I asked a question on a forum about why a command wasn’t working. They said I didn’t have an interpreter installed on my computer and were making fun of me. I showed them that I had one installed and that wasn’t the problem, but they continued to talk sarcastically to me without explaining anything. Only one of them suggested the cause of the problem, and he was right, so I thanked him. Then another guy said that if I couldn’t figure it out myself, I should do something else and that he was tired of people like me. After that, I deleted my question, and now I’m not sure. And I don’t think I want to ask for help ever again
The short answer is the people you interacted with are assholes. The stereotype of IT people is that they don’t know how to play with others. Just because it is a Stereotype doesn’t mean it is not earned.
Am IT guy can confirm. We tend to be misanthropic loners. Bad “bedside manner” is an industry-wide problem. That’s why the A+ certification has a section on customer service skills.
Every stereotype stems from a bit of truth
A lot more than a bit.
And everything has an exception.
I mean if we’re throwing around one liners here.
Yup. There is a guy who responds to every question in the Linux forum like we all have 3 degrees in Linux CLI. he’s an asshole, whether his solution is correct or not.
His name isn’t Linus, is it?
Linus isn’t generally an asshole but if you submit garbage code to the kernel he’s gonna let you know
There’s a massive difference between asking where the toilets are, and pissing in the pool.
Nah lol
I am careful with conclusions like that. We only know one side of the story. There can be a lot wrong on both sides.
Ymmv
exactly - coders are some of the
weirdestmost diverse assholes i’ve ever worked withHEHE
please do not delete your question. it could easily help someone else who has the same issue. by deleting it, you are throwing away the work of the person who took the time to answer it.
This. So many brave ppl asking such questions light the ways. There are jerks but don’t let them dictate what happens to information. Don’t give into them. Be the light in the darkness.
or they reply to themselves saying “nvm figured it out” and don’t elaborate
True, that’s even worse because you then know that a solution exists.
Why do you think they went into a profession where they communicate primarily with a machine?
They may have entered the profession thinking they wouldn’t have to talk to people, but I just want to point out that this is not at all what the profession actually looks like. You have to constantly talk to people, to work out the requirements that the customer actually needs and exchange knowledge with your team mates. If someone is not a team player, that is the absolute quickest way to get thrown out.
Yeah, it’s common, especially in programming. It’s true that searching on Google usually solves the problem, but the biggest issue is that it’s hard to know the exact word you need to use. They know the word so it’s trivial for them, but that’s not the case with others, and they’re proud that they’re out of touch with people.
It’s true that searching on Google usually solves the problem, but the biggest issue is that it’s hard to know the exact word you need to use.
I tell people 90% of IT (and development I assume) is knowing what questions to ask, where to ask those questions, and how to interpret the answers. It’s like the search for the ultimate question in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
As for Google, I think it’s getting less useful, so the days of saying “just google it” are gone.
“Have you asked the clanker yet?”
Most of my search process prior to LLM was querying google with keywords and specific phrases, clicking through several of the first page links that are from reputable sources, reading all of that, synthesizing an answer. Now that google has completed its enshittification of search, it’s index is gamed both from the SEO grifters and from inside with them making search worse because it ultimately leads to more ad impressions. The quality of those first page links is directly related to how much the stink of money the topic has.
I now pay for search with kagi (not an ad, swear) so that incentives are properly aligned. I get very useful first page links again because I can lens the search to exclude a lot of the SEO shit sites or only return academic sources. And I also use their robot assistant now for many searches because it can synthesize good summaries and good gists of topics from good source links. Prompted to always cite shit so I can always verify the clanker’s bullshit, but trust has been getting higher lately as the models get better.
At some point we will end up with a lmgtfy.com but lmpalfy.com (let me prompt an LLM for you)
but the biggest issue is that it’s hard to know the exact word you need to use.
This is one of those few cases where I’ve actually found AI to be genuinely useful. If I don’t know how something is called, I describe it to AI and have it figure it out for me, then I go look the thing up myself once I have a word for it.
