem. Several hours later I had that triumphant feeling when it was fixed and my monitor was working. I realized something. It’s totally my fault. I’m a propagator of the myth. I love that feeling when a good hard problem is solved. I dive right in. When someone in my family calls and says “help me!” – I always say yes. It’s because that kid inside me that was sitting beside my dad helping him navigate that new complicated machine, and seeing his approval, wants to harken back to that same feeling.
The Moral
I guess the moral of the story is, the myth is okay. No, we aren’t all IT professionals. Trust me there are some very qualified people out there who are. It’s great that your family, your friends, and your community have that kind of respect for you. At the end of the day, I’m grateful. I’m going to keep on fixing problems when I find them, and when someone else can’t figure it out on their own.
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