Did I know how printers work and can fix their printer.
Look, I have a computer science degree (utterly pointless qualification folks don’t get one) and I work in cyber security. I haven’t got a clue how those fuckers work, I don’t know get a brother or something they seem to be fine.
Printers are so cheap nowadays that the solution to every problem is to buy a new one. Paper jam? Out of ink? Random pages coming out with grayscale pictures of demonic forces? Lost the power cable? Buy a new one
Software engineering.
Most people don’t have a clue what we do. Especially management. Most people think we’re code factory workers, just writing code all day. In reality, it is closer to being an artist than it is a factory worker. There’s a ton of thinking, discussion, design, and unfortunately politicking.
Thats interesting. I am one of those people who assumed the job was pretty much just coding all day on some team project. What does your day to day routine look like?
It can vary a lot depending on the day and the company/job. Frequently there are meetings that are update/planning discussions, discussions with one or more other engineers on how to build a given feature, debugging existing code to figure out why it’s not doing the thing we want (which is a different but overlapping skill set with coding).
Ultimately there isn’t really a “typical” day because we wear a lot of different hats. My current job is more coding heavy because I’m at a small startup with only a couple of engineers. In a given week I’m probably doing 10% meetings, 50% coding/debugging/configuration, 20% code review (reviewing other people’s code), and 20% thinking/designing/experimenting with ideas. Those numbers vary a lot though. At a previous job I ended up spending an entire week just doing project management to alleviate my boss’ anxiety over a project (which was somewhat self defeating because it meant I wasn’t getting work done on said project). That job in particular had a lot of politicking and communication which was due to micromanagement.
A lot of what people don’t realize is that we aren’t just building a feature. We’re building a feature while thinking ahead to known or potential future features. How can we build feature A to enable making features B, C, and D easier/better/faster without also making feature E much more difficult or impossible? It’s about building flexibility into the system while also balancing against time and cost restrictions. We as engineers have things that we see as necessary while the business wants more features and it’s necessary to balance the two. At a healthy org that means that there’s a negotiation of priorities between the two forces. If you only focus on the technical stuff, you won’t ship features. If you only focus on the features, how fast you can deliver features will come to a grinding halt. Your system will also start breaking in unexpected ways which takes time away from building features.
It’s kinda a rambly response to your question but I hope it helps.
That because I’m punk and a mosher I must be aggressive and do lots of drugs. i’m only aggressive to shit people who deserve it lol
Mosh pits are surprisingly wholesome if you’re not familiar with them. To an outside observer it just looks like a bunch of aggro idiots beating each other up. To the people in the pit it’s an amazing shared experience of like-minded people, there to enjoy the same thing, having a great time and helping each other up when they fall. The right pit is a sea of positivity, community and endorphins.
I like peaceful hippie jam band noodly noodling nowadays. However, I was born in a mosh pit. There is a time and a place and appropriate selections when it comes to more ”Cerebral Matters” , shall we say. It’s all about keeping the positive vibe a go go! Keep it surreal, friendly and safe. Btw, ya’ll new kittens. Doooo Not! Forget ya’lls safe word(s).
What about the drug part?
never done illegal drugs but sometimes I get zooted on z drugs bc I have insomnia
That I spend all day coding, I spend most my day reading. Code usually but still
That’s so fucking true. If I’m honest its usually trying to figure out how the fuck something actually is supposed to work. Its either by searching stuff online or changing single lines of code until it finally works.
People praise me up for “saving the bees”. Honey bees don’t need saving. It’s the other bees that do, the hundreds of species of bumblebees, mining bees, solitary bees etc etc. Bees that are outcompeted in some areas due to the number of hobbyist beekeepers and commercial bee farms. I’m one of the baddies.
I have a wildlife garden with lots of wild plants and insects and stuff. I thought I was helping the bees but I mean just helping some body make artisanal honey to sell to me at the craft fair?
No, you’re helping all the other pollinators too! Keep a corner of your garden nice and rough, with tumbled bricks or rocks, twigs, dead leaves etc to make a wee nesting spot for bumblebees.
I’ve always been interested in the business side of beekeeping, do you rent out for pollination and is it worth doing?
We get free use of a spot next to an apple orchard, so I guess pollination is our “rent”, plus some honey. I don’t know what arrangement commercial beekeepers have - near us they move 60+ hives in when the oilseed rape (canola) is flowering, then move them again when it’s finished. A guy I was talking to said they reckon they can break even with 300 hives, because one person can deal with that many. More than that they have to employ someone else, and bang go the profits. Sounds like a nightmare. I struggle to cope with 7 hives!
