I mean.....I'm not in IT but in medicine we have to Google Searchle stuff all the time so it's not surprising August does too. Especially after all the normal tricks are used. Not wizards or encyclopedias, he needs help with the particular problem so makes sense
More importantly Robin don't criticize the process if you aren't willing to do the work and fix it yourself.
I am somewhat surprised August didn't want coffee though
It's useful and it makes it so that we can resolve stuff faster without the need for a notebook or whatever handy all the time.
Plus some stuff is sooooo specific. Like in my profession how the hell am I supposed to know the name for a med on a condition that's so rare it's the ONLY one in my city?!
My doc was talking to me about how meds change so frequently, you'd have to be an android to remember them all. Some go out of use, new ones are created, existing ones get a new generic brand... It hurt my brain just listening to him talk about it.
GPT's deep research function actually does a decent job of finding correct information, because instead of using its LLM model, it scours the internet for reputable sources and compiles all that. Its nice because, with all the sponsored shit and bloat on Google these days, it does hours of searching in like thirty seconds.
However, you can only use it like twice a day if you don't pay the 20 a month for GPT
Context-aware search of reputable information isn't a novel feature of chatgpt. That shit's been around for a least a decade, without all the hallucinating
As described in a new paper published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, a 60-year-old man ended up coming down with an all-but-defunct condition known as “bromism” after ChatGPT suggested he replace sodium chloride, which is better known as table salt, with sodium bromide, a substance used in pesticides, pool and hot tub cleaners, and as a canine anticonvulsant.
After the patient’s bromide-induced psychosis abated, he explained to his doctors that ChatGPT advised him, when he asked for a good alternative to sodium chloride, that sodium bromide could be an effective substitute.
It's a pump that delivers medication at a fixed rate. Sometimes used for pain or something that's needed daily. They sent overly common anymore especially the morphine ones
Some do! It could be an internal database and for us paramedics we usually have a app on our phones that allow us to quickly look up and compare medicines
Lol my patients like to make smart ass comments all the time about their other doctors not knowing about our medication. My specialty pharmacy is the only pharmacy in the country that carries this medication for less than 10k patients.... of course your other doctors don't know about it.
As an IT professional, I'd notice my docs run up the search engine a lot too. I make no issue out of it, the true skill is understanding the information presented and knowing what to do with it. Whether it's following basic instructions or registering what the information is stated that may not be as clear cut in the given context.
Stuff is complicated as hell, especially software and medicine. Lots of interchangeable stuff that goes around
The difference between a doctor (or IT professional) using Google to search for something and a layperson using it is that the layperson doesn’t know when what they’re reading is wrong.
Part of the reason AI is so nice in a senior devs hands. I can just read it's output and tell it when it's approach is dumb or straight wrong. But as soon as people put their full faith in whatever the Internet shits out.... Things can get dumb.
Exactly. It's one thing to look up your problem and another to interpret it. Without the knowledge of how to make use of your search results you might as well be a toddler flipping through an encyclopedia.
It happened when one of my children had a rash. He goes “I think it’s this.” And then does a google image search, shows me the pics, then goes “it’s not this.” Google image searches the other thing and then puts the images side by side and explains his reasoning.
I trusted him for everything after that. Dude was effectively showing me his thought process in real time.
Yeah, the first time mine did that I did a double take. Then I remembered I do that for my job, and a professional using the internet to diagnose a problem is a few steps more effective than someone who doesn't know shit trying to do the same thing, and he probably wasn't just putting symptoms into WebMD and coming to the conclusion that I had bubonic plague.
One of my most interesting doctor appointments involved the doctor searching for something while I was in the room. She explained to me why she was doing a search, the resources she was using, and how her experience and education helped in finding and utilizing the results. She was one of the best doctors I ever had and I'm still sad that she ended up shifting careers.
That's quite a shame. It's hard to find someone that patient and caring in my field. But it's nice to hear you had such a wonderful experience! What did she end up switching to if you don't mind my asking
She never told me but I was seeing her frequently enough to know she was starting to have some extreme burn out. I get the impression that she moved to administration.
I had a professor who said that looking up the answers was not cheating, it was research. Seriously, books were specifically invented so we wouldn’t have to memorize everything.
There are things that you should memorize but by and large these are not what we test people on. You don’t need to memorize the date the Magna Carta was signed or what year the Norman Conquest of England started. You do need to memorize your address and the phone number of an emergency contact.
That said, you should generally know the order of historical events and the general timeframe of them. If you don’t know that the US Civil war happened before the Black Friday stock market crash you should probably have that held against you still.
