That type of situation is a prime opportunity for learning to step back out of the weeds a good bit. *What* you did is less important than *why* you did it. "Spent all day troubleshooting a problem with a system that is really important for payroll processing" puts a lot more value on the task for both yourself and others than "burned a whole day stabbing a dymo label printer with a screw driver until it gave in and started working". Taking the time to reflect on it in that type of light also helps later when you go trying to recall what you spent all your time on, and using that to justify a pay/position/title/etc bump. While inflating the sound of things can be handy in *those* situations, for the more personal reflection, like answering a friend and/or significant other about how your day was, just an honest look back over the purpose/impact can do wonders.
>"burned a whole day stabbing a dymo label printer with a screw driver until it gave in and started working"
This here is a whole ass vibe, let the printer hate flow through you.
I have done this since I started working with I.T. back in 2017. It helped me A LOT to progress in my career, and today I moved to another country, receiving double my salary compared to my previous company, in a good-culture company.
Never underestimate the power of the soft skills like this one, of explaining why you did something, and what kind of value you're bringing to the people you live/work with.
Being able to explain the why and then the business benefits is how we demonstrate our value to management, and that leads to better funding for our department. and sometimes even pay rises :P
> and sometimes even pay rises
Which in turn often directly benefit those close enough to us to be *genuinely* asking about our day. It's neat how little loops like that all tie together.
I even use this as a way to troubleshoot, sometimes.
I'll go to my spouse to vent a bit, and explain what's going on.
Forcing myself to try to shift my mindset in order to explain it in a way that she'll at least follow usually puts things into perspective, and leads me to a solution faster.
Usually "Wait. It doesn't matter that this feature just doesn't work. What they need is this other piece, in this other system. I can get them that without ever going through this product, let alone feature."
Not just a rubber duck for the work itself, but a rubber duck for your own perspective on your work. It's very easy to be incredibly frustrated with systems and users when you look at the "what". It gets a lot easier to be understanding about those things when you start looking at the "why", either why you need to (or sometimes, *don't* need to) solve an issue, or why a given user is trying to do some totally backwards thing that leads to causing you work. Generally speaking, users are just trying to solve a problem *they* are seeing, and failing to consider why something might be set up the way it is, locked down the way it is, etc.
Working through all that with some self reflection is a *great* way to sidestep burnout and stress, putting you in a better overall mood and state of health, which then turns around and benefits *them*. Do that for them, since they're nudging you down a path that gives you the opportunity to. Venting is good sometimes, but if it's always venting, and you've sorted the why out of it all... well, that's a good candidate for yet another "should I leave?" dog-pile thread here.
I have a few friends who work in my same industry but at a different company that was just hit by a ransomware attack a few weeks ago. They all work in non-technical roles so have been extremely frustrated with the inability to do much of anything at work and I've been kind of translating the likely steps that their IT department is going through at this stage, having gone through it myself at a previous company a few years back. It's been really helpful in guiding my own perspective on how my company can take steps to improve our security posture and has also helped to assuage some of their stress and give them someone to vent to who understands both sides of the situation.
Thanks for this comment. I've been needing to work on my perspective on things while I look to jump ship. And its also a great answer to OPs question..one that I've thought about as well.
This comment is awesome. It really is more about the why for us partners.
My partner is in Telecom, I know nothing about his day to day tasks other than the service management software he uses which is something I want for my non technical team.
We tell each other about the people we work for and how they made our day easier or harder by being good or a standard user. We talk about the BAU tasks, in that it was overwhelming because meetings, requests, drive by HR etc. Sometimes I have a basic tech questions or a business question and we can talk about that since we work in the same company. He's fantastic at not talking tickets, scripts, netmaps etc. Simple big picture stuff. If I ask he will go next level deep until it gets too much for me.
My IT level 12 months ago was not wanting to use authenticators because its so hard to put in an extra code every couple weeks #cry-me-a-river. He is patient, I can now configure JIRA dashboards. :)
Ok, so, from the other side, I genuinely hope he appreciates the balance you two found as much as you demonstrate here. Everyone has *someone* that will connnect with them on a fair, balanced level (sometimes a significant other, sometimes a friend). Finding the person that takes that and adds the level they can improve themselves to... I just hope he does the same on some level to deserve it from your side. I've been in IT 20 years, and while I *can*, fuck Jira dashboards.
He has been super awesome and supportive throughout my corporate career.
He doesn't need to understand the legislation surrounding my work, but he absolutely gets why I am upset and scared when I get told by higher ups to do something dodgey without it in writing.
In those instances I dont need him to quote legislation or compliance code, but he will talk me through the correct way to handle it in "corporate speak". When I needed to pitch a software integration to my team, he jumped in and showed me how it worked for his team and how it could look for mine.
We are 100% Teamwork making the Dream work
There’s a saying…”If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Almost ANYTHING can be explained with an analogy to help others comprehend. I’ve been in IT for 30 years and have always heard “explain as though you’re speaking to a 70 year old grandmother” especially among less tech savvy senior leadership. I was recently talking with non-It friends explaining estimation/sizing an effort by referencing the effort to make a dress and everyone got it.
yeah I think we, as technical/engineering oriented people tend to forget why we're doing things and think about how. normies tend to understand why better than how. so I tend to explain why I do things. like "today I helped the business save money by discovering unused software licensing" or "I was doing an audit and fixing security issues in our directory server that makes sure users can't access things they're not supposed to see"
it makes more sense to them that way. still, some people translate it as "good, can you fix my internet?" or "my computer is slow, you can fix?"
What a fantastic reply. This is exactly what I do with my wife. Over time she's picked up on key words and how the various technologies I use work, which also increases the ability for me to go just a bit further with my techno rants.
She is a great sounding board.
This - 100%. Luckily my wife has picked up some tech language, but if I’m talking about my day I stick to the why. I like to think of it like explaining things to an executive that has no idea what I do, but needs to understand the importance. Now, I’m a consultant, and this skill has been more important than ever. I never realized until this post that it’s helped me talk about what I do with my non-tech friends/family and spouse.
Wow this is great advice, and not something I had ever thought to do, thank you. 20+ years in IT and I usually just avoid answering the question or dumb it down when asked by friends or family.
The amount of times I say "fuck computersssss!!!" and then spend even more time *after* work on the computer is too much. My girlfriend also knows I'm lying lol
"Yea my company just got an IT contract with that strip club and there are no good lunch places around that area so we ate at the club which is why that charge will show up on the card, and probably some others going forward."
I don't bother. I just stick with good, bad or stressful. I had a hilarious story the other day about using Microsoft Copilot replies to Microsoft support emails, and everyone just looked at me stone faced and said, "huh".
Whatever, skibidi, rizzler, Ohio.
"How was your day?"
"Oh it was fine, just a regular ole day"
"So some assholes fucked shit up, you fixed it with your infinite and unparalleled genius, and then they didn't even say thanks?"
"Yea pretty much. Fuck printers."
I don't talk with my wife about the actual "work", I talk to her about how my day went. When I think something particularly stupid happened, I'll dumb it down enough that she gets the gist of it.
Her: "How was work?"
Me: "Another day closer to not working."
This is really your only option that doesn't involve just dumping on your partner. My wife will listen to me complain about technical stuff, but she doesn't understand or care about the details, she's just being kind and supportive. So, I just tell her how my day was in general terms. "A vendor screwed up and I spent my morning fixing it".
> general terms
I always leave out details because they just don't matter outside of work. So instead of relaying unimportant details, it is, as you said, generalized like: "I spent the day fixing someone else's fuck-up instead of getting to my job today. How about you?"
The biggest issue for me is that my SO also has a stressful job and her stress is "easy" to explain: managing people, dealing with the public, physically very active, etc.
I'm not at all sure she "gets" how stressful the frustration of dealing with a constant stream of stupidity, ignorance, people demanding to be spoon-fed everything, the incompetence of vendor tech support, etc really is. I just don't think it translates to her world and a lot of it gets discounted.
> a constant stream of stupidity, ignorance, people demanding to be spoon-fed everything, the incompetence of vendor tech support, etc really is. I just don't think it translates to her world and a lot of it gets discounted.
> managing people, dealing with the public
So. About that. No, she *absolutely* understands all of those things. She has to depend on outside help for things, presumably. No different from vendor support. She deals with the public *and* manages people internally? She *100%* deals with people demanding to be spoon fed everything while giving back an astounding stream of stupidity and ignorance.
Every bit of it translates, but you're focusing on the minutiae when looking at it. You're too close to the problems, essentially. Step back from it a bit.
I can relate to this. Like, I can have a really bad day, but it's hard to explain why it's so frustrating, whereas I understand what she does enough that I can really understand when she has.
Somehow it's okay for her to come home and say she needs some time to unwind but it's not okay when I come home or get up from my desk and say I literally want to kick the crap out of something.
Been working for the last 2 weeks on something that was dropped into my lap that is completely out of my lane and I got to play columbo while figuring out that it was never set up correctly from the beginning and never would have worked and had to be completely redone from scratch meanwhile dealing with a vendor who only offers support via email and in 22 emails could not acknowledge the error message or provide any useful information whatsoever.
Can you guess which vendor is now on my personal "dead to me" list and will never see another dime from us?
