• FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 days ago

    I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.

    My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.

    But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…

    Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.

    It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.

    • brad_troika@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      2 days ago

      It’s funny. You’re telling us that the technology was too complicated for some people to use, then you say we got to the point that it just works and you end with this being bad. Why do you think that?

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        2 days ago

        In short, the complexity acted as a filter. It was a barrier to entry, which meant you had to be a bit of a nerd to get online. Back in the ‘90’s, people made fun of you for being an online nerd. But it also meant that the people who got online tended to be smarter. More educated.

        The internet of the ‘90’s had a very nerdy culture. The worst debates were about Star Wars vs Star Trek. We disagreed on some things, but on the whole it was ‘us nerds’ online.

        Now that we made it this easy, there’s no longer a filter: you can find anyone and everyone online. Including some folks who can’t really handle this much freedom without being assholes with it. The web also gravitated towards bigger platforms which, ironically, have much less of a community feel than the old web. In the 90’s, I knew everyone on a forum by name. But on a subreddit with a million people, there’s no real ‘community’.

        The web these days is also overrun with politics, which simply wasn’t a thing back in say, 1995.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        When technology was too hard for the tech-illiterate to use, your grandma wasn’t sharing stories about Haitians eating cats and dogs, and your deadbeat cousin didn’t waste his life savings on Trump’s cryptocurrency

    • C126@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      It goes back to critical thinking, the struggle to learn something is the most important part.

    • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      I know my way around Windows, Linux and android pretty well. I have to google any time I get asked for help with an apple device.

      So, while yes things have gotten simpler, if you want to do anything beyond the basics you still need to learn the device.

  • Different_pie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 days ago

    Anyone who dismisses an entire generation as lazy or stupid is, ironically, revealing their own ignorance. Even Socrates complained about the youth of his time, yet civilization kept moving forward. If every new generation were truly worse than the last, we’d have collapsed long ago. So no, you can’t generalize an entire generation as foolish—doing so only highlights your own lack of perspective.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      24 hours ago

      Maybe the world runs on averages. It might take a handful of really bright people to move the world forward whilst everyone else languishes in blissful ignorance.

  • Muffi@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    54
    ·
    3 days ago

    I run a Makerspace and teach technology to kids. I don’t think they are getting worse, but the difference between the lowest and highest skilled is bigger than ever before.

    Those who are interested, learn so fucking fast and so thoroughly, because they have things like YouTube tutorials and Discord chat groups with like-minded nerds to teach themselves. BUT at the same time, it’s easier to just remain a consumer, and never gain any deeper knowledge.

    I think curiosity and attention are quickly becoming the most important skills by far.

  • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    89
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    92 here. My boys 10 and 8 have their own machines, they are told to Google it first before I come help.

    “I’m not raising end users…get your shit together kid.”

    Love,

    SysEngineer Dad.

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      3 days ago

      fellow tech dad here. how did you strike the balance between “look up shit online” and “hiding the terrors and lies of the internet from my kids”?

      Mine’s still little, but knowing sooner is better.

      • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        3 days ago

        I have the Microsoft safety shit on, and I made every site they can go to a web app. My router blocks nsfw/nonkid traffic. My phone gets notifications when they do anything at all.

        And I have extensions blocking all nsfw sites just in case. And I’ve nuked the entry for any web browser on their start menu and task bars. Can’t even scroll to find it. If you open it, it requires my admin PW, which is 14char #$@-123-ABC so good luck turds.

        Steam is locked down in kid mode - also they just play Roblox or cool math games anyways lol. Steam has browser disabled.

        Only things they have access to is Bing.com with their signed in kid account. And coolmathgames.com.

        It took about a week on and off to setup and I just did the two laptops in tandem. Windows 11.

        The family thing can be a pain, Microsoft has a lot of half baked ideas https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/how-to-set-up-parental-controls-on-a-windows-11-pc

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          3 days ago

          My parents and school administrators’ attempts at blocking unsanctioned activities is what taught me computer literacy

          There was nothing quite as satisfying as getting caught opening addictinggames on a web browser through a proxy when the teacher was convinced they had blocked it completely.