You don’t need to memorize the date the Magna Carta was signed
But what if my no good con artist brother tries to swap numbers on an important legal document that I know for a fact was correct because it was one after the magna carta. 1216! As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just - I just couldn't prove it. He - he covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the copy shop to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He's done worse. That billboard! Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No! He orchestrated it! Jimmy! He defecated through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn't have. I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He'll never change. He'll never change! Ever since he was 9, always the same! Couldn't keep his hands out of the cash drawer! But not our Jimmy! Couldn't be precious Jimmy! Stealing them blind! And he gets to be a lawyer!? What a sick joke! I should've stopped him when I had the chance! And you - you have to stop him!
The kids don't even do that anymore. They just ask WizGPT to write an incantation for them. And then they wonder why so many of their generation keep on accidentally stranding themselves in the Nether Hells...
With most of my tech support friends as with most in the legal field about 80% of the time if there’s a question the answer is searching for an answer. The real talent is knowing what search terms to use, understanding the results and knowing when you’ve found the right answer.
I’m the backup tech support for my firm with exactly this approach.
In my experience, knowing what to search for and being able to parse what results may actually help is the most valuable tool in IT (and presumably other fields), whether it's corporate or helping your family members fix their routers. And you quickly come to realize that a lot of people can't or won't do it. Your knowledge and training is what helps make those search results useful.
It's like the joke about the customer complaining that something is so expensive when it only took the professional 5 minutes to do it. Yeah, it took 5 minutes cause he went to school for years and has been doing this job for even more years.
As a former IT guy, it's funny that you relate to IT work via medicine because I always felt like IT guys are what happens when your pharmacist isn't trained in their field. IT guys have to deal with complex interactions between programs and layers of software (sometimes... sometimes you just need to turn it off and back on again) but we learn EVERYTHING on the job.
Being a good IT guy means you are a good researcher and have decent people skills. That's it.
I'm in IT, and I'd like to say I know windows but when windows just spits out one of ~10.000 error codes, I'd use Google.. I can't memorize every single one 😂
When I was studying CS, I’d be looking up functions and whatnot every 30 seconds. I had definitely spent way more time in the browser than actually coding anything.
I remember having to go to a&e for something and trying to explain my very long list of conditions and the doctor stopped me and went "hang on, COVID can induce diabetes‽" opened up Google and went "oh my god I need to research this some more, this is so interesting".
I respect the hell out of people that are happy to just search for something. We can't know everything and admitting that is a real strength. It's also a great skill to be able to utilise searches to find what you need. I always get asked by colleagues how I manage to find what they spent ages trying to. I also love that I can share knowledge with others. A lot of people have no idea how destructive COVID is, medical professionals included.
I am an IT tech for one of the biggest IT companies in the world...and the best way for me to get troubleshooting and diagnostics in the field is to Google it which brings up my company's tech help.
Thank you. Humility is too rare. Im a Senior Platform Developer and love to learn and research, cuz I still feel like idk shit. My wife and son both have seperate 'mystery' diseases and its like my wife does 90% of the leg work to solving. Doctors are either like "bummer idk lol" or "oh you looked that up? Thats probably not it (didnt know what IT was)". I could rant, but not time or place.
Ill end with backing you up on "doing the work yourself", cuz its not always just a recipe. Even if, you may want elementary knowledge or you may end up with EBKAC issues.
I think some people don't realise that searching for information that you kinda forgot IS NOT THE SAME as trying to learn it completely from the internet.
I am somewhat surprised August didn't want coffee though
It's either 3PM and he doesn't want it too late in the day where it'll affect his sleep... or because it helps you poop he doesn't want to mess up his scheduled pooping time.
Yup professionals search shit all the time. The difference is they have the background or simply the access to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
If your doctor or whatever isn't looking up the more complex stuff, find another doctor.
I'm in IT, and we Google shit ALL THE TIME. Its a ton of information to remember, so after getting your certs, less common stuff just falls off the brain map. A quick Google brings it right back.
I can see how that might be disconcerting to someone who doesn't know what the profession is about, though. I always feel mild concern when my doctor googles something while Im in the office, and then realize that they probably have to memorize more than almost any other profession.
Whenever I am explaining things to customers, I will look things up, anyway. If I have an example or a model, then I will just use that, but if it is too complicated, I will just look it up. People learn better with pictures and animation than with words. And I know that I forget things, so looking up keeps me straight and lets them know that they don’t have to worry about getting screwed because I am too proud to check my answers.
I always tell them, “you don’t have to trust me. We can just go find out.” They usually trust me after that, though 😁
I think having that background in IT is what gives the average IT guy an advantage over a regular, non-tech savvy person when trying to Google fixes for their computer issues. You have a basis of information to go off of when you start googling stuff.
