December 6, 2019 at 12:35 pm
It isn't just here that the questions are getting worse. If you look at other sites the same trend is true. Considering the wealth of knowledge that is readily available for anyone with some sense (good attitude) from sites like here, the Stack Exchange Communities, MSDN, etc, it's amazing how little effort people show to solve their problems.
I don't think it helps that there are many, on certain websites (cough Stack overflow cough) that don't help the situation by answering the questions for these people, just for some "internet points". Those that answer the awful questions you see, without trying to get the OP to engage or even try, are as much to blame as the Op themselves, in my opinion. (Of course, engaging the OP to show their attempts is conversational on Stack Overflow and therefore off-topic. You're expected to downvote, vote to close and move on; because that's how you build a "good" concise Q&A community. In fact, asking the OP "what did you try?" is not even allowed any more. /headdesk)
Thom~
Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk
December 6, 2019 at 2:15 pm
I don't think it helps that there are many, on certain websites (cough Stack overflow cough) that don't help the situation by answering the questions for these people, just for some "internet points". Those that answer the awful questions you see, without trying to get the OP to engage or even try, are as much to blame as the Op themselves, in my opinion. (Of course, engaging the OP to show their attempts is conversational on Stack Overflow and therefore off-topic. You're expected to downvote, vote to close and move on; because that's how you build a "good" concise Q&A community. In fact, asking the OP "what did you try?" is not even allowed any more. /headdesk)
This is why I'm not a fan of the SO sites. You can get good answers there though when you do search, I just don't like to post or answer there because of the way they discourage conversation.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
Check out these links on how to get faster and more accurate answers:
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Need an Answer? Actually, No ... You Need a Question
December 6, 2019 at 2:29 pm
oooh points, that gamification that gives you a sense of achievement on a website. sadly it's quite a hook for newbies, but you get a lot of "trawlers" that just scrape points.
I don't care if I have a fraction of the points of most of the experts on here - I just want to help. and maybe on occasions get a bit of help or write something for the site
MVDBA
December 6, 2019 at 2:45 pm
I don't think it helps that there are many, on certain websites (cough Stack overflow cough) that don't help the situation by answering the questions for these people, just for some "internet points". Those that answer the awful questions you see, without trying to get the OP to engage or even try, are as much to blame as the Op themselves, in my opinion. (Of course, engaging the OP to show their attempts is conversational on Stack Overflow and therefore off-topic. You're expected to downvote, vote to close and move on; because that's how you build a "good" concise Q&A community. In fact, asking the OP "what did you try?" is not even allowed any more. /headdesk)
What really bugs me is that the answers frequently suck so hard they have their own source of gravity. When you call them on it, you get chastised and told "it worked, so what"?
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
December 6, 2019 at 2:58 pm
Thom A wrote:I don't think it helps that there are many, on certain websites (cough Stack overflow cough) that don't help the situation by answering the questions for these people, just for some "internet points". Those that answer the awful questions you see, without trying to get the OP to engage or even try, are as much to blame as the Op themselves, in my opinion. (Of course, engaging the OP to show their attempts is conversational on Stack Overflow and therefore off-topic. You're expected to downvote, vote to close and move on; because that's how you build a "good" concise Q&A community. In fact, asking the OP "what did you try?" is not even allowed any more. /headdesk)
What really bugs me is that the answers frequently suck so hard they have their own source of gravity. When you call them on it, you get chastised and told "it worked, so what"?
And then there are those that criticize (read basically attack) a suggested solution even after the OP thanks both individuals for their suggestions, states which one they are going to explore and even provides some attentional details that may indicate that the chosen suggestion could be viable for their environment.
December 6, 2019 at 2:59 pm
oooh points, that gamification that gives you a sense of achievement on a website. sadly it's quite a hook for newbies, but you get a lot of "trawlers" that just scrape points.
