Training some younger people at work: “click the cog in the corner to pull up the settings”. “What’s a ‘cog’?” Some things people miss out on life when you’ve never seen a Jetsons episode.
I just described a cog as a circle with teeth and my son thought it was funny to call the sticky out bits as teeth.
I’m just hoping he doesn’t ask about crenellations next.
Cogs are gear teeth.
I always call it a gear.
Cogs are typically square tooth, gears have involute teeth.
The definition online says that the teeth of the gears are cogs, which I’d never heard of before.
Me neither. We were taught cogs were those janky gears for certain tasks, while a true gear had geometry for smooth engagment
That’s not a cog, it’s a sprocket! George Jetson works for Spacely Sprockets.
I was thinking of the competitor: Cogswell’s Cogs!
I know what a cog is but not what a Jetsons is
Ripoff of The Flintstones, except the family is from the future rather than the past.
Both are from Hanna-Barbera. There is also a cartoon called The Roman Holidays, which is The Flintstones, but set in Rome.
Yes, Hanna-Barbera ripped off itself. Never heard of the Roman one!
Hanna Barbara cartoon from the golden age of animation.
I’ve never seen an icon of a single cog. Multiple cogs on a hub forming a gear, sure, but never just a cog.
If you have an android phone, the settings icon is a cog.
Edit: 🙄
To be precise, that’s a cogwheel. There are six cogs around the cogwheel in your image. The word “cog” refers specifically to the teeth around the wheel, not the wheel itself. The cogwheel may be colloquially called a cog, but it’s technically inaccurate; If you told a watchmaker that their watch was missing a single cog, it would have a very different meaning than if you told them it was missing a single cogwheel.
That’s a gear with six cogs.
Huh? The single cog is the standard for settings menus. Just looking at three random apps on my phone, they all had single cog icons.
cog
noun
ˈkäg
1 : a tooth on the rim of a wheel or gearCan you share an image of what you describe as a single cog?
It can also be used to mean a singular cogged wheel
It’s splitting hairs, but that would technically be a cogwheel. The actual cogs would be the teeth around the wheel.
If you have a cogwheel with a broken cog, it would be accurate to say “the cogwheel is missing a cog.” That doesn’t mean the entire wheel is missing from the system; The system is only missing a single tooth.
Not according to the dictionary, or my masterful command of English
My bad, I was using gear and cog interchangeably. Didn’t realize it could also mean just a tooth.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Look up cog in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
A cog is a tooth of a gear or cogwheel or the gear itself.
Xennials are fascinating to watch navigate through tech hurdles. They have a custom built toolbox built purely through trial and error.
As an autodidact xennial, I’ll take that as a compliment.
DOS, Windows, all the format C:'s in my time, it’s all been trial and error as you say, because there weren’t really anything on the line in the 90s and early 00s.
Absolutely a compliment. It took me many months of research to figure out what PC parts to buy in the late '90s. Now you can easily piece something together in a day.
I think you misspelled experience.
ouch.
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Zoomer in computer science here: I’ve noticed that there are two types of people in my age range, you have the people who are really passionate about technology for the sake of being technology and want to know how things work under the hood (like me) and people who see technology only as a means to accomlish a goal like writing a document, maintaining a social media presence, playing a game, etc, and can’t care less about how it actually works.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the latter, but there can be conflict between the two groups because their priorities are completely different.
This is not unique to technology and you see this in other fields too. For example, you have the car enthusiasts who do their own oil changes and are constantly tuning up their cars, installing aftermarket mods, etc, and then you have everyone else who see cars as just a way of getting to where they need to go, have never even opened the engine compartment, and bring it into the shop when the scary lights on the dashboard appear.
To use your car metaphor, there was a time when you basically needed to know how a car worked in order to own/operate one. I’m talking like the 1910s-1920s. They were unreliable, simply made, manual transmission, hand crank start, and needed a lot of maintenance.
Millennials grew up at a time when you needed to have some understanding of how a computer worked in order to do basically anything.
