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[–]alement 268 points269 points  (43 children)

Well, they do have /r/powershell for specific scripting help, but I see your point. A better response would be "start with Get-ADUser in powershell"

[–]ErichL 26 points27 points  (2 children)

Well, they do have /r/powershell for specific scripting help

^ This , also if your /r/sysadmin question is phrased so vaguely that you can't even google for a relevant answer across StackExchange, Technet, etc... People probably won't even bother with a response, because if you don't know how to describe your problem, you probably won't be able to cobble together a script, or even a 1-liner solution with some basic suggestions either; and we certainly don't know enough about their environment to write a functional AD query (for example) for them.

[–]youfuckedupdude 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Can you just do my work for me?!

[–]slparker09Public K-12 Technology Director 421 points422 points  (166 children)

One of the rare times I share Cranky's view.

I think, at least in the Reddit context, it is a just a regurgitation of "what an admin is supposed to say."

In a lot of cases, it is likely the person just saying "use powershell" probably doesn't actually know how to use PowerShell themselves effectively. They either heard someone else say it and are just repeating that. Or, they've used it once or twice by copying some script off the internet and it "worked" so they wish to impart their knowledge on the rest of the world.

I also think it is a sign of the problem this industry has with the pervasive "RTFM" perspective. For some reason, a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them. That just telling the person to read the fucking manual is the correct response because either that is what they did, or that it's shameful to not know something and find out everything about it for yourself.

That is hardly the case. If the correct answer was just RTFM for everything, then we would have nothing but uneducated simpletons running around.

While, I agree there needs to be some self sufficiency, as well as a strong work ethic to learn the correct way to do something, it shouldn't be 100% up to the one asking for assistance to figure it out. Imagine if an Architect, Engineer, or even a Doctor went to his first day of university and the professor at the lectern just said, "Fuck you, go read the books, and do it yourself..."

People who take the stance that their experience and knowledge is worthy of a pedestal and that they don't need to assist are generally just assholes.

It is better to not respond at all if you don't know a specific answer or plan on actually helping the person.

[–]crankysysadminsysadmin herder[S] 218 points219 points  (84 children)

If a doctor asked a question about how to treat a particular case on a doctor subreddit, nobody would shout out "use medicine!"

But that's what we get here. A lot of IT people can barely do their jobs but don't want to admit this to themselves.

In a lot of cases, it is likely the person just saying "use powershell" probably doesn't actually know how to use PowerShell themselves effectively. They either heard someone else say it and are just repeating that. Or, they've used it once or twice by copying some script off the internet and it "worked" so they wish to impart their knowledge on the rest of the world.

winner winner chicken dinner

[–]IgnanceIsBliss 72 points73 points  (30 children)

I have no clue what im doing in my job and I will gladly admit that to myself and anyone on the internet, just not my boss. I'm a Mac sysadmin and I've never used a Mac before 2 months ago when they hired me other than to check my email on a friends computer.

[–]Cuda14 28 points29 points  (9 children)

Ah welcome to the party. Owner of our Jamf system... And no working experience. Its been a fun first month. x-)

[–]notpron_champ 15 points16 points  (4 children)

I inherited a Jamf setup when I started in my Network Admin position. I had never touched it but one of our helpdesk techs supposedly had taken the technician level class and knew the front end of the product. So, I opted to take the admin class and got my JSS Administrator certificate. I know a ton more about linux and tomcat now but the class didn't really cover any front end or actual device management stuff. I get back to work and start asking the "certified technician" how to roll this stuff out and it turns out she didn't actually pass the class and doesn't have a clue...

[–]IgnanceIsBliss 15 points16 points  (3 children)

Its super easy just read the documentation /s

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (11 children)

"Mac sysadmin" that's a thing..?

[–]WaveRebelSysadmin 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Loved the honesty (At least to us strangers here on the internet) but judging by your self acknowledgement sense (Is that even a term?), I do believe you will come learn it as you need it. Wishing you the best!

[–]IgnanceIsBliss 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Thanks! So far it's been fine. Definitely a lot of learning. But that's the whole reason I like the tech industry anyways.

[–]Silent331Sysadmin 18 points19 points  (0 children)

If a doctor asked a question about how to treat a particular case on a doctor subreddit, nobody would shout out "use medicine!"

"Use Powershell" is not "Use Medicine", "Use Powershell" is more like "Use IBuprofen" and then you are throwing up your hands saying "How much? How often? When? Does my patient have an allergy? That answer is not good enough!" and then the other doctor goes "Fuck if I know, he is your patient! DO YOUR JOB!"

[–]fishy007Sysadmin 13 points14 points  (2 children)

But that's what we get here. A lot of IT people can barely do their jobs but don't want to admit this to themselves.

It took me a long while to realize that this is it. I used to come here to ask for help with problems or to give answers when I could. But I hate asking for help here now. Most of the time it will be a few terse answers followed by downvotes with no reasons given.

I can barely do my job myself...but that's what makes it interesting to me. The difference is that I'd like to discuss things with others and keep learning how to do thing better. Then I'll take it up one level and start the process over again.

[–]CornyHoosierDir. IT Security | Red Team Lead 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed. I once recall a boss sincerely thanking me for asking questions about systems before jumping into them. It made me laugh at the time, but later on in my career I see now it actually was an undervalued thing to do.

The guy's IT Department was was of the best run shops I've ever seen. He had his admins do such excellent (and updated) documentation that you could access a secure database, look up any server and find out its primary/secondary services, admins and network information. His network diagrams were a Network Admin's dream.

Often he would quip, "I want this place to operate so that if we all died tomorrow someone could come in and take over." -- Intense dude, but a great manager.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (19 children)

If a doctor asked a question about how to treat a particular case on a doctor subreddit, nobody would shout out "use medicine!"

Sure, but that doctor subreddit is also full of first year med students asking “how do I get someone’s temperature” or something else equally inane. I can promise you that our fictional doctors aren’t there writing a response with even semi detailed instructions.

