some fruitless searching through outdated documents is going to teach you a lot about where all the outdated documents are
Yeeess. How much use is that, really, unless you're the person with ability/responsibility to update (or mandate the update of) the documentation?
and how to find things
But I already know how to find things! :-) Generally if I can't find it in half an hour's searching, I'd be willing to bet money that it either isn't there or I'm missing some key piece of information that I don't know enough about to know how to find it. Is it really better use of people's-time-in-general for me to spend a long time bashing my head against a bootstrapping problem with the searching, when somebody else could answer the question in two seconds? (NB, I don't tend to ask phone/face-to-face questions. I figure if I email somebody with a question, they can answer it in their own time.)
Most of the time management advice doesn't apply to people who come and talk to you, which is the main method of communication I have with people asking questions.
Hrm. Can you stick a "Do not disturb" sign on your door? Or tell people "I'm in the middle of something right now, if you still haven't found it in an hour's time give me a call and I'll get back to you?" ... If you've already thought about all this and you know there's no solution, how do you cope with the non-stop annoyance?
Agreed on the points about research, and people wasting their own time. But, well, your job is probably very different from mine, but here I have to deal with a lot of people who a) genuinely don't have time to go away and learn the things they're asking me (because it's not a big part of their job - even if they sometimes wish it was), or b) simply don't want to learn (and if I tell them "go away and learn" will only pester me more loudly and more insistently). I try to give people answers which point them in the direction of finding things out themselves, and like I said somewhere up there in the comments, it's so satisfying for me when I see the light go on as they realise "I get this! I could learn more about this! I would be able to do this bit of my job so much quicker if I got my head round this stuff!" If they want to learn, I'm happy to spend a bit more time guiding them, if I can; if they don't, I figure it's probably in my interests to answer them as quickly and painlessly as possible to get them out of the way.
If they come with the same "read the manual for me" questions time and time again, though, I find the following approach works quite well as a discouraging tactic:
Them: "How do I do X?" Me: "Hmmm, let's see... that'd be in the manual... [open document]... and probably in the section of the manual labelled 'X' ... [read slowly, scrolling back and forth a bit so they can't quite pick the bit they want out themself over my shoulder] ... Ah yes, here we are, 'How do I do X?'. So... yeah... [read a bit more, reading out useless phrases occasionally] ... yeah, it looks like what you do is ... [then finally read the relevant bit out]."
Make it slow and painful, and eventually they work out that they can read the docs faster, or Just Fucking Google It (http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/).
no subject
Yeeess. How much use is that, really, unless you're the person with ability/responsibility to update (or mandate the update of) the documentation?
and how to find things
But I already know how to find things! :-) Generally if I can't find it in half an hour's searching, I'd be willing to bet money that it either isn't there or I'm missing some key piece of information that I don't know enough about to know how to find it. Is it really better use of people's-time-in-general for me to spend a long time bashing my head against a bootstrapping problem with the searching, when somebody else could answer the question in two seconds? (NB, I don't tend to ask phone/face-to-face questions. I figure if I email somebody with a question, they can answer it in their own time.)
Most of the time management advice doesn't apply to people who come and talk to you, which is the main method of communication I have with people asking questions.
Hrm. Can you stick a "Do not disturb" sign on your door? Or tell people "I'm in the middle of something right now, if you still haven't found it in an hour's time give me a call and I'll get back to you?" ... If you've already thought about all this and you know there's no solution, how do you cope with the non-stop annoyance?
Agreed on the points about research, and people wasting their own time. But, well, your job is probably very different from mine, but here I have to deal with a lot of people who a) genuinely don't have time to go away and learn the things they're asking me (because it's not a big part of their job - even if they sometimes wish it was), or b) simply don't want to learn (and if I tell them "go away and learn" will only pester me more loudly and more insistently). I try to give people answers which point them in the direction of finding things out themselves, and like I said somewhere up there in the comments, it's so satisfying for me when I see the light go on as they realise "I get this! I could learn more about this! I would be able to do this bit of my job so much quicker if I got my head round this stuff!" If they want to learn, I'm happy to spend a bit more time guiding them, if I can; if they don't, I figure it's probably in my interests to answer them as quickly and painlessly as possible to get them out of the way.
If they come with the same "read the manual for me" questions time and time again, though, I find the following approach works quite well as a discouraging tactic:
Them: "How do I do X?"
Me: "Hmmm, let's see... that'd be in the manual... [open document]... and probably in the section of the manual labelled 'X' ... [read slowly, scrolling back and forth a bit so they can't quite pick the bit they want out themself over my shoulder] ... Ah yes, here we are, 'How do I do X?'. So... yeah... [read a bit more, reading out useless phrases occasionally] ... yeah, it looks like what you do is ... [then finally read the relevant bit out]."
Make it slow and painful, and eventually they work out that they can read the docs faster, or Just Fucking Google It (http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/).