I suppose the issue is that the car metaphor breaks down because a vehicle really only does one thing. Push pedal and go. Maybe worry about snow conditions if that affects you.
Meanwhile, computers can still be used to do thousands of different tasks and the only thread tying all of those tasks together is that they’re done by the same machine. So knowing fundamentals about the machine gives you access to a lot of capability vs. just memorizing how to do a few tasks.
the problem is that there’s people out there who in the analogy don’t know how to drive a car, defend it by saying ‘I’m just not a car person’, and constantly ask to be driven around when a major part of their job is driving a car. somehow when it comes to computers employers tolerate this
You forgot the third group, [email protected]
In my experience, Zoomers largely lack a lot of computer skills (specifically in troubleshooting), but, for me the huge difference between them and the older folks has been that the older folks will say things like “I’m just not a computer person ::laugh::” and refuse to be shown how to do anything whereas the Zoomer just doesn’t know, yet, but are more than willing to learn.
ETA: NOTE: that’s just the generalized trend … some of the most knowledgeable technical people I’ve met are Boomers and some of the best computer techs I’ve worked with have been Zoomers.
Oh god this was my previous colleague. “Hey MBech, mind showing me how I do this thing in Excel you’ve shown me 100 times?” Sure thing, but at least try to remember. He even told me he forgets it instantly because he just doesn’t give a shit about computer stuff. Then you probably shouldn’t have a job that has you working on a computer 90% of the time.
Don’t show. Guide them to do it themselves. Never be the one to actually do it beyond the first time.
If they still refuse to learn, make them take notes. Make them read to you their notes from last time. Make them tell you what each step is and means.
Make asking you the hardest option for them to get what they want.
That’s similar as the saying:
Give them fish, and they will have something to eat for days. Teach them how to fish and they will have something to eat for a lifetime.
Something along the line 😅
Build them a fire and they’ll be warm for a night. Set them on fire and they’ll be warm for the rest of their life. 🤣
Hahaha dark humor, nice !
“I should be able to ask my team for help” - The guy asking me to do his job for him after the umpteenth time of him refusing to learn a basic process.
You are helping - they clearly need the additional training, and you’re doing everything you can to supply that. Their job can’t be relying on you.
They shouldn’t (and almost certainly don’t) have delegation authority.
For corporate bingo, the keywords are upskill, cross-training, and bus factor.
This person had been taught the process multiple times before and simply refused to do it. It became relying on me to do the job for him in when my job is to help everyone on this large team with more advanced things then that.
I 100% agree with the caveat of SAP. I’m not letting those cunts having a single microgram of my brain space. I’m asking accounting for help everytime
I started as a graphic designer back in November with absolutely zero experience. It’s crazy being whown how to do stuff in Adobe suite by a 68 year old man
Ha. My young coworker said “wow you really know this software in depth, how long have you used it?” me: meh 26 years. He was like “dude that is longer than I have been alive”
I’ve stopped talking to Zoomers about tech completely. If I try to help, I end up confusing them more, and I don’t like to simply solve shit for them because then they start bugging me for every single thing. (I’m also technically a Zoomer, but barely.)
It hurts me deep inside as well
Source: https://lemmy.ca/post/41402040
An unfortunate consequence of developers playing to the lowest common denominator of users for the last twenty years. Everything has been designed to be as easy and intuitive as possible for mobile, and troubleshooting skills have suffered as a result.
Not to mention that phones are crazy powerful and can do virtually everything these days, so fewer and fewer people are buying PCs.
If the general population is indeed “going backwards” in regards to tech literacy, it seems like demand for IT services is going to spike in the coming years. Good thing to keep in mind for young people choosing a career path!
My most recent job hunt has me thinking the same. I used to be a dime a dozen, and young folks were real and serious competition in the job market, but I’ve been in IT since before the .com crash and now my skills are once again becoming unique.
I’ve been raising my kids, warning them about the shit state of IT. Maybe I should have been nerding them harder.
I will say, I would not want to be a software developer right now, but systems support is generally pretty stable (and less likely to be replaced by AI any time soon)
Yeah, I’m a fancy bricklayer these days…
i think its more complex than this.
people wont know what to do/wont bother if a simple google search doesnt inmediatly has what they want in the first link.