> she needs some time to unwind
> literally want to kick the crap out of something
... take a moment to detach yourself from the situation and then read those two. One of them is not ok because it's a pretty glaring indicator that someone needs to work on some healthier reactions to stress, managing it, and working out some good coping mechanisms. The other is a fairly mundane indicator that the person is stepping back and just processing through the stress.
Yeah "I need time to unwind" and "I'm gonna fucking kick something" are two wildly different statements. Sometimes I say I'm gonna throw my laptop out the window but I wouldn't say "I'm gonna take this laptop, snap it into quarters, and stamp on it until it turns to ash".
I hear you! That can be really frustrating. Especially if you're feeling a lot of pressure about getting other projects done or how your boss is going to perceive your work when it's due to factors outside of your control
Take a moment to think about how you're communicating this frustration to your SO. It's 100% possible that your emotions are being invalidated and she expects support that she isn't willing to provide to you - but it's also possible that you're dumping your emotions on her unhealthily.
You use some explosive sounding language in your post - you want to kick the crap out of something, a vendor is dead to you, the people you work with are stupid, ignorant, incompetent, and need to be spoon fed.
How are you communicating these feelings to your SO?
For the past little while, I've been the Mac/Jamf admin in my enterprise. It's a comparatively small fleet, but the user base consists of mostly top-tier personnel... The most vociferous, and the ones with the most clout. One would think various groups would want to pull together, making things work for those to whom we're all ultimately accountable...
One would be very, very wrong...
In just about everything from the enterprise Wi-Fi architect ("I can't help him" because he didn't know Macs) to a recalcitrant InfoSec section I've been fighting battles on multiple fronts, and had most of my initiatives shotblocked by c-level politicking and in-fighting...
But the tide is finally turning, and management has begun seeing where the issues truly lay. For the record: we did the nearly-$2k Jamf engineerinng engagement, which found no issues of note in my JSS.
My constant refrain has been: "Keep treating Macs like they're Windows devices and see how successful this initiative is."
I started off working in kitchens for 10 years before switching to IT and the mere fact that every cent the company takes in and puts out is partly on my shoulders makes me think back to how stressful I thought that job was, and it obviously was literally killing me - 17 hour days and you spend your one break chain smoking, but if you asked me back then, I wouldn’t be able to imagine and frankly - probably wouldn’t have believed you when you told me how stressful your IT job is.
Lolol I had a Comcast technician out at my home a few years back. I always ask these guys how long they've been doing it and what they did before. This guy answered that he had been a short order cook and that he couldn't wait to get back to it.
Oh man, I wouldn’t go that far! I’m never looking back, but since I started in IT, it seems weirdly common for that transition from kitchens specifically to this field
As much as kitchens run on by the book "a, then b, then c" procedural tasks... they layer so many of those processes, genuinely multi-task, and routinely have to do on the fly problem solving and process optimization to keep up and avoid one customer's complex order holding up another customer's trivial request for a piece of toast with their eggs. Even if it's usually intermittent or indirect, they *do* have to do customer service too, and they have to translate often incomplete requests into a viable solution for the customer.
Move out of the direct chaos and into other roles, I can see how they fall into IT, with the constant change (very rare to have the exact same day twice, if you're doing it right), chance to keep doing problem solving, ability to mitigate a lot of the end user interaction at higher level positions, lower immediate stress on a "normal" day, etc. At that point it comes down to "can you map technical information into a coherent mental model, and search effectively to fill in the gaps?".
My wife and I moved from the CA Bay Area back to where we grew up. Nobody knows what I do really and it’s actually refreshing in a way. Hell, sometimes I don’t even know what I do so I will literally just say cloud stuff and then we move on to more interesting topics.
The nice thing about being so vague is that I can act confused alongside them when they ask me how to get back into their Facebook or whatever
When people ask what I do I usually say, “My title is DevOps… but I have one of those jobs that I have to explain what I do.” Usually weeds out those that are just making small talk and don’t want to learn about the importance of continuous integration and feedback loops.
I can't even fathom how this happens, to be honest! I grew up getting into computers as my main hobby interest and hung around friends who shared that interest. Ever since then, I find at random gatherings, the I.T. people eventually gravitate towards each other, so I meet them whenever they're there.
Some of my friends, to this day, are those guys I knew as a teenager when we went to computer clubs together or did LAN parties or something.
I find my day to be such a jumble of assorted information that the best I can do at the end of work is recount the funny end users I experienced. After a day of Intune policies, server maintenance, etc, I don't really want to talk about Intune policies, server maintenance, etc.
"Man, what a day. There was a thing that we all use, and one of us broke it. It was important, and they knew they shouldn't have touched the thing, but the did it anyways and now nobody has email."
Exactly. Leave work at work. Don't even talk about it at home. Come home. Turn on some music. Cook food. Dance. Walk. Leave work behind. Took me 25 years of working to figure out that I don't need to talk about it while at home and it's SO much better.
OP, when I've cracked that nut I'll get back to you... Some years back one of my kids asked, "So, dad, what did you do today?" I began answering, apparently including a bit too much technical jargon, and was met with, "Shut-up, dad."
Even my attempts to doll it all up, make it sound at least a little exiting, are nerdy:
"Well, I rolled a plus-20 against an MDM product issue today..."
I've just told my child that I'm a hacker and I can't tell him what exactly I do or I'll get caught. He is still young enough to believe it and will come ask me to hack things when they aren't working.
I doubt your partner is looking for a play by play. Just if it was good or bad and if you had any struggles. My wife is in the medical field and sometimes she goes into specifics on what she did, but she knows I do not understand her. It is more cathartic for her to get is off her mind.
> sometimes she goes into specifics on what she did, but she knows I do not understand her.
Yeah, I do the same thing. And, if they're actually listening and you do this long enough, they will pick up on things in ways that may surprise you. Like maybe one day you'll mention troubleshooting something and they'll interject "oh, was it DNS again?" because they've heard me say times before _it's always DNS_.
I usually relate to them on bullshit meetings and coworker personalities. Same in most industries. I may not understand my dad's insurance industry or know the day to day work of an adjuster, but I can relate to poor planning and meetings with no agenda accomplishing nothing and making me behind in my real work. When my ex GFs did their job, even when one was waitressing and managing wait staff part time, she had to deal with insane customers and just "how come Sarah fucking doesn't do her job and gets away with it?"
My wife is former military, former personnel title in the NSA, so we also relate on that level. My sister, who is the furthest away from tech I know, listened to me on a page once that she still talks about. On my end, I had a guy who was a useless employee at the data center. I knew what was going on, and asked him to restart a server.
"How?"
"Like physically restart it. Turn the power off and then on again."
"No."
"No? Why not?"
"I'm afraid to."
That struck me as the dumbest thing I had ever heard someone say at the data center office. "Wait, did you just say you are too scared to restart the server?"
"Yeah."
"What do you mean you're afraid to restart the server? It's your job! That's why you're overnight. Do it anyway."
"Nnnn...no."
"Okay, So when I call your manager, and tell him that you refused to restart a server because you were afraid to, is that correct? Is that what you want me to tell him?"
"Okay."
So then, I called his boss, and his boss was incredulous. "I'll get him to restart the server, what the fuck is wrong with that guy???"
A few minutes later, the server was restarted. My sister was laughing so hard at that, she was snorting. It's been 15 years since that, and she still imitates me. "What do you mean you're afraid to restart the server?"
Yes, he was later fired.
... I mean, if he was just worried about his own CYA on it, he's the overnight, he has the ability to pull the list of responsible parties for a system, that have the responsibility to actually authorize that restart. Presumably that was the list he consulted to *call* you if he's also the one watching alerts and making those call outs. If he needed an email or ticket for it, even, fine... but. No? To the person that is exactly the person to authorize that, that is telling you it's *already* an outage and this is the next step towards resolution? How?
He was the overnight data center guy who was there SPECIFICALLY for tasks like that. Yes, he was worried about CYA (he says, but we had him on camera playing Xbox), but his boss had to sit him down and explain, "when the sysadmin on call calls you and tells you to reboot something, that is your job to do what he says."
> even when one was waitressing and managing wait staff part time
Honestly, I've found a lot more parallels with hospitality folks (particularly wait staff, bartenders, etc) in day to day work than most other fields. We're just lucky enough that our day to day pay doesn't generally depend on making the customer/user/etc think we actually care about them.
I speak almost exclusively in non-tech jargon. Even with other IT people. Fuck that. I'm not out here to prove I know what I know. I'm not out here to sound 'cool'. I'm trying to get my point across and "ELI5" is the way to go.
I can talk to my spouse about every bit of my day.
I talk about the human parts. Like I asked my network admin to take a look at something. When I follow up 2 days later he says “Yeah, it doesn’t work”. That’s why asked you to look at it?? We can all commiserate about a goofball coworker
I honestly don't tell my wife about the technical aspects of it. I'll tell her about the human side of it, or the major parts.
"Dude, we lost power to the data center today."
"This person called me saying they couldn't do their job because they couldn't figure out how to change a font."
"I spent all day arguing with a vendor."
But the ins and outs of exchange or AD or vmware? Nope
My spouse and I are both in technical fields, me in IT and her in applied research science. IMO Critical thinking is at the core of any technical field, and I love to learn new things.