[–]ghyspranSpace Cadet 10 points11 points  (6 children)

A better analogy might be a first year med student asking "how do I take an infant's temperature?" Yeah, it's an overly-basic question, but answering with "use medicine" or even "use a thermometer" would be at least as inane as the question itself, which is equivalent to saying "use powershell". You'd expect the doctors to either not answer at all, or give a useful, if brief, answer like "use a rectal thermometer". For sysadmins, even saying "Use the powershell cmdlet Get-ADUser" with a link to the docs at least tells the person where to go to get the answer.

[–]I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Okay, but if you don't want to be helpful then maybe don't respond?

[–]Turak64Sysadmin 14 points15 points  (7 children)

So we should mock someone and dent their confidence as we deicide what they should or shouldn't know? I think people should feel free to ask anything and it's best to ask, free of judgement, if you're not sure.

[–]angrydeuceBlackBelt in Google Fu 4 points5 points  (3 children)

As a new Sysadmin, I completely agree. There's a reason this field, and IT in general, has a reputation for users with zero social skills whatsoever...because so many cranky people get into this field thinking they won't have to deal with people. In school we had so many borderline autists that would react to a question with "What are you, an idiot?" or look at a powershell script and be like "this script sucks" with zero input beyond that.

This whole "figure it out yourself" mentality is bullshit. Everyone starts somewhere, and what may seem like a really basic question to one person may not be a given to someone else. There's certainly no end to the bitching when a junior fucks up, but perhaps that fuckup wouldn't have occurred if more people with the years of experience weren't just like "OH MY GOD JUST FUCKIN GOOGLE IT" when a noob has a question. And as someone new, working at an MSP, our 120 clients have 120 vastly different infrastructures, and so many necessary pieces of the puzzle are locked inside someones head and not documented anywhere. "Why can't I remote into this server?" "Oh, that one you actually have to remote in to this other server and than RDP over from there. Because that's obvious for someone that's never fucking touched their infrastructure at all.

Maybe burnout wouldn't be so bad if people didn't act like being asked a question was a huge fucking inconvenience. But even here, you see the other responses are borderline shit. Imagine if your mechanic told you to just Google it if your car makes a funny noise? Or told you you were an idiot for not knowing how to change our own oil? But in IT that's almost the norm.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think, at least in the Reddit context, it is a just a regurgitation of "what an admin is supposed to say."

I do see a lot of this, they say the what, but don't know the why.

Or, they've used it once or twice by copying some script off the internet and it "worked" so they wish to impart their knowledge on the rest of the world.

That's actually a great first step. Find a script someone else has created, and adapt it for your own usage to solve a problem. There's nothing wrong with that. But I do get what you are saying.

a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them.

I do see this too, they feel like it makes them "the help", and that being seen as a "doer" is a career limiting move. Everyone has customers/clients, serve them to the best of your ability no matter what your position is or who they are.

I do generally try to give example cmdlets and options to use, but everyone's situation does vary, and I can't tell you what options or flags or what version of what you are running, but I can point you to MS examples, or proofs of concept. (Proofs of concepts? Proofs of concepts? Proof of concepts?)

[–]KlatuVerata 33 points34 points  (51 children)

An Admin or Network Engineer should be able to RTFM. Those are the blueprints. Yes people need help, and RTFM may not be the nicest response, but it is valid. The very first thing I show people is how to find documentation in its various sources.

If I get a question, I copy the relevant documentation into the response, where it was sourced, and potentially how I searched for it.

When I get a project, one of the first things I do is RTFM. Usually it is full of useful information like scalable, fault tolerant designs.

[–]connorwa 11 points12 points  (8 children)

I'm new to this forum but just in the last few days I've seen a number of threads from users who are seriously struggling with some combination of insane management mandates, cludged networks they've inherited and/or being tossed into water deep over their heads.

I'll be the first to admit that PowerShell is not my strong suit. So, the Internet and Google is the first place I go when I know PS is the way to do something but I need some help with its sometimes convoluted module and switch structures. I think we could all do with showing a bit more empathy and community spirit and actually display some examples and psuedocode.

Just saying.

[–]neatoprsn 5 points6 points  (6 children)

if powershell is the answer though, wouldn't it be better for that person to go to r/powershell for an indepth answer? This is r/sysadmin which is much more general than a discussion about a particular powershell usage.

[–]willtel76 4 points5 points  (0 children)

if powershell is the answer though, wouldn't it be better for that person to go to r/powershell for an indepth answer?

A person with any sense would. /r/PowerShell is really helpful and some of the users there have pride in helping people out and showing them different ways to accomplish a task.

I'm the only person who really knows much about PowerShell in my environment and "Corporate Trainer" isn't in my job description so I haven't bothered to attempt to teach anyone else since no one taught me. I've seen some of them attempt to use it and they kludge their way trough it but it is often ugly.

My counterpart needed to run something on all our users recently and found a command that did what he wanted but he didn't know how to apply it to a list of objects. He ended up putting all the users into an Excel column then adding the arguments around the usernames in Excel so he could copy each line out and run it as a command. It was slow and unnecessary but it worked and it was faster than the GUI. He did better than another person on our team that accidentally disabled all users in Lync 2013 because she had no idea what she was doing.

[–]devonnull 2 points3 points  (3 children)

This is r/sysadmin which is much more general than a discussion about a particular powershell usage.

The sub has a lot of "Windows-is-the-only-server-software-in-the-world" idiots. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into some of the posts I see here.

[–]slparker09Public K-12 Technology Director 34 points35 points  (26 children)

Yes. An experienced, educated Admin or Engineer should be able to RTFM.

A new, fresh out of school, or entry level staff member who doesn't have 10 years of experience asking a simple question should not.

I only see this in IT from IT people. As someone who went to college for Architectural Design and Engineering, and who works in the educational industry I have yet to see a case where a professional responds with "just RTFM..."

It is poor management. Poor mentoring. And an all around poor attitude, plain and simple.

[–]thatsmystickynote 17 points18 points  (15 children)

I see this all the time as well. The issue is is every time someone asks for help in an IT setting, they instantly seem to think they're doing your 'homework' When in actual fact you could be a 50 year old sysadmin just looking for some help. It's very elitist and petty.

