‘No, I won’t help you.’
The New York Times (free registration required) has an interesting little article up about the growing divide between the Geeks and everyone else. Basically, in the past geeks were more than happy to help those less technically-inclined out with things. Now, though, the geeks are just getting sick of the same people just not learning stuff.
“You went to college and you got a degree, you obviously can learn something. Play around with it; it’s not going to kill you.”
Much of the article is focused on viruses and how they spread when “clueless” users click on infected email attachments. It also touches on other situations. I have to say that I’ve gotten to the point where I’m walking the fence on this issue. I used to help people out all the time but more and more I find myself refraining or just trying to point people to other resources for help.
Posted Friday February 6, 2004 in Around the Internet by Chris Curtis
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My personal line is between helping someone and doing it for them. Regardless, to me, the person’s attitude that’s wanting the help has a great deal to do with the time I’ll spend with them, and the quality of attention I’ll provide.
People that expect geeks to handle all of their geek-issues are just inconsiderate sods. And that’s the trend, really. I don’t know how it came about that people feel that someone who is “good” with computers has some obligation to spend all of their time freely distributing their skills among all of the non-tech oriented masses. I mean, mechanics aren’t expected to fix your car for free, lawyers aren’t expected to give legal advice for free, and a tax preparer isn’t expected to stop what he’s doing and help you with your taxes just because he knows the forms and you don’t.
I’d like to historically pinpoint the moment in time that this particular bit of trained knowledge suddenly became distributed property instead of something that you understood that if you wanted to do it, you’d have to learn; and that you have to pay a teacher if you don’t want or can’t teach yourself.
As a recent example, someone asked me to make a functioning website for them, or at minimum to hold their hand through it. Not only was this person not offering money or any sort of barter, it wasn’t even for a legitimate site. It was for a grade in his marketing class. I really like this guy, and don’t think that he’s inconsiderate in general. But something about it involving websites, and him knowing that I had that knowledge, turned a switch in his brain and made him think that it was a reasonable request.
By Derek Jones on February 6, 2004 at 02:55pm link