I would point out that while general computer use has gotten easier, doing anything advanced has gotten much harder.
I’m glad my grandma can send memes, but I can’t figure out where an app is saving my files because everything is a walled garden!
I almost added this as a point in my original comment, but you’re absolutely right, and its happening in other industries too (auto, for example). Its really tough to troubleshoot things you lack the permissions to fix.
Lifelong Android user here. I don’t know where an app saves its files (not to personal folders, but app-private folder) even it’s rooted. I’m glad this protects me from malwares but it also forbids me to put my device in full control.
Developers don’t decide that. Blame UX folk for making things simple.
I meant it a more general sense as anyone involved with the software development life cycle, but I see your point, good catch
As a UX person often my job is to implement somebody else’s vision rather than being able to design something that makes sense.
As long as you treat yourself as a pixel pusher, this is a side effect. When you understand that you are a mirror for ideas, you will empower yourself.
“Listen boss, I know you wanted me to create it in a certain way, but I am not a pixel pusher alright?! I am a mirror of ideas, so I made something completely different from what you pay me for, what do you mean I’m fired?”
If you say it that way, then yes, even the nicest person will call you a cunt and fire you. If you ask questions, as a user, and showing patterns that support your thesis, this becomes a conversation, rather than a “do it that way”.
edit: People are not all knowing. Once you start asking the right questions, you’ll see that - “Ok, and what happens when the user presses this? And what happens if they delete that?” It’s obviously a very abstract example, but if their ideas can’t stand a single user test, then they shouldn’t be surprised if the feature flops.
I agree in principle but when I’m building something I’m normally 3 - 5 people removed from the people who want it. It’s hard to push your ideas back through project managers, project engineers, program managers, presale engineers, contract managers, feed managers and then onto the actual company that asked you to implement the “solution”.
That’s a problem, I agree. I feel privileged then, because I actually get to research, and interview, and split test. It was a long battle, I’ve been trying to build that culture for a good 5+ years. Once the features started flopping, I started by doing 2 prototypes - one, based on the PRD from the product team and another, based on my personal research. I had to work 12, sometimes 15 hours a day, but when, instead of showing problems, I was showing solutions, without the “i-told-you-so”s, and when I made it clear that I care about the product’s health alone, that’s when I became the mirror. I reckon it’s not an industry term, but it’s what I like to call it - product presents their idea, you reflect it, and more often than not they do not like what they see. That’s when the real work starts.
just want to add, it’s not the zoomer’s fault. they were intentionally raised in ignorance because its apparently profitable
fuck the corporations who’ve deliberately turned our living computers into soulless commercial brainwashing surveillance machines
Also schools that thought just seeing the tech used would give you innate knowledge on how to use a computer.
It’s their parents fault for not using GNU/Linux
True, and Alpha are even worst, most of them never touched a real keyboard, only use 2 thumbs on a phone. Don’t tell them about windows (or/mac/linux) or what is a UI or how to use a mouse and navigate in a OS, they don’t get double click or right click, resize a window, minimize a window (OMG THE WINDOW IS GONE!!!) it’s impressive.
I have seen a lot of late Z/early Alpha who cannot make some special characters on a keyboard like " or $ or even worst using AltCar. Using Word to write a letter, using keyboard shortcuts, etc. they are completely clueless with computers.
Look I don’t doubt you’ve met these people but it’s not everywhere. Here in Australia the kids still learn this at school.
My daughter is in primary school and they’ve learned to use a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software etc.
So they can all use a keyboard and mouse and she’s done some school projects as PowerPoint slideshows.
A good way to get a feel for how these Alpha kids probably feel is to use something un-Windowsy like RiscOS. I felt similarly helpless
Me and a classmate were absolutely stunned when we saw this girl typing in her password, and using Caps Lock to do uppercase letters instead of shift. We looked at her like, “WTF are you doing?” And she seriously did not know what the shift button was for.