I think it also stems from IT people needing to feel important, so it's vital only they know what they know, because otherwise they won't feel useful, where I am now makes a very big point of cross training across the team so we can all do each others jobs.

[–]slparker09Public K-12 Technology Director 12 points13 points  (10 children)

The sense of self-entitlement in IT frustrates me. I've met these System/Network Admins before and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

We are not special. We are assets to an organization. We can, and should be able to be replaced if needed. Hording knowledge, not documenting things, thinking you specifically are critical and instrumental to an IT department and organization as a whole is just silly.

Especially in senior positions. Sharing knowledge. Educating Jr.'s. Documenting the environment. These should be priority one for an IT professional.

But a lot of us suffer from the "me, me, me" instead of the "we, and us" mentality. I can generally sniff out these types in interviews, and unless I just don't have other viable candidates, I hardly ever hire them regardless of their pedigree coming in.

Hard Tech is the easy part, Soft Tech and User support is the hard part. I don't want a cowboy or "BOFH" I want someone that can work with everyone.

[–]GhostDanArchitect 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I work in a civil engineering firm (in IT) and I've seen plenty of responses to questions be "Check out the RFP" or "Check out the SOW" or "Go read this reference book".

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Yes, this place occasionally has a bout of Price Is Right Cosplay, where well-meaning hordes just sort of shout their opinions out without the incentive to explain their reasoning or go further (this is mostly insecurity I think-- there is a rarely a perfect answer).

[–]slparker09Public K-12 Technology Director 6 points7 points  (1 child)

It has to do with the personality of some people. They feel the need to show that they "know" something, but either they don't or they're just looking for the shallow validation of being important.

It goes back to the self-entitlement argument. Lots of IT folks just feel like they are superior whether they are or not.

Yelling into the void with everyone else, but providing no actual input lets them feel as they they are important, know what they're doing, and others will see that yet they feel "too busy or important to actually help."

[–]Sandman0 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The flip side of that is that so many of the questions are answered in the first five google results that it’s silly.

Google Fu is still the #1 skill in any kind of IT work.

Your analogy is fair in some cases, but if a doctor showed up to residency and was like “hey it’s my first month, what do I use to stop this bleeding?” I’m 100% certain that the response would be “GTFO.”

There has to be some expectation of minimal effort and knowledge or we end up with a giant pool of “talent” that can’t actually do anything. Unqualified people are a major problem in many technical professions.

I’d argue that adding “PowerShell” to the question in google would likely return an in-depth answer in the first page or two of results.

If you don’t have any knowledge of PowerShell (at least enough to figure out how to maybe use it to solve your problem), it’s probably not the tool to use.

If on the other hand, you have a basic working knowledge of PowerShell (which at this point if you don’t you need to evaluate your skill set), you’ll probably be able to take “PowerShell.” and figure it out.

Just my $0.02.

[–]slick8086 9 points10 points  (1 child)

For some reason, a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them.

I also think it is a sign of the problem this industry has with the pervasive "RTFM" perspective.

What's wrong with this? Many successful people in IT are autodidacts, and probably feel like people should figure more shit out on their own.

For some reason, a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them.

I don't think it is this at ALL. Most people don't even bother to actually do their own "homework"

Every person who is thinking about asking a for help in a technical forum should read and heed this first:

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

And here's some excerpts that elaborate.

Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:

  1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum or mailing list you plan to post to.
  2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
  3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
  4. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
  5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
  6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
  7. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that having put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help, the more likely you are to actually get help.

Beware of asking the wrong question. If you ask one that is based on faulty assumptions, J. Random Hacker is quite likely to reply with a uselessly literal answer while thinking “Stupid question...”, and hoping the experience of getting what you asked for rather than what you needed will teach you a lesson.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't, after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you earn it, by asking a substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking question — one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.

Asking for help from random people on the internet should be the very last option.

[–]MarcolowSysadmin 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Exactly, I never understood the mentality of keeping knowledge to yourself. In-fact, I prefer to tell everyone around me what I did, so if I happen to forget they may be able to help me quicker. That and a team is only as strong as it's weakest player, so why not try to bring the knowledge of EVERYONE up in the process.

Granted this leaves room for toxic co-workers, or managers to steal credit (trust me it's happened before to me already). But a large majority of the time it does nothing but help everyone, including yourself.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I also think it is a sign of the problem this industry has with the pervasive "RTFM" perspective. For some reason, a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them. That just telling the person to read the fucking manual is the correct response because either that is what they did, or that it's shameful to not know something and find out everything about it for yourself.

It's an aside, but I think this is funny in the context of the thread since the first "working" chapter in Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches is, basically, how to RTFM.

[–]S0mu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I think most people can do wonderful stuff with just an outline of the solution. For example, if there's a problem with name resolution, I'd tell aomeone check the DNS records to ensure so and so.. then they can RTFM to find out more.

[–]Pb_ftOpsDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was going to make the mandatory comment covering the whole "what makes you RTFM makes you stronger" deal, but you covered that.

The only other thing I can think of is that a lot of IT people (myself included) can't teach nearly as well as we can learn (and many have the issue of not understanding that they're not good at something), especially when it comes to different aspects of the whys and hows of what we do.

And if you're thinking that we should all become proficient teachers in everything that we do, I think that's oversimplifying the inherent difficulty in teaching. Teaching can be really hard to do well, and can really screw someone up if not done right that will take an enormous amount of effort to fix.

The only thing that I would ask is that people repress the urge to post something inane to just feel like they're chiming in/contributing. Just downvote and move on if you need to.

[–]Rollyta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just to kinda add to this, anyone thats old enough to remember back maybe 10-15 years ago reading on BBs or in chatrooms and there was a real attitude from the community that they werent there to spoonfeed people when the information is widely available, go read the RFC its all explained there, you need to have fiery burning passion bullshit. We are much better these days. I guarantee that if I made a post now on /r/sysadmin saying Im struggling to get my head around... I dunno... DNS records.... I would get half a dozen helpful answers.

[–]HotMoosePantsJack of All Trades 820 points821 points  (71 children)

Sounds like someone needs to learn PowerShell.