That’s what I did too. It’s not programming, but I remember doing something like “What is it when a plus b is b plus a” because I forgot the name of that property.
I agree its one of the few uses.
The ai gives the correct terminology, you can then cut it out of the loop for reliable information on the subject.
This is one reason it could have been better for OP to not have deleted their question, as there are likely many people who would think to word their question the way OP did but don’t know the more technically correct way to word it.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of pretentious and impatient assholes in this field.
That being said, IRL, I’ve had coworkers that are assholes, and I’ve had coworkers that have been the most amazing people. Just depends on who’s on your team and who you have to interact with.
I’ll take it a step further and say that most of the people I’ve worked with have been amazing. Really just some very enjoyable people to be around.
Something about the field though seems to really attract the super assholes and they’re so assholish that they color the perception of the whole field.
It’s really unfortunate how a very loud, very obnoxious minority can have such an outsized impact.
I agree. I had one super asshole on my team a while back and it was hell. I dreaded every meeting. Once he left I realized how much I enjoy everyone else on my team. Lot of really great folks.
Something about the field though seems to really attract the super assholes and they’re so assholish that they color the perception of the whole field.
I’m not so sure about that, when my friends who work in finance tell me about the people they work with their stories often make me think that I’ve been very lucky to end up in a field like software where people in general are so nice, helpful and cooperative.
It all depends on what one compares with, I guess.
alot of questions are of the “i have gone out of my way to avoid reading/searching any documentation” variety, i imagine those get annoying pretty quick
Because there is a huge demographic of nerds that are actually chuds and learned absolutely nothing from being bullied and/or being a beginner when they were younger.
I bet you can picture the demographic that they overlap with, but I’ma try not to explicitly make this political.
I mean, they are chuds. That already tells you exactly what demographic it is.
A lot of them learned the wrong lessons from bullying, or learned it from those who were in the intersection of the nerd-jock dichotomy. Those were usually the worst.
In my experience there really is no correlation between being powerless/oppressed and actually being a good person: plenty of such people when given a bit of power turn out to be the same kind of shithole as the ones who oppress them in other situations.
The reason why powerless/oppressed people seldom act as shitholes is not because they’re better persons in average than the rest, it’s because they’re far more likely to suffer negative consequences if they do act in such ways, than the powerfull are.
I think the OP’s experience is the result of this dynamic alongside the one that, when that in an online environment one is far more likely to notice the assholes (because they’re the ones activelly posting shit) than the non-assholes (because they’re more likely to just silently negativelly judge the assholes) - in a street you can see when there’s a ton of other people looking down on the assholes, but you can’t online.
In my experience the solution for this kind of problem in an expert context is to keep in mind that the most expert a person is, the least likely they are to waste time in shit-talking, so almost invariably the people being assholes online in such a context don’t actually have knowledge beyond at most mid-level expertise and are really not deserving of any respect on a professional sense and, of course, as people who would chose shit-talking rather than helping or at worst not bothering and staying silent when confronted with somebody with less knowledge, are not deserving of any respect as persons.
Further and given the whole “generally powerless person who will act as an asshole if they’re isolated from the consequences of it” dynamic, they’re only doing it because they feel isolated from the consequences of pissing of somebody else, but that means the other side is also isolated from them.
Dealing with such people in a work environment is a lot more complex, but online they’re like dogs barking behind a wall and just as unworthy of consideration or attention.
I have once heard “It is our time to make fun of them” from a software developer. He wasn’t a very well-meaning person in general, bootstraps and all.
…what is is to be a woman in STEM. and why a lot of women leave and why it’s a sausage party. And also why women online often disguise themselves even in games.
That being said I suggest this when some rando online is trying to pressure you: when a person is so fragile to be easily annoyed by your existence: exist harder. They are the fool for giving you such power. Lean into it. Ask more questions. Watch them stir in their seat overreacting.