          • The_v@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            3 days ago

            My son’s group in middle school hosted their own proxy overseas. They then pirated a whole bunch of educational videos that the teachers liked to use and made nice clean interface. The games pages had no direct links on the educational videos screens. They had to type in the the page directly in the URL.

            So the teachers all loved the site and gave the official “approved for all students” bypass on the districts Chromebooks. The kids had uninterrupted access to all their games.

            The kids were smart enough to keep the location of the games to students with a B or higher GPA. Most of the teachers turned a blind eye to them playing games when they did get caught. The games pages also had a home button that sent the students screens to a random educational video. I was truly impressed with their clever approach.

            The IT department either never caught on or enjoyed the games themselves because its still up and they are all in highschool now.

          • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            I remember when proxies were easy to find and you could get to the most ridiculous stuff. We had college intern system admins for IT at our HS so it was easier to get by alot of things most of the time.

          • Soggy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            3 days ago

            A friend and I became unofficial TAs for a high school computers class when we defeated the remote-viewing software and any web blockers, we knew more than the poor teacher and it was easier to let us do what we wanted if we promised to help other kids do the actual lessons.

            That network had terrible security. So many important files stored as unprotected text in the intranet.

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          3 days ago

          Yeah, I found Microsoft family to be a pretty half-assed experience. The thing that seems to work best is the screen time management. I had planned to try and set up YouTube access via allow listing channels in a home Linux server, but it turns out that YouTube doesn’t identify their videos by channel in the URL and I’d have to allowlist every single video for a given channel.

          • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            2 days ago

            I’m planning on building a server that rips channels videos and they can have the app for that.

            We are a no YouTube without our explicit permission on the video kinda household. Too much actual brainrot. And as much as I don’t like Television, at least my kids are mentally protected from bullshit with the Children’s Television Protection Act.

            • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              3 days ago

              I’m not a sysadmin, I’m a backend dev with enough network knowledge to be dangerous. I’ve set up exactly one super basic website, so I know some of this stuff, I just have to (and can and will) stumblefuck my way through it. This seems like a really great idea, I had no idea Piped could potentially handle that. I’m going to keep an eye on this, thanks!

        • Poxlox@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          3 days ago

          That’s awesome. I would’ve hated dealing with this as a kid. Will definitely steal this when I have kids.

            • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              Yea, my job at work now is to do this but all day lol. I build my network/firewall/and shit and then go around trying to break as much shit as I can so I can fix it.

      • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Raising them right. I have a 28 year old college grad sys admin that I work with…I had to show him where windows updates were.

        He uses windows search to open settings…bachelors degree in IT.

    • aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 days ago

      you should encourage them to use something that’s not google. Startpage, SearxNG, DuckDuckGo are good alternatives.

    • Fleur_@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      I spent so much time troubleshooting together with my dad. I found it way more educational than just googling it and owe my current level of knowledge to it. When I was living with my parents part of me was sad when I got to the point where I was able to solve any issues I had faster alone than with my dad’s help. No judgement just thought you might want to know. I totally get not wanting to cross over your work life and your family life though.

      • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        I learned electronics through my Dad that way too. And my kids learn through me with this stuff. But if they ask me over and over again to do something, it’s their burden to go research what they need to learn to stop asking me. And it’s usually done with my guidance. I’m not actually flippant with them with their questions lol

    • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      3 days ago

      You turn your 8 year old loose on google, explicitly and intentionally unsupervised, and hold it up as an example of good parenting.

      • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        You assumed absolutely wayyy to much based on a single sentence and virtue signal your superiority based on your own fantasy of what’s going on with inconclusive data. Move along.

  • bluewing@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    3 days ago

    I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.

    It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse…They couldn’t grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don’t go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn’t have a touch screen.

    And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.