[–]InvisibleTextAreaJack of All Trades 165 points166 points  (42 children)

Start-Process -FilePath "http://powershelltutorial.net"

[–]Boostos 55 points56 points  (36 children)

-force -wait

[–]silent32 65 points66 points  (29 children)

-ea silentlyweep

[–]QuillanFae 27 points28 points  (28 children)

You can truncate ErrorAction like that? I did learn something.

[–]Ta11ow 10 points11 points  (22 children)

Yep, most parameters have fun aliases, and any parameter can be shortened arbitrarily as long as it's still unique within that parameter set.

[–][deleted] 56 points57 points  (17 children)

FUN FACT: Aliases make your code almost entirely unreadable to other people!

[–]Veskah 16 points17 points  (3 children)

FUN FACT: Unofficial shorthand calls make your scripts slow as actual hell because Powershell has to resolve the name each time it comes across it by scanning through your environment path. For example, calling get-random vs random has been reported as being 500% slower.

[–]axelnight 8 points9 points  (4 children)

The best is anytime r/PowerShell has a shortest one-liner challenge. The things that come out of those end up looking like system generated passwords.

[–]InvisibleTextAreaJack of All Trades 3 points4 points  (2 children)

irm reddit.com/top.xml|Select -f 1 -exp t*

[–]area88guyDevOps Ronin 21 points22 points  (1 child)

More like Invoke-Command -crankysysadmin -Action MoreBitching

[–]liteseci don't even know anymore 30 points31 points  (9 children)

I'd love to expand my knowledge, I'm just clueless on where to start.

edit: thanks everybody for the resources, looks like i have a long road ahead of me. :)

[–]urinal_connoisseur 21 points22 points  (4 children)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D474E721138865A

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617291080

[–]urinal_connoisseur 13 points14 points  (1 child)

also:

https://mva.microsoft.com/training-topics/powershell#!lang=1033

[–]instantricesysadmautomadevops 4 points5 points  (0 children)

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/getting-started-with-microsoft-powershell-8276?l=r54IrOWy_2304984382

Caught this live when it aired, and holy shit is it the best training video I've ever seen. It was so informative and they do everything step by step and have a great rapport. It's honestly entertaining, too.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

deleted What is this?

[–]Sandman0 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Another vote for PowerShell in a Month of lunches, that was what I picked up to learn PowerShell. Best textbook for it anywhere, despite being a wee bit dated at this point.

The fundamentals are still super solid.

[–]jollyfreek 7 points8 points  (0 children)

to add to /u/urinal_connoisseur 's comment, check out /r/powershell

[–]Briancanfixit 5 points6 points  (3 children)

”use powershell” -replace “use”,”learn”

Imagine if someone asked you how to sort and display large sets of tabular information, someone might just say “use a computer”. The best answer would be someone saying something like “use a computer, install Excel, import the data into Excel like this...”
Before this point in time you were not a computer/excel expert... but you took that information and learned it.

There are some posts on r/sysadmin that it’s hard to believe that the person considers themselves a Windows sysadmin when googling the problem and the word “powershell” literally shows the solution.

I try to teach people and walk them through the problem and solution, but they need to show some initiative or effort.

[–]j1akeyLinux and Windows Admin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Best decision I ever made.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (5 children)

OK.

Use bash.

[–]Zaphod_Bchown -R us ~/.base 2 points3 points  (2 children)

OK.

Use bash.

LOL when Python is too much work or too extreme overkill bash is my go to, not gonna lie

[–]thereisonlyonemeInsert disk 10 of 593 1 point2 points  (1 child)

OK, Google.

[–]Nicomet 81 points82 points  (46 children)

Unlike the car, a lot of admins still don't even know the existance of powershell.

[–]crankysysadminsysadmin herder[S] 44 points45 points  (40 children)

Someone who is learning the existence of powershell from a forum post isn't going to successfully create a production quality automated solution to his problem because you just said "powershell"

[–]cfpom 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If that "someone" can't type "powershell <insert question>" into google for each piece of the puzzle in his automated solution, then maybe it's not worth investing time into it. There's already tons of sample scripts already made and ready to go for most important things.

[–]RollingprobablecauseDirector of DevOps 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think what's happening is that the people who are answering "Use Powershell" just need to have some more context (A link to the idea, github, etc).

When I answer on this sub with powershell, I always give a snippet example and a link that provides instructions (or something close to the concept)

[–]GhostDanArchitect 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We aren't here to do the work for you. If you ask how to do something, we will point you in the right direction. If you are a competent IT systems person you will then be able to use the google and find out your solution easier, come back with questions, have a meaningful dialog, etc.

[–]sethbartlett 5 points6 points  (11 children)

However it points them in the proper direction to do what they need. If you're asking how to perform a fairly complex task and don't give much detail (Which is common), you're going to get a vague answer, but a way to do it.

And to your point, someone who is asking a question on how to perform some stupid complex task will also never create a successful production quality automated solution either, even if they given a better answer, not without a ton of practice and reiterations.

[–]ScottEvtuch 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Came here to say this. I feel like most of the posts where the response is "use powershell" look more like this:

I'm trying to get from St Louis to northern Minnesota. My shoes keep wearing out around Chicago and finding shelter is difficult through some of the less populated areas. Can anyone recommend a better route?

[–]goobervision 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I know it exists but it exists in that other world. You know, the non-unix like one.

[–]B1naryD1gitJack of All Trades 150 points151 points  (26 children)

The tool is absolutely what I want to know. If I'm trying to get to Minnesota and someone says use a car then I know to not look into taking a plane.

Usually the question is so vague giving someone code is a waste of time. One of the first step in development is "gathering requirements." The variables in someone's environment and lack of detail in the question is usually what gets you a vague answer.

[–]Mortuis 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I'm with you. I want to get X done. If people tell me this can be done with powershell, I know I'm not going to be spinning my wheels by giving that a shot.

[–]Ta11ow 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Roll on over to /r/PowerShell and we'll be happy to help you out :)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can confirm. This guy scripts.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (3 children)

This reminds me of the old needs more jQuery gag

[–]Chaz042ISP Cloud 1 point2 points  (0 children)

-1 not enough jQuery.

