this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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I have a colleague making close to twice my salary struggling with IT...but he's extremely skilled at his actual job.
But like... saving a PDF should not be considered IT lol
Yeah my bet is that the meme is facetious
Nope it's not facetious .. I'm an ICT professional and I see this regularly.
Ok then, sure it's extreme but document handling is not necessarily a key (or even important) part of their work. Yes they absolutely shouldn't need to use 15min or get help to save a document, but if their skills in their actual job are spectacular and they produce the work of two in that area, of course they still should be compensated well. I don't know your specific case, but this is almost the case I mentioned.
If your work involves using a computer all day, but you can't be arsed to learn how to use it, I'm going to assume the rest of your output is incompetent too. I see this way too often.
In the case of my colleague he's expert-level in the software tools we need for our actual job, but he struggles with basic office tools like MS word and excel.
The more I read here the more all these people come off as being super insecure and jealous that their skills are just to help people with real skills do basic computer stuff
I'd say it has more to do with feeling under-appreciated for what they do to help workforce. To their colleagues they're treated as little more than lowly keyboard jockeys until they're needed for an IT problem, then they're sent back to languish in the computer mines.
At the end of the day it's more a managerial problem, as they arent treated as an equal contributor to the group. Despite how much they contribute to overall efficiency and productivity.
We're almost always seen as a burden because we don't directly generate revenue. That is, unless someone in the C-suite has an IT background.
In a capitalist landscape we are trained to only ever be good at one thing. If you do more than one thing, you are worth less because then clearly youre not as good at your primary profession. Even if those other skills benefit that primary profession.
There are, of course, exceptions where managers understand that well-rounded employees provide a bulwark against mistakes and thus inefficiency. But for the most part, if youre not spending time on things that are not your primary responsibility, like learning tangential skills, youre losing them money.
As an Engineer, I need to know:
-At least two professional-grade drawing softwares
-Word processing skills
-Presentation skills in documentation, such as InDesign
-Excel
-Quick comprehension in a mountain of contractual documents
-Digital Document Management
-Two languages minimum
I have already skipped a bunch of soft skills, we are not paid enough, while watching my Boomer PM taking 3 days to write three questions to client consultants.
Working with engineers as my profession, these are not professional requirements, they are personal requirements. They make you a better prospect when hiring, but spending time to learn those skills while actually on the job makes you a liability.
One of the jobs I had when working with engineers was basically doing all the digital document management and word processing/excel tasks.
Again, im not saying those skills, or their equivalent in other professions, shouldn't be part of the general lexicon. Im saying taking the time to learn them, while also being paid, is discouraged. KPI is a thing, and learning new skills makes that go down.
I am not sure about your projects. Other than InDesign, all I mentioned are essentially project /client requirements; daily operation in the site office is going to be crippled in one way or another if you don't know how to use those software. Sure, you don't have to know two drawing software programs; they are being framed as "extra" on job ads, but it is really handy when there is an opportunity to make an impression on the client with 3D.
Of course! It can and should be something that is encouraged in most, if not all, workplaces.
Im saying that's not the case, even going outside engineering. The emphasis is on learning and polishing your primary skill, not tertiary, or even adjacent skillsets. If it happens and improves workload, great! But if we catch you doing it when you could be making money instead, for shame...
I would say in professions like engineering, where you are doing more problem solving, there is a higher tolerance. Especially since a lot of PMs and supervisors are or were engineers themselves. But tolerance is not acceptance.
Yeah, but I mean if you are fully qualified for the job and the company is being run efficiently, and there are no projects that have nasty extra demands/complaints that deviate from the norm and the skillset of the company. Why need tertiary skills aside from your boss having a sense of humor "yOU sHoUlD leARN thIS, i pAy yoU tO lEaRN"?
Unless you caught me learning something so remote from my core work, so much work for little improvement margin, then you've got every right to question me.
Besides, what I have been mentioning are NOT tertiary skills; they are becoming primary skills, but no one actually wants to admit that. It is a constant reminder to your superior that they can't elevate you even if they want to.
It sounds to me you are talking about a cultural problem called conformity and KPI tunnel vision. Sometimes it becomes so stiff that even working efficiently requires permission because someone is adverse to change.
I'm talking about a cultural problem started by Henry Ford over a hundred years ago called the assembly line. Where you only have one job to do and you do it over amd over with little variation. It started in industry, but shows it's face in every profession.
Im glad your personal experience is better, but that doesn't mean it isn't a very dangerous trend in most professions that this entire post is literally complaining about.
Yes, situations should be more ideal for the worker. But they're not. That is my entire point.
"Working with engineers as my profession"
"Henry Ford over a hundred years ago called the assembly line."
Engineering IS a multidisciplinary career; you are not going to do finite element analysis on a stack of paper, I don't even think governments will accept a full-blown hand sketch drawing. Everyone will at least want a cad file, everyone will want to use software with interoperability, paper doesn't do that...
It’s pretty funny how the people who only have computer skills are hating on people who only have their own skills too
Computer support is literally only useful to other humans doing useful stuff
These people have 0 usefulness outside of helping the guy print a pdf and yet they consider themselves so high and mighty
Until you click on a phishing link.
This is the curse of IT. Perpetually undervalued yet absolutely essential. If IT were ever to disappear, the businesses they support become walking corpses.
It chaps my ass that everyone working in business has grown up with computers being essential to business yet its somehow still acceptable for them to be functionally illiterate in using them.
Sometimes its so fucking bad that the equivalent would be someone being granted a drivers license and given a car but they have no idea how to put it in park, let alone use the brakes.
IT are the Dunedain Rangers protecting The Shire. They're not popular, they're barely acknowledged, often scorned, but without their presence The Shire cannot be.
My industry could abandon most technology and we’d be fine but things would just take longer to do 🤷♀️but everyone I know still appreciates and respects IT anyway
Most people just use their computers to accomplish other things in life and then go about their business without developing actual computer skills. The reason yall in IT is cause you were obsessed w computers enough to truly learn how to use them.
You could always learn how to code an awful system that requires IT support if helping people print and plug in cables isn’t rewarding enough
You seem to think that desktop support is the only IT job that exists, which is incorrect.
I work in Infosec and my job isn't helping users with computer illiteracy, but I can still get frustrated when people don't know how to do basic tasks that their job requires.
This is like saying Software Developers have a useless skill set, except to make the important, value creating, end users more productive.
I've been in IT since it was called something else.
90% of the work I do is to enable other people to do their job.
Before IT, these people did their work on paper, which took more people, and more time, but they still did their work, and my job didn't exist.
You said it even better
Sad life huh
The fuck else is it? Did you come out your momma's vajayjay being able to save a pdf?
Lol, it's just computer literacy. Most jobs require using the computer, saving a file required for the job is part of that job.
Computer literacy is exactly what is taught in IT lessons, just like regular literacy is taught in school as well.
I overheard someone considerably high up in my organization struggling to understand the concept of an email BCC (Blind Carbon Copy).
He was trying to figure out how to notify a large number of people via email without letting them know who else was receiving the email.
Some things may fall under IT but they should really fall under the category of things every professional should understand.
BCC is turning 50 years old next year.
Yup. The key is are they paid to save pdfs? Or are they paid to do other things?
I can save the shit out of some PDFs, but I’ve only ever made one sale in my entire life.
Are they paid to use the toilet to go to the bathroom or are they paid for other things? If they're paid for other things, they should shit on the floor wherever they happen to be and let the janitors handle that since they're the ones paid to clean things up.
I liken it to a professional basketball player with a low free throw percentage. If they're still on the team and in the league despite missing 3 free throws a game, they must be really good at the other stuff.