    • lost_screwdriver@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      To be fair: I switched to Linux 6 years ago. I’m using a tiling windowmanager, a lot of custom scripts, a different keyboardlayout with six instead of two layers (great for writing greek math, and other symbols) and an enthusiastic emacs user. I know the my System in and out. As a CS end math student, I know a fair bit about a Computer. But when A sit in front of an ordinary windows PC, I am a little bit upset. I stumble a lot of times over the thought: “You don’t have a keyboard shortcut for this! You have to use the Mouse, to switch Windows or you have to click yourself trough a menu to change this setting. There are no man pages you can search with regex” I hate it!

      • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        3 days ago

        It’s because Windows has to save its keyboard combinations for the important things, like opening a new LinkedIn tab.

      • bluewing@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        “an enthusiastic emacs user” Well, there’s your problem! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the poke)

        To be serious, Windows and that mouse are just tools-- same as any Linux distro is. A means to an end. Nothing more. There is nothing to be miffed about when you need to use that tool. Be proficient with all your tools. And when you need to use a tool, don’t be concerned about comparing it to the other tools. It diminishes you skills with that tool and and offers no gain to the solution.

        • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          3 days ago

          But being stuck using windows when its not the right tool for the job is like having to use a pickaxe when you could be using q jackhammer, only the idiots in procurement don’t like power tools.

          • bluewing@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            2 days ago

            Perhaps. But despite using Windows, you got the job done, right? Life is all about using the tools do have, rather than the ones you wished you had.

            • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 days ago

              I mean i guess you must be pretty competent with an abacus then in case you ever get stuck somewhere where they wont let you ise a calculator? Your argument that people should spend time becoming proficient with inferior tools just because they are tools doesn’t really hold up. If something gets the job done better and more efficiently it makes the other tools obsolete. Thats the nature of technology.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        I use Arch (btw) because it’s easy, simple, and beginner friendly

        Absolutely lost in Windows, nothing ever works, and the documentation isn’t laid out well. Support is just sfc /scannow

      • zqps@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        I think that’s being a bit unfair to Windows. Some of its keyboard shortcuts are stupid, but it does have them. When it doesn’t, the problem is the application.

      • wabasso@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        Some of the legacy keyboard shortcuts still survive to this day.

        I live by Windows+R for the run dialogue.

        If you populate %userprofile% with shortcuts named after keywords to your commonly used apps (eg fire.lnk for Firefox) then you can just slap Windows+R, type fire, Enter.

        • zqps@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          Win+X is also great. Especially since the Start Menu doesn’t allow for quick shutdown commands since Win 8.

      • atx_aquarian@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Generally, you’re totally on point, but I just wanted to drill into that mention about hotkeys for switching windows. You mean something other than alt+tab, ctrl+tab, and in some applications shift+brackets?

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      I haven’t run into the problem of people not being able to use a mouse - but I’ve found that very few young people are able to tell if something is saved on their own computer or being accessed over the internet. Saving or downloading files is not something they are familiar with. (Which I suppose is because a lot of modern software makes cloud stuff so silky smooth that people don’t notice it.)

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    46
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    They get handed locked down chromebooks or iPads at schools. They’re only really exposed to a walled garden, and they also aren’t explicitly taught a lot of concepts that need to be taught (almost all MS/HS I’ve met have passwords which are just sliding their finger across the keyboard - it’s bewildering. I teach “correct horse battery staple.”)

    You can’t learn much if you can’t install your own software. Learning is breaking things though, and most schools seem allergic to hiring competent tech teams/setting up sandboxed computer labs. Security concerns are huge - eg, if your kids school uses PowerSchool they probably got hacked this year - but when your teaching physics and can’t install MathLab or whatever…

    There are still the little geeks that figure out how to get video game emulators going - Pokémon Emerald is probably more popular among middle schoolers today than it was in 2005.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 days ago

      My second grader’s school laptop is a cheap lightweight Lenovo Windows machine. So not ideal, but better than many options. At least it’s something I’d be willing to call a PC.