You're going to google "how to fix computer", I'm going to google "how to fix thingamabob version 4.7 freezing when you attempt to reverse the polarity" which I can tell is the problem with your computer.
I'm in IT, and we Google shit ALL THE TIME. Its a ton of information to remember, so after getting your certs, less common stuff just falls off the brain map. A quick Google brings it right back.
But after all that experience you know a little bit better what to google and how the answer you're looking for looks like.
I've been IT for more than 25 years. Maybe 10-15% of the stuff I was initially trained for is still relevant in modern IT.
The one skill that has stuck with me the entire time and provided me the most value is how to disassemble a problem into it's individual components and how to search for solutions to common problems with those components.
On top of the amount, it also changes frequently and often enough drastically. Whatever knowledge you had 5 years ago is probably 80+% worthless and outdated.
Yeah, and a lot of the experience comes in navigating to the problem first so you can make informed searches. "Why does X not work" will bring up a bunch of noise, but being able to find a log with an error code to search "Error Code YYZ2 in ApplicationY" will bring up much better results. Or following a stack trace up to the failing program in a more complex system.
tbh even the certs are mostly useless. I've been in IT for about 8 years now and don't have a single cert. We'll interview people that look like they're trying to collect them all but then give terrible answers to interview questions lol
My oncologist googled all sorts of research when he was explaining the course of my treatment.
Granted his "explaining" meant saying words that I had NO IDEA what they meant. And granted (again), he used words in his definitions that, again, I had no idea what THOSE meant.
But I do know that a graph that shows the treatment and the control having the exact same line (5 year survival rate) is bad, and the graph that shows a treatment STAYING MUCH HIGHER after 5 years compared to the control group is much better.
He, um, tried. Luckily his ARPN was actually able to explain the treatment in words I understood (and I never had to talk to the oncologist again LOL.)
Realistically, nobody is going to memorize how to fix every little thing wrong with a computer. Computers today are far more complicated than they once were. Not one single person on earth knows everything about them.
At the end of the day, just know how to use your tools to solve problems. The internet is one of those tools, and probably the most powerful one in your arsenal when it comes to fixing computer issues.
Blessed are the people who know how to do basic quick fixes, can recognize when it's something beyond their scope, and are willing to turn to others when. Especially after documenting what they tried.
I used to provide details in my tickets. However our IT tends to respond with things like "you didn't respond to my 2am email, ticket closed for non response" and "no, that shouldn't happen, ticket closed."
The worst is when you do this, but you still get stuck with tier 1 support that can only tell you to do those things again before you can get advanced support!
In defence of tier 1, they do get a lot of people who tell them they did the thing but didn't do the thing so they have to do the dance just in case.
"Is it turned on?"
"Of course, I'm not an idiot!"
"Ok can you turn it off please"
"Sure" [presses the power button, turns on]
"Oh wow it's working, thank you so much!"
I asked them to please check the cable. They called me an idiot, rummaged under the desk and half way through telling me that it was plugged in, they stopped, sighed, then hung up.
As someone who works in IT, yes, it's a ton of info to remember. Even more so if the architecture surrounding the entire workplace was done by people who are no longer working there, and are 100% not willing to share a single detail even when asked properly
Plus, if I knew EVERY single Windows error in the book, I'd probably get an aneurysm
If they aren't willing to share, I hear that enticing them with cash sometimes does the trick.
I'm not IT, but I do work in automation engineering. It's not uncommon for a similar situation to happen at a production plant. Often times, if they're desperate enough, these plants will offer pay rates far exceeding the norms just to temporarily get a guy back in to help train the current staff how to manage or replace a complex system that he was familiar with.
The real value in any tech job is knowing how to find, validate, and apply information. Some memorization is needed, but nobody actually remembers every single thing from studies or lectures, especially not for all the decades we're expected to work. Memorization can actually be a curse in IT because things that were once right become wrong. Microsoft is especially good at making a fool out of anyone who tries to memorize how their UI works. Even the PowerShell commands are uncertain over time, because they keep making new modules and retiring the old ones. The correct way to do anything will be different if you blink twice. Looking up current information is the safest method.
That really is the only difference. IT has enough knowledge to find the solution. However, it is quite astounding how easy it is to find the answer sometimes while everyone else around you is stumped.
My other magic skill as IT support, is reading the damn error message, out loud, to the person who said their computer is broken, and following its instructions.
Yeah this is a big issue that was covered a little in my UX class. People really don't like pop-ups and error messages and will often simply click out of them, ignoring and/or missing the problem or information entirely.