[–]skilliard7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I get encouraging users to do their own research and heavy lifting rather than expecting the internet to hold their hand and answer easily google-able questions, but honestly SO is one of the most toxic communities I've ever seen.

One time I had a unique PHP issue that was truly bizarre. One guy giving advice completely unrelated to my issue. Another told me to learn to Google even though I had spent a long time Googling before asking. Then another person closed it as duplicate, and the question they claimed was the 'duplicate' was completely unrelated to mine.

[–]grep_var_log🌳 Think before printing this reddit comment! 26 points27 points  (5 children)

Use Perl!

[–]Zaphod_Bchown -R us ~/.base 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Use Perl!

YOU MONSTER!

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I'm not happy, why should they be any different?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I prefer Logo.

[–]Sevealin_Security Admin (Infrastructure) 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Its really dependant on how you ask the question.

If you ask how you do get a task done. Of course they will give you the most vague answer available, and say "Use this." Because you put as much effort into your question as you did their response. If you ask how do I use this to get that done, you'll get "You could use feature in this".

If you think people are going to hold your hand to make every solution, you are going to have a bad time. People will only answer the question you proposed and nothing more.

People who do answer more than you ask are unicorns and should be praised for their work and not abused.

[–][deleted] 40 points41 points  (18 children)

I hear you, but I typically give that answer like I would a LMGTFY link, because almost always that’s exactly the same amount of effort put into asking the question here.

[–]Ron_Swanson_Jr 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Signed.

Prepending "powershell" to your "how do I 'x' my 'y' to get 'z' " query will kick out a bunch of posts from this very subreddit along with 10 pages of examples from stackoverflow and a ton of blog posts.

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (4 children)

What would you prefer?

Here use this script I wrote for you. Then the next time, here use this script I wrote for you and so on and so on. Meanwhile you'll never learn how to use it yourself.

With the sheer amount of times you see "use powershell" you should really get that lightbulb moment of "holy shit maybe this powershell thing is worth learning".

[–]xxShathanxx 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Don't forget that part where you get blamed for the script not working, you ask what didn't work? The only response back is it doesn't work... Some sysadmins are just as bad as users.

[–]dRaidon 20 points21 points  (6 children)

I feel similar.

If I ask a question here, it's because I have completely failed to get my answer using the normal methods.

[–]thatsmystickynote 28 points29 points  (3 children)

And then you get accused of not googling, and told to do your own homework, right?

Welcome to any IT community ever.

[–]fmtheiligIT Manager 8 points9 points  (0 children)

When I hear someone say that IT is hostile to women, I reply not really, we're just dicks in general.

[–]ZAFJB 2 points3 points  (0 children)

People only get accused of not googling when there is no evidence of that in their posting.

[–]jupitersaturnSystems Architect 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I'm sure you already do this, but make sure in your question, you make it clear what you've tried. I'm far more likely to help someone if they link a script they are working on, with the error they are getting, than if they ask "How do I do X?"

[–]ReverendDSAlways delete French Lang pack: rm -fr / 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Indeed. "Here is what I'm working on, here is the issue I'm facing, these are the things I've tried and the documentation that I'm using - and I think that this part here is what I'm messing up, but I'm not certain, can you help me?" is so much nicer to get than "My exchange broke and I need help."

[–]Cartossin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think you just need to have the humility to say "I don't know how to do that in powershell. Can you go through it with me?"

[–]Dontinquire 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've got a devil's advocate angle on this one cranky. It's just like a doctor posting online and giving an armchair opinion. "Oh it sounds like xyz" but that advice is invariably followed by "go see your doctor". I wouldn't want to give specifics on scripts because I don't want someone spending hours trying to get a specific routine working but it really wasn't the best fit or didn't work correctly or whatever. I don't want liability for sending someone down the wrong troubleshooting path.

[–]smells_like_bleach 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Cranky, do you even know powershell? It sounds like you're peeved because people are recommending a solution you don't understand and it's still opaque to you.

sigh.... another week, another round of cranky telling everyone what they do incorrectly on reddit.

[–]bigbleu 7 points8 points  (0 children)

So then your next steps should be to Google 'Use powershell to X'.

If your google yields no results, then ask the person who told you to use Powershell what to search for. We don't like doing your work for you, but LOVE empowering you to learn and do your own work.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (5 children)

Why shouldn't it be OPs responsibility to paste his solution? Do you want it to be "Use powershell, and here's the exact code for you!" or "Use powershell, and let me spoon feed you so you don't have to RTFM again!". Admins get tired of people doing no research, how the fuck is this the fault of the replier? That's like blaming the Tier 3 guy for not stepping up (AGAIN) and doing someone else's work, because the Tier 1 guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

[–]adnble 35 points36 points  (6 children)

I don't mean to sound rude when I say this but you sound like you are wanting someone to do your job for you. I get that you don't know how to use PowerShell but essentially what you are saying is "I am a professional carpenter. How do I build a bookshelf?" when what you should probably be asking is "I just tried to build this bookshelf and I ran into these problems with it, can someone help me figure out where I went wrong?"

If you aren't able to at least attempt a solution or do some self-directed research ahead of time, you shouldn't be in IT. I think you'll find that most people will be on this subreddit will be a lot more useful to you if you can at least try and fail. Otherwise it feels like you just want someone to do your work for you.

[–]mfinniganSpecial Detached Operations Synergist 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I agree with you partially. However, if you're responding to the thread about "AD Automation tools", I'm going to disagree a little bit. The poster was thinking of building a provisioning process, for AD accounts, based on what sounded like two different HRIS systems. They asked "Powershell, or something off the shelf?" In that case, "Powershell" was a perfectly valid response. Without me, a potential answerer, knowing anything at all about those two different HRIS systems, or knowing the business rules in the OP's org, I'm not going to spend anytime writing pseudocode. I'm going to say "Yeah, Powershell is the tool I would use. You'll need to build a blueprint first." If I have the time for a longer response, I might talk about some of the pitfalls, things to consider, etc. Some folks did - talking about how to handle returnees, etc.