      The password situation is just as funny though. His login and password are on a nice printed label stuck right below the keyboard. The login is typical, lastname-firstinitial-middleinitial, but the password is just his 6-digit student ID number. So not only is it the classic “post-it on the monitor” situation, but it would be pretty trivial to log in as any student.

      Though so far in elementary school the laptops have been a teaching tool and occasionally a remote learning tool. Somebody couldn’t log in and mess with his homework or whatever.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    3 days ago

    Computer natives are millennials. In due time, millennials will be what cobol programmers are in the coding world.
    “On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you.”

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    I had a meeting with a young person who had to have the concept of a directory structure explained to them for a half hour…and they’re in charge of designing a file browser. 🤦‍♂️

    I don’t think the exercise was even successful.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      3 days ago

      how do people with no skills even get hired? I cant even get interview for job I fit perfectly for every thing they are asking for.

      • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        28
        ·
        3 days ago

        I’m pretty sure the people who do interviews are not the ones who have to train them. Also, if you use chat gpt for writing your cover letter, structuring your CV, running interview prep etc etc. You don’t even really need to be literate to come across as pretty put together.

        • reksas@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          3 days ago

          i guess i’m not getting hired for any work ever then… i just want to work and do my work well, not play their sick mindgames or pretend to be someone i’m not. I dont have any motivation to force myself to do work on fields outside my education either anymore.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    121
    ·
    4 days ago

    This has been a worrying trend in education. Parents assumed kids just knew how tech worked so they stopped teaching things like typing, office, or how to use the basics. Now we have people graduating who know how to use iPads and Xboxes, but have no idea how to manage a file structure (many honestly just use “recent”), or make a PowerPoint, and a lot don’t know typing.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      71
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Typing is irrelevant. Office software is irrelevant. There is one thing, and one thing only, that determines whether a person is computer-literate or not: whether the person can put together a custom workflow to solve a novel problem.

      I don’t mean “programming,” per se, and I don’t mean “scripting,” per se, and I don’t mean “piping together commands on a text command-line,” per se. But I do mean being able to (a) understand the task you want to accomplish, (b) break it down into its component steps, and (c) instruct the machine to perform those steps, while potentially (d) reading documentation and/or exploring the UI to discover how to do said instructing if necessary.

      A computer-literate person can be sat down in front of a computer running an OS and/or other software they’ve never used before and (eventually) figure out how to use it via trial-and-error, web-searching for tutorials, RTFM, or whatever, without shutting their brain off and giving up or demanding that some other person spoon-feed a list of steps to memorize by rote.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        69
        ·
        4 days ago

        I need to store my emails for later reference, so I print them out.

        But I don’t want to keep stacks of printed emails around, so I scan the prints and save them as pictures because that’s what the scanner does automatically.

        But I need to search through the emails, so I found a browser plugin that can scan a picture for text and give me a summary in a new file.

        But my company computer won’t let me install browser plugins so I email the scanned pictures to my personal address and then open them on my phone and use the app version of the browser plugin to make the summaries and then I email those back to my company address.

        But now I want to search through the summaries, which are Word documents, but Office takes forEHver to load on my shitty company computer so I don’t want to use the search in it, so I right-click -> Print the summary files and then choose “Print to PDF” and then open them in Adobe Reader so I can search for the information I want that way. I usually have 200 tabs of PDFs open in Reader so I can cross-reference information.

        I have a great custom workflow. I’m the most computer literate person in my office.

        • Adm_Drummer@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          45
          ·
          4 days ago

          Reading this felt like the computer version of whatever the SAW movies are.

          Torture porn? It’s so repugnant but I want more.

          • jawsua@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            25
            ·
            4 days ago

            I had someone take an email they received about a technical problem someone else was having. They then printed it out, highlighted the important part, then scanned it back in as a picture all offset and grainy, then used that picture in a web chat to request help for that third person without direct contact

            They were an IT Manager

              • jawsua@lemmy.one
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                3 days ago

                It actually takes more delta-V to fire someone into the sun as it takes to fire them out of the solar system. We like efficiency.