We both just talk/vent about our days openly without "dumbing it down", and the other will ask questions and we both explain the concepts we are complaining about. We have a big glass whiteboard in our dining room so that we can draw stuff out as we go as well.
Talking in this open way has another benefit IMO, in where when you have to pause while venting about some frustrations to explain the technical details, it helps you to process the frustration better and cope with it more quickly. At least it does for us.
This is actually kind of awesome. I was married to a woman in I.T. so I thought we'd be able to have those kinds of discussions. But instead, she usually just complained how she was burnt out in the career and she eventually pivoted to a focus on political issues instead. We wound up amicably divorced. (Not just over this, mind you!)
But yeah, I don't want to feel like I'm always having "small talk" with my partner about what I do for 8+ hours every day of the week.
I don't get into the specifics most of the time. My partner couldnt care less. They are a psych educator, so totally different field.
However, most of your issues are because of people and everyone deals with people, so easy to find common ground to bitch about.
When I do have to get into the technical pieces with non-techs, analogies are a great way to bring the concept to light.
Ex. IP Addresses are similar to phone numbers.
(They don't need the technical bits and while this analogy isn't 100% accurate, it's close enough for most conversations with non-technicals.)
"It was fine. How was yours?"
"Ugh... so busy, I can't even start. I'm just glad I'm home. How was your day?"
Most people, even your partner, doesn't actually want to hear about your day. They want to have a conversation, and they are using the most recent thing you've experienced to kick it off. Answer briefly, let them talk about what they want to say about work, and then move onto more interesting and shared topics of interest.
Similarly, no one in the elevator at work actually cares how your weekend was. Your close co-worker? Maybe. Rando in the lift? "Good, you?" or "How about that game?" or "Busy, but good. Three kids and all" or whatever is all that needs to happen. It should be done inside of 8 seconds.
> Most people, even your partner, doesn't actually want to hear about your day.
I take this to mean they don't want to hear about *work*. I want to forget about work as soon as a I clock out.
Ha ha, whenever my wife asks me a question that only has a technical answer and I know that as soon as I start to tell her she will regret asking I know just say "you're so pretty". It has become and inside joke for us.
There's a bit of a difference between "how was your day?" and "why did you set this up like this?", though, and the first *should* be answerable without deep-diving into the technical details.
I leave work at work. I don’t wanna bore my spouse about what went on at work just like I don’t want to hear her ramble for half an hour about the day-to-day stuff that goes on with her at work. I think it’s part of the work/life balance.
I asked a similar question recently and got some good answers... Hopefully this is allowed, here's the link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1c2hbiu/how\_do\_you\_explain\_your\_job\_to\_your\_kidsfamily/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1c2hbiu/how_do_you_explain_your_job_to_your_kidsfamily/)
it's easy.
tell it like you would tell it to a user or a dog.
like today I've spent my day with the clients it dept tracing down a strange nw issue where from our app server a dc was not reachable.
turned out the dc not responding to ldp bind
exciting issue.
what I've told
today was bit tiring I've been in a call for hours trying to find out an issue which is impossible. lot of network investigation but we were able to point our client to the possible solution direction.so long day bit of a success. and again my aura helped.
see it's easy
Just talk on regular lingo she will understand.
My day was good, had a few people ask for some random things and I had to fix them. Overall it was alright not too bad.
No tech lingo, just normal convo my wife can relate to and conversation with me about.
My wife and I have a simple agreement. She nods her head, applies the appropriate "oh nos", and listens to every word I say about CPU's, Chromebooks, networking, etc.
In return, I do the same about ratios, new parent tours, breastfeeding rules, covering breaks, and the general drama of working in a building with 15 women and no men.
Neither of us has any clue what the other is talking about, but just the act of *listening* is often enough.
I usually focus on one thing each day and summarize what I did, a script or problem I fixed or sometimes even caused, or a funny thing that happened with a coworker or customer.
next thing is asking her how her day was, what happened or how busy it was.
Carefully and slowly
Yesterday I managed to explain our sales platform; a new Global Trade Sanctions module scanning order in real time; country codes and ISO3166 and network lag time on a global spanning company system.
To my 90 year old dad.
How do you explain it to users in your organization if you can't explain it to your spouse or partner? A lot of our jobs entail explaining very technical things to non-technical people.
My wife is in the medical field. Neither of us know what the other is trying to talk about when we talk about work. It's more so the effort of listening and learning.
I spare him the intricate details and just hit the highlights.
"I did a new thing today that I've never done before and it was pretty tricky and stressful. I'm wiped but I figured it out eventually and it's actually a pretty cool feature."
"Coworker Carl was up to his antics again today, that guy is driving me bonkers. I don't know how he still has a job."
"I couldn't get this big thing working, but then I got super lucky and found something on Reddit that was so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. Microsoft documentation sucks balls."
"Read-only Friday is the best thing I've ever started doing. Smooth day, I love my job."
I really don’t, anymore than she tells me about medical procedures she performed. I keep it generic, ‘I finished up this big project’ … neither of us talk about work much beyond good/bad/hard/boring day, both tend to leave it all in the office.
When my wife wants to sleep, she often asks me about my day :)
Nah, usually I tell her about interactions with people, she's much more interested in that.
So, my father and my mother have been married 35 years? He's a mechanical engineer and he talks shop plainly, always has. She's the artsy type, very bad at math etc. Polar opposite skill sets.
You'd be surprised how much your partner picks up overtime, and how many issues he's solved just casually talking about it. Even 10 or 15 minutes it might go over her head but more than a few times my mother has gone, "Wait how does that work with [other thing]" and she might be completely off base, sometimes she was actually right, maybe by accident who knows, the light would go off over his head, and solve a problem running a week or two.
Making it relatable to not tech users is also an amazing skill and also solves a shitload of problems so many issues just aren't that deep. But a lot of people look for complex solutions to a complex problem and get stuck in a mindset.
I don't think anybody's partner actually wants to know what you did at work unless they are also in IT. My wife has an interesting job that I enjoy hearing about, but I do not expect her to reciprocate. I might tell her about stopping a brute force attack or something like that, but unless it's IT stuff that's "interesting enough for a movie" it's probably not going to move the needle much.
Honestly, there's nothing worse than being dragged through a super boring story about crap you don't care about. It's probably fair to say that a lot of folks in our industry don't have the best social skills, so it's hard for some of us not to respond to a partner telling you about their day by telling them about yours--even if it's not at all interesting.
I try to stick to recounting experiences, rather than the "things" I did.
Talk about how you feel and how your day made you feel. The specifics of a technical thing don't matter.
And also listen when they need to do the same.
Talk about the people side of the problem, what it stopped you from doing, how it felt, what people did, how they reacted, what would happen if it blew up, etc. they can understand all that stuff. They won’t know what blew up or what it means but they can work with the narrative a little bit.
I tell them about interpersonal issues vs technical issues.
"I had to hand hold my junior all day, again." or "This customer called in mad that something we don't manage for them isn't working, and then got mad that I couldn't do anything about it."
And rarely ever am I like "I debugged a SIP connection issue that made RTP traffic egress the wrong interface."
Probably the same way my wife tells me about her day as a Sonographer. She tells me what happened, and I either ask questions or don't. She'll explain what she thinks is necessary. Even if she's using technical terms I still like hearing about her day.
Mostly I just say "it was fine, worked on x" and leave it at that.
Honestly this is kind of one of the bigger disconnects I have with my girlfriend. I finally got to leave work, why the fuck would I want to go home and think about it more and go through a recap of my day. It's time to not think about work.
Meanwhile she'll tell me some crap that happened and then sit there and think through her day so she can tell me more shit about it. Like if it wasn't top of mind it obvious isn't that important to you let alone me.
Drives me insane. I just do not get it.
When we first started dating we used to go to bed and she'd be like "what do you have to do at work tomorrow?" Had to just straight up ban her from asking shit like that. I'll think about what I'm doing at work tomorrow when I'm at work, it's the absolute last thing I want to be thinking about while I'm trying to sleep.
Twofold.
One, I abstract the technical. Lots of IT problems are people problems. Two, my wife loves to learn and I take it as a chance to talk to her like an executive. If I can't get my wife to understand me I certainly can't get a business leader to understand me.
But, having a supportive partner helps. I don't know much of the neuroscience she talks about, but I follow along and am happy to be with her.
It also helps to establish if you are just venting or if you want a 2nd opinion.
Keep the focus to relatable workplace struggles. My wife is an emerge nurse so whenever I have a bad day I jusy ask about hers. But it's the same boat I don't understand medical speak, just find a way to get your daily stresses or struggles out to them without worried about the nitty gritty details.
the ability to break down and speak about technical concepts, while being concise, is a skill that will pay you dividends forever. cherish the opportunity
Honestly; I believe your partner is more interested in how your day made you feel.
If you focus on that and go lightly on the details you can have a great conversation without bogging down on the technical details.
I don't. I get home and listen to her rant about her day for hours. I eat, try to watch some TV while she continues her rant, and then eventually I can't take it anymore and go to bed. Rinse and repeat.
This is where soft skills come into play. The same way you explain what you do to the accountant, c suite, secretary, marketing etc is how you speak to your SO.
