The amount of times people told me this when I worked IT support, and crossed over to see them on-site, and restarted their machine myself, and found it suddenly magically started working…
I’m not saying they lied, but the ‘IT Support Aura’ may be a genuine thing. Like the computer is afraid of getting scrapped so it quickly starts working.
My former career was in IT, I’m a developer now. I work with a bunch of tech savvy people, but I still have the ‘IT Support Aura’. I’ve lost count of how many times a coworker has a computer problem, asks for help, and then watches me fix it and they claim they tried the exact same thing and it didn’t work. I never really have an answer besides ‘computers fear me’
Before my life shifted more into integrations I was a fan of running:
systeminfo | find"System Boot"
I wasn’t out to call anyone out, but sometimes users honestly believed they had rebooted and I would find of the the day’s lucky 10k. It also helped to figure out which users would just blankly say they’ve done everything.
The IT support aura is nothing more than being patient.
Users don’t have patience, so when they call IT about a problem, they are forced to wait until IT gets there. Which is enough time for it to get through whatever it was calculating and start working again.
I’ve experienced IT support aura, both from my friends and myself when I joined IT for a while.
I’ve also experienced the evil IT aura. Sometimes when everything is working just fine and an IT worker touches or observes it, it will break inexplicably.
An IT friend asked to use my computer to play a round of Starcraft at a LAN party and I agreed. Watched him slowly sit down, extend his arms above the keyboard like a pianist, slowly rest his hands on the keyboard, and immediately got my first BSOD. Wasn’t even running anything, just sitting on the desktop.
The ol’ IT person magic touch - the second you touch the machine, it works flawlessly!
Only problem is if it’s one of those problems that’s workflow-based. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “well it seems to work fine for me” only to watch the user do the same task in the most janky, roundabout way, and that is the source of their problem.
Also the thing where you try and show the problem to any other person and it starts working just to make you look dumb. Me and my SO do that all the time: “This thing isn’t working, I know you don’t know how to fix it but can you come over and look at it not working so it’ll work?” And I’d say at least 50% of the time it does lol
The fear effect also works the second you show the problem to someone else in IT. The only thing that makes a computer behave faster than IT being in the room is 2 people from IT.
The amount of times people told me this when I worked IT support, and crossed over to see them on-site, and restarted their machine myself, and found it suddenly magically started working…
I’m not saying they lied, but the ‘IT Support Aura’ may be a genuine thing. Like the computer is afraid of getting scrapped so it quickly starts working.
My former career was in IT, I’m a developer now. I work with a bunch of tech savvy people, but I still have the ‘IT Support Aura’. I’ve lost count of how many times a coworker has a computer problem, asks for help, and then watches me fix it and they claim they tried the exact same thing and it didn’t work. I never really have an answer besides ‘computers fear me’
Before my life shifted more into integrations I was a fan of running:
systeminfo | find "System Boot"I wasn’t out to call anyone out, but sometimes users honestly believed they had rebooted and I would find of the the day’s lucky 10k. It also helped to figure out which users would just blankly say they’ve done everything.
Back when I was in that sort of role, I did it to call them out. I’d highlight it on their screen and ask if it was ok to restart the computer now.
The IT support aura is nothing more than being patient.
Users don’t have patience, so when they call IT about a problem, they are forced to wait until IT gets there. Which is enough time for it to get through whatever it was calculating and start working again.
I’ve experienced IT support aura, both from my friends and myself when I joined IT for a while.
I’ve also experienced the evil IT aura. Sometimes when everything is working just fine and an IT worker touches or observes it, it will break inexplicably.
An IT friend asked to use my computer to play a round of Starcraft at a LAN party and I agreed. Watched him slowly sit down, extend his arms above the keyboard like a pianist, slowly rest his hands on the keyboard, and immediately got my first BSOD. Wasn’t even running anything, just sitting on the desktop.
your machine didn’t have enough minerals
The ol’ IT person magic touch - the second you touch the machine, it works flawlessly!
Only problem is if it’s one of those problems that’s workflow-based. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “well it seems to work fine for me” only to watch the user do the same task in the most janky, roundabout way, and that is the source of their problem.
Also the thing where you try and show the problem to any other person and it starts working just to make you look dumb. Me and my SO do that all the time: “This thing isn’t working, I know you don’t know how to fix it but can you come over and look at it not working so it’ll work?” And I’d say at least 50% of the time it does lol
I’ve joked that some computers just like having someone else watch (kinky).
The fear effect also works the second you show the problem to someone else in IT. The only thing that makes a computer behave faster than IT being in the room is 2 people from IT.