We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

Developers: Those are rookie numbers

I'm going for the high score!
- I'm an IT engineer, 100% of my time is spent on computer problems.

Do they include "fighting with anti patterns and dark patterns" as broken? It's pretty insane how much misalignment there is between what most people want their computers to do and what the companies want people to do, which seems to largely be "look at ads literally everywhere".

Personal computing is badly sick today.
Even for Linux users.
- Why for Linux? Its always painted as Zion for matrix-dwellers?

How much time do we waste on car problems? Neighbor problems? Political problems? Grocery problems?

Right and how much time do we save by having computers? Fixing the problems is just the cost of doing business
Yeah, this seems like a pretty dumb conclusion. I expect that as far back as you look, people always took advantage of tools that save them time. But then they always also spent a fair amount of that time (that they could have been working), just maintaining/fixing/making their tools. I think the truth is that computers are very useful tools, but the maintenance and troubleshooting can be quite time consuming.
I will continue using computers though.
- Using computers and also having to deal with their problems is still far more betterer than not using computers at all.
Also in the context of working, this isn't just computers. It's tools in general, and a computer is a type of tool. Problems with your saw? Problems with your batteries? Problems with access to electricity and your extension cords not being long enough? Problem with losing your 10mm sockets? If you're a trucker or driver the problem could be your vehicle. Etc etc etc.
This article is stupid. Tools break, they always have and always will. The tools we have now are better than they have ever been. They will probably keep getting more and more efficient, but they will still break. Because tools break.
How much time do we waste on first-past-the-post problems?
Not much.

My job is to fix computers so I waste 100% of my time with computer problems.

"I'm here to fuck computers and chew bubblegum..."
- At the same time?
Keep fighting the good fight.

It's not a waste if I'm getting paid to do it full time

I wish I could do that
- You absolutely can!

Linux users brings the numbers up

Once everything is set up properly it just works tbh. Meanwhile in windows updates broke something every other time.
- This is so not true unless you are using some super stable old Debian release and aren't doing complex work.
  Most DEs are super buggy, especially the darling child kde, which right off the bat makes things not super stable.
  Additionally some of the most loved distros are rolling release and inherently unstable.
  Hell, I use multiple distros daily, fedora and slackware, I also use windows for work, windows is by and large more stable in my experience.
  Slackware has kernel panics monthly, kde crashes on fedora, Wayland has too many problems to count, meaning I have to switch to x sessions all the time.
  Most GUI software I use has tons of visual glitches.
  Yes it's tolerable, that's why I still use it, but I wouldn't exactly say it 'just works'
  I would estimate I restart my fedora computer about 4-5 times more often than than the windows computer, and usually I have to restart fedora because of serious hard crashes (e.g. kde crashes so hard that I can't even switch to a tty, meaning I need to hard reset)
- Really? Because I updated and my wine prefix just broke. That was yesterday.
- I'm literally dealing with an update issue with this distro lol
  To he fair, it was perfect, literally perfect, until now. And even now, it's not unbootable, since I can just use the previous image point. Just sucks I can't update.
Hey, all of those problems are entirely because of my own incompetence.
I can't tell if you are joking. But just in case, my installation worked flawlessly for years.
- I mean, that's fine, but as a Linux user I've fucked around a lot and spent a lot of time fixing mistakes that I did not need to make.
  I think I'm a pretty average Linux user. Who needs something that "just works" when you can break it by trying to add something you don't need?
- I'm joking I use fedora and its super stable And takes less time for gnome customization which can't be achieved by windows
All 0.4% of the user base or whatever it is? Unless you mean among the population of server admins.
- You mean like 50%? Or do you only mean desktop users? Which would be 4%.

This is 100% due to Microsoft, google and Apple. If you dont understand, I'm not defending my position, or explaining further.

Tangent: what’s this trend all about where people will make a statement and then firmly state that they will not answer questions or explain themselves afterwards?
I’m seeing it everywhere.
- Presumably it's people who are tired of dealing with troll responses.
- I just never read replies. Have people answer me and then never get back to them or even just read their well thought out comment.
- Sanity.
Working server side much? Pretty sure a lot of us spend a lotta time on fixing shit unrelated to either of those 3… Not that it diminishes the merit of our IT support dude that endure due to those 3 indeed.
He uses arch btw
- One thing I appreciate about Arch is that it's quick to set up if you don't care and still need something kinda controllable.
  Since I don't reinstall everything every week, I'm fine with Void. But I've used Arch for a month or so. It's sane.
Oracle vies with MS as to who fucks me more often each working week. Cuurrently Oracle is pippng MS for biggest fucker award. If you don't understand, you've never had to use Oracle (front end / web UI products - tbf the back end DB usually works ok).
Correct, but not how you meant it, fixing my Linux boxes is is my hobby now, so ita not a waste of time anymore.

Them's rookie numbers.

Jokes on you! My whole life is a waste of time

It's actually simple.
HIG, UX, ergonomics, all that - it doesn't build up. Acceptable complexity of a pretty mechanical normal 80s' UI\UX is the same as of a modern one. Humans don't evolve over decades, they evolve over spans of time which are as good as eternity. They still need the same kind of complexity in tools they use.
A control panel for a loader that a factory worker should be able to use is as complex as a workflow on a computer can be. And that's very explicitly accounting for the fact that loader's or lift's control panel doesn't change every fucking day and the user remembers it, so computer UIs should be simpler than those of lifts and loaders!
You just don't make UI\UX more complex than that. There are things humans can learn to do, and there are things they often can't and they shouldn't.
The issue is that this creates a bottleneck for clueless project managers, UI designers and such. They can't throw together some shit in 30 minutes. They have to choose. They have to test. They don't want that. And no regulation makes them do that, because if a loader has an unclear UI\UX, you might kill someone, while if an email program has that, you'll just get very nervous.