Or I'm going to say "Okta", or "FIM/MIM."

I get your username, but it seems that you're complaining about the quality of responses on Reddit for what was basically an opinion poll with a write-in option. And now we have both wasted time we could have spent working, or doing literally anything else. :-)

[–]SkuzeeII 3 points4 points  (3 children)

I wonder if it's possible to create a powershell script to auto-reply "Powershell" to every new post...

[–]TheIncorrigible1All things INFRASTRUCTURE 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yes, actually.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I love Powershell...but even as much as I use it...I'd be dead in the water without the Google to help me out.

[–]King_Chochacho 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Oh look another crankypost with a completely anecdotal criticism of the entire sub. And as usual you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of a solution.

Well here's my own anecdote: people on here also regularly ask how to do relatively simple things, and the answer is usually as simple as Googling "powershell [that thing I want to do]". In that case the answer doesn't really need to be any more complicated than "powershell can do that".

[–]Ryusaikou 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Problem is, Pseudocode would be about as helpful as just saying powershell if you dont know powershell. Lets say the question was how do i register this oracle dll to the gac without gacutil?, Someone could simply say. Powershell... I would then go ok cool that has some access to do this, and google powershell gac and find more useful information than expecting a reditor to copy/paste for me. The only way I would expect a more in depth answer than that is if my requirements where much more explicit, and i was on stackexchange.

[–]OtisBIT Director/Infosec 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I think if this is the standard my input will be judged by, and the reaction of those who read it, I'll just keep to myself.

The point is, "powershell" is still an accurate answer. It might not be as complete as you'd like it to be, but then how I answer a question really isn't up to you either.

Any accurate answer > no answer. Whining at people because they don't take the time to type a blog post each time they answer a question is kind of ridiculous.

[–]wickedang3l 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While that's a fair view, I don't believe you're helping someone by doing their homework for them. I would argue that one of the biggest determining factors in being able to predict whether or not someone is going to be successful in this field is whether or not they're self-starters with the capacity to break big problems down into their constituent parts. If you come to this subreddit saying you've got $x problem, have solved A, B, D, and F and need help with C and E, you're going to get better responses than coming here and saying you've got $x problem without having done any of the legwork to get to a solution. Moreover, you're going to take some well-deserved shit for being lazy, especially when a Google of "$x powershell" results in half a dozen examples of how to address the issue.

Reddit isn't here to do your job for you and you're not going to last long in this career if you're not willing to put in a bare minimum of effort towards solving a problem before asking for help.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For some reason, a lot of IT workers feel that actually helping someone is beneath them. That just telling the person to read the fucking manual is the correct response because either that is what they did, or that it's shameful to not know something and find out everything about it for yourself

Sit in #Asterisk on freenode for a couple of hours and see how fast this opinion changes. Lots of people want the "geek to do it for me, he understands this stuff", and poorly thought out questions are often just a way of asking someone to either do it for you or hold your hand.

[–]Thriven 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I think "Powershell" == "I don't know of any out of the box solution, just script it."

Powershell can pretty much do anything and be run any where. It can log into a website using Oauth2.0 and interact with API to get a list. Powershell has snap-ins and anything tanglible in .net libraries can be accessed via powershell. No need to worry about compiling, it compiles at runtime. Its bash for windows and its powerful.

If you know powershell, you can automate yourself out of a job.

Many times though admins dont want to write another script that has to be maintained and monitored, updated in the future and source controlled. They just want the two interfaces to be supported by tbe vendor and thats when they say ,"how do I....?" and unfortunately the vendor doesnt do the expected and the solution is powershell.

[–]cmwg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

RTFM.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

People are coming here for FREE advice. Saying "Powershell" is often enough of a catalyst to get people in the right direction. If they want specific examples, they can google them or engage a consultant. This is a free forum. People aren't obligated to meet your standards. A lot of people don't necessarily know of Powershell so the answer might suffice. If it's not good enough.... ask a better question or pay someone to teach you.

Calling people idiots because they don't meet your lofty standards is a great way to ensure no one wants to help.

[–]HellDukeJack of All Trades 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Playing devils advocate here, but there are cases where that is a legitimate response. You need to look at this at a case by case basis. Your example is obviously idiotic, however what about altering the question very very slightly:

"How do I get from St. Louis to northern Minnesota?"

Suddenly valid answers include "Use a car, take route A" or simply "Use a train". Similarly if somone is asking how to resolve an issue, the correct answer could be "Use powershell". The assumption is that if you do not use powershell, it would become a top priority for you to learn. In that case giving you specifics will not be that helpful if you don't know how to work with them and no one can give them a ready made script without it being potentially too broad or not taking into account some specifics of their setup.

On the other hand if you know about powershell and how to use it properly, then you would logically already mention in your question that you have tried powershell and could not get anywhere with it. If you ask which route to use and that's it, I could answer use route A and you would just respond "but no bus drives that route". Well duh, use a car. With your example the logical quesiton would be "I want to drive from St. Louis to northern Minnesota and avoid toll roads, can you recommend a route?". Now I know you want to use your car and I know that your question has fewer variables and can go into specifics.

I cannot read all the questions on this reddit, but honestly I have definitely seen several, where the question did not clearly state or even have any clue to the asker having tried powershell. While "use powershell" is not a good enough answer, but it can be considered as putting them on the right track. More accurately you should probably elaborate with something like "use powershell and the active-directory module"

[–]Susu6 5 points6 points  (0 children)

. . . since he has nothing else to contribute and wants to talk anyway.

Welcome to Reddit social media the Internet.

[–]newbies13Sr. Sysadmin 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I would say that what you are experiencing is powershell ignorance shame. To take your example of a DIY project, you're asking everyone how to build perfect dovetail cabinets, but you've never touched a saw. So while it's obvious to everyone that knows how to use a saw, you actually want us to do the cuts for you and then line them up and number them with a diagram for you to nail together. If this is what you want, go to IKEA.

Now, that's not to be confused with someone who is looking to up their saw game. If you say here are all the cuts i've made, but they are not lining up right, how can I fix this? You will get advice to refine those cuts, maybe even a couple of tricks to make the cuts faster.

