Those of us who are good at addressing user-reported issues learn to do the same. No one in our industry seems much to teach this skill. I wonder why.

> No one in our industry seems much to teach this skill. I wonder why.

It's pretty simple. In a company of any size, customer support is a separate job from development. Asking a programmer to field support calls is like asking an architect to trim grass.

Yet, if they did so perhaps the architect would stop putting grass in places where it's too f'ing difficult to actually maintain properly. Sometimes putting the 'expert' in the shoes of the 'maintainer' works wonders toward creating designs than can actually be maintained.

Similarly, reference librarians receive reference interview training to get a better idea of what information patrons are seeking. There were several MDs in my LIS cohort who remarked on the similarity between reference interviewing and medical interviewing.

Contrast this with tech, where users are treated like idiots and the first question asked in a tech support interaction is the cliched "have you turned it off and on again" joke. Maybe we need to approach this more like the doctors and librarians do.