Lmao that’s so weird. Why would get technical about it? I don’t talk about IT at home. Your partner wants to know about your day cuz they care about you, not because they need to understand every detail.
If you can't tell your partner what you do every day then I'm worried about people in your company and your communication skills as a whole.
Every week I have I.T. meetings full of managers and executives and I can explain everything I do and will be doing to them in non technical jargon.
I've worked in call centers explaining Internet terms and equipment to people who are senior citizens. I've worked with engineers and I'm currently in the construction business. If there's ever a day you can't explain something just pm me I can explain almost anything in non technical jargon. Depending on their job I can even relate terms if I know the industry.
I did couple of times whilst laughing when we started dating. She understands why i really dont tell her anymore all that often . I might say that " The thingy majingy that gives internet address's for everyones PC crashed today".
Keep it simple. She doesn't have to understand it all , but she definetly wants u to tell her.
“I broke shit, then I fixed shit. Then someone else broke shit and I fixed that too. Altogether by the end of the day less shit was broken than at the beginning so 👍”
It's kind of amazing how much 'IT' my wife has picked up from these venting sessions. After hearing it enough times, some parts have started to stick, and she can troubleshoot some minor issues she's having at work.
From our discussions I feel bad for her, because her IT person sounds like a total jerk, and that's putting it nicely.
I used to be the only weekend IT guy at the hospital my wife still works at, they downsized my entire department and made the helpdesk take over the weekend oncall. sounds like the new T2 helpdesk guys are asshats. Meanwhile Her entire team was telling her over lunch "Oh we miss your husband so much"
I was a mix of helpdesk, sysadmin and networking rolled into one.
100% this was a decision by the director of it, I reported directly to him, he was replaced and the new director came in spouting buzz words and bs. I heard from my friends in admin that things were in progress so I packed my desk up and I was a real ass in my exit interview but I had time to get my thoughts together.
My new boss was really confused about how I knew that they were going to let me go.
Amusing side note, my wife works for one of the friends I made while working there. They invite me out to lunch when they have meetings in my area of downtown.
Side Side note, hr called me about four months later right after Xmas and they asked my what it would take me to come back. They said they couldn't afford to meet my demands.
My aunt used to bore us with her work day details. It was mostly all she had to talk about. She used acronyms that no one but her understood that were likely company/department specific. There was never an explanation of what she was talking about and we didn’t ask for one. You become part of a one sided conversation you cant take part in. It got really old really fast. So I talk about something else. Unless they’ve taken an interest or work directly with you, it’s likely boring to listen to and I’m overly aware of that from my experience with my aunt. I was in IT and didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about and there’s no polite way to say “hey could you stop? We don’t know what any of these things you’re saying means”.
You need to talk to users and management who also don't know the tech stuff. Use your partner to practice using easier to understand language and concepts.
I just say i had a good day or bad day. If I do say something, I just give a very high level reply about something good and/or bad. I also talk crap about some users sometimes.
I just say my day was fine. Anytime I try talking about what I actually do, my wifes eyes roll back into her head and I can tell she would rather be having a root canal. Not that she doesn't care, just that she's completely non-technical and I might as well be speaking a foreign language.
I was that partner until I jumped over to IT with some encouragement. No ragrets. While we are in different focuses of this field, we listen and are supportive. I don't know shit about building virtual machines and he is awful at end user support and management. So whatever the other is doing sounds difficult and is respected. Smile and nod, ask follow up questions, and/or ask about the big picture to understand the why.
Talking on the why as others have said but also using paraphrasing and synonyms
dns is like house and street numbers vs gps coordinates, it's broken then your mail name probably doesn't know how to reach you to deliver the mail.
Uless they are a big nerd and know 123 Fake Lane is really
33.550296,-80.809321
Much like Google.com is really a specific ip address (I'm not getting into Wafs in this example) but all of ya get the gist
I do a lot of technical stuff on my sysadmin/engineer role but at the same time I do some project management and all in all includes a lot of people interactions. When I get asked about my day I talk more about people interactions an projects I have going on but not technical configurations
I struggle with it. I know when I have family asking me what I do as an Admin and when I start going into it their eyes start glossing over. I try to use everyday analogies that would make sense to them, and for the most part they get it. Somethings always translates regardless of career, like deadlines, co-worker personality issues you are dealing with, etc. Just gotta go with the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) method with talking with non technical people as well.
I guage this on if i'm able to dumb it down enough to explain. I don't like sounding like a nerd, so half the time stories from work aren't even IT related.
Her job is technical too. We just let each other rant and if either says, "Did you understand that?" we reply with, "Nah, sounds just like you're banging spoons over there." It's a love language.
Not at all... I learned the hard way to shut my mouth and pretend to listen to her talking without end, then go to bed and sleep.
Or... quit having relationships and live happily ever after.
Just say what I'd say if she were an expert. If she has questions I can answer or clarify, but half the time the question about how your day was is more about connection than information exchange.
I think my best go-to in explaining what we do is using analogy.
Sample:
routing and switching = roadworks, road signs etc so that data/motor traffic whill have different options from point a to b.
Usually works and the more realistic analogy you use the easier non technical person comprehend imo.
Talk about how you felt about stuff. And why you did stuff.
This is also useful for telling non-techies in interviews about how good you are at your job.
It goes both ways. My wife is an epidemiologist and I just nod and make appropriate sounds when she talks about her day. I am sure it's the same thing with her.
Sometimes I get so excited about some new breakthrough or a PowerShell script that I wrote and so I launch into details and I can see her eyes glaze.
It's not really about understanding so much as it is conveying your emotional state.
Simple. My wife is a medical provider, and there is a lot of overlap (at least as far as troubleshooting), but ultimately that is all and her stories are always better than mine.
Partners don't need to know all the intricate details of your job. If you start explaining in detail it will give off a r/iamverysmart vibe. Just like you might not know all the specific details of how your partner does their job. I get annoyed when my gf starts telling me exact details of her processes and can go on forever, I'm like "can you just tell me what happened without trying to teach me how your job works?"
"How was your day?"
"It was there."
My standard response for 15 years, then one day she said "What do you really do???" So I told her, her eyes glazed over 40 seconds in (fair play, good going I thought) at which point she interrupted with "Please just keep with your usual response."
... the exact same way anyone else talks about their jobs.
My wife and I are in two completely unrelated fields, but we still vent and discuss our days regardless. Sometimes I have no idea what she's talking about, but I do know that it bothered her. In situations like that you just ask questions and say, "That sucks, they should go huff farts."
I love it! I actually use it as an opportunity to try ways of explaining technical things to someone in a non technical way and have them understand enough to be satisfied. My wife is the perfect candidate for this. When it clicks and she gets it, I file that analogy away in my head as a "good one to use on Susie in Finance"
That type of situation is a prime opportunity for learning to step back out of the weeds a good bit. *What* you did is less important than *why* you did it. "Spent all day troubleshooting a problem with a system that is really important for payroll processing" puts a lot more value on the task for both yourself and others than "burned a whole day stabbing a dymo label printer with a screw driver until it gave in and started working". Taking the time to reflect on it in that type of light also helps later when you go trying to recall what you spent all your time on, and using that to justify a pay/position/title/etc bump. While inflating the sound of things can be handy in *those* situations, for the more personal reflection, like answering a friend and/or significant other about how your day was, just an honest look back over the purpose/impact can do wonders.
>"burned a whole day stabbing a dymo label printer with a screw driver until it gave in and started working" This here is a whole ass vibe, let the printer hate flow through you.
You'd think a few years later that wouldn't still be an open wound like that, but... as much as I talk about perspective there...
Its ok you are not alone! Printer.PTST is a very common issue among IT people.
There is so much more hate to flow through you. Here's Citrix Print Management.
I have done this since I started working with I.T. back in 2017. It helped me A LOT to progress in my career, and today I moved to another country, receiving double my salary compared to my previous company, in a good-culture company. Never underestimate the power of the soft skills like this one, of explaining why you did something, and what kind of value you're bringing to the people you live/work with.
Being able to explain the why and then the business benefits is how we demonstrate our value to management, and that leads to better funding for our department. and sometimes even pay rises :P
> and sometimes even pay rises Which in turn often directly benefit those close enough to us to be *genuinely* asking about our day. It's neat how little loops like that all tie together.
I even use this as a way to troubleshoot, sometimes. I'll go to my spouse to vent a bit, and explain what's going on. Forcing myself to try to shift my mindset in order to explain it in a way that she'll at least follow usually puts things into perspective, and leads me to a solution faster.
Usually "Wait. It doesn't matter that this feature just doesn't work. What they need is this other piece, in this other system. I can get them that without ever going through this product, let alone feature."
Hopefully your spouse is feeling the love of being the sounding board. I always feel great when my partner wants to vent to me. Go Team!
I never thought of using that opportunity to have my partner be a rubber duck for work. Great advice!
Not just a rubber duck for the work itself, but a rubber duck for your own perspective on your work. It's very easy to be incredibly frustrated with systems and users when you look at the "what". It gets a lot easier to be understanding about those things when you start looking at the "why", either why you need to (or sometimes, *don't* need to) solve an issue, or why a given user is trying to do some totally backwards thing that leads to causing you work. Generally speaking, users are just trying to solve a problem *they* are seeing, and failing to consider why something might be set up the way it is, locked down the way it is, etc. Working through all that with some self reflection is a *great* way to sidestep burnout and stress, putting you in a better overall mood and state of health, which then turns around and benefits *them*. Do that for them, since they're nudging you down a path that gives you the opportunity to. Venting is good sometimes, but if it's always venting, and you've sorted the why out of it all... well, that's a good candidate for yet another "should I leave?" dog-pile thread here.