User end hands on IT for the elderly.
that it’s hard. “Oh I could never do your job”
It’s literally a customer service job with tech paint. Reboot the device. Don’t yell at the decrepit person doing their best in a digital world. Collect check and praise.
The amount of times I’ve been called a genius for relogging into someone’s email is greater than 7.
Yeah. Real hard.
Don’t yell at the decrepit person doing their best in a digital world.
I think this is the part some people might struggle with
Every time it gets difficult I imagine cleaning week old fry grease out of the fryer with a coat hanger because it was so clogged. I was making less then.
I love context. It helps so much.
Honestly it’s only bad when they come at it like they know more than you do. 1 out of 100 in my very lucky experience.
Lol, I was the computer genius in my office job because I knew how to change the paper size on the printer from Letter to A4. Soak up the praise!
It’s one of those things I’d probably have to Google because how many times do you do that, but yeah think most people just give up when they hit a technical problem and stop thinking.
Used to be that because I was an expert on Apple platforms, that must mean I can fix a Windows computer. I hadn’t the first clue where anything was. I’ve since learned, however. Because of work. Oh well.
People assume programmers know all about hacking. Because we “know about computers.”
Can you hack Roblox?
Can’t everybody?
Skydiving
Skydivers are not adrenaline (epinephrine) junkies. Adrenaline actually makes you feel terrible. You know that rush and shakes you get when you get hungry? Yeah, THAT’S an adrenaline rush.
No, we go for the same thing runners do. Endorphins. Nature’s own anti-depressant.
I assumed you guys did it for the view. I’d do it but I’m afraid of heights.
This is very enlightening. Great way of framing the difference between the two.
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I work in IT (Sysadmin). “Oh, you fix computers? Can you look at my laptop?”
I’ve had to be very direct with my family that I don’t fix computers (anymore, I used to do remote and hands on helldesk), I fix the deeper kind of stuff that keeps email working for an entire company, or makes sure new hires can log in to work stuff.
I’m an IT manager and today I had the director of HR bring me her new iphone asking if I can help her set it up. Um, no… first, that isn’t my job, and second, I have no idea how to setup an iphone. I assume it’s an easy process but I’ve never done it before and have more pressing matters to attend to instead of fiddling with her new phone.
Lol, been there. But my former CTO had one that I think takes the cake:
My (now former) CTO showed up to a C-suite/executive meeting shortly after he joined the company and they asked him to sort out the fucking A/V setup (read: projector, computer to put the slideshow on, clicker to advance the slides, hooking it all up, etc). In a hotel conference room that was “bring your own hardware”. With no warning.
And these chucklefucks expect perfection. We must have burned over a million on the executive conference room at our HQ. “The camera that automatically zooms into who is speaking isn’t fast enough at changing targets” type shit.
We’re a company of over 4000 employees. Every single C-suite/executive meeting before then they would book one of the senior members of our in-person internal tech support team for support for that shit, so they should have known better.
It wasn’t some joking hazing thing either. They legitimately just hadn’t fucking planned for how they were going to present their slideshow at this off site location and expected the CTO to just magic it together. Why they needed to do it offsite when they had a fancy ass overly expensive room built for conferences at the HQ? No fucking clue.
The things that come out at tech division happy hours are wild once the higher ups get a few drinks in them.
They legitimately just hadn’t fucking planned for how they were going to present their slideshow at this off site location and expected the CTO to just magic it together. Why they needed to do it offsite when they had a fancy ass overly expensive room built for conferences at the HQ? No fucking clue.
I work at a place with a banquet room, and consistently ask myself the same question. So many corporate meetings that show up with basically zero plan. I’ve had to tell clients “no” when they asked last minute if we could put up a projector and screen.
Sorry brotato, you should have mentioned the need for a projector during any of the six emails where I specifically asked if you needed a projector. The projector is already in use across the building; you said you didn’t need it six times, so we rented it to a different client instead. And even if it were available, that shit takes two people and fifteen minutes to put up. And I know you aren’t going to crawl around on the floor in your suit to help snap it together, so it’s just me here. And I’m not doing it by myself. So the answer is no, you can’t use our projector and screen at the last minute.
LMAO @ BROTATO!!!
The funny thing is, that people always assume that you can fix all kind of stuff just because you work in IT (or just know stuff about IT). In reality 90% of the time I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing and just pressing random buttons and reading the text next to the buttons hoping it fixes the problem.
“Accountants spend most of their time preparing tax”
No, hardly any time is spent on tax. Management accountants and auditors don’t do tax work at all.
Therapists are not “always analysing” you.
Seriously, you gotta pay me before I’ll spend the energy to do that
My ex girlfriend is a therapist, and she was CONSTANTLY “analyzing” me, even when I begged her to turn that shit off and just be my girlfriend.
