> Office hours were great, though. It’s is like debugging a program, you start at the symptoms and then try to trace your way up to the root cause. Except you have a conversation instead of a stack trace. Just like debugging, it can be really frustrating in the moment, but the end result is really satisfying.
You sound like one of those rare souls who might both enjoy and be good at people management.
(Line management, at least. The higher up you go, the less fun it gets, unless you're a psychopath whose primary motivation is Number Go Up.)
I once knew a manager who told a group of us engineers that they love getting contacted by customers. The angrier the better.
This was baffling, of course. But the explanation was that every time it was an opportunity to listen to their problems and ask questions and figure out what the problem was and try to work out a solution. Might be their expectations or their situation or it might be the company product or service. Either way, they could usually find a way to make things better and the customer would end up being happier than they were before the talk.
It's still pretty far down the list of jobs that I'd ever want to do, but I can really relate to the motivation. Made a lot of sense.