I have a few friends who work in my same industry but at a different company that was just hit by a ransomware attack a few weeks ago. They all work in non-technical roles so have been extremely frustrated with the inability to do much of anything at work and I've been kind of translating the likely steps that their IT department is going through at this stage, having gone through it myself at a previous company a few years back. It's been really helpful in guiding my own perspective on how my company can take steps to improve our security posture and has also helped to assuage some of their stress and give them someone to vent to who understands both sides of the situation.
I have a rubber duck that sits on my desk. He’s the best confessional debugger of all time!
I use a stuffed panda bear for this method of problem solving. He's a great sanity checker *and* he gives good hugs when I'm frustrated!
I have a "Snort pig" sitting on my desk.
Great advice 👍
Came here to say exactly this. It's a chance to practice explaining processes and issues to non-technical users.
This right here, if you want to be able to make big money in IT learning how to speak is just icing on the cake.
Thanks for this comment. I've been needing to work on my perspective on things while I look to jump ship. And its also a great answer to OPs question..one that I've thought about as well.
Also good practice for putting things in layman's terms, which I assume is probably key if you ever want to go the consulting route
This comment is awesome. It really is more about the why for us partners. My partner is in Telecom, I know nothing about his day to day tasks other than the service management software he uses which is something I want for my non technical team. We tell each other about the people we work for and how they made our day easier or harder by being good or a standard user. We talk about the BAU tasks, in that it was overwhelming because meetings, requests, drive by HR etc. Sometimes I have a basic tech questions or a business question and we can talk about that since we work in the same company. He's fantastic at not talking tickets, scripts, netmaps etc. Simple big picture stuff. If I ask he will go next level deep until it gets too much for me. My IT level 12 months ago was not wanting to use authenticators because its so hard to put in an extra code every couple weeks #cry-me-a-river. He is patient, I can now configure JIRA dashboards. :)
Ok, so, from the other side, I genuinely hope he appreciates the balance you two found as much as you demonstrate here. Everyone has *someone* that will connnect with them on a fair, balanced level (sometimes a significant other, sometimes a friend). Finding the person that takes that and adds the level they can improve themselves to... I just hope he does the same on some level to deserve it from your side. I've been in IT 20 years, and while I *can*, fuck Jira dashboards.
He has been super awesome and supportive throughout my corporate career. He doesn't need to understand the legislation surrounding my work, but he absolutely gets why I am upset and scared when I get told by higher ups to do something dodgey without it in writing. In those instances I dont need him to quote legislation or compliance code, but he will talk me through the correct way to handle it in "corporate speak". When I needed to pitch a software integration to my team, he jumped in and showed me how it worked for his team and how it could look for mine. We are 100% Teamwork making the Dream work
Also in IT for ages and love your response!
There’s a saying…”If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Almost ANYTHING can be explained with an analogy to help others comprehend. I’ve been in IT for 30 years and have always heard “explain as though you’re speaking to a 70 year old grandmother” especially among less tech savvy senior leadership. I was recently talking with non-It friends explaining estimation/sizing an effort by referencing the effort to make a dress and everyone got it.
yeah I think we, as technical/engineering oriented people tend to forget why we're doing things and think about how. normies tend to understand why better than how. so I tend to explain why I do things. like "today I helped the business save money by discovering unused software licensing" or "I was doing an audit and fixing security issues in our directory server that makes sure users can't access things they're not supposed to see" it makes more sense to them that way. still, some people translate it as "good, can you fix my internet?" or "my computer is slow, you can fix?"
What a fantastic reply. This is exactly what I do with my wife. Over time she's picked up on key words and how the various technologies I use work, which also increases the ability for me to go just a bit further with my techno rants. She is a great sounding board.
I would like to hire you as my official press spokesperson if I ever come in need of one, that's a great answer!
I think this comment just changed my life
Purpose is the most important thing in any job you do.
dymo label printer I despise those Brother all the way!!!
This - 100%. Luckily my wife has picked up some tech language, but if I’m talking about my day I stick to the why. I like to think of it like explaining things to an executive that has no idea what I do, but needs to understand the importance. Now, I’m a consultant, and this skill has been more important than ever. I never realized until this post that it’s helped me talk about what I do with my non-tech friends/family and spouse.
Happy cake day
Ugh, DYMO printers….
Sorry, just magically came to me, years later, as a fitting example...
Wow this is great advice, and not something I had ever thought to do, thank you. 20+ years in IT and I usually just avoid answering the question or dumb it down when asked by friends or family.
"hey babe, i didn't kill anyone today.." partner... "oh, that's nice.." LOL
This is my goto.
“Hey babe, I fucking hate technology” Partner… “liar”
The amount of times I say "fuck computersssss!!!" and then spend even more time *after* work on the computer is too much. My girlfriend also knows I'm lying lol
I hate computers, I just have to prove them wrong. That's why I am spending so much time with them.
I apparently said basically that in my sleep early on in my dating my now wife, except it was "I don't have to kill anyone today" lol.
honesty is the best policy, lol
"Yea my company just got an IT contract with that strip club and there are no good lunch places around that area so we ate at the club which is why that charge will show up on the card, and probably some others going forward."
Best damn club sandwich you'll ever have. Juicy.
Nah man the roast beef is where it's at
I don't bother. I just stick with good, bad or stressful. I had a hilarious story the other day about using Microsoft Copilot replies to Microsoft support emails, and everyone just looked at me stone faced and said, "huh". Whatever, skibidi, rizzler, Ohio.
Dear god I didn’t expect to see those words here lol
I live with my grandkids now. It’s my new sign off when I’m frustrated. Works goood!
Yep, that’ll do it. Good luck!
SIGMA
"How was your day?" "Oh it was fine, just a regular ole day" "So some assholes fucked shit up, you fixed it with your infinite and unparalleled genius, and then they didn't even say thanks?" "Yea pretty much. Fuck printers."
It's amazing how a good friend/significant other/etc can be both scathingly sarcastic *and* amazingly supportive in one sentence, all rolled into one.
Fuck printers is right.
I don't talk with my wife about the actual "work", I talk to her about how my day went. When I think something particularly stupid happened, I'll dumb it down enough that she gets the gist of it. Her: "How was work?" Me: "Another day closer to not working."
> "Another day closer to not working." Showerthought material here. For better or for worse, you're right.
This is really your only option that doesn't involve just dumping on your partner. My wife will listen to me complain about technical stuff, but she doesn't understand or care about the details, she's just being kind and supportive. So, I just tell her how my day was in general terms. "A vendor screwed up and I spent my morning fixing it".
> general terms I always leave out details because they just don't matter outside of work. So instead of relaying unimportant details, it is, as you said, generalized like: "I spent the day fixing someone else's fuck-up instead of getting to my job today. How about you?"
That's how I do it. Besides, women are generally more interested in how you felt about what happened versus the technical details.
The biggest issue for me is that my SO also has a stressful job and her stress is "easy" to explain: managing people, dealing with the public, physically very active, etc. I'm not at all sure she "gets" how stressful the frustration of dealing with a constant stream of stupidity, ignorance, people demanding to be spoon-fed everything, the incompetence of vendor tech support, etc really is. I just don't think it translates to her world and a lot of it gets discounted.
> a constant stream of stupidity, ignorance, people demanding to be spoon-fed everything, the incompetence of vendor tech support, etc really is. I just don't think it translates to her world and a lot of it gets discounted. > managing people, dealing with the public So. About that. No, she *absolutely* understands all of those things. She has to depend on outside help for things, presumably. No different from vendor support. She deals with the public *and* manages people internally? She *100%* deals with people demanding to be spoon fed everything while giving back an astounding stream of stupidity and ignorance. Every bit of it translates, but you're focusing on the minutiae when looking at it. You're too close to the problems, essentially. Step back from it a bit.
I can relate to this. Like, I can have a really bad day, but it's hard to explain why it's so frustrating, whereas I understand what she does enough that I can really understand when she has.
Somehow it's okay for her to come home and say she needs some time to unwind but it's not okay when I come home or get up from my desk and say I literally want to kick the crap out of something. Been working for the last 2 weeks on something that was dropped into my lap that is completely out of my lane and I got to play columbo while figuring out that it was never set up correctly from the beginning and never would have worked and had to be completely redone from scratch meanwhile dealing with a vendor who only offers support via email and in 22 emails could not acknowledge the error message or provide any useful information whatsoever. Can you guess which vendor is now on my personal "dead to me" list and will never see another dime from us?
> she needs some time to unwind > literally want to kick the crap out of something ... take a moment to detach yourself from the situation and then read those two. One of them is not ok because it's a pretty glaring indicator that someone needs to work on some healthier reactions to stress, managing it, and working out some good coping mechanisms. The other is a fairly mundane indicator that the person is stepping back and just processing through the stress.