Cuz one thing I’ve learned is when you are that brave: there are twice as many newbies hiding around you thinking you’re awesome for asking all the hard questions.
Don’t delete because of some elitist assholes. Leave it up for the other newbies. Get more newbies up in their business.
The trades are the same way, unfortunately. When the first woman apprentice showed up, all these guys started acting like they’ve never seen a woman before.
The quiet guy who I thought was one of the nicest people there told the apprentice that she belonged in an office. Others wouldn’t let her do anything “dangerous” or over explained all the simple shit to her. Others would just hang around her for uncomfortable periods of time. It was truly bizarre to witness.
She ended up only coming to me for work related questions because I was one of the few people who treated her like a person and not like a little girl. That’s how I found out all the gross and fucked up things the guys were saying to her. She didn’t last long and left for another company which already had women working there. I worked until I got terminated for bringing up issues with the work culture.
During the fight about work culture with management, the vast majority of my coworkers turned their backs on me. Treated me like an idiot and isolated me. They were all so fragile and scared they would have to change their awful ways.
I ended up quitting my apprenticeship and decided to never return to the trades. I can’t stand the culture and I no longer have the energy to fight alone.
Any woman that can remain in the trades or STEM is way stronger than I’ll ever be. I couldn’t imagine myself dealing with that shit daily for an entire life.
I hear you. Yes, It’s definitely easier when there are at least already one or two women already present.
But sometimes you have to watch your back sometimes even then. Cuz there can be the ‘pickme’ ladies that lean into the misogyny. I’ve come by some real toxic ones that had rap sheets of other victims all women that had bundled together and basically had group therapy about the same woman.
That’s where I start saving every single email they (the toxic ones) send me. I’ve taken one or two out in my day just on ‘accidently’ forwarding an email they sent me they thought they had me too intimidated to send. I was just biding my time giving them false confidence.
Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.
Document everything.
Though I’m hoping current days are getting better where this kind of toxicity is easier to call out. I’ve notice some of the more recent places of work that they even encourage and prefer calling it out in the moment with HR and not having it be dealt with in such a chaotic way. Though that can also be dependent on how good your HR is. (Watch out for HR using the catch phrase ‘conflicting personalities’ is a dead give away you got a dud HR)
Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.
That’s very much what I did. While causing noise with management, I made friends with someone who worked for corporate HR. My first email to her basically predicated what would happen if I raised a complaint to management. I gained her trust by focusing on changing the work culture and not looking for retribution.
I got terminated, lawyers got involved and in the end I got a my severance and banned from working with that international corporate. The HR manager of my company was forced into leaving the company before her retirement. If I didn’t play nice with corporate HR, the company HR manager would have probably worked until retirement like nothing happened.
I now have a new hate for bureaucracy that’s on a deep and personal level but at least I came out with some wins at the cost of some sanity.
Yikes yeah that place sounds rotten to the core. I’m glad you got out of it and hope you found safer ground ! Glad you kept your sanity too. That can be a challenge in such situations where you can feel the walls closing in.
Which country was that in, may I ask?
Canada
The women I’ve met in STEM both during my college days and in my career have always been far more welcoming and willing to share their expertise than the lions share of men.
Never going to forget the TA I went to back when I was a freshman who not only juggled 5 different people asking questions but helped take a concept I was struggling with and made it clear as day.
I run into people like that at work and what I’ve discovered is they have no idea they’re being rude. Some people in technology are genuinely that out of touch.
I just created an account to tell you, if you would like, I would be super happy to either answer that question you had, or if I don’t know the answer show you how I research problems related to programming or archotecture or algo or whatever needs done to finish a project. I’ve been in IT for 20 years now. What you experienced is the very thing I’ve dedicated my career to correcting.
Fuck rude gatekeeping assholes, knowledge is for everyone.
Welcome!
Some of them are probably insecure about their own limitations and find pleasure in mocking someone who knows a little less than they do. On the other hand there may also be, among the crowd, those who genuinely found your mistake to be an unusually funny one.
