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Comment by semitext | Hacker News Reader

This is my experience working in offices like law firms that are filled with people that have limited technical aptitude for using software. Showing any sort of competency is a recipe for increasing your workload with no conferred benefits.

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Yeah, it’s draining. They have no desire or intention to learn. You’re not helping them, you’re just doing their job for them.

Yours, former excel guy.

I always looked at it as being great job security.

"You haven't completed any of your assignments while your co-workers all exhibit improved productivity. For this reason, I'm giving you a poor performance review."

Never once seen it play out like that. Most people understand that your work comes before the help they need.

That's fine, the problem is that you also get all the blame as well. Once you "fix" a computer, everything that will break will suddenly be your fault.

Very true. I once installed a printer driver in a friend's company. I got blamed for missing files by several employees during the following weeks.

I've heard that auto mechanics know these as "Ever since you..." stories.

My former boss, in process of bidding for a bigger highway maintenance job, started with me with How can we do this in excel? Can we get all these X? etc basic questions, solved with vlookup or index or things. Things slowly shifted to just do this this & this, no desire of learning 5o know how, & the tasks became my extra responsibility, & anything breaks in that sheet because of long tangled inter-dependent cells, it will be my fault. Too much draining & taxing on mind.

It's quite similar to being a senior programmer and assisting junior colleagues instead of doing their own work. Though in this case I suppose the blame falls on management for not allocating time properly.

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