Support as a Stag Hunt
Here is the critical thing to know about desktop computer support: No one likes it--it's stressful, it's difficult and hardly anyone ever calls support when they're happy. Support is not progressive, growth-oriented, or even particularly challenging for the support person--once you've dealt with a couple thousand people and answered a couple thousand questions, it's all pretty much the same no matter how many new computers and new programs come along. Everyone who does support has other things they're interested in doing in addition to support. People use ';well, I don't like to do support'; as an excuse to dump support on someone else. But that's what it amounts to--an excuse--because nobody likes to do support.
Economists use game theory to model strategic interactions among economic agents. I'm not a big fan of game theory because it values a certain heartless rationalism over acting like a human being, but I was recently introduced to the Stag Hunt game and I think it has something to say to the 'I don't like to do support'; crowd.
Stag Hunt is set up as follows:
Two hunters can either jointly hunt a stag (an adult deer and rather large meal) or individually hunt a rabbit (tasty, but substantially less filling). Hunting stags is quite challenging and requires mutual cooperation. If either hunts a stag alone, the chance of success is minimal. Hunting stags is most beneficial for society but requires a lot of trust among its members (gametheory.net)
Let's consider that for our purposes, hunting stags equates (more or less) to doing support. And support is big--bigger, really, than anyone or any group of people can handle because support is a black hole that sucks in all the resources nearby; support is never finished, but it can be managed. The 'rabbits' are the more tempting, more interesting, vastly more 'fun' projects that could be done (and are done in the space between support demands). If we all work in support, we can not only all keep it manageable, but there will be space and time for all of us to work on other things.
But, if all the people who feel it's necessary to say they hate support and must do something else (as opposed to the people who hate support but do it anyway because it has to be done), go off hunting rabbits full-time because, after all, they don’t like doing support, then those left behind not only won't have the chance to do anything but support any longer but they won't be able to manage support anymore either (having lost a bunch of people who used to do support, but now do 'other things'). The support people who remain are punished in several ways, really. First, they now are doing more support than before; second, support overall is not being done as well, which reflects on them, not on the people who have 'left' to do other things; and, finally, there is much less time to do anything except support--no 'rabbits' for them.
Support as a Stag Hunt says several things. First, cooperation provides benefits to all--support gets done and everyone has time for other projects. Lack of cooperation benefits some at a high level--those who claim they don't like support and then do something else benefit from not doing support and from doing projects they like better. Those who stick with their original commitment are punished because they have more support to do, their reputation goes down and they never or rarely or much less often get to do projects that are not support. In this scenario, the 'rational' person would shove all support issues onto someone else because as long as you're not the last person left, it works out pretty well.
It's not a perfect fit to game theory (nothing is). It operates most like this when support is spread over a number of people but no one or several people are strictly titled 'support' people (though I have also seen it happen when people are hired for support, but gradually move over to doing 'other' things because they are 'talented' and like the other things better anyway). But here's the bottom line for me. Don't ever tell me that I have to do something and you don't because 'you don't like support'. At least be honest enough to admit--'I'm handing this off to you because I'm a selfish schlub and I can get away with it.'