Friday, August 4, 2006 11:37 AM
[Edited Aug 7/06]
Remember this post by Chris Williams asking the question about why geeks are sometimes stubborn, or full of themselves, etc.?
Well check out the email the leader of the Winnipeg .NET User Group received from a Mr. Right (I've changed his name obviously):
[Email Begins]
Your next meeting as given on your web-site is six weeks ago. Also, when I hit your web-page, I get an error:
Line 599: Object Expected.
This isn't on your default main page. It is at the tail end of a script that ends with: (some script code)
Ergo, no closing script tag. Five gets you ten it's in an #include file. I expect the SCRIPT tag is supposed to be the closing tag.
Really. Should I have to be telling you these things? I'm a programmer, and by default turn on every debugging facility at my disposal, including treating warnings as errors. Don't you guys do that? As a .Net user's group, it doesn't do much for your credibility to have newbies pointing out your mistakes to you.
Yet you presume to advocate the standards by which I can be certified to be capable enough to be called a programmer? Yet another incidence of the weight of paper over actual ability.
When you get around to updating the next meeting date to a time that's actually in the future, I'll see if I can attend. You guys need some serious help. If you don't have time to update that time manually, at the least you could have it updated programmatically. You do know how to do that, right?
Mr. Right
[Email Ends]
Classic. So instead of using your experience as a programmer to help the overall community, you take on an attitude of superiority and arrogance. Oddly enough, on this page I found in Google's cache, he has this quote:
“I don't believe in people, but I believe in individuals. People are cattle, who will go wherever they are led, but individuals really do care about things, and individuals do make a difference. There are millions of individuals out there right now who, in their own way, are making this world a better place to live in. The only problem is that there aren't enough of them, and what few that do exist are largely ignored. This does not have to be. At the risk of using 'pop sociospeak', maybe this will serve to 'raise awareness' of the finer side of humankind.“
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Right should consider his own quote before firing off assinine emails to user group leaders (who spend alot of their own time and many “seconds” putting together community events) and trying to promote himself and his arrogance. The people who spend their time running the user group care about the local developer community and are making a difference, yet Mr. Right seems to contradict what he values by his actions.
Here's another lesson: Reputation is key. Winnipeg is a small town, and our UG executive is made up of people from some of the most successful technology firms in the city. By your tone, you've now put yourself out there as someone that would not be attractive to hire in the future, and since most people get on by who you know, you may have burned bridges you didn't know existed.
It sounds like you've gone through alot though, and I think the real issue here is that you need to deal with those things in your life that have caused you to have such a negative view of society. Community is a key piece in the future of software development, and if you're not willing to play nice, don't expect to be invited to play.
D