Oftentimes, the perception of the average IT professional is one of a nerdy guy with poor social graces; the type of person that doesn’t hold conversation well, and is rather banal in appearance and behavior. While this is certainly true with some IT professionals, it is worth stating that the IT field has a lot more diversity than some people give it credit for. There is a wide range of people, personalities, and social/cultural backgrounds that many everyday users don’t get the chance to see. A lot of this stereotype is due (in my humble opinion and experience) to the type of mentality that is required to carry out this line of work; a personality that is not unlike what one may experience while interacting with a human physician or surgeon.
Let me explain: in both the human and IT “healthcare” fields (I’ll lump the two under that umbrella for ease of this comparison) comes the same scenario:
- Someone contacts the professional due to a problem or to perform a checkup or maintenance;
- Said professional has a duty to resolve and/or prevent an issue.
When you get sick or have an injury, you go to a physician who has to make observations about what has happened, take your story and vet it against his/her own knowledge and experience, and then make an educated inference as to how to accurately diagnose and treat the condition. This is part and parcel the same process for IT professionals. We, just like your physicians, want to treat resolve the issue as quickly and as correctly as possible. We want things to work as “normal”, and we want it to happen with the fewest treatments possible.
So now that we have the process down, how does that correlate to the personality or the “bedside manner” that many of us in IT are known for? Well, much the same as physicians, we have to approach diagnosis and treatment in an objective manner. Emotions take a backseat due simply to the fact that emotions won’t solve the problem. This should be an informed process, taking facts and tangible observations to make the correct decisions; emotions run counter to that. It’s not that we are cold, heartless people incapable of empathy or feeling “things,” but much more our realization that those “feelings” have nothing to do with the task at hand and only serve to distract.
Anyone who has ever visited a physician who was blunt and no frills in their approach to treatment knows that feeling well. Did it reflect on their actual abilities to treat your condition properly? Not necessarily. In fact, that physician was more than likely very astute and practiced in their abilities; they just didn’t care to add needless fluff in their presentation.
Fluff doesn’t fix broken bones. It doesn’t fix broken computers either.
Anytime a professional (in either the medical or technical field) offers fluff and hold-handing, they do so knowing that every minute spent massaging egos is a minute lost in actually doing what needs to be done. It’s nice to experience that soft skill when the stakes are low, or the issue isn’t large, and I’m sure it makes a person seem more “personable” and “friendly.” At the same time, let’s not lose sight of what you came to that person for, and why that “nice-person” persona won’t always be appropriate or available to them. These fields demand logical inferences and cold hard facts, and when you feel like saying to yourself “Wow, that person isn’t very social/personable…” remember that you didn’t approach them under a social pretense; you approached them because you had a problem that needed to be solved.