Start talking about logic gates and flip flops and PLAs and FPGA, maybe even throw in few of the ASICs. If they don’t shut up even after that then bring in the big guns and start talking about doping and PN junctions and How BJTs are better than FETs
I was legally contracted to say yes.
At least it was satisfying to answer NO when the question involved their personal (not a company one) acer cheap mall laptop filled with mcafee, bloatware and socuh combined with the slowest low capacity hdd in existence.
Hell NO
What they say: “You know about computers, right?”
What they mean: “Can you fix this bug in Microsoft’s software?”
Alright I’m probably the outlier here but… I like helping people with their IT needs, and I’ve always found the problem solving and praise kinda nice. Maybe it’s just a me thing tho
I actually like helping people a lot, too.
I don’t think IT folks are naturally misanthropic or antisocial, but I personally got beat down so much by wanting to help and realizing they didn’t care to listen, or weren’t willing to learn anything. At all. Even though they came to me with the problem, it seemed they mostly just wanted me to fix it for them with zero understanding required, or to “be emotional at someone” or were lonely.
I also got so tired of being friendly and enthusiastically educational with advising my relatives or friends, only to then watch them completely disregard 100% of my advice they came to me for.
In the former job I’m still putting myself back together from, most of the public peoples who visited me would have been better served by visiting a psychologist / therapist first, but I was cheaper (free). :(
Often when it’s something I do specialize in and I get all excited, that’s when they choose to gloss over and I can tell they just want me to stop talking.
I hate having biases against people, but there very much are definitely “normies” who are threatened by the prospect of having to activate their neurons for the first time since they stumbled out of their highest level of education, and only learned to think when it was forced upon them.
Makes a guy feel pretty crappy. So I’m not as forthcoming with my skillset as I used to be in casual company. Lol
I think what you are describing is teaching not helping. Helping someone is just doing the thing they need help with and thats it. Its not a prerequisite that someone learn something if your goal is just to help them but it is if your goal is to teach them something.
It is nice when people share your interests and want to learn but everyone’s got their own stuff going on and sometimes can’t make room for something new like that.
Except in a minority of scenerios, helping someone do something ≠ doing that thing yourself. It could mean less, or, at times, even more than that.
Take the familiar example of helping a blind man cross street. While you do cross the street with him, the fella ALSO WALKS with you and crosses the street on his legs, not yours.
imo - you are not the outlier, you just haven’t yet progressed to the mostly inevitable stage where people take advantage of your help, or their spyware ridden dumpster fire of a laptop breaks and they blame you because you “touched it last” - never mind that was 6 months ago and the only thing you did was change the screensaver timeout.
My new excuse is, “I only know linux, I don’t know anything about windows.”
I do that too but only because it’s much easier to help my relatives with Linux than those with Windows.
I even “convert” some people because Llinux is easier for them if I just manage it. I had a neighbor that was using Window on a very old computer, it was slow and choking under the weight of simple updates. Plus, she was always asking me why her computer kept rebooting by itself while it was obviously Windows update. So I installed Mint and all the problems went away.
Anyway I don’t want to have to deal with Microsoft accounts, licenses, office365, the general bloat, the ads, the new versions of Windows… I have enough at work, so if I am going to help on my free time, it has to be on the OS I find easier to deal with.
Stare at their computer blankly
“Wait, they got rid of the green hill???”