I don't care if I have a fraction of the points of most of the experts on here - I just want to help. and maybe on occasions get a bit of help or write something for the site
Ditto that. Points don't matter. Helping others matters (not to mention solving interesting problems that I wouldn't otherwise even come across) but, I have to admit, I've been skipping a lot of the one's that others have cited that fall into the general categories of not trying and arrogant entitlement.
And I love lmgtfy.com. I have to admit that I have to resist the urge to use it on the people that fit the two categories above. I also want to use the saying that might cousin uses on such people and that's "I didn't get this old being stupid but it looks like you did" . 😀
Yes, I do feel bad for people just starting out but, lordy, at least try Yabingooducklehoo first.
We had a person at my old job. She was ALWAYS on the phone. I got curious as to why and so I discreetly "hung around" for a couple of hours. She couldn't actually write a stitch of code... she was on the phone with someone that was. Why the hell our boss hired her is totally beyond me and she wasn't the only one that was seriously sub-par for the job. It's a part of what led me to quitting that job.
As the old saying goes, people don't quit jobs... they quit bosses. Being as kind as I can, if the man had two brains, he would have been twice a stupid.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
December 6, 2019 at 3:06 pm
Thom A wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:p.s. I've also adopted the policy of NVO (No Verbal Orders), especially for "urgencies". It there's not a well documented ticket to support the urgency, it doesn't get done. While that sounds like I'm being nothing more than an Ahole, I'm not. It supports audits and a whole bunch of other things and I've gotten management support on that. It's actually written into our SOPs on the company WIKI.
This is something we have for everything now, if the really simple stuff; as we got fed up of people abusing "urgents" at times. People will call us, and make a "urgent" work request, to which we remind them of the correct channels to raise a work ticket. Sometimes We've been chased a week later for that work, which they needed 2 days earlier, but then respond with "I didn't have to raise the ticket" when we say we can't find it. They literally take 2 minutes; if it was that urgent you would find those 2 minutes of time.
It does work really well though, as I'm sure many have found as well. People get a little "annoyed" by it, but those are many people that can't be bothered to make the request; but then why should we be bothered to do the work for them then? 😉
I take great pleasure in telling people that they just wasted more time arguing about opening a ticket than it takes to <insert drum-roll and cymbal crash here> open a ticket.
I had a job where I had to do this regularly.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
Check out these links on how to get faster and more accurate answers:
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Need an Answer? Actually, No ... You Need a Question
December 6, 2019 at 3:10 pm
And that, right there, is the reason I don't post on SO. Years ago, I did post a couple of times. On one I was chastised for the post being too long and the other one was deleted by a moderator for having too much detail and explanation. I haven't been back since. I'll use it to find one-line answers when I'm doing something I'm not familiar with and it's returned by a search engine as a match, but that's about it.
December 6, 2019 at 3:15 pm
We had a person at my old job. She was ALWAYS on the phone. I got curious as to why and so I discreetly "hung around" for a couple of hours. She couldn't actually write a stitch of code... she was on the phone with someone that was. Why the hell our boss hired her is totally beyond me and she wasn't the only one that was seriously sub-par for the job. It's a part of what led me to quitting that job.
Jeff, did you just admit to stalking a woman and wasting a few hours on work time... lol 🙂
MVDBA
December 6, 2019 at 3:35 pm
Jeff Moden wrote:Thom A wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:p.s. I've also adopted the policy of NVO (No Verbal Orders), especially for "urgencies". It there's not a well documented ticket to support the urgency, it doesn't get done. While that sounds like I'm being nothing more than an Ahole, I'm not. It supports audits and a whole bunch of other things and I've gotten management support on that. It's actually written into our SOPs on the company WIKI.
This is something we have for everything now, if the really simple stuff; as we got fed up of people abusing "urgents" at times. People will call us, and make a "urgent" work request, to which we remind them of the correct channels to raise a work ticket. Sometimes We've been chased a week later for that work, which they needed 2 days earlier, but then respond with "I didn't have to raise the ticket" when we say we can't find it. They literally take 2 minutes; if it was that urgent you would find those 2 minutes of time.