A huge part of good error messages is formatting and giving clear, actionable instructions. I had an app that would give validation errors that people would file tickets for, and the fix was to make the message have less scary formatting and a slightly different sentence structure.
Dear Lord if even 5% of users actually would read the whole message through or EVEN just taken a picture with their phone that's more than we have now ;-;
I browse /r/networking a lot since that's what I do. There was a post from a student who asked "How am I supposed to answer this question on this test when I'm not given any information like I would be in the real world?"
Nearly every comment in the post was "This is the most real world question you'll ever see" lol. Especially in networking, where routers, modems, and switches are interchangeable to people, along with "internet" and WiFi
Being able to identify the problem and correctly search for a useable solution is my IT non-secret, after completing the normal troubleshooting rituals.
As someone who has no computer schooling other than typing class.
August is at the office and looking at a computer that's being difficult. It can't seem to connect to the network. The screen says "ERROR No connection So alone". Poor computer. August tried the usual fixes but the problem isn't obvious. He's begun searching for answers on his phone with a search engine called "Searchle".
August: This might take a while to fix.
Robin: Okay, let me know when it's-
Panel 2
Robin has noticed that August is searching online for solutions. Why did he even bring IT into this when he could have done that himself?
Robin: Wait, you're just looking up how to fix it on your phone! I could have done that.
August: You still can do that.
Panel 3
Robin looks to the side and contemplates the situation. August wouldn't mind being able to skip this task but is also aware not everyone knows the right thing to search for and he will probably still have to do it in the end.
Panel 4
Robin has decided to stop questioning things and take this as an opportunity to get some coffee. This moment is a gift. August is unbothered, he would probably do the same thing.
Robin: I'm going to get some coffee. You want anything?
I like these descriptions because they add nuance you might not get from the comic. Like August being unbothered as opposed to just disliking the coworker or something. (Though if you know August, you know that's not the case lol)
When I was in technical college one thing our mechanics professor used to say was: "You don't have to know everything. You just have to know where to look it up"
And I feel like that is a helpful skill that not everyone possesses
Definetly and I would argue even using chat gpt properly is something that many people don't know how. (I for example use it for a new topic to give me a rough overview similar to a wikipedia search and from there search for secondary source like academic papers and articles on my own)
Also in regards to chat gpt the skill of being critical about information sources i.e. being able to discern a credible trustworthy source compared to a potentially incorrect information source
Sometimes finding what you need online is a talent of its own. I need help searching things sometimes. I ask my man that works in IT to find art supplies sometimes.
So you accept, all responsibility when, - not if but when - , shit hits the fan, and pay for all corresponding damages, and give us this information in writing?
I also work in tech and often do this, and I encourage my team to do the same and include a scenario in interviews for what to do if they don’t know the answer.
But I do enjoy telling people I’m Binging it or asking Jeeves instead of googling just for the reaction
I work with speciality equipment, and I still do this. Hey, the equipment still uses Windows, and much of the errors are the same. So being able to find possible solutions online can help, even if it's just the right place to look or the right command to run.
When I worked IT, anything that was more complicated than a hardware swap or reboot was probably gonna involve a quick google search. If nothing else, confirming the resolution you expect to do….but more often than you’d think you’d find clever workarounds or unexpected snares in fixing problems.
Yes, but one do you know how many errors there are with a PC?
Two, you dont have the administrative rights to do what the guide says anyways so don't worry about it.
IT is less about knowing exactly how to solve every problem and more about having the ability to find the information I need to solve the problem.
Sure, both of us can look up the solution to a problem, but if you don't know the terminology or places to look, I'm going to find the solution a lot faster than you.
Additionally, if you don't have the experience, you won't know how to problem solve when a solution doesn't work.
Now, you might ask: how does one get this information? The answer is simple: screw around with tech and see what happens in a relatively safe environment. For example, today my File Explorer in Win10 was locked up, so I killed the process in Task Manager, and then I noticed that my entire taskbar was gone. This tells me that Win10 uses File Explorer as a basis for the taskbar, so that's one possible reason why someone might have their taskbar dissappear.
Sometimes I search, but other times I just dive right in and poke around. When I was a young warthog, we would rent video games from Blockbuster and they never had manuals so you just had to press buttons and figure it out as you went. No maps or guides to help navigate, either. That has carried over into my professional career (and personal life, honestly) since I don't know what I can or can't do so lets see what this literal or metaphorical button does. It works out pretty well a decent amount of the time. For everything else, there's the internet.
Most of the time when I looked up tech fixes for my computer/other electronics I get the answer and still go "yeah, I don't know how to do that/what that means".
