Under appreciated

Sometimes a simple thanks or a 'well done' wouldn't go unappreciated.
Sometimes a simple thanks or a ‘well done’ wouldn’t go unappreciated.

It is sometimes hard being an engineer, as the truth is that if you do your job well, the results are often invisible.

Recently I performed a feat of technical wizardry that I personally was extremely proud of any my client doesn’t even recognise the magnitude of the issue he had, nor the marvel that both I and Microsoft performed for him. 😐

Now this isn’t really a fault on the part of the client, and I can totally recognise his point of view, in that this particular problem caused his main server to be offline for an entire day; so it can be forgiven that seeing the technicians point of view may not have been an option, but still – a simple “thank you” would have done wonders after wrestling with the demons of tech all day.

Just to reiterate the point, this after a catastrophic failure causing the server not to be able to boot at all (the server couldn’t read its own storage drives!).
To drop a few more details in then, this was a case that the client’s primary server had a catastrophic failure after a Windows Update was only half applied (this was confirmed by Microsoft and several others around the world – particularly Brazil for some reason). After trying all the magic I knew I had to call in the big guns and contact our partners in Microsoft for assistance.

I felt a little less of a failure when even Microsoft themselves were struggling to resolve this! they did agree with my diagnosis though.  😀

After a combined effort from both the Microsoft engineer and myself for nearly six hours, we got the server up and running again, without losing any data. 😀

Once this was completed I reinstalled the server into the clients site, finally completing the job around 20:00 ( 8:00 PM), not bad really. I left with a feeling of both joy that the job was complete and the client wasn’t missing anything, and a sad feeling of under appreciation.

Overall I felt happy I had done a good job though, and I guess that is the only solace a lowly computer geek deserves.

Love your geek – sometimes a simple ‘thanks’ is all it takes…

Written by

Simon Rochester is an IT geek, with a passion for all things tech. Over the years I have worked for companies large and small and have been running Rochester & Associates Ltd for over 15 years. I like various things in life, including cycling, reading and learning about my beloved technology.