I essentially agree with you but there is a missing piece to this.
There are food reasons people get tired of supporting their tribe or family’s IT infrastructure:
1. What we are supporting is often badly designed for individuals and so we’re doing mindless make work to overcome problems cause by corporations. I.e. we are experiencing an externality that a corporation is profiting from.
2. It’s often not reciprocated. Many people have no problem letting someone spend hours fixing a messed up computer, but won’t think to do anything in return. This isn’t universal, I have family members who are very appreciative and will make me dinner, or otherwise value what I’m doing for them, but ‘tribe members’ often just take it for granted that it’s ok for them to just lean on people helplessly for support.
3. Similar to 2. A lot of people keep doing stuff that causes them problems and won’t follow advice that would prevent this. My experience is that it’s the same people who take the help for granted.
I agree that it’s our responsibility to help, but it’s not our responsibility to be enablers.
There are food reasons people get tired of supporting their tribe or family’s IT infrastructure:
1. What we are supporting is often badly designed for individuals and so we’re doing mindless make work to overcome problems cause by corporations. I.e. we are experiencing an externality that a corporation is profiting from.
2. It’s often not reciprocated. Many people have no problem letting someone spend hours fixing a messed up computer, but won’t think to do anything in return. This isn’t universal, I have family members who are very appreciative and will make me dinner, or otherwise value what I’m doing for them, but ‘tribe members’ often just take it for granted that it’s ok for them to just lean on people helplessly for support.
3. Similar to 2. A lot of people keep doing stuff that causes them problems and won’t follow advice that would prevent this. My experience is that it’s the same people who take the help for granted.
I agree that it’s our responsibility to help, but it’s not our responsibility to be enablers.