"Up to 20%" is meaningless for a headline and is pure click bait. It could be any number between 0% and 20%. Or put another way, any number from no time at all to a horrifying more than an entire day per week.

Why not just state the average from what is probably a statistically irrelevant study and move on?

We are wasting up to 20% of our time with bronze problems.
-- Some grumpy dude circa 3300 BC

Must be the crappy copper from Ea-nāṣir
This. We used to waste time repairing the mechanical things when we could have been planting, or wasting time dealing with plant blights and livestock woes when we could have been hunting for wild game.
- Some people still do. Fuck Jhon Deere.

Using the word "we" loosely.

I certainly don't. If I can't fix it in 5 minutes, I just ignore the problem. And I wish everyone else would too and stop complaining about the smoke coming out of the machine. It's fine.

I don't know how many times I've taught my coworkers to use the search features or ctrl+f function ... at this point it feels like they are willfully forgetting. They ask me to help them do something, I go over to their computer, one of the steps is to bring up 1 specific document from the list of 100+ documents, they proceed to slowly scroll... and scroll.... and scroll...

How about everyone who has zero skills with these problems, do they count is 0% spent on them as they outsource it or do they count as 100% since the smallest problem incapacitates their computer usage?

At least 10 percent of my time sitting in a classroom in college was waiting for the prof to get the projector to work with their laptop.

So far I am lucky enough to have not had any classes that have had the issue of a professor not being able to get their projector or computer to work.
Closest I had was the Linux VMs we were using for a Linux fundamentals class were having troubles because someone gave them too much resources by accident (I think it was memory but I don't fully remember), causing them to sometimes just stop working because there wasn't enough for every VM. Somehow persisted pretty much the whole quarter before being figured out.

That number was more like 30% with a windows laptop and all the security crap Microsoft convinced my company to install. It was so painfully slow and glitchy. So I went rogue and put Linux on my company laptop 8 months ago and I'm not looking back.

Yep. Over here running Fedora KDE 40 on my desktop, dealing with zero issues. My use case is pretty simple, but everything I use just works, no issues.
- If your use case is "pretty simple," you're unlikely to have problems with any operating system.

53% of my time is spent looking for CASE statements without an END. This is 99% human error - does that count?

With focused R&D, we can make it 70%!

I've gotten to a tight, taut 82% by trying to make all the mods I cram into video games not shit themselves all over my PC
I'm a homelabber. If you want notes or a flow chart let me know.
- This hits me right in the DIY NAS.

Yeah, I know. What of it?

Those are rookie numbers. Install Linux and pump those numbers up.

You don't know what you're talking about

Computers would be far less interesting if there weren‘t any problems to solve. Fiddling around really is half the fun for me, even when it can get frustrating.

Please don't get a job where you have windows, cloud, sharepoint , dynamics and one drive forced on you (plus a load of oracle). it makes you fucking hate computers.
- We use Teams and what frustrates me about it is that any „fix“ to a problem the program introduced itself (because teams just tends to be quirky like that for some reason) is just a workaround to use teams as little as possible. That sure is frustrating.
I agree for my personal usage, but I do think there's value in trying to make software easier to use for less technically minded users, while ideally still allowing the configurabilty and complexity for power users.
- Oh I absolutely agree. I just think a certain amount of problem solving still makes for a better user experience than having everything handed to you on a silver platter. Humans are problem solvers after all. That‘s why many of us „waste“ far more than 20% of our free time on games for example. But yes, it‘s frustrating when silly problems pop up when you already have enough on your plate. Things should generally work and we can all think of programs that are plainly too frustrating to use because the pile of problems is just too big.
if something broke on Windows or I tried to fix an issue that was bugging me on that OS it felt like a chore and was frustrating. If something breaks or I have an issue I want to fix on Arch I actually have fun and enjoy doing it.
The only problem with that is that it can really lead you down a rabbit hole. you fix or improve one thing and then you start wondering what else you can fix and improve on your install and all of sudden the day is gone becaue you've decided you want cmus to display album covers.

Just stop having computer problems

I thought the title said “We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computers.”

My immediate thought was “That seems way too low…”

I think we're all just chasing our tails sometimes

That's why I only use mentats.

Sarah Butler was right all along

Most of my time is lost on cloud services that got shittier over time.

My personal computer just works on Linux.

Doesn't surprise me at all lol, technology is always broken

I recognise the waste in waiting time, but I also think we are still increasing productivity more than enough to make up for it.

Personally I solve it by multitasking harder. Whenever there is a waiting time for a download or other stuff I simply start doing something else. I'm not going to waste my life watching loading bars for a living.

I don't think increasing user-friendlyness is a good solution. It's pretty much what caused the issues to begin with. Every time Windows or the apps make something more user-friendly it always results in more buttons to click and more updates to keep up.

I also spend an unreasonable amount of time just rearranging the windows in comparison to back when apps had keyboard-only GUIs with functions layered in different pages or tabs. I obviously don't think that is a good solution today either, but it goes to show that the bloated operating system has a lot of the blame.

Say you want to do something simple like renaming a file, you'll need to open an app to show the folders and files and also 100 different functions that are of no use for the specific task, position and scroll it where it's visible, navigate by mouse or keyboard and then do whatever you wanted. My point is that just operating the operation system is something that requires 10s of seconds over and over again every day. There's a long way from thought to execution for the simplest task.

The good thing is that it enables a lot of people to do so without any training at all, so maybe that makes up for it in total.

I think you might really enjoy using a tiling window manager on linux.