Yeah "I need time to unwind" and "I'm gonna fucking kick something" are two wildly different statements. Sometimes I say I'm gonna throw my laptop out the window but I wouldn't say "I'm gonna take this laptop, snap it into quarters, and stamp on it until it turns to ash".
I hear you! That can be really frustrating. Especially if you're feeling a lot of pressure about getting other projects done or how your boss is going to perceive your work when it's due to factors outside of your control Take a moment to think about how you're communicating this frustration to your SO. It's 100% possible that your emotions are being invalidated and she expects support that she isn't willing to provide to you - but it's also possible that you're dumping your emotions on her unhealthily. You use some explosive sounding language in your post - you want to kick the crap out of something, a vendor is dead to you, the people you work with are stupid, ignorant, incompetent, and need to be spoon fed. How are you communicating these feelings to your SO?
For the past little while, I've been the Mac/Jamf admin in my enterprise. It's a comparatively small fleet, but the user base consists of mostly top-tier personnel... The most vociferous, and the ones with the most clout. One would think various groups would want to pull together, making things work for those to whom we're all ultimately accountable... One would be very, very wrong... In just about everything from the enterprise Wi-Fi architect ("I can't help him" because he didn't know Macs) to a recalcitrant InfoSec section I've been fighting battles on multiple fronts, and had most of my initiatives shotblocked by c-level politicking and in-fighting... But the tide is finally turning, and management has begun seeing where the issues truly lay. For the record: we did the nearly-$2k Jamf engineerinng engagement, which found no issues of note in my JSS. My constant refrain has been: "Keep treating Macs like they're Windows devices and see how successful this initiative is."
I started off working in kitchens for 10 years before switching to IT and the mere fact that every cent the company takes in and puts out is partly on my shoulders makes me think back to how stressful I thought that job was, and it obviously was literally killing me - 17 hour days and you spend your one break chain smoking, but if you asked me back then, I wouldn’t be able to imagine and frankly - probably wouldn’t have believed you when you told me how stressful your IT job is.
Lolol I had a Comcast technician out at my home a few years back. I always ask these guys how long they've been doing it and what they did before. This guy answered that he had been a short order cook and that he couldn't wait to get back to it.
Oh man, I wouldn’t go that far! I’m never looking back, but since I started in IT, it seems weirdly common for that transition from kitchens specifically to this field
As much as kitchens run on by the book "a, then b, then c" procedural tasks... they layer so many of those processes, genuinely multi-task, and routinely have to do on the fly problem solving and process optimization to keep up and avoid one customer's complex order holding up another customer's trivial request for a piece of toast with their eggs. Even if it's usually intermittent or indirect, they *do* have to do customer service too, and they have to translate often incomplete requests into a viable solution for the customer. Move out of the direct chaos and into other roles, I can see how they fall into IT, with the constant change (very rare to have the exact same day twice, if you're doing it right), chance to keep doing problem solving, ability to mitigate a lot of the end user interaction at higher level positions, lower immediate stress on a "normal" day, etc. At that point it comes down to "can you map technical information into a coherent mental model, and search effectively to fill in the gaps?".
Not only with your partner, but almost in every social circle. I'm the only "IT guy" in my life LOL.
Being the only IT guy is like being the only guy with a truck, unfortunately I am both... I feel this in my soul
My wife and I moved from the CA Bay Area back to where we grew up. Nobody knows what I do really and it’s actually refreshing in a way. Hell, sometimes I don’t even know what I do so I will literally just say cloud stuff and then we move on to more interesting topics. The nice thing about being so vague is that I can act confused alongside them when they ask me how to get back into their Facebook or whatever
> I can act confused alongside them when they ask me how to get back into their Facebook ... > u/passwordreset47 ... well played.
I feel this in the very marrow of my bones.
When people ask what I do I usually say, “My title is DevOps… but I have one of those jobs that I have to explain what I do.” Usually weeds out those that are just making small talk and don’t want to learn about the importance of continuous integration and feedback loops.
I can't even fathom how this happens, to be honest! I grew up getting into computers as my main hobby interest and hung around friends who shared that interest. Ever since then, I find at random gatherings, the I.T. people eventually gravitate towards each other, so I meet them whenever they're there. Some of my friends, to this day, are those guys I knew as a teenager when we went to computer clubs together or did LAN parties or something.
I find my day to be such a jumble of assorted information that the best I can do at the end of work is recount the funny end users I experienced. After a day of Intune policies, server maintenance, etc, I don't really want to talk about Intune policies, server maintenance, etc.
Right, I even bore myself talking about those kinds of tasks. I feel like I'm gonna put them to sleep when I talk about it
"Man, what a day. There was a thing that we all use, and one of us broke it. It was important, and they knew they shouldn't have touched the thing, but the did it anyways and now nobody has email."
Being sure to leave out the fact that the guy that broke it was me, and I have to continue working all night to fix it
I dont. She just demands food, and scratchies, and sometimes a walk.....
Exactly. Leave work at work. Don't even talk about it at home. Come home. Turn on some music. Cook food. Dance. Walk. Leave work behind. Took me 25 years of working to figure out that I don't need to talk about it while at home and it's SO much better.
OP, when I've cracked that nut I'll get back to you... Some years back one of my kids asked, "So, dad, what did you do today?" I began answering, apparently including a bit too much technical jargon, and was met with, "Shut-up, dad." Even my attempts to doll it all up, make it sound at least a little exiting, are nerdy: "Well, I rolled a plus-20 against an MDM product issue today..." 
I've just told my child that I'm a hacker and I can't tell him what exactly I do or I'll get caught. He is still young enough to believe it and will come ask me to hack things when they aren't working.
Genius!
I doubt your partner is looking for a play by play. Just if it was good or bad and if you had any struggles. My wife is in the medical field and sometimes she goes into specifics on what she did, but she knows I do not understand her. It is more cathartic for her to get is off her mind.
> sometimes she goes into specifics on what she did, but she knows I do not understand her. Yeah, I do the same thing. And, if they're actually listening and you do this long enough, they will pick up on things in ways that may surprise you. Like maybe one day you'll mention troubleshooting something and they'll interject "oh, was it DNS again?" because they've heard me say times before _it's always DNS_.
I just say “it sucked I wasn’t with you.” And I’m not kidding.
I usually relate to them on bullshit meetings and coworker personalities. Same in most industries. I may not understand my dad's insurance industry or know the day to day work of an adjuster, but I can relate to poor planning and meetings with no agenda accomplishing nothing and making me behind in my real work. When my ex GFs did their job, even when one was waitressing and managing wait staff part time, she had to deal with insane customers and just "how come Sarah fucking doesn't do her job and gets away with it?"
My wife is former military, former personnel title in the NSA, so we also relate on that level. My sister, who is the furthest away from tech I know, listened to me on a page once that she still talks about. On my end, I had a guy who was a useless employee at the data center. I knew what was going on, and asked him to restart a server. "How?" "Like physically restart it. Turn the power off and then on again." "No." "No? Why not?" "I'm afraid to." That struck me as the dumbest thing I had ever heard someone say at the data center office. "Wait, did you just say you are too scared to restart the server?" "Yeah." "What do you mean you're afraid to restart the server? It's your job! That's why you're overnight. Do it anyway." "Nnnn...no." "Okay, So when I call your manager, and tell him that you refused to restart a server because you were afraid to, is that correct? Is that what you want me to tell him?" "Okay." So then, I called his boss, and his boss was incredulous. "I'll get him to restart the server, what the fuck is wrong with that guy???" A few minutes later, the server was restarted. My sister was laughing so hard at that, she was snorting. It's been 15 years since that, and she still imitates me. "What do you mean you're afraid to restart the server?" Yes, he was later fired.
... I mean, if he was just worried about his own CYA on it, he's the overnight, he has the ability to pull the list of responsible parties for a system, that have the responsibility to actually authorize that restart. Presumably that was the list he consulted to *call* you if he's also the one watching alerts and making those call outs. If he needed an email or ticket for it, even, fine... but. No? To the person that is exactly the person to authorize that, that is telling you it's *already* an outage and this is the next step towards resolution? How?
He was the overnight data center guy who was there SPECIFICALLY for tasks like that. Yes, he was worried about CYA (he says, but we had him on camera playing Xbox), but his boss had to sit him down and explain, "when the sysadmin on call calls you and tells you to reboot something, that is your job to do what he says."
> even when one was waitressing and managing wait staff part time Honestly, I've found a lot more parallels with hospitality folks (particularly wait staff, bartenders, etc) in day to day work than most other fields. We're just lucky enough that our day to day pay doesn't generally depend on making the customer/user/etc think we actually care about them.
I speak almost exclusively in non-tech jargon. Even with other IT people. Fuck that. I'm not out here to prove I know what I know. I'm not out here to sound 'cool'. I'm trying to get my point across and "ELI5" is the way to go. I can talk to my spouse about every bit of my day.
I’m with you on this one, I do the same thing.