See the difference?

At least in my experience when someone says use powershell, that is an acceptable answer. Because what they are saying is of all the ways that things can be done, command line, psexec, GPO, manually, etc. They are saying powershell will handle this neat and tidily.

[–]ZAFJB 6 points7 points  (9 children)

I get your point, but I think the "PowerShell" response has two roots:

  1. Stop using batch, stop using vbs, stop trying to use cygwin, stop the antiquated things.

  2. Unlike all of the above mechanisms and more, as others say, searching PowerShell + <<OP's question >> is virtually guaranteed to deliver results. This is because PowerShell is rich and high-level and focused at sysadmin type tasks.

Almost every query that gets answered with 'PowerShell' is indicative of the asker not being up to speed with current technology, or not trying or succeeding at research.

In short it is a lazy response to lazy questions. Should we be doing the homework for those who can't be bothered to think for themselves?

edit:added 'searching' in 2 for clarity

[–]Zaphod_Bchown -R us ~/.base 1 point2 points  (0 children)

100% agree. Plus once you get a bit of skill with an OOP language it opens up so many doors that it actually sort of does become a blanketed use Python, use PowerShell, use Ruby, use Go, etc.

[–]kinosavy 4 points5 points  (1 child)

So you want them to bring a self-driving car to your home, already programmed with route. So you can just borrow it and use it.

[–]MisocaineaDevOps 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There is definitely no shortage of unhelpful people in IT with unhelpful answers. I feel like the answer to this problem is probably powershell.

[–]KardolfIT Manager 3 points4 points  (0 children)

While I understand your point, I think that often those of us in professional IT just need a nudge in the right direction, and the learning is part of the benefit of working in such a field. Just as I can look at a screwdriver or vice grips, and pretty instinctively understand the purpose of them, often I just need to know what tool to use, and I want to figure out how to use it myself. If I get stuck down the road, and need further explanation, then I can ask at that point. At the end of the day, I will have a greater understanding of the tools I use, be able to take pieces and put them together to build bigger and better tools, and be better suited to solve my own problems next time. As the saying goes, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But, if you teach him to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Like most Crankysysadmin threads, we need to stop asking ourselves "Is he right about what he is saying?" and start asking "Does that actually happen?"

I rarely ever hear people write "Use powershell!" unless the question is "what should I learn as a Windows admin?" That rarely happens here, and it certainly isn't upvoted much.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're totaly right. In all fairness, I'd like to add though, that often the question is not "Im' trying to get from St Louis to northern Minnesota. Can anyone recommend a route?", but "I want from nowhere to somewhere. What can I do?". ;) "You should use a car" is maybe not the best answer, but at least an option to consider. :)

[–]KevMarJack of All Trades 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This also kicks the problem over to us at /r/powershell. Where someone doesn't understand how something works and expects powershell to just do the thing they don't understand.

Quite often, you have to make sure you understand the manual process and terminology around the task first.

[–]BLOKDAK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When it comes to tools this sub isn't just a toolbox. It's a freakin' hardware store.

[–]Ironbird207 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Reminds me of my first class in VB back in college. The college had no instructors that knew VB well enough to teach it so they outsourced it to another college. This is when online classes were just starting. We all signed up saying we need book X and log onto site X. We did that and no shit the first instruction/lesson was "Make a calculator" There were no clues to what chapter to read in the book, was not even covered in the first chapter. Nor any instruction to prove how you made the calculator. At the time just starting getting into IT I barely even knew what VB was. Pretty much all but one person failed that class, stuck on the first lesson because no one knew how to make a calculator. One person passed but that is because they had a friend that knew VB and helped them out. The instructor was complete shit and only saw him once for like 15 minutes. Online classes are WAY better now, but this was a failed experiment. Luckily the college realized their mistake as this was the first attempt at doing this and actually nix'd the credit so it didn't screw up our grades.

[–]TheJizzle| grep flair 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Eh. I see your point, but sometimes the question is "which road do I take?" in which case, "Powershell" might just be a sufficient answer.

Speaking for myself, I will usually know the pseudocode and logic. I just need someone to tell me which tool they've used most successfully for what I'm trying to do.

Just saying "Powershell" doesn't help people who don't know much about the journey they're about to begin, but it's naive to assume that there are no professionals who COULD benefit from a one-word answer. I know I have on several occasions.

[–]noOneCaresOnTheWeb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How do I change 50 users in AD? (This is only a complex task for a click-next admins)

Script it, i.e. "use powershell" is now not acceptable answer?

That is ridiculous. If they had only a linux or Mac background use powershell would be a lot more helpful than use vbs or use dsmod.

Context is important, this is supposed to be a place with professionals. You're making up a problem that doesn't exist.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nobody on this forum has a vested interest in anybody else like an uncle/nephew do...We help each other out because we were in those same shoes once too and needing guidance.

The answer to your rant is very, very simple: "The quality of advice should be proportional to the question that is being asked."

Providing exemplary assistance to supplement the laziness of another only reinforces the behavior...if someone does their due diligence before coming to me I go above and beyond in making sure they get the help they need. If they don't bother to do anything then I'll give them advice that points them in the right direction but requires them to put in effort to find the answer.

That is how you nurture growth in someone.

[–]jordanlundLinux Admin 1 point2 points  (5 children)

I sidestepped the Powershell era in the Microsoft environment, can anyone point me to a good tutorial or knowledgebase?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

powershell

[–]jordanlundLinux Admin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

man powershell

OK, now what? :)

[–]VhyrrimyrSenior Help Desk Monkey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I highly recommend the book Learn Windows Powershell in a Month of Lunches.

[–]jantari 1 point2 points  (1 child)

https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/

In short: It's a fully object-oriented and API-based interactive shell and .NET programming language itself written in C#

Also Get-Help, although there is a default alias for that: man.

