Daily dialogues between a primary school teacher and someone in “IT”
I am a data professional. My wife a grade 1 school teacher. Our professional lives couldn’t be further apart. Here are some anecdotes from our daily dialogues.
The cool new app from my mobile provider
My wife: “Oh look at this new app, I can upgrade my phone with the click of a button”
I think: Wait for it…
1 hour later…
My wife: “Urgh! they had to call me and now I spent 30min on the phone answering security questions, just for them to ask me at the end which phone I wanted, then only to tell me it is out of stock!”
Me thinking: Whoop, there it is!
Me: “Yeah, their inventory system is probably not integrated with the backend of the app. I totally see that happening”
Police cross-referencing databases
Watching a scene of CSI or FBI or something where the algorithm cross references suspects based on certain input parameters.
My wife: “Wow, that is so cool how they can do things these days.”
Me: “That is definitely not real. First of all I rarely see things this well integrated in the private sector. There is no way a government agency can do this.”
My wife: “Do you always need to spoil shows for me? ”
Point of Sale notifications
My wife: “It is interesting that when I swipe my card at shop X the SMS notification comes through immediately but if I shop at Y it only comes through on Monday.
Me: “It is not interesting… shop Y probably still runs batch jobs to do this sort of push notification. The schedule is either planned for Monday, or the schedule is not running and Dave who’s job it is to monitor the schedule will see the issue on Monday.”
My wife: “I am gonna go with interesting and discard your answer.”
Me: “Well… it is interesting that I can track your movement by your card swiping. If your phone ever dies and you are in danger just start using your credit card.”
My wife: “Challenge accepted”
Facebook ads
My wife: “It is creepy how my Facebook ads have changed since I have been interested in buying clothes for the baby.”
Me: “Did you talk to anyone on Whatsapp about this”
My wife: “Uhm.. maybe”
Me: “Facebook owns Whatsapp”
My wife: “So.. not creepy?”
Me: “Oh no… still definitely creepy.”
AI in a growing number of professions
Me and my wife are at the optometrist where the optometrist is using very big words like “AI”, “Machine learning” and “algorithms” to explain all the different eye tests I need to take. (He is however using the terms incorrectly and incoherently)
My wife: “Wow… it is amazing how advanced even the optometrists have become.”
Me: “The optometrist has no idea how this works, however, yes it is pretty cool. I hope it is true, because I paid double for it.”
Changing things directly in production
Monday:
My wife: “Something is wrong on my account. I am going to phone them.”
Tuesday:
My wife: “No worries, it is fixed.”
Me: “They definitely fixed that straight in production.”
My wife: “Surely there are controls in place for that.”
Me: “Sure, but also loopholes.”
My wife: “Shouldn’t we all be worried if it that easy to change stuff directly in production.”
Me: Nods in agreement
1 version of the truth
My wife: “Why is my address different when I am querying about my bank account to when I query about my vehicle finance. It is the same bank!”
Me: “Probably different backend systems because the different subsidiaries were acquired at different times and they still haven’t managed to integrate it.”
My wife: “How hard can it be?”
Me: “That’s why I have work, be grateful.”
Getting off spam email lists
My wife: (Concentrating on her phone for couple of hours)
Me: “What are you doing? Can I help you?”
My wife: “I am unsubscribing from these mailing lists so I don’t get spammed anymore.”
Me: “Please don’t, it won’t work, just mark it as spam so that it at least it goes to the spam folder. You will never get off these mailing lists.”
My wife: “But isn’t it like an integrated list that is kept somewhere.”
Me (looking perplexed): “Remember what I said about systems and integration?”
What do you do for a living?
My wife: “I am filling in a form and need to fill in your profession, but it only has “IT” in the drop down menu.
Me: “No I’m not simply in “IT”… so is there nothing about data engineer, data scientist, data analyst, data architect, solutions architect or anything that sounds similar?”
My wife: “Nope”
Me: “Fine, go with IT”