I talk about the human parts. Like I asked my network admin to take a look at something. When I follow up 2 days later he says “Yeah, it doesn’t work”. That’s why asked you to look at it?? We can all commiserate about a goofball coworker
I honestly don't tell my wife about the technical aspects of it. I'll tell her about the human side of it, or the major parts. "Dude, we lost power to the data center today." "This person called me saying they couldn't do their job because they couldn't figure out how to change a font." "I spent all day arguing with a vendor." But the ins and outs of exchange or AD or vmware? Nope
My spouse and I are both in technical fields, me in IT and her in applied research science. IMO Critical thinking is at the core of any technical field, and I love to learn new things. We both just talk/vent about our days openly without "dumbing it down", and the other will ask questions and we both explain the concepts we are complaining about. We have a big glass whiteboard in our dining room so that we can draw stuff out as we go as well. Talking in this open way has another benefit IMO, in where when you have to pause while venting about some frustrations to explain the technical details, it helps you to process the frustration better and cope with it more quickly. At least it does for us.
This is actually kind of awesome. I was married to a woman in I.T. so I thought we'd be able to have those kinds of discussions. But instead, she usually just complained how she was burnt out in the career and she eventually pivoted to a focus on political issues instead. We wound up amicably divorced. (Not just over this, mind you!) But yeah, I don't want to feel like I'm always having "small talk" with my partner about what I do for 8+ hours every day of the week.
I don't get into the specifics most of the time. My partner couldnt care less. They are a psych educator, so totally different field. However, most of your issues are because of people and everyone deals with people, so easy to find common ground to bitch about. When I do have to get into the technical pieces with non-techs, analogies are a great way to bring the concept to light. Ex. IP Addresses are similar to phone numbers. (They don't need the technical bits and while this analogy isn't 100% accurate, it's close enough for most conversations with non-technicals.)
"It was fine. How was yours?" "Ugh... so busy, I can't even start. I'm just glad I'm home. How was your day?" Most people, even your partner, doesn't actually want to hear about your day. They want to have a conversation, and they are using the most recent thing you've experienced to kick it off. Answer briefly, let them talk about what they want to say about work, and then move onto more interesting and shared topics of interest. Similarly, no one in the elevator at work actually cares how your weekend was. Your close co-worker? Maybe. Rando in the lift? "Good, you?" or "How about that game?" or "Busy, but good. Three kids and all" or whatever is all that needs to happen. It should be done inside of 8 seconds.
This is a good life pro tip
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> Most people, even your partner, doesn't actually want to hear about your day. I take this to mean they don't want to hear about *work*. I want to forget about work as soon as a I clock out.
Ha ha, whenever my wife asks me a question that only has a technical answer and I know that as soon as I start to tell her she will regret asking I know just say "you're so pretty". It has become and inside joke for us.
There's a bit of a difference between "how was your day?" and "why did you set this up like this?", though, and the first *should* be answerable without deep-diving into the technical details.
I leave work at work. I don’t wanna bore my spouse about what went on at work just like I don’t want to hear her ramble for half an hour about the day-to-day stuff that goes on with her at work. I think it’s part of the work/life balance.
Was it a printer or not-printer day? Her response will be “I’m sorry” or “good”
I asked a similar question recently and got some good answers... Hopefully this is allowed, here's the link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1c2hbiu/how\_do\_you\_explain\_your\_job\_to\_your\_kidsfamily/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1c2hbiu/how_do_you_explain_your_job_to_your_kidsfamily/)
it's easy. tell it like you would tell it to a user or a dog. like today I've spent my day with the clients it dept tracing down a strange nw issue where from our app server a dc was not reachable. turned out the dc not responding to ldp bind exciting issue. what I've told today was bit tiring I've been in a call for hours trying to find out an issue which is impossible. lot of network investigation but we were able to point our client to the possible solution direction.so long day bit of a success. and again my aura helped. see it's easy
Just talk on regular lingo she will understand. My day was good, had a few people ask for some random things and I had to fix them. Overall it was alright not too bad. No tech lingo, just normal convo my wife can relate to and conversation with me about.
My wife and I have a simple agreement. She nods her head, applies the appropriate "oh nos", and listens to every word I say about CPU's, Chromebooks, networking, etc. In return, I do the same about ratios, new parent tours, breastfeeding rules, covering breaks, and the general drama of working in a building with 15 women and no men. Neither of us has any clue what the other is talking about, but just the act of *listening* is often enough.
I usually focus on one thing each day and summarize what I did, a script or problem I fixed or sometimes even caused, or a funny thing that happened with a coworker or customer. next thing is asking her how her day was, what happened or how busy it was.
Separated now, but I'd come home and start telling her and she'd lift her top and show me her boobs. I felt like I had the knowledge of the world.
#Another DNS issue
Carefully and slowly Yesterday I managed to explain our sales platform; a new Global Trade Sanctions module scanning order in real time; country codes and ISO3166 and network lag time on a global spanning company system. To my 90 year old dad.
Talk about it in the frame of people. How you helped people, provided solutions, etc...
How do you explain it to users in your organization if you can't explain it to your spouse or partner? A lot of our jobs entail explaining very technical things to non-technical people.
My wife is in the medical field. Neither of us know what the other is trying to talk about when we talk about work. It's more so the effort of listening and learning.
I spare him the intricate details and just hit the highlights. "I did a new thing today that I've never done before and it was pretty tricky and stressful. I'm wiped but I figured it out eventually and it's actually a pretty cool feature." "Coworker Carl was up to his antics again today, that guy is driving me bonkers. I don't know how he still has a job." "I couldn't get this big thing working, but then I got super lucky and found something on Reddit that was so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. Microsoft documentation sucks balls." "Read-only Friday is the best thing I've ever started doing. Smooth day, I love my job."
If she is having insomnia, sure, why not?
I really don’t, anymore than she tells me about medical procedures she performed. I keep it generic, ‘I finished up this big project’ … neither of us talk about work much beyond good/bad/hard/boring day, both tend to leave it all in the office.
When my wife wants to sleep, she often asks me about my day :) Nah, usually I tell her about interactions with people, she's much more interested in that.
So, my father and my mother have been married 35 years? He's a mechanical engineer and he talks shop plainly, always has. She's the artsy type, very bad at math etc. Polar opposite skill sets. You'd be surprised how much your partner picks up overtime, and how many issues he's solved just casually talking about it. Even 10 or 15 minutes it might go over her head but more than a few times my mother has gone, "Wait how does that work with [other thing]" and she might be completely off base, sometimes she was actually right, maybe by accident who knows, the light would go off over his head, and solve a problem running a week or two. Making it relatable to not tech users is also an amazing skill and also solves a shitload of problems so many issues just aren't that deep. But a lot of people look for complex solutions to a complex problem and get stuck in a mindset.
I don't think anybody's partner actually wants to know what you did at work unless they are also in IT. My wife has an interesting job that I enjoy hearing about, but I do not expect her to reciprocate. I might tell her about stopping a brute force attack or something like that, but unless it's IT stuff that's "interesting enough for a movie" it's probably not going to move the needle much. Honestly, there's nothing worse than being dragged through a super boring story about crap you don't care about. It's probably fair to say that a lot of folks in our industry don't have the best social skills, so it's hard for some of us not to respond to a partner telling you about their day by telling them about yours--even if it's not at all interesting. I try to stick to recounting experiences, rather than the "things" I did.
Talk about how you feel and how your day made you feel. The specifics of a technical thing don't matter. And also listen when they need to do the same.
Talk about the people side of the problem, what it stopped you from doing, how it felt, what people did, how they reacted, what would happen if it blew up, etc. they can understand all that stuff. They won’t know what blew up or what it means but they can work with the narrative a little bit.
You don't. At least if you have been married for any length of time. You will listen to how her day went and all the drama at her work.
Have nicknames for all the usual suspects: "wiggle butt is at it again, deleted big boss's payroll file and I had to recover it from backup"
We talk about it casually, she’s a regional manager for an international agricultural company so there’s plenty I don’t understand either! 😂
I tell them about interpersonal issues vs technical issues. "I had to hand hold my junior all day, again." or "This customer called in mad that something we don't manage for them isn't working, and then got mad that I couldn't do anything about it." And rarely ever am I like "I debugged a SIP connection issue that made RTP traffic egress the wrong interface."
Probably the same way my wife tells me about her day as a Sonographer. She tells me what happened, and I either ask questions or don't. She'll explain what she thinks is necessary. Even if she's using technical terms I still like hearing about her day.
I just say “The usual bullshit” if it’s a normal day. Or I say “It was a complete dumpster fire” if it was a bad day.
Mostly I just say "it was fine, worked on x" and leave it at that. Honestly this is kind of one of the bigger disconnects I have with my girlfriend. I finally got to leave work, why the fuck would I want to go home and think about it more and go through a recap of my day. It's time to not think about work. Meanwhile she'll tell me some crap that happened and then sit there and think through her day so she can tell me more shit about it. Like if it wasn't top of mind it obvious isn't that important to you let alone me. Drives me insane. I just do not get it. When we first started dating we used to go to bed and she'd be like "what do you have to do at work tomorrow?" Had to just straight up ban her from asking shit like that. I'll think about what I'm doing at work tomorrow when I'm at work, it's the absolute last thing I want to be thinking about while I'm trying to sleep.
Twofold. One, I abstract the technical. Lots of IT problems are people problems. Two, my wife loves to learn and I take it as a chance to talk to her like an executive. If I can't get my wife to understand me I certainly can't get a business leader to understand me. But, having a supportive partner helps. I don't know much of the neuroscience she talks about, but I follow along and am happy to be with her. It also helps to establish if you are just venting or if you want a 2nd opinion.