I just don’t know how nobody showed or told her this before, and we’re in college…
Oh, you mean characters that are actually on the keyboard. I thought you meant stuff like ‘Δ’ or ‘°’
I still remember looking up alt codes on the character map.
I haven’t had to represent degrees in decades, but for some reason I remembered the code being 0961. According to this page it was 0176. What a classic blunder!
Messing around with your old WinXP/95 computer and then fixing that mess before your parents come home and scold you does wonders to one’s troubleshooting skills. People of this generation never got to hear that scary XP error sound, and it shows.
Fun fact: Windows XP had cool day 0 loophole that saved my my ass. Once I decided to explore new options and I stumbled upon new and cool feature: setting a password. The only issue with it was that I’ve forgotten it half an hour later. I already knew ‘admin’ word so I used it in hackerman style and I logged in and I was able to reverse old password. This loophole was patched with first service pack but I still giggle when I remind myself of that.
Damn! This is some real hackerman shit.
Windows XP’s error sound wasn’t scary. Windows 95 and 98’s were. That natural alarming chime, combined with the angry faces when our parents find out the non-functioning operating system…
Turns out the one I was thinking of was the critical stop sound and the error sound was less threatening. Learnt something new…
I work on a help desk. We hired multiple Zoomers and they literally don’t understand how computers work. They don’t know what the registry is. Or what POST means. Or how to properly back up a user’s data without using automated software.
They’re fucking dumb. Nice. But dumb.
To be fair, I’m a millenial who’s fairly tech savvy and I barely know what POST means. Then again, I don’t work in IT.
I would guess 90% of “IT” people don’t know what POST (in web context, maybe bios since they might have taken an A+ cert class lmao) means nor do they know how basic http or web servers work. Most of IT are help desk and do not know technology well but are comfortable enough to tell people to reboot, uninstall/reinstall stuff, reformat, google an issue they can’t figure out… Which is better than 99% of the world.
To be fair, POST could mean a number of things. Are we talking in a webserver context? BIOS context? The POST Office?
Why would someone on a help desk be expected to know what POST is? A software engineer, sure, but helpdesk? If it’s needed knowledge…that’s what training is for. Businesses’ expectation that people will come into the job already knowing exactly how you do things and never require on-the-job training is absurd.
Guessing they’re talking about Power-On Self Test rather than the HTTP verb. I’m assuming you were thinking of the latter given you mentioned a software engineer.
Half of software engineers don’t know what a POST is either
Software engineer here, can confirm I’ve never received anything by post in my life, it’s always couriers. My assumption is that post stamps are boomer NFTs.
Ah, but postage stamps are completely fungible.
As opposed to images on the internet… XD
If anything it would actually take more effort to replicate a physical stamp now that I think about it.
I was thinking of the HTTP verb, you’re right.
help desk definitely doesn’t need to know that either. “does the shit turn on… no, well send it in then we will give you a new one”
Yes, helpdesk should know the basic steps that happen when you power on a computer.
Do you think that’s what he meant by POST? Could have meant data delivery through http? Do you think they should know that one too?
That’s not one helpdesk needs to know, unless you’re in a specific niche where it’s relevant to how your normal users interact with your product. (For example, some backend service, where your users are web devs)
maybe in 2005. Today it is “did it turn on? No? Ok we will give you a new one”
I got used to looking for registry tweaks, but I don’t even know what to call it exactly.
The closest I’ve got is: A place for accessing hidden settings in Windows. I’ve made a couple typos in there and nuked an install or two of XP, but I never really changed much personally. Just kinda looked up various ways people would use it to accomplish x, y, or z, out of curiosity.
I don’t have to deal with it anymore at least.
Lot of boomer-like fist shaking in these comments.
Newer generations are going to find different things to excel at, and they’ll inevitably give up on some of the old ways.
Companies used to train workers, now they just complain that workers aren’t pre-trained by some magical process. (And millennials are old enough that we’ve forgotten how dumb we were in our 20s.)
I was teaching flight school by the time I was 23. I started studying the books at 14 and started flight school in earnest at 16. It’s called teaching adolescents to do shit.
