I have interviewed a few people for positions as break/fix technicians for my company. They would be dealing with primarily small business owners, non-profit organizations, and home users, particularly "Grandma". One of my standard interview questions was to have them explain to "Grandma" what happened to their computer - in this case, a virus infection. None of them could do it without lapsing into Geek Speak - they talked about exploits, patches, black hats, and TCP/IP.
Many of my clients have also told me stories of calling up some of my competitors, and being made to feel like idiots because they simply don't know what a Power Supply is, or the difference between the tower case, the monitor and the hard drive. Many techs have hung up on people who say things like "the hard drive went blank".
My standard thought process is, if I know what you mean, I'll go with it. In the above example of the hard drive going blank, I knew my client was referring to the monitor. Good chance there is a power supply problem, or maybe the computer became unplugged, or the CPU overheated. I'm not going to overwhelm my client with all the technical terms though. I will use the proper terminology myself, POINT to the object in question and use analogies that my customers will likely understand.
One of my first customers (and he still is a customer today) is a retired highway construction foreman. He knows how to build roads. He knows the materials, he knows all the equipment, how to operate it, and in many cases how to fix it. Our economy needs people like him, much more than other professions that others are studying at University. What would happen if you put 30 typical IT people on a road crew to have them build a road? We would all be lost, and wouldn't have a clue on what to do. We probably wouldn't even be able to get the "thing-a-ma-jig with the giant shovel" even started, nor would we know what to do with it. The steamroller? Knowing some of us, we'd end up pulling a "Eddie in Roger Rabbit runs over Judge Doom" stunt.
I know computers. He knows road construction. Neither one of us is smarter than the other, but long term society needs one of us much more than the other. Which one is that is, is an exercise for the reader.
(Hint: V'ir tbggra hfrq gb qevivat ba cnirq ebnqf.)
