Changing your point of view
Penny Peticolas · ACM SIGUCCS Newsletter · 1983
For many years, and as recently as last week, I have heard that in the computer world it is "us against them". The systems staff is on one side of this debate and the user services staff is on the other. In the fourteen months since my promotion from Manager of User Services to Associate Director for Systems & Operations my experience and my personal convictions have required me to challenge that opinion.The common perception is that systems programmers are a strange breed who prefer machines to people and who want to be left alone to "do their own thing"; while user services is a people oriented group that crusades for every outlandish request that its users make.The truth is that the goal of both these groups should be and can be to provide the best possible computer service for their community by combining their knowledge of the Possible and the Desirable.This paper will discuss why it is in the best interest of each group to work with, rather than against, the other, and suggest some practical steps toward accomplishing this.