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
…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.
Being in the industry, I don’t think they are. Forums attract chronically online and miserable people who are not there for beginners but for their own motives.
There are shit people everywhere. Focus on the good people and positive spaces.
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.
Some people are just dick. There might be a bigger crossover between programmers and socially inadequate people, but thankfully it’s not a complete overlap (I hope).
Hopefully you’ll find saner people somewhere else. It’s fine being snarky with people you know and know can handle it, but doing so with stranger online really looks bad moist of the time.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I assume the motivation for a lot of people to go online and answer people’s technical questions is to puff up their ego
If you asked the question properly and they still gave you more grief than help, then it’s their fault for sure.
Without knowing the context - that’s key both questions, the one you asked then and the one you’re asking now - we can’t be sure what happened. And I’m not going to jump to conclusions about how much context you started with in your actual question because that is no help to you.
I say point us to the question – and accept we’re going to answer honestly.
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.
people suck online because there’s zero physical consequences to being rude. this isn’t a problem on forums like the one you visited, but all of them tbh
Did you practice due diligence of RTFM (reading the fucking manual) & researching the problem earnestly before asking a question that requests people to commit their time to answer it (ie, were you considerate), and did you show the effort you had put into answering the question yourself & what insights you gained before getting stuck? That’s usually it. No one appreciates their time wasted by poor effort.
I used to work with a programmer who would schedule meetings with IT subject matter experts of systems we were working on integrating. Instead of doing the research in advance & coming prepared with meaningful questions, he’d waste their time (and mine!) with questions he could have answered by reading public documentation. It was infuriating.
All of this. It should also be said that if you don’t understand something in the manual that’s ok too, but at least do a quick search to see if you can solve it. You ask when you bottom out, not to skip effort.
Sometimes you may even find that there are 2 or 3 things you could try and you want some help before investing too much more time (as long as you invested some).
Thank you, NSFW enjoyer.
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
And everything has an exception.
I mean if we’re throwing around one liners here.
A lot more than a bit.
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?
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!
Do I 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.
