Discriminatory Help 10

[BJCooperIT]

I am going to duck before I say this too loudly. Do those of you in the USA remember the protests against import cars because of the jobs that were lost at the U.S. Steel mills? Well, it occurred to me that there is a high potential that we here at Tek-Tips are providing help and solutions to the very same folks that have those offshore jobs we have been discussing lately.

Example:
I might have gotten a particular job, but it was sent overseas. "Mohan" gets this cheap labor job in his country.

"Mohan" needs help and posts the question on a thread here at TT.

I answer "Mohan's" question. He is now successful in his job, helping to insure he keeps his job.

Questions
Do you help under this circumstance? How do we maintain our professional integrity and help those that need it, if we suspect we may be hurting ourselves?

Please be kind. I answer all questions I am qualified to answer without regard to the apparent nationality of the poster.

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000

 

[BJCooperIT]

I feel a bit defensive. While most of you have taken up the spirit of my question, it seems as though some think that by asking the question I am part of the problem. Not so.

Within recent months I have been searching for a new contract. I spend a great deal of time online searching the job boards and keep a Tek-Tips browser open. Periodically I return to this browser and check postings. Thus the job search is always on my mind when I am reading threads.

Have you ever been given a math problem and the answer pops up in your head but you have no idea how you figured it out? Sometimes I have a knee-jerk response to something someone posts and I do not know how I arrived at that conclusion. In this instance I did not like the question that came to mind. Where did it come from? I am a very accepting and tolerant person and I felt guilty that this thought was my own. I needed to break this reaction down logically to understand it.

I have realized that it was only an issue for me when the poster was poorly-skilled in the technology in which they make their living. In the Oracle fora these types of posts are mostly made by folks who struggle with their English skills. So... when I read a post in poorly phrased English from someone who hasn't a clue about the tools they use, I logically wonder why my job search is taking so long when my skills are still needed somewhere out there. The next logical step in my thought process was: "Why are they working at a job for which I have better skills?". So there I was wondering if they are working in one of those outsourced development jobs which then led to a bit of green-eyed envy on my part. A human reaction I can deal with and this thread has helped me understand it's source.

[sub]Disclaimer: I am not saying I am better than anyone - certainly not the forum MVPs from whom I have learned much. They have helped me sharpen my SQL & DBA skills. Like most everyone here, I simply know a few things that I can share with others who have less experience.[/sub]

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000

 

[CajunCenturion]

I don't feel you're part of the problem at all BJCooperIT. In fact, I've asked myself some flavor of this question several times.

When someone posts a question on Tek-Tips, we all have our various criteria for deciding whether or not we're going to answer this question. It is perfectly reasonable to consider these issue in making that determination. Unless information is provided in the post itself, we have no way of knowing where this person is, who they work for, who their client is, where their client is, and such.

But we do (or should) ask ourselves is this homework? Is this person a professional? Is this a professional question? Why not also ask, Does this person deserve our help? Does this person belong in this profession? Do they want help, guidance, or do they want me to do their job for them? It does not serve our profession, nor our fellow professionals, well to prop up those who don't belong.

It matters not to me where they're from. Just because they are not from my country, doesn't mean that they are taking anything away from my country. But if they are not skilled, and not IT professionals, then this is not the place for them.

Would you expect a major airline pilot to answer the following question: "Hi all, I took a ride with my neighbor in a Cessna 150 last week, and the pilot let me fly for a few minutes and I really got the hang of it, but now I have a more detailled question. I told my boss that I could fly and now he wants me fly him in the company learjet tomorrow and I was wondering what the proper temperature exhaust gas should be while on final with an outside ambient temperature of 50 deg F? As much as we'd all like to help our fellow pilot by providing the information, to right thing to do -- the right answser is -- go to flight school and let a professional fly the plane.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Murgle]

Would that be posted in the Wing-Tips forum?

Ahhhhh, I see you have a machine that goes Bing!

 

[CajunCenturion]

What do shoes have to do with it? :-D

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[lionelhill]

BJCooper, I don't think you need to worry. I'm sure we all recognise the sort of person you describe, and frankly they come across as utterly clueless. If their boss fails to notice just how clueless when they're actually working together, then I'm pretty sure the boss is himself so clueless that he'd certainly have failed to choose you at interview (or would have chosen you accidentally for completely the wrong reasons). Bosses and employees like that deserve each other, and I just feel sorry for the rest of the organisation.

Tek-tips is interesting to look at because lots of people post here. I have a horrible feeling that if all the postings by not-very-professional people were taken away, there would be less than a critical mass remaining, and the whole thing would fizzle out. Interestingly, I've learnt more on postings that weren't mission-critical difficult problems, than on the few more tricky ones I have posted in areas where I know I'm as knowledgable as the next chap(chappess). Those just didn't attract much readership.

 

[dilettante]

I always thought the bias against imported cars was due to loss of car sales, not steel mill sales. I suppose it depended on whether you lived in a car town or a steel town.

One big difference between that scenario and now though is that the competition was between domestic corporations and overseas coporations. At the time, this competition was about real or perceived value as well as price. Well now it seems to be the domestic corporations who are simply preying upon their labor force - or ditching them by the side of the road. Basically the domestics have chosen to not to innovate or otherwise be competitive, they just slash costs and let the chips fall, hoping gullible consumers will continue to buy their product even though their buying power dwindles and dwindles as they and their relatives are forced to take lower paying menial jobs.

As far as stabbing ourselves in the back through participation here and at similar sites goes... I don't think there is any doubt about it. But you could be aiding your competitor down the street just as easily as around the globe. The difference is if your work heads "there" due to lower living costs and fewer safeguards regarding working conditions and hours you don't even have the option of chucking it all and heading where the jobs are. Many of these countries have very rigid immigration policies and restrict the work that a "guest worker" is allowed to do.

For all we know Tek-Tips is an evil plot to foster technology transfer abroad ;-) I have my doubts about that one though. It might be interesting to see an economist's take on this whole thing. Maybe all the talk about how the Internet has