Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

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I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people.

Recently though, I've been assigned a guy to help me with one of my tasks, managing the build pipeline. This requires a wide range of knowledge about unix and scripting (Bash, Perl AND Python. Yup. On top of Makefiles, of course).

The guy doesn't know how to use a command-line.

I'm surprised to find myself to be very unhelpful and curt with this guy. He's the unlucky recipient of my resentment at the amount of effort I will have to put in before he can actually become remotely helpful. Of course, it doesn't help that he's in far off timezone where I'd have to stay up late to help him, and that I have trouble getting direct answers from him about his knowledge level. The communication and experience gap is too large.

Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s.

Very well said. It's wrong to be a dick, but it's also the natural response to a lot of stressful situations. Think of trying to give tech support to relatives, for example. It's too easy to get annoyed with other people, and this is especially true when you're under pressure and they're MEANT TO BE HELPING, DAMNIT!

FWIW, I suspect that you're much more experienced in this stuff than me, so it's a bit arrogant for me to offer a suggestion. But still, I'm going to offer one. Is the guy quite self-motivated? If so, one thing that might help you is to spend some time curating good learning resources for him, and then linking him to them. It's essentially the ethical version of RTFM. You help him figure out what the useful "M" actually is, and he'll get himself up to scratch from there.

Just a suggestion, anyway. :)

That's actually the route I've been trying to follow, but that's where the experience gap becomes a problem. I can give him some ressources on how to use Git or learn Python, but it's been so long that I don't even know where to start for the CLI :|

I found this pretty good for sharing to people, if you're targeting Linux: http://linuxsurvival.com/

Parts of it are a bit dated (no longer typically used features), but it's a pretty good overview of how Linux works for end users.

I like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Commands-Editors-Progr...

I've also found "Unix for the Impatient" very helpful but the 1995 copyright is a little scary.

I had the same problem with a past coworker, a "how is this person being paid to work with technology in any capacity" person doing development and having never learned how to read graphs ("the CPU is at the top of the graph, so that is the cause of the performance problem" was common). Or knowing that Excel could do visualizations of data. And I found myself doing the "Blatantly type their question into google right in front of them and click on the first link" thing and being super short and RTFM-y which made me feel bad afterward. But so resentful.

I had an IT job where I was the only person taking care of all office technology for 22 locations. This got bigger over time and I pushed management to get me some help. I got some halftime assistants, one of which was great, but he was a young guy and decided to move on after about 2 years (I was rather pleased this was the longest he had ever held a job!)

Then the powers that be decided I needed a manager, and hired some old wreck retired from IBM. I have no idea why. Old? Male? Wore a suit and would be more presentable to the board than me (not hard)? It was certainly not for his knowledge. He couldn't fix a PC, diagnose Windows problems, or use a Unix command line, and actually added to my workload because he would break his computer and need me to fix it. A co-worker quietly told me he spent his day playing Solitaire and taking messages because he was unable to solve problems.

He didn't seem to want to learn, either. That was the kicker. I would usually spend an hour a day teaching my previous assistant about networks or software, but this guy, his ignorance was just too big and he just didn't express any curiosity. I'm pretty sure his job was to collect a paycheck.

I quit. There wasn't really much choice. I was overworked and insulted. And within 2 weeks he resigned as well.

You made the right choice.

> Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s.

The guy is not just a human being, he's also a professional whose job it is to know what he's doing. Shouldn't there be some sense of "duty to do a job well", not just "duty to care about someone's feelings"? If he's not pulling his weight and is failing at his job, then the poor responses are his fault also.

Sound like you haven't been working with outsourced talent and a boss that says "this is all we've got, deal with it." ;)

The "interesting" thing here is the cultural gap, where these folks have had all initiative beaten out of them throughout their education, where the cost of failure is higher than that of not trying. It's really disheartening.

My point is, it's heard to blame the person when you know how flawed is the system they come from.

Your boss should pay you handsomely for the extra overtime and responsibility involved.

"And forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to us."

> Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s.

Sure. We're all human, and I know I've been there many times. Just also remember how the seemingly normal and ready to learn human will react to a lesson put that way.

I know, and that's the part I feel worse about.

How was the gentleman 'assigned' to help you?

Did the assigner spend enough time with the remote worker to understand the skill level?

In your organisation, is it OK to report a skill mismatch like this up the chain?

Summary: this is a management issue I think

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