Count Dracula doesn’t like in a castle because he’s a vampire.
He lives in a castle because he’s a count
I feel like even after paying therapists don’t do much
Sucks that you’ve not found them helpful.
Therapy can be great, a place to get stuff that’s hard to find in the day to day life.
But it’s not the only place to get that stuff. So I hope whatever it is you need, you find a place that works for you.
I’m in engineering. If I tell someone I work for the phone company they think I work on phones. Not sure what my mom thinks I do.
I’m in school for electrical engineering. Everyone I tell that to then says they are going to hire me to fix the electrical issues at their house.
That management and leadership are smart, visionary, people without whom everything would fall apart.
It doesn’t matter what my line of work is. Management is mostly out of touch idiots everywhere.
“We need to redesign the web page to be more modern! Get me a big hero image and an image carousel!”
“Customers are complaining about how they can’t save their search settings. Maybe we should do something about that?”
“No that’s not a priority”
I swear I spend more time prioritising and decising when to release my fixes than actually making them
That I can make the band suck less. Sure, there’s something to be said about polishing a shit… But ultimately, it’s shit in>shit out. Your guitar doesn’t sound like ass because of the EQ; it sounds like ass because the guitarist had nine beers before he even walked on stage, and he can’t stay on beat to save his goddamned life.
Psychoacoustics is a fascinating subject. Just like placebo, people will fool themselves into thinking that something sounds good or bad, simply because they want it to. I always keep a DFA fader on my console, for when random people walk up and have suggestions. I make an adjustment to the DFA fader, they smile and nod to themselves, and then walk away. DFA means “Does Fuck All”. It’s literally a fader that isn’t doing anything at all. It’s not in the mix, it’s not in the monitors. It’s just a spare fader. But by adjusting the DFA, audience members will feel like I took them seriously, and they’ll placebo themselves into thinking that I took their advice.
To be clear, not all audience advice is bad advice. But for every “it’s too loud” complaint, you’ll inevitably get an equal and opposite “it’s too quiet”. There’s a reason music festivals have their audio console fenced off with a very wide perimeter. It’s specifically so drunken audience members can’t just saunter up and start yelling suggestions. That shit is distracting and 99% of the time is entirely unproductive.
There is one instance where I have heard of a literal Suck Button. Gonna copy and paste it here…
Not my story, but I like to read it again from time to time and get a good chuckle:
My band’s drummer, John, is also a sound guy; for several years before we hooked up musically, he had been doing sound for other bands I was in, as well as for touring acts I booked shows for. He’s very good at what he does, and has a pretty massive rig. Anyway, he’s the nicest guy in the world at band practice, at Burger King, or at a gig we’re playing, but when he’s running sound for other bands, he can be pretty crabby.
Very little patience for bands who start late or end late. Even less patience for bands who take an encore when they’re the second band playing out of five. Very little patience for singers who ask for more vocals in the monitor while cupping the microphone ball in both hands (feedback, anyone?) In general, just an altogether grouchy sound man.
For example, he ran sound once for this seven- or eight piece ska band. One of the trombone players said he needed two mics: one for his horn and one for his backup vocals. Normally at this venue (a 120-seater), John didn’t bother to mic horns at all. Rolling his eyes, John put up a Shure Beta 58 and some AKG condenser mic. “This Shure is for your vocals, and this AKG is for your horn, OK?” he said. “Don’t blow your horn into the vocal mic, because your horn is about 30db louder than your voice and I’m going to have everything mixed properly.” Horn player nods his head. During the second song of the set, apparently this trombonist was set to get a solo. Right before his solo starts, he grabs both mics and pushes them close together, so that the capsules are actually touching. He then blows this fortissimo opening note into BOTH mics. I was sitting at a table in back, by the sound board, at the time. John’s limiters caught most of it, and I STILL had ringing in my ears for two days. At the end of the song, John mutes both of the guy’s mics (and leaves them mute), and basically threatens to ream out the guy’s plumbing with his own horn if he ever pulls that shit again. John does this through his talkback mic, which is clearly audible over the monitors. The crowd bursts into laughter, and the horn player goes bright red in the face.
At any rate, for years I had heard John threaten bands with the “suck button.” Bands who were taking too long to set up, or whose members repeatedly refused to follow reasonable directions (please keep that vocal mic away from the monitors!), would be threatened. “Pull that shit again, and I’m gonna hit the suck button on you guys!” I took it to mean that he would intentionally make them sound bad, but he never followed through on the threat, so I took it as a vague general warning.
