The Dual Faces Of Tech Support

Content Chri S cherrikissu Can websites please stop the trend of giving error messages that are like "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!" And just give me a fucking error code so I can try and fix it 31018, 12:27 PM

Content You: - fairly average software dev - claims not to be competitive, but secretly dreams of landing on the leaderboard at least once - uses a full IDE; wastes a minute right out the gate waiting for it to start - still parsing the problem statement while others are already submitting answers - actually uses a debugger when things aren't working Your competition: "Hackerman" - InfoSec major - sits at his PC on a near- lethal dose of Adderall waiting for the timer to hit 00:00 - has automated scripts for pulling the input and submitting solutions, and his own library of helper functions for every imaginable problem class - knows your IP at all times "-mhtwalters" - research scientist at Intel - does puzzles for fun that are harder than any job you will ever have - so utterly bored with the problems that he creates increasingly ridiculous self-imposed restrictions to keep things interesting - solved last year exclusively in APL on a System360 emulator, and still finished 9th on the global leaderboard - personal homepage is HTML 2.0 compliant "wihbr" - software dev from undisclosed Eastern- European country, making 200kyr for a company you've never heard of - is in literally every coding competition - Twitch stream is just a Vim terminal and the sounds of a mechanical keyboard - types faster than you can read or think "Tharg" - Linux kernel hacker - specialization in compiler design - is golfing in some esoteric language nobody has ever heard of - can mentally transpile any code he sees to assembly - measures his solutions' performance in actual clock cycles - overworked Chinese university student, double majoring in theoretical physics and chemical engineering - has been locked into various educational institutions since he was 3 years old - only time outside of school is for piano lessons - can literally only see the relevant parts of the problem statement - you will not understand his solutions without a PhD in discrete mathematics "Samir Nagheenanajar" - outsourced IT support technician - does puzzles because he has nothing better to do during his shift - forced to solve in Excel because he isn't allowed to install other software - can reveal the face of God using only BA - rumored to possess the combined knowledge and power of all Indian educational YouTubers

The instant transformation from dead-inside to pure joy when a meeting gets canceled is the most authentic developer emotion ever captured. That precious hour you just got back? That's not "catch up on emails" time—that's "finally fix that cursed bug without someone asking for a status update every 15 minutes" time. The headphones stay on either way because they're not just for music—they're the universal symbol for "I'm in the zone, interrupt me and I'll rewrite your Git history."

The gradual descent into clown makeup as you troubleshoot a connection issue that was self-inflicted all along. Nothing quite captures the soul-crushing realization that you wasted hours debugging when your VPN was silently sabotaging everything. First you try random commands like sudo pacman -Syu (the Arch Linux equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"), then restart Docker, then consult colleagues who suggest the classic "sudo reboot" fix... only to discover your Sweden VPN was the culprit the entire time. The real joke is that we've all done this. Multiple times. And we'll do it again next week.

Content AND REMEMBER: LAWFUL GOOD OK. START THE REIEASI LAWFUL NEUTRAL DON'T MAKE AN THE CLIENT'S LEAVEIT AS IT IS WE WILL CHARGE I AS A FEATURI LAWFUL EVIL I REPLACED THIS SAY WE MAKE NEUTRAL GOOD CHAOTIC GOOD ALL COLORS ARE DECLARED LIKE TEEM, ENES CANBE ANOw, we USeD THE WE'LL NEED 3 DAYS BUTH THE CLIENTT TRUE NEUTRAL CHAOTIC NEUTRAL ...ND THEY TOLD ME WE DECIDED TO STORE THEIR PASSWORDS FIND THE PROBLEN NEUTRAL EVIL CHAOTIC EVIL

That massive red slice is basically a monument to the phrase "I know a guy." The pie chart brutally exposes how most people skip qualified technicians and instead summon their self-proclaimed tech wizard friend who once installed Chrome successfully and now considers themselves the next Linus Torvalds. The result? A simple driver issue transforms into a complete OS reinstall with bonus malware. The tiny green slice represents the mythical creatures who actually contact manufacturers first—like spotting a unicorn in the wild.