My favorite:
“Where did you save the file?”
“I saved it in Excel”
Gen Z here, in college.
Some of these people are braindead when it comes to tech.
Like, I get if you’re not used to technology because you’re poor/had a lack of access to it, as many people might not have a home computer. So there were kids who were absolutely hopeless when it came to using windows at my tech school because they were broke, and the school only gives out Chromebooks (cause they’re shitty and cheap).
But outside of not knowing a UI and different file formats, you should absolutely know how to use anything on the web, unless you literally lived in an area with absolutely no internet and electricity.
Some people at my college STILL don’t know how to share Google documents correctly, and it’s the most insane and frustrating thing to me. Literally any device with an Internet connection can use it. Windows, apple, Chromebook, Linux, you name it. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO WORK GOOGLE DRIVE?!?!?!
Like many comments have said, devs have dumbed down a lot of shit in the name of protecting users, and people expect stuff to just work without any issues/effort, which I get, but damn, you’ve never simply done a 5 mins search on Google or YouTube for a quick fix?
My hand-me-down phone journey started with a Samsung G Note 4 as a kid, then a old iPhone (don’t remember which), moved to a Moto G Play 7 (I adore that thing today), moved to iPhone X, and now I’m at a Pixel 8a cause I put GrapheneOS on it. My mom got me it as a grad gift cause I hated my iPhone so much for all the shit I couldn’t do while I was on it. I’ve always just liked Android and Windows more for the freedom to fuck up (which I never did), instead of Apple’s shitty walled garden. And now I’m on Fedora, because I know I don’t have to subject myself to a shit user experience on Windows just for simplicity.
But other people my gen who aren’t willing to be adventurous for a bit and even try will never do that. Hell, you get shamed in school for not loving the Apple overlords and wanting Apple deciding everything in your life (green bubble shaming is real, I hated middle and early high school…). We want quick and easy, and we got it, but at what cost?
Some people at my college STILL don’t know how to share Google documents correctl
They emulate a “files” menu (like any native office software has), where you can download/export it to a standardized format. Right?
Well, for the download/export stuff, yeah, you just go to the “File” tab and click the download drop down tab, and you can save it to the computer or Google Drive. Which some people still didn’t know about somehow but… (Some people never touch the tabs I guess)
But when I mean file sharing, I’m talking like sharing stuff to another person’s drive, or simply just letting them have access to it by clicking a link. To be fair, sometimes the sharing is wonky or really dumb, but it’s basically, give access to specific emails/accounts, give access to anyone within your organization with the link, or give access to anyone who has the link. You can specify if this access link should be viewer, commenter, or editor.
The amount of people who have shared a document with incorrect access rights where teachers can’t see their work and have to ask them to resubmit, or trying to do group projects with people who claim that it’s not working, is fucking insane. I get some of them are just being lazy and probably lying about it not working to get more time to procrastinate, but dead serious, some people just have no idea how to share files correctly. My public speaking class was full of these blunders, especially when sharing a presentation done with Canva, and we’d always have to waste like 3 minutes waiting for them to fix it…
Google drive is absolutely horrible to use for any real purpose. Organizing things is awful, search sucks, sharing permissions are dumb in terms of their specific behaviors. Its not particularly hard to use for basic things where you’ve got like 10 files in there, but it’s a terrible example of usable software. Like… SharePoint is better, and I didn’t think it was possible to be worse than SharePoint.
I’ve used both for work and I’m having a hard time understanding what you could possibly find better about SharePoint. It’s consistently the most frustrating sharing and navigation experience I’ve ever had to endure.
Yep, have used both Google Drive and SharePoint for work. SharePoint is an abomination
Mate just my 2 cents ignore overlords and enjoy using other stuff and getting a more global knowledge. Didn’t know the situation was getting this bad, let me guess: they know every single thing that has been posted on tiktok, but nothing else?
That’s no different from boomers and millenials really. Boomers only know the 6 o’clock news and either the front or back page of the paper. Millennial only know 90s cartoons and how to complain; I should know as i am one.