As my friend who works on a similar area said "You're not paying for someone knowledgeable, you're paying for someone that's knowledgeable enough to search and understand for the answer you need".
As someone in IT, yes… we google A LOT! But it’s cause we can’t remember every little thing that we fix. I manage 4 different schools (used to be 5 and some colleagues have more per week), there’s no way I’m remembering all that garbage.
Also the difference is: we know what to search and how to read/interpret the results. And a lot of the time it’s skim reading to jog the memory.
Back in the ... 90s, I think... I was applying for a position with a local non-trivially sized software company. There was a question about some obscure buffer parameter, something that I later found out was related to where the department might go in the future.
Anyhow, they asked a question or two about the value of the parameter and my response was "/usr/sys/include/param,h... I really shouldn't have constant values memorized anyhow and that file - or something similar - will give me the correct DEFINEs. I can check out the man page if I need more".
This royally pissed off the interviewer even though, when I spoke to others both within the group and the department at large, vastly preferred my answers. Meh, it was the 90s, I found a startup instead that I made bank with that just had a farther commute.
The company crashed & burned in following years, if not that soon, but did become somewhat famous in certain circles for making more money filing lawsuits than anything else.
Long & short though in relation to this comic - the ability to research, and the hows, whens & wheres of a problem, is far more important than memorized specifics. How you do that research, as long as it works, is about as important to solving the problem as the brand of TP you use & how that affects your ability to drive your car.
I google stuff all the time for work to figure out how to do it. People without my skill set don’t know what to google or what to do with the answers they find.
The difference between a junior IT employee and a senior IT employee is really just how well-trained their Google-Fu is, and how many times they've seen this exact problem come up before.
My IT friends use to tell me search engines are your best friend. Mostly because computer issues are always changing. So if you have an issue, there’s a strong possibility someone else has had the same issue.
Also having a network of other IT friends comes in clutch when keeping up with up to date news.
I have a friend in IT. He's regarded as the most valuable employee in his company and he attributes his success to being willing to look up YouTube videos on how to solve unique problems.
Lol that happened a lot at my previous job. Everyone would ask me to fix our computers and printers and stuff like that when they weren’t working right and literally all I ever did was google it and follow the instructions.
It’s bizarre that people have the answers at their fingertips and choose not to use them. 😭
In every IT related job i had it was the same, i "had" to give thanks that most people doesn't actually want to learn how to fix their stuff even if it takes 5 minutes instead waiting 40 minutes for a technician to finish rebooting printers.
You still need the knowledge to understand the answer to the question and see the nuances that might cause additional problems or be off base of what you are trying to do.
I'm a handyman and I Google and AI stuff all the time. Half of it is experience and skill, and half is knowing what to search for and how to implement the info you get.
Sure, you can Google or ask chatgpt what to do to fix X. I'll even do it because I haven't seen this particular model of appliance before and I want to check what to do, especially because the manufacturer has one generic manual for 100 models that wasn't updated when the model was updated so the model has parts and systems not in the manual.
Ok the user can search for it, but they don't know what quetions to ask, filter the results or undertand what to do, and even then the answer is never given, but the data helps the IT people to figure out a solution.
I'm one of the guys who does look up how to fix it myself before calling IT and only really brings them in on something I don't have permissions for or that I have to deal with the downstream of and don't touch the actual working parts ever.
On the other hand, the amount of family IT I've had to do where they ask for help with something, and I search for an answer on the exact same search engines they have access to and use their account on their computer to fix it is slightly maddening. I've never had anyone get mad at me for looking up the answer but "You can still do that" is just a killer line. "I could have done that" by someone who just fucking didn't is such a bullshit perspective.
A lot of IT is just knowing where to look for the right answer and the right way to search it, and understanding the vocabulary of the solutions.
and being willing to sit for hours trying various solutions until one works.
It might sound like something anyone can do but if that were the case, my family would have never needed my help. Maybe many people just aren't willing to spend time on it.
It's kind of like medicine where the problems and solutions are constantly changing with updates to the data. New updates bring new potential problems with different solutions. And there's a new update weekly. It's nigh impossible for one human to just memorize all of it before work every day.
I solve every technical problem like this and it always works, nobody else seems to do it, only my dad knows that the internet has the solution and even he prefers it if I do it for some reason.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 4h ago edited 4h ago
I mean.....I'm not in IT but in medicine we have to
GoogleSearchle stuff all the time so it's not surprising August does too. Especially after all the normal tricks are used. Not wizards or encyclopedias, he needs help with the particular problem so makes senseMore importantly Robin don't criticize the process if you aren't willing to do the work and fix it yourself.
I am somewhat surprised August didn't want coffee though