So anyway, a little while back he’s running sound on a four band show. The second band, a Matchbox 20/Train kind of band, has him running 20 minutes behind before they even play a note because their lead guitarist was late. Their allotted set time is 40 minutes, but their last song runs over and by the time it’s done, they’ve played for almost 45 minutes. John says quietly over the talkback mic, “Hey guys, you’re done.” The lead singer says loudly over the vocal mic “Sound man says we gotta get off the stage. We got one more song for you!” as they kick into another soupy jangle-rock tune. John shakes his head at me. Then, the most amazing thing happened. After their “encore,” this band kicks straight into ANOTHER song without announcing it, apparently in the hope that John wouldn’t notice it was a different song.
John leans over to me to be heard over the PA and asks, “Hey, wanna see the suck button?” “Sure,” I replied. I figured he was going to muck with the levels or just turn them off or something. Instead, he reaches to one of his racks and starts scrolling through patches on his trusty DigiTech unit. Sure enough, he gets to a patch titled SUCK BUTTON. He engages it, and all hell breaks loose onstage. The lead singer and the lead guitarist (who was singing backup), immediately start to sing WAY off key. They try to get back in tune, fail, trail off in mid-line, try again, and start glaring at each other. The guitarist is so distracted by this that he starts muffing the chord progression. If not for the drummer, I think the whole song would have derailed. For the entire four minute duration of the song, I was treated to this asshole band sounding like crap and getting madder and madder at each other. John explained the patch to me; basically it pitch shifts all tracks from the vocal submix up one step, BUT ONLY IN THE MONITORS. So the audience, out in front of the mains, was treated to the sound of two guys trying to get in tune, only to be utterly confused. If they got it sounding right in the monitors, they could tell that something was grossly wrong in the mains. And each of the singers thought it was the other guy who was singing out of tune. I just about died laughing.
That’s amazing. It’s kinda like those speakers that play your words back to you on a half second delay that make it hard to speak
When I worked in retail, I’d have customers ask me to raise or lower the temperature in the store I worked at. “Of course!” I’d say and then disappear into the back area and play on my phone for a couple of minutes. I’d come back out and ask if it was starting to feel better, to which they’d reply, “I feel it working already, thank you!”
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At my home venue, I have no protection. If you fuck with me—particularly within the first twoish songs of a set—my usual response is to look them dead in the eye and say, “Where do you work? I’m going to come to your job and help you on Monday.” And that usually scares them off.
Sometimes, I feel bad about it and will find and apologize to that person later, explaining why I reacted like that.
My favorite is when it’s a local/college-age band and parents are around. Or spouses of older band members. “No, I can’t get her vocal any louder because she’s whispering six inches from the microphone and Jimi Hendrix up there is blasting his amp at 11.”
All this said, it’s a common misconception that “asshole” is the default mode of operation for a sound engineer. It’s just that the job is fucking stressful, and if you catch us at the height of that stress, we will react poorly. I’ve definitely come across a few grumps, but most folks are nice on average — kinda have to be so that people will want to work with you. Most of us just want to work with the team to make a good show happen.
To your original point, it’s 100% true that the better the artist, the better/easier the mix. Can only polish a turd so much before it crumbles.
My favorite is when it’s a local/college-age band and parents are around. Or spouses of older band members. “No, I can’t get her vocal any louder because she’s whispering six inches from the microphone and Jimi Hendrix up there is blasting his amp at 11.”
There’s a reason the lead singer’s girlfriend is the butt of so many jokes. And I have 100% had to use the Baffle of Shame for guitarists who won’t turn down. It’s just a doghouse made out of pink foam board and tape, that you can throw over the top of problem amps. Add a corner notch for cables to run in/out, and dust it in some black paint.
If it’s a tube amp, I can at least understand it; Tubes distort at higher volumes, and the distortion is part of the tone. And if you try to argue with a guitarist about their tone, you’ll lose every time. The nice once will smile and nod, then not make any changes when you ask them to turn down. The rude ones will make direct eye contact as they turn it up more.
But if it’s a solid state amp, putting a 2x4 block under it (or putting it on a spare guitar stand) to tip it towards their head usually works. The guitarist is used to having all of the sound blow right past their knees, so actually aiming it at their head makes a world of difference.
Good idea on just homebrewing a baffle!
I normally just ask them nicely to turn down, if they can do so without sacrificing tone, and otherwise encourage them to point their amp towards the curtains.
I’ve definitely seen some folks prop their amps to angle them toward their heads from time to time — I’ll start working that suggestion in for sure, since every little bit of db decrease will help in that small room.
I also want to get a set of ClearSonics or similar for cymbal wash. May not be able to use them all the time (stage real estate is at a premium), but they would be nice to have.
