What I Have Learned in a Technical World

Almost seven years ago, I joined Thrive Networks as an Account Manager. I had come from a purely administrative background. I knew nothing about technology. I even remember during one of my first interviews being asked if I knew what “XP” was and had to answer honestly, “No”. Really, I knew absolutely nothing.

Being a non-technical employee surrounded by network engineers had its challenges. Over the years, I have learned a lot from being around technology. I now know what Raid 5 is, what Virtualization means, and I can tell you for certain the Internet is not a series of tubes. Can I build an Exchange box? No. Can I troubleshoot your bandwidth issues? No.

What I can do is give you the Top 5 Things I have learned being an end-user just like you working at an Outsourced IT Firm.. These tips won’t get you promoted to CTO, but they will surely help you make your own IT experience better.

Top 5 Things I Have Learned Working at an Outsourced IT Service Company

(1) Do NOT Save to Your Desktop

It amazes me how many people I know still save documents directly to their desktops. I see this when I visit clients, speak with friends, and visit my parents. If your hard drive crashes then you lose everything on your desktop. Do not learn this lesson the hard way, because you are playing with fire if you do this. Trust me – every hard drive will eventually die. Check with your IT department or your Thrive Engineer on where the best places to store documents are. Save them to your file server or to a home directory where you know they are backed up safely and can be recovered in an emergency.

(2) “Just Admit It!”

We all have had the misfortune of getting hit with spyware or a virus. No matter how careful we are, it is going to happen. Even with the latest and greatest protection, it can still happen. When clients call our Remote Support Center, we frequently hear “I don’t know how this happened” or “I was just working in Outlook writing an email when all of a sudden I got all these pop ups.” My favorite line of all is “I was not on any bad sites.”

First of all, most people do not just get infected on these so called “bad sites”. It can happen from sites we are familiar with. Second, there is no benefit to not being up front on what happened. Sending an Engineer on a wild goose chase benefits neither party. By admitting that you were on MySpace or on Orbitz when the problem started will only help the network engineer trying to resolve your issue get you back up and running faster. They may know of this site being compromised and may have a quick fix.

(3) You are Not an Engineer

I am always so surprised how many people I run into that are experts at IT. They seem to know the problem, the best fix, and are always telling Engineers how to do their job. I learned early on to just let the experts handle it. Tell them the problem or what you are trying to accomplish and kindly step out of the way. Engineers are trying to help you. Just because you have installed iTunes on your PC or know what a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is, this does not mean you’re a certified Engineer. Don’t tell them what to do; let them do it for you.

(4) There is a Limit to RAM

These days, we can get computers loaded with RAM. I see people with up to 8GB’s on their machines, but most people are not so lucky. A lot of people are still running on 2GBs of RAM or less. As technology moves forward and our work environment evolves, most employees are running more and more applications at that same time. Before you complain about network speed, take a look at how many programs you are running. Do you have iTunes, MS Outlook, AIM, QuickBooks, and two Excel spreadsheets open all while searching Orbitz for a good deal on a flight? If the answer is yes, then that may be the reason why your machine is slow. Understand that there are limitations to your machine’s processing capacity. Ask yourself, “Is it imperative for me to be running all these applications at once?” If your answer is “Yes”, then make sure your amount of RAM is adequate. Of course, you could always close a window or two.

(5) No Need for Multiple Clicks

When I am working with clients, co-workers, family and friends, I’m constantly reminded of the “multiple-click phenomenon”. This happens when a computer hangs or freezes. First reaction? Click frantically multiple times because for some reason this is going to help the issue. I find it fascinating. It is just like driving on a flat tire. If your tire is flat, should you keep driving because maybe it will re-inflate?

The fact is that if your computer is hanging or freezing, it is trying to sort itself out. With each additional click, you are only adding more and more for it to sort though, making the problem worse. Notice that when the computer finally starts recovering, it has to go through the 50 or so clicks you did while it was frozen. So next time your machine hangs, just let it fix itself and unfreeze. There is no need for those 50 or so frantic mouse clicks.

Like I said, these tips are not going to make you CTO, but they will certainly make for a better IT experience.

Do you have any interesting tips to share? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below.

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