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
RTFM
~(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it’s the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)~
IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)
This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn’t accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there’s chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.
I’m very sorry this happened to you. Please don’t let some assholes discourage you. It’s a great profession, and can be a lot of fun.
I have trained 6 people to fill my shoes in my role. 1 gave up. 1 got fired. 1 was never really a programmer and that resulted in an argument with management about the role actually needed (they call it tier 2 support but you need to be a competent programmer to debug the issues). 2 of the others took other jobs for much more pay. The last guy is still here and he’s good I guess…
But I’m tired man… Tired of explaining the same things over again. It’s not the new guy’s fault but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve grown jaded. I tend to realize I being a jerk, apologize and tone it down. Doesn’t change the fact that my gut response is jerkish.
Okay, I understand. This leads me to believe that programming is not really for everyone and I should reconsider my choice so as not to regret anything in the future. I hope you enjoy the rest of your work.
I don’t think it’s just programming I think it’s most jobs in general. It’s just very evident cuz programming and IT and and overall is very in focus now. Most people that have been in a job for any length of time tend to have short tempers because " it’s easy to get this job. Cuz they don’t remember how hard it was for them in the beginning. They expect everybody to come in. Not only that but most of those people coming in are getting paid close to the same if not sometimes more than the person training them. So you tend to give up after a while.
As someone in a programming adjacent job (which still involves a lot of coding and debugging, looking at my current career in comparison with other jobs I’ve had I think it’s not all jobs, but it’s about jobs that require specificity.
Some pick up the fundamentals on their own and end up getting good at it. Some pick up the fundamentals, either through education or hobby, but never really get a good grasp on it. And some fail to pick up the fundamentals. Programming is a job that requires a certain level to at least be useful, and failing that can lead to a lot of frustration.
I don’t know I disagree with the specific jobs that require specific skills. I mean hell I’ve seen fast food workers that have been doing it for years get annoyed at people that come in and can’t do what they consider basic.
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.
…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.
I’m an it professional and I am sad what happened to you.
However, without knowing details I could not pass judgement on what went wrong. Yes, people (not only in it!) are elitist assholes oftentimes but maybe something very basic was off (which you might not have even known, missing experience) and so on and so forth.
Being in the field for decades I can say that there’s nothing I have not seen.
Do not lose hope and carry on if you’re interested.
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 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.
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 mean, they are chuds. That already tells you exactly what demographic it is.
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.
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
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.
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.