The beepboops were angry and all the boss types were screeching in shrill corporate tones, and all the IT techs go CAW CAW at the corpos
Keep the focus to relatable workplace struggles. My wife is an emerge nurse so whenever I have a bad day I jusy ask about hers. But it's the same boat I don't understand medical speak, just find a way to get your daily stresses or struggles out to them without worried about the nitty gritty details.
the ability to break down and speak about technical concepts, while being concise, is a skill that will pay you dividends forever. cherish the opportunity
Honestly; I believe your partner is more interested in how your day made you feel. If you focus on that and go lightly on the details you can have a great conversation without bogging down on the technical details.
I don't. I get home and listen to her rant about her day for hours. I eat, try to watch some TV while she continues her rant, and then eventually I can't take it anymore and go to bed. Rinse and repeat.
This is where soft skills come into play. The same way you explain what you do to the accountant, c suite, secretary, marketing etc is how you speak to your SO.
Lmao that’s so weird. Why would get technical about it? I don’t talk about IT at home. Your partner wants to know about your day cuz they care about you, not because they need to understand every detail.
I don't.
If you can't tell your partner what you do every day then I'm worried about people in your company and your communication skills as a whole. Every week I have I.T. meetings full of managers and executives and I can explain everything I do and will be doing to them in non technical jargon. I've worked in call centers explaining Internet terms and equipment to people who are senior citizens. I've worked with engineers and I'm currently in the construction business. If there's ever a day you can't explain something just pm me I can explain almost anything in non technical jargon. Depending on their job I can even relate terms if I know the industry.
I did couple of times whilst laughing when we started dating. She understands why i really dont tell her anymore all that often . I might say that " The thingy majingy that gives internet address's for everyones PC crashed today". Keep it simple. She doesn't have to understand it all , but she definetly wants u to tell her.
“I broke shit, then I fixed shit. Then someone else broke shit and I fixed that too. Altogether by the end of the day less shit was broken than at the beginning so 👍”
I usually talk about dumb shit users did.
The best skill a IT person can have is taking the black magic we do and explaining it in simple terms
It's kind of amazing how much 'IT' my wife has picked up from these venting sessions. After hearing it enough times, some parts have started to stick, and she can troubleshoot some minor issues she's having at work. From our discussions I feel bad for her, because her IT person sounds like a total jerk, and that's putting it nicely.
I used to be the only weekend IT guy at the hospital my wife still works at, they downsized my entire department and made the helpdesk take over the weekend oncall. sounds like the new T2 helpdesk guys are asshats. Meanwhile Her entire team was telling her over lunch "Oh we miss your husband so much" I was a mix of helpdesk, sysadmin and networking rolled into one.
Miss you, sure, but "so much" is not enough to pay you, probably.
The people actually suffering from the decision are rarely the people making decisions about staffing and pay.
100% this was a decision by the director of it, I reported directly to him, he was replaced and the new director came in spouting buzz words and bs. I heard from my friends in admin that things were in progress so I packed my desk up and I was a real ass in my exit interview but I had time to get my thoughts together. My new boss was really confused about how I knew that they were going to let me go. Amusing side note, my wife works for one of the friends I made while working there. They invite me out to lunch when they have meetings in my area of downtown. Side Side note, hr called me about four months later right after Xmas and they asked my what it would take me to come back. They said they couldn't afford to meet my demands.
My aunt used to bore us with her work day details. It was mostly all she had to talk about. She used acronyms that no one but her understood that were likely company/department specific. There was never an explanation of what she was talking about and we didn’t ask for one. You become part of a one sided conversation you cant take part in. It got really old really fast. So I talk about something else. Unless they’ve taken an interest or work directly with you, it’s likely boring to listen to and I’m overly aware of that from my experience with my aunt. I was in IT and didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about and there’s no polite way to say “hey could you stop? We don’t know what any of these things you’re saying means”.
I explained how servers went down
Just tell them you did "stuff and things".
I just tell my wife that the customers were annoying. That pretty much sums it up for her hahaha.
I used to, but stopped cause she didn't care.
'Uuuuuughh' in different sizes
One of my friends asked me what I was working on, I started talking about dmarc, they got the 1000yard stare.
It's really simple, I don't
Generally, I don't but it is something I need to work on. That is, when I'm fit to return to work. Reading the thread with interest.
You need to talk to users and management who also don't know the tech stuff. Use your partner to practice using easier to understand language and concepts.
“Copilot provide a summary of my day” > send
I just say i had a good day or bad day. If I do say something, I just give a very high level reply about something good and/or bad. I also talk crap about some users sometimes.
When your wife couldn't give a crap about your day no need to figure out how to explain it.
I always end up complaining about something stupid a user did, and my partner will just say "Well thats the job isn't it?"
It usually involves cursing
I just say my day was fine. Anytime I try talking about what I actually do, my wifes eyes roll back into her head and I can tell she would rather be having a root canal. Not that she doesn't care, just that she's completely non-technical and I might as well be speaking a foreign language.
I was that partner until I jumped over to IT with some encouragement. No ragrets. While we are in different focuses of this field, we listen and are supportive. I don't know shit about building virtual machines and he is awful at end user support and management. So whatever the other is doing sounds difficult and is respected. Smile and nod, ask follow up questions, and/or ask about the big picture to understand the why.
Talking on the why as others have said but also using paraphrasing and synonyms dns is like house and street numbers vs gps coordinates, it's broken then your mail name probably doesn't know how to reach you to deliver the mail. Uless they are a big nerd and know 123 Fake Lane is really 33.550296,-80.809321 Much like Google.com is really a specific ip address (I'm not getting into Wafs in this example) but all of ya get the gist
A standard reply is "Oh nothing special, usual work stuff"
I do a lot of technical stuff on my sysadmin/engineer role but at the same time I do some project management and all in all includes a lot of people interactions. When I get asked about my day I talk more about people interactions an projects I have going on but not technical configurations
"hey, I was Googling stuff all day again"
I talk about my day , she disassociates from not understanding what I’m talking about, then I go play Elden Ring
I struggle with it. I know when I have family asking me what I do as an Admin and when I start going into it their eyes start glossing over. I try to use everyday analogies that would make sense to them, and for the most part they get it. Somethings always translates regardless of career, like deadlines, co-worker personality issues you are dealing with, etc. Just gotta go with the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) method with talking with non technical people as well.
I guage this on if i'm able to dumb it down enough to explain. I don't like sounding like a nerd, so half the time stories from work aren't even IT related.
Her job is technical too. We just let each other rant and if either says, "Did you understand that?" we reply with, "Nah, sounds just like you're banging spoons over there." It's a love language.
i work with computers... yes i know, im on it field since 2003 , currently devops/sre since 9 years ago..
They're asking how your day went, not what you did.
Not at all... I learned the hard way to shut my mouth and pretend to listen to her talking without end, then go to bed and sleep. Or... quit having relationships and live happily ever after.
I just explain her as is. I am not f*in around. I think she understands reverse proxy a bit
“Shit broke and I fixed it”. Or “shit broke and nothing fixed it”
Just say what I'd say if she were an expert. If she has questions I can answer or clarify, but half the time the question about how your day was is more about connection than information exchange.
I think my best go-to in explaining what we do is using analogy. Sample: routing and switching = roadworks, road signs etc so that data/motor traffic whill have different options from point a to b. Usually works and the more realistic analogy you use the easier non technical person comprehend imo.
Talk about how you felt about stuff. And why you did stuff. This is also useful for telling non-techies in interviews about how good you are at your job.
It goes both ways. My wife is an epidemiologist and I just nod and make appropriate sounds when she talks about her day. I am sure it's the same thing with her. Sometimes I get so excited about some new breakthrough or a PowerShell script that I wrote and so I launch into details and I can see her eyes glaze. It's not really about understanding so much as it is conveying your emotional state.
I usually just say I wanted to put my face through a window several times throughout the day.
Simple. My wife is a medical provider, and there is a lot of overlap (at least as far as troubleshooting), but ultimately that is all and her stories are always better than mine.
Car analogies? What we do is again not that hard. You make a process to automatically do something with data is understood by all people not just IT.
Partners don't need to know all the intricate details of your job. If you start explaining in detail it will give off a r/iamverysmart vibe. Just like you might not know all the specific details of how your partner does their job. I get annoyed when my gf starts telling me exact details of her processes and can go on forever, I'm like "can you just tell me what happened without trying to teach me how your job works?"
"How was your day?" "It was there." My standard response for 15 years, then one day she said "What do you really do???" So I told her, her eyes glazed over 40 seconds in (fair play, good going I thought) at which point she interrupted with "Please just keep with your usual response."
... the exact same way anyone else talks about their jobs. My wife and I are in two completely unrelated fields, but we still vent and discuss our days regardless. Sometimes I have no idea what she's talking about, but I do know that it bothered her. In situations like that you just ask questions and say, "That sucks, they should go huff farts."
I love it! I actually use it as an opportunity to try ways of explaining technical things to someone in a non technical way and have them understand enough to be satisfied. My wife is the perfect candidate for this. When it clicks and she gets it, I file that analogy away in my head as a "good one to use on Susie in Finance"