                They’ll meet up with Voyager II for a close flyby in about 156 years. They’re the universe’s problem now.

            • Klear@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              3 days ago

              Nah. While the text does successfully destroy the notion that “if it works it isn’t stupid”, I still see this as an improvement over so many people who are incapable of anything

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          35
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          4 days ago

          Okay, I guess there’s one more criterion for computer literacy: being able to distinguish between a reasonable workflow and a batshit-insane one. (That might even include a little bit of understanding of complexity: not enough to be able to classify an algorithm using “big O notation,” but maybe enough to avoid a basic “Schlemiel the Painter” situation, for example.)

          • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            3 days ago

            When you don’t understand the tools, every possible solution that reaches your end goal seems equally valid, no matter how convoluted. Unfortunately, the design philosophy that attempts to make every tool as compatible as possible with every other tool enables this sort of Rube Goldberg-esque nonsense (and creates development hell and permanent legacy dependencies).

            It’s… difficult for someone who does understand the tools to even imagine being in the mental space of someone who doesn’t, which is why IT people frequently come off as arrogant, judgy, even rude - they expect other people to understand things the way they do, when they’ve been taking computers apart since high school. What seems reasonable to you is perfectly opaque to them. Also… sometimes people who are technically literate are the hardest to pull out of their batshit processes (doctors are the worst patients).

            When you are trying to help someone, always keep the XY Problem in mind. They’ve arrived at a solution which seems insane to you, not because they’re unreasonable, but because they ran into an obstacle and bounced off of it in a path-of-least-resistance direction and they have shit they need to get done. Try to solve the real problem, not the problem that is presented.

          • The_v@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            23
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            Get out more. This is entirely realistic in my experience.

            The worst one I ran into was early in my career. This was back during the XP days.

            The lady who who did the job before had a certificate e-mailed to her from a lab. She printed the certificate off then slipped two certificates front and back into a plastic sheath and put them into a 4" 3 ring binder.

            She then deleted the labs e-mail and electronic copy to save space in her mailbox.

            There were around 4,000 of these certificates every year for 5 years when I started. So around 20,000 pages. We had ONE physical copy of a legally required certificate.

            Around 15 shipments per year required her to find around 300-400 specific certificates She then had to pull them out of the plastic sheaths, make 3 physical copies and scan one PDF to load to the government agencies webpage.

            She would then delete the PDF, and laboriously refile the certificates back into the the plastic sheets.

            Oh the binders were also ordered in a way that nobody but her could find anything. It was about as close to random as you could get.

            The 15 shipments took around 50% of her time every year.

            I hired two temps and gave them a few very boring days. When we were done the certificates were all organized in a logical numerical order and in long-term secure storage. I had a folder on the server with 20,000 PDF files all with a unique name. It took me around 15 minutes to locate, print, and upload the required files for each shipment.

            • Hoomod@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              4 days ago

              I remember reading a story where the persons job was literally copying data from one program into another, may have even just been between two excel files

              New hire came in and wrote a script that did it, and automated that person’s job out of existence

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              4 days ago

              I can kind of see the reason though. If she’s old enough then digital storage space was a really big issue. I can totally see someone having been told 30 years ago to make sure they leave nothing in memory and never updating that knowledge. I don’t know what to say about the rest of it though.

              • The_v@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                3 days ago

                Poor workflow management sadly is quite normal, not the exception. She was in her early 20’s at the time, just completely computer and workflow incompetent. I have seen similar issues with people of all ages. It’s not a generational thing, it’s an aptitude and interest thing.

            • FinnFooted@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              3 days ago

              Man I think this is just ensuring job security. Until you hired the interns and ruined it!

      • LittleBorat3@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        3 days ago

        It’s shocking how few people know things I consider using a PC like organizing, customizing, automating tasks etc.

        I always have to hold myself back and think I am not going to tell you how exactly to do this.

        And expecting a list they can work off instead of thinking? Infuriating! These people are not old, it’s a mentality.