It does work really well though, as I'm sure many have found as well. People get a little "annoyed" by it, but those are many people that can't be bothered to make the request; but then why should we be bothered to do the work for them then? 😉
I take great pleasure in telling people that they just wasted more time arguing about opening a ticket than it takes to <insert drum-roll and cymbal crash here> open a ticket.
I had a job where I had to do this regularly.
On the other hand, one of my favorite interview questions is:
"Someone called to tell that a query is slow on the server. What do you do?"
I had a guy spend most of the time talking about how support tickets get created and dealt with instead of how to heck to deal with the problem. Ha!
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
December 6, 2019 at 3:41 pm
Jeff Moden wrote:We had a person at my old job. She was ALWAYS on the phone. I got curious as to why and so I discreetly "hung around" for a couple of hours. She couldn't actually write a stitch of code... she was on the phone with someone that was. Why the hell our boss hired her is totally beyond me and she wasn't the only one that was seriously sub-par for the job. It's a part of what led me to quitting that job.
Jeff, did you just admit to stalking a woman and wasting a few hours on work time... lol 🙂
I like the one where the guy hired someone in china or something like one fifth of his pay. They only noticed by the network traffic that his "hire" was using.
https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-china/index.html
December 6, 2019 at 4:23 pm
Jack Corbett wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:Thom A wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:p.s. I've also adopted the policy of NVO (No Verbal Orders), especially for "urgencies". It there's not a well documented ticket to support the urgency, it doesn't get done. While that sounds like I'm being nothing more than an Ahole, I'm not. It supports audits and a whole bunch of other things and I've gotten management support on that. It's actually written into our SOPs on the company WIKI.
This is something we have for everything now, if the really simple stuff; as we got fed up of people abusing "urgents" at times. People will call us, and make a "urgent" work request, to which we remind them of the correct channels to raise a work ticket. Sometimes We've been chased a week later for that work, which they needed 2 days earlier, but then respond with "I didn't have to raise the ticket" when we say we can't find it. They literally take 2 minutes; if it was that urgent you would find those 2 minutes of time.
It does work really well though, as I'm sure many have found as well. People get a little "annoyed" by it, but those are many people that can't be bothered to make the request; but then why should we be bothered to do the work for them then? 😉
I take great pleasure in telling people that they just wasted more time arguing about opening a ticket than it takes to <insert drum-roll and cymbal crash here> open a ticket.
I had a job where I had to do this regularly.
On the other hand, one of my favorite interview questions is:
"Someone called to tell that a query is slow on the server. What do you do?"
I had a guy spend most of the time talking about how support tickets get created and dealt with instead of how to heck to deal with the problem. Ha!
if at any point they said " did you try turning it off and on again" I would have died laughing.
MVDBA
December 6, 2019 at 4:25 pm
if at any point they said " did you try turning it off and on again" I would have died laughing.
I have actually received that as an answer before. Ended the interview, which is nice.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
December 6, 2019 at 4:32 pm
MVDBA (Mike Vessey) wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:We had a person at my old job. She was ALWAYS on the phone. I got curious as to why and so I discreetly "hung around" for a couple of hours. She couldn't actually write a stitch of code... she was on the phone with someone that was. Why the hell our boss hired her is totally beyond me and she wasn't the only one that was seriously sub-par for the job. It's a part of what led me to quitting that job.
Jeff, did you just admit to stalking a woman and wasting a few hours on work time... lol 🙂
I like the one where the guy hired someone in china or something like one fifth of his pay. They only noticed by the network traffic that his "hire" was using.
https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-china/index.html
there was an "onion news" article about a guy who outsourced his job to India, it was then outsourced about 5 times - the closing line was something like "by 2020 this guy in Ethiopia will be doing 83% of the worlds work"
MVDBA
December 6, 2019 at 5:19 pm
MVDBA (Mike Vessey) wrote:if at any point they said " did you try turning it off and on again" I would have died laughing.
I have actually received that as an answer before. Ended the interview, which is nice.
HEY! Sometimes that IS the right answer! (Just not for the question that was asked)
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