The Justification for IT Sarcasm
Description
This image is a screenshot of a Twitter conversation that serves as a perfect comedic exchange. The initial tweet is from a user named BJ Smith, who asks, 'Why are IT guys such dicks?'. Below it is a reply from Eric Chapman that reads, 'Last week I drove two hours to push the power button on a server that three separate people assured me was already on.' The reply provides a concise, powerful, and deeply relatable anecdote that explains the cynicism often found in IT and operations roles. For senior engineers and SREs, this isn't just a joke; it's a shared trauma. It represents the countless hours wasted on 'user error' and the frustration of dealing with problems that could have been solved with the most basic troubleshooting, justifying the 'trust but verify' mindset that can be perceived as abrasive
Comments
8Comment deleted
Three separate people confirmed it was 'on'. In enterprise terms, that's what we call a quorum for being completely and utterly wrong
“Finance vetoed the $250 iDRAC license, so last night I drove 180 miles to be the ‘human API’ that toggles the power button - apparently my index finger now bills at triple overtime.”
The real reason IT professionals seem grumpy isn't the technology - it's the quantum superposition where a server exists in both 'definitely powered on' and 'actually off' states until an IT person observes it directly, collapsing the waveform with a two-hour commute and a single button press
When three people confirm the server is on but you still drive two hours to press the power button, you've just experienced the fundamental theorem of operations: trust is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the metal. This is why seasoned ops engineers always have IPMI/iLO/iDRAC bookmarked - because 'the server is on' and 'the server is actually on' exist in different quantum states until directly observed by someone who knows what a POST screen looks like
We had quorum that the server was “on”; physics returned 0 - two-hour drive to commit the one-bit write
Blameless postmortem: root cause was layer 8 - three verbal health checks; mitigation is buying IPMI so the next RPC isn’t a two-hour drive to the power button
Eventual consistency fails hard when the power cord's unplugged - strong consistency demands a sysadmin's physical quorum
yup Comment deleted