How Not to Be a Computer Jerk (zt)

YugaYuga

An excerpt from book "Network Warrior" 2nd Ed, by Gary A. Donabue. Wish I had read this when I was younger.


How Not to Be a Computer Jerk

The computer industry is known for attracting a certain type of individual: the archetypal “computer guy” who thinks he’s smarter than everyone around him and talks to people like they’re idiots because they don’t know what the fuser does in a laser printer.

To be fair, most people in the industry are not like this—and not all of the ones who are this way are guys!

What is it that makes these people the way they are, and why are they attracted to the computer industry? While I don’t have any studies to back me up, I have made some observations over the years, both of myself and of others. Yes, I’ll admit I was one of these annoying people in a past life, and I’ll share with you how I recovered to become a successful professional.

There are a couple of things that contribute to the computer jerk phenomenon. Some of  them  are  self-induced,  and  some  are  environmental.  Some  computer  jerks  are actually nurtured  (usually  unconsciously)  by  peers  and  leaders,  though  people  in these positions often have the power to turn them around. After you examine these traits and influences, my hope is that you’ll be able to help someone you know—or perhaps even yourself—to become a more balanced, useful computer person rather than a computer jerk.

In my opinion, the primary influences fall into three principal categories.

Behavioral
Everything we do is based on habit, including our patterns of interaction. If you’re used
to dealing with people a certain way, you will tend to stick to these patterns. However,
that’s not to say these habits cannot be broken. We deal with different types of people
in different ways. For example, we typically treat women differently from men, and we
treat people in positions of power differently from our peers. While many people will
argue that they treat everyone the same, the simple truth is that they do not. The very
fact  that  you  have  friends  indicates  that  you  somehow  treat  them  differently  from
others.

One of the ways computer jerks operate is through constant attempts to let other people
know how smart they are. These people are usually very intelligent, but for some reason,
they seem to need to prove it to everyone around them. Unfortunately, they go about
it the wrong way.

There are two ways to look smarter than other people:

Be smarter than the people around you
Knowledge is different from intelligence. Knowing a lot of things is not the same as being able to troubleshoot a problem. Memorizing a book on anatomy is not the same as being a surgeon. People who are naturally smarter than the people
around them—and who don’t need to flaunt it—are widely known to be smart people. The people who are the smartest are often the most humble, for they have nothing to prove.

Make the people around you look stupid
This is the way the computer jerk likes to operate. He believes that if he makes everyone around him look stupid, those people will see how smart he is. Sadly, what the computer jerk misses is the fact that all of those people will come to dislike
the person who made them look stupid. If computer jerks could stop doing this, many things would change in their lives.

Everyone you meet is good at something. I learned this the hard way all those years ago. Remember that there will always be someone smarter than you, and there will always be someone better than you.

The smartest person in a computer department often suffers from what I call alphageek syndrome. Alpha-geeks need everyone around them to know that they are the smartest and the best. But often, these people are only the “best” within their small circles, and have no real view into their ranks within the wider world of professional IT consulting. When a consultant is brought in or a new person with a wide breadth of skills is hired, the alpha-geek will try very hard to discredit this person in the hopesof retaining his alpha-geek status. When faced with a confident, intelligent adversary, however, the alpha-geek will usually fail to discredit the interloper and end up looking foolish.

Another problem that computer people often have is delivery. Remember that you’re not the smartest person on Earth and that everyone should be treated with respect, and you’ll go far. People don’t need to be told the mistakes they’ve made (particularly in front of an audience), and they don’t need to be told what they’ve done wrong.....

yangkuan

netstat

太长

麥兜

It is not necessary to emphasise a "Computer" jerk, as jerks appear everywhere