And the irony there is at some point in their career, they were in OPs position asking for help as well. So it’s either a cycle (people were also rude to them back then) or they’re the pull-the-ladder-up-after-yourself type of person.
Report the rude assholes. Genuinely not knowing something while genuinely asking for knowledge should never be shat on.
Without seeing the entirety of the interaction, it’s hard to be sure.
Some people are assholes, and because nobody wants to interact with assholes, they usually end up congregating on whatever forum doesn’t ban them. Moderation is hard and ban evasion is often easy, so there end up being a lot of places like that.
The other side is that people in general ask a lot of bad questions, and a forum flooded with bad questions becomes useless because people who could answer good questions either get tired of it and leave, or spend so much time on the bad questions they don’t have time for the good ones. People get frustrated when they think that’s happening to a forum they enjoy, and programmers are famously better at communicating with machines than with people.
Here’s are some tips to ask good questions about programming:
- First, try to find the answer without asking other people. This is especially important when it comes to programming because the whole job is problem-solving. That means figuring out how a search result, LLM output, or published documentation relates to whatever it is you’re trying to do.
- Once you’re sure you need help from other people, clearly articulate what it is you want to happen, what you tried in order to achieve it, and what actually happened. Use more detail than you think you need here, especially regarding your expectations. Sometimes the mere act of composing a question this way leads you to the answer, which is effective enough there’s a popular technique of explaining problems to inanimate objects.
- Include the troubleshooting steps you tried from the first step above in your question. By typing it out, you may discover an error or omission in your process, but you also communicate to other people that you’re not just being lazy, wasting their time, and reducing the signal to noise ratio of their forum.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html <-- this too
I had that in mind, but it’s been a while since I read it and skimming it today, it seems a little dated. The tone may also be a bit harsh to offer to OP in this thread.
A little bit dated, but it seems like it has been receiving updates. There is a whole section at the bottom now about how to answer questions (ie. don’t be an asshole). I really want to emphasize that idea. Lots of FOSS communities now have codes of conduct which I find useful in mitigating this behavior, too.
As for the tone, it definitely has an ivory tower, individualism, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, slanted view but I don’t think it unduly burdens a newbie to learn how to teach themselves by ensuring they’ve exhausted all the typical avenues of stored knowledge before bothering someone with a well-crafted question. It is a self-sufficiency that has very positive returns in the future.
Without more context, it is difficult to say how justified OP is in their read of the situation. Maybe the forum posters weren’t really out of line because the general topic was #random and OP asked in the wrong place?
Whilst dealing with this kind of asshole in a work environment is a lot more complex, online they’re like dogs barking behind a wall - only doing it because they’re aggressive simpletons and isolated from any problems from doing it - and just as unworthy of consideration or attention as one.
They really only have any impact on you when you give them more importance than they deserve.
Also keep in mind that these people are at the lower end of expertise and professionalism: top experts don’t waste time with talking shit like that, they’ll just either teach you or (most likely) ignore you because they think that stuff is too basic and not worth their time, and professionals are used to being professional and shit-talking ain’t being professional - even in expertise terms these people are unimportant.
Frankly, this has been quite a significant barrier to my Linux adoption previously. Its really unfortunate that people are like this. I wish there were set tags or communities for noob problems so people could post questions safely. Anyone who doesn’t want to engage with noobs can then stay away.
They can just choose to ignore the questions, but they have big egos and zero social skills.
It’s amazing that people actively answer a question with insults rather than simply scrolling past.
Hey cool recommendations. I’ll subscribe, maybe I’ll see something in the feed I can help with.
Doi know why that happened to you? No, just guessing.
What I do know though: if it was like some replies here suggest, that it’s all due to IT folks not playing well with others, then forums like stack overflow wouldn’t exist.
What I also know: I’ve been to a lot of forums, not all IT related, and I met quite a few people online who just love to be rude, regardless of the topic.
So if I had to guess why, I’d say because they are assholes, not because it was an IT forum.
