What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?
What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?
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Read the error message. The whole thing.
This comes up even with coworkers who are allegedly senior software developers.
"It's just a white page it's not working"
"Ok well what does the console say? Network requests?"
"403?"
"Ok now what's in the response body?"
"The what?"
"Click on it. Then response "
"It says I don't have permission to view this page "
"Do you have permission to view this page?"
"...no."
"What does the error message say?"
"I already closed it. Those things are always gibberish"
Yep, so many clients: I have this problem and an error pops up, I need immediate help.
Me: Ok send me the data and the error log, and a description of what it is telling you on screen.
Client: I forget what it said, i didn't save the log, And i needed to keep working so I deleted the file and started again.
OR
Client: My set of files is doing this, and giving me this specific error.
Me: Ah OK, that is a known issue, close all the fikes and open the top level only, open each sub fike one by one till the error pops up, that will be the culprit so run this clean up tool on that file only.
Crickets
Week later, Client : Im having that same error again, can you help?
Me: That cleanup tool should have fixed it.
Client: I didn't have time to do those steps so I just kept working as is.
me: hopefully a gangster shoots me in a drive by crossfire on the way home.
"That's fine, when you have the time, run the tool I sent you, it takes 30 seconds and should solve your issue!"
I wish that worked. Rather than spend an hour diagnosing which file is causing the error, they would rather struggle with it crashing for a week.
Yep, but that is their problem, I have it logged that I gave them the tool with instructions on how to use it, with them dismissing it, even when I followed up on it.
I won't work myself up over a user who is not interested in solving their issue.
Now obviously in real life I would remote in and run the tool for them, but there have been time when they have been unwilling to do that due to some pointless reason, that's fine, I have logs showing that I tried.
Yeah, sometimes we can't remote in due to IT policy or ITAR data. And I was just being dramatic with the comment, it just boggles my mind that they will just keep calling back without even trying to help themselves. Even scheduling a call..."I don't have time for a call I just want it fixed" LOL
"Sorry, I cannot help you without the message."
Close ticket.
I literally once got an email from another engineer using our internal tool at the big tech company I used to work for which said something like, “the page isn’t working. Please help. Attached screenshot of error.” The attached screenshot showed the error message, “Your authentication token has expired. Please refresh the page.”
I emailed him back, “oh yeah, that happens when your authentication token expires. Try refreshing the page.”
He emailed me back, “that worked, thanks!”
(For anyone wondering, no, we can’t refresh the page for the user, because they might have unsaved data on it.)
I've had this and similar conversations far too many times, I keep professional but holy shit, and then when they do get a call going with a screen share they zoom past the error every. Single. Time.