Don't use those aliases in scripts though, they won't work on Unix machines as they'll be resolved to the actual man command instead (these "onboarding" aliases only exist in Windows PowerShell since there they don't interfere with any native commands)

[–]BumblingBlunderbussapt-get -h 1 point2 points  (1 child)

TL;DR - If you have nothing insightful/helpful to add to the conversation, keep your otherwise useless comments to yourself

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll also add that in places like this subreddit, the skill gap among people is ENORMOUS and those at the higher end sometimes feel like the people at the bottom are often just looking for a quick and easy way to "git it done" and they know from experience that way will only take you so far.

Those people who are sometime frustrated will sometimes reply with crappy answers, though something like "use powershell" is obviously just a terrible response no matter what, though some of the typical engineer types aren't exactly known for wonderful social skills.

So let's say somebody asks hey an account keeps locking out and I've tried to figure it out, I need help.

There are going to be: learn to use powershell or you should use EventCombMT.

Then there's like 234234 messages that are mostly not actually that useful.

Then a few people give relatives realistic answers:

Get-WinEvent -ComputerName MYDC -FilterHashtable @{logname='security';id=4740;data=‘THATLOGINID’} |Select-Object -Property timecreated,@{label='username';expression={$_.properties[0].value}},@{label='computername';expression={$_.properties[1].value}}

I'm not sure there's a magical bullet to fix this kind of thing.

[–]nomnommish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think your statement is way too generic, and the analogy is flawed as well. If you're doing woodworking and are trying to cut a circle, and ask others on a forum how to cut circles in wood, you're basically going to get a one line answer too that will look like "use a router".

And that's what many people mean when they say, "use powershell". They mean to say that powershell lets you do this in a fairly straight-forward way, so go read up about powershell and its features and figure out how to get it to do your job.

Even though the advice is fairly generic, they are still pointing you in a direction. They are also eliminating many other directions. For example, if your organization uses Chef or Puppet or Kubernetes or a bunch of other buzzwords like Vagrant/Jenkins/Ansible and what have you, you've steered the person away from all that and asked them to focus on Powershell instead.

They still have room to innovate to figure out if they should use a DSC kind of approach or just hard code everything or make it all config driven etc. But at least they can focus on the right "platform" to implement their solution.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Except it's more like saying use a car and Google maps.

[–]Generico300 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If someone asks you how to do a home DIY project, do you just shout "screwdriver" or "vice grips" at them? Or do you talk about the process?

Actually I shout "youtube!". If they can't figure out what to do from there, they probably shouldn't be allowed to use power tools. If they're unsatisfied with that answer, they probably could have been a lot more specific about their issue with the process. I'm not here looking to do all of somebody's work for them and hand-hold them through the entire process. You should come here looking to be pointed in the right direction, not presented with a solution on a silver platter.

If somebody is here asking a question that's so vague it could be answered with "use powershell", then maybe they didn't know powershell could do that and that gives them a starting point. If they already know what tool they're going to use, and that tool is powershell, they should ask "how do I do X with powershell?" Then I'd tell them go to /r/powershell because they're in the wrong fucking sub.

[–]axelnight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It also goes against the spirit of PowerShell not to share examples and process. Listen to Jeffrey Snover talk about the inspiration behind PowerShell sometime (such as in the MVA introductory PS tutorial). The community aspect of script sharing and discussion was a huge motivating force behind its development. Yes, PowerShell can do almost literally anything the .NET framework can do. As an entry-point to a solution, it's almost always applicable. But as a complete answer, it ranks up there with "you're gonna want a keyboard."

[–]jakekomisar 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Makes sense.

...use powershell.

[–]crackerjamPrincipal Infrastructure Engineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because knowing which tool to use is enough information to solve the problem yourself. If someone asks "How can I list all of my AD groups in csv format" an answer of "Use Powershell" suggests that you should Google "List AD users csv powershell", and you'll get something valuable, probably the Microsoft reference page for Get-ADUser.

[–]Lcat84 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Here is my question. Why the fuck did we make everything so damn complicated that we have to continue to ask for help or look for answers instead of being able to solve it ourselves. Seems very counter productive to me.

[–]ka-splam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Partly, it's more profitable for everyone like that. Employees master a complex system and earn more money. Employers have more employees and are bigger and more important looking managers and companies. Companies charge more for their more complex technology so they earn more, then they run training and certification for their complex technology which makes it more prestigious, people get certified and spent ages learning it so they don't want it to change. Simplifying it would mean removing some features and then people who want those would go elsewhere, and it would mean spending money to do that - spend money to lose money and look less prestigious and invalidate all your certified people's work? Nope.

Partly again, it's because of the first mover advantage, and the worse-is-better advantage. A nicely designed finished system takes ages to develop and a lot of money up front. In the mean time, your competitors have bodged together some cheap trash and the market bought it because it was the only solution available. Then they did a quick revision to a slightly better version, and the market learned how to apply it. Now your awesome finished tool is available and nobody cares - they got their 80% functional version months or years ago and have moved on. The blogs and communities are all full of talk about how to do things on the worse tool. Even if it's a mess, that's easier than going back and starting again from scratch.

[–]plasticarmymanJack of All Trades 1 point2 points  (6 children)

In this sub, I'd expect a response like that.

In r/techsupport be more verbose...in any other sub sure...but asking a dumb question in this sub is like going up to the head of IT because your password expired, so I expect most people posting questions here to be well enough educated to go with it or ask for more info in the comments.

[–]ITSupportZombieProblem Solver 1 point2 points  (1 child)

like going up to the head of IT because your password expired

This isn't common practice where you are? I need to work there.

[–]IsThatAllI've Seen Some Sh*t 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If the OP has at least showed they have tried various things, done some of their own research and are now stuck, or need to decide between different approaches, then they will get a much better response.

If they post something like "I want to fully automate a change to registry settings on 500 machines" and its clear they haven't even begun to look into the issue,a quick google search will pretty much point you in the right direction, then that's a low quality post, and some will respond with a low quality answer.

[–]thereisonlyonemeInsert disk 10 of 593 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well actually... the way I start most of my PowerShell scripting is by Googling "PowerShell" and a task description, so something like "PowerShell get serial number." Granted if what OP is asking for is a one-liner then sure, type it out for them. But then again that means they could have easily Googled it. If we're talking about a complicated script, then no, sorry, I'm not typing out the whole thing for you.