Programmer Humor

In my experience, random failure with random auto-fix is exclusively a windows feature. Turning it off and on fixes the majority of windows glitches.

It's part of the class package. We auto-resolve issues under a certain level of difficulty just by being nearby. Pretty nifty.

I just tell people the computer is afraid of me. Because it is.

The computer just trembles at the IT dude's aura and does what it's supposed to do because they know what they do to printers that step out of line.

I’m in IT, but not that kind of IT.

Last week I afflicted myself with the Location Services are turned off bug by installing the 23H2 update to duplicate an issue a user in my work area was having.

When I called desktop support, we could not replicate the issue after he remoted in.
He closed the Remote Desktop connection, and the issue reoccurred.
He remoted in. The popup vanished as soon as he connected. We couldn’t replicate the issue. He seemed dubious now. He disconnected. It occurred. I got a screenshot. He reconnected. We looked at the remote connection settings. Remote connections were set to override location. Disabled that. Issue presented. We both had a good laugh.

I work in IT support.
A solid 80% of all issues magically disappear the second I show up.
There's a very simple explanation for it – Clarke's Fourth Law:
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

It's the whole reason why IT wizards are exempt from the usual office dress code.
The long hair, beards and flowing robes (or baggy pants and XXXL T-shirts) are vital parts of the ritual.

Fear keeps them in line.

I had a coworker who had constant issues with her laptop. Whenever she tried showing it to me, the issue magically fixed itself.

After this happened multiple times, she would just ask me to quickly touch the laptop to fix it. Worked every time!

It's the same with all machines. When I worked news production in television it was the same thing. Something breaks, call in the engineers, now it works once they show up.

Tech Aura. If you have it you understand. If you don't then you watch in awed frustration as the computer that refused to work 10 seconds ago suddenly starts behaving when I.T. touches it. As an aside you know your I.T. are real wizards when stuff starts working just because they walked in the room or answered the phone. :)

Today I (backend) asked my teamlead (frontend): "Can you help me, 'npm run dev' isnt running for me"

She said: "Have you 'npm install'ed?"

I hadn't, so I quickly ended the conversation right there.

You know how slackers tend to make more of an effort to at least look like they're doing what they should be when the boss walks by?

This is the same relationship between the computers and the IT department.

And the real truth may be somewhere in between. The user may suddenly regulate their behaviour and take extra care, or at least act sufficiently differently, when the IT person is watching over their shoulder.

They don't do the thing that makes the computer complain. Everything looks normal. IT person goes away. User reverts to original habits. Computer complains.

Or else the IT person uses the computer themselves, but does not emulate the user sufficiently well, so the computer behaves.

I know it's not always this but it goes a long way to explaining how tech aura became a thing.

It's a bit of a curse, so often I come in and things magically start working... But that's hardly satisfying, and the person that needs help just knows it's going to bite them again... So I get to guess why it broke before it behaved for me and hopefully figure it out and fix it despite it currently working right now.

One time, I was staring at a piece of code for a solid 10 minutes or so, and could not understand why it gave me a compile error.
So, I ask the senior for help, start explaining what I've been trying to do, scroll down to show some other code snippet, scroll back up and the compile error was gone. My IDE simply had not re-rendered properly. I have rarely sweared as much as in that moment.

One of my previous tech jobs used this strategically. We would just send like a vague "hey could I get your help for a sec" which was code for "some trivial thing that has never failed before is failing now but if it thinks I'm wasting your time it'll start working". Half the time when the other person showed up we'd just talk about random stuff while the person tries the thing again and it would start working no need to ever know what the bug was in the first place

Unofficial IT at my work and half the time people ask for help, it suddenly works with me there and not even touching it. Granted, most of the time that's just people having typos when typing username/passwords and managing to do it correctly the 4th attempt. And sometimes it's just the computer being unusually slow to connect to wifi right after booting up and its connected by the time I walk over to check on it.

You embarrassed the computer back into working. Pat yourself on the shoulder.

Magic Fingers.

I worked in IT for 25 years and this was true for a large majority of calls I got over the years. I called it the IT intimidation rule. LOL

Wizard has magic fingers

Works for me!

MJ Hibbett: It Only Works Because You're Here

Sometimes you just have to book a doctor's appointment to break your kid's fever and make the slapped cheeks appear.