      • Lightor@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        I think knowing something like office software helps since that novel problem. Knowing how to do a pivot table can get you an outcome you need in a fraction of the time if you don’t know how to do one. You need to know how to use the tools to create a solution.

    • adm@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      To be fair, file structure navigation became more of a pain in the ass when Microsoft decided to rework their start menu to feed into their fucking store/web browser. It’s not a hard fix but tablet natives wouldn’t know any better. At work I still end up accidently searching the web sometimes when im searching for a file that wasn’t important enough to pin. I know basic file structure the modern UIs are just trash and not designed for local users.

      • AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 days ago

        With the search Powertoys can help, it is really good. Plus the other features it has is just amazing, windows without it is pure trash.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          3 days ago

          On windows the best search is https://www.voidtools.com/ by voidtools.

          And by far, it hooks up right into the mtbr in the drives and knows instantly where all files are at all times. Copy 100.000 files? They are already “indexed”! Clean GUI too.

          One of the few tools windows has that’s better than the linux ones. Or if you have an equivalent please let me know!

      • On iOS for example it’s also hard. Every app has its own silo of files and then there’s a shared file system. The file manager app is far less capable than Finder on macOS.

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 days ago

      I blame the education system, not the parents. Most parents can hardly work a computer themselves, much less teach it to a kid who will ask 20,000 questions

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    ·
    3 days ago

    Late GenX (really, between X and Millennial): we expected everyone after us to understand tech. Nope.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      3 days ago

      Digital safety seems to have disappeared

      The internet is a scary place, you should treat it like a scary place

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Nah fam, post with your real name, your real face, all your personal details, and then write your racist opinions next to them.

        I’m sure nothing will go wrong with that.

      • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        Its a watered down and minimalist scary place. at least the Design language and UI of the conspiracy theorist websites are clean and sanitized today.

        In the 90s and much of the 2000s, That Web 1.0 style of webpages, even Granny’s Knitting website looked terrifying.

        … And I loved web 1.0

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      Bingo. We straddled the digital divide, figured it out and deployed it to the world. Until a radical new technology comes along, there won’t be another generation like us.

    • Jeremyward@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      I have an 'intern` I’m working with on a project, kid doesn’t know how to read docs. Maybe doesn’t know how to read? 🤷 Thing is we are doing devOps and using powershell or terminal or whatever. So it’s literally all reading, all day long every single day. I don’t know what to do honestly.

      • save_the_humans@leminal.space
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        I can read docs and would be interested in an internship… Paid ideally, but would love to have a mentor to learn devops. I also know multiple programming languages and am comfortable in a terminal

      • Soggy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Cut your losses and get a new intern, it’s gonna take ten times longer to teach this kid to read than if you just do the project solo.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    3 days ago

    I’ve worked in IT for most of my career. I’ve seen some shit. I’m on the older side of “millennial”. Not old enough to be on the cusp, but almost immediate after. I have had computers as a part of my life since I was young enough to remember, starting with a 286/386 that my dad used at home.

    One thing I’ve noticed is that most companies shit doesn’t stink. What I mean by that is that all of them, to some extent, hide, cover up, or otherwise deny that their product has any issues whatsoever. I did a lot of VMware training back in the day, there were good reasons for that, but I won’t get into it … anyways, all of their training was about how it’s supposed to work. There’s zero material about what to do when it doesn’t work like it is supposed to… Even “troubleshooting” courses are designed to help you fix the configuration of the system using only methods sanctioned by the company, because any fault or flaw in their product must be because you aren’t using it right, or you simply don’t know how.

    I’ve known so many millennials, especially in the tech space, that had to fix their own problems because the product, and the company that made it, believes that their shit doesn’t stink. There’s nothing wrong with their product, you either don’t know how to use it, or you aren’t using it correctly,

    Meanwhile, here in reality, all their shit sucks to all fuck, and their product is little more than hour garbage.

    Yay?

  • VerbFlow@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    Right here you can see capitalism collapsing in on itself. This is the result of a society that glorifies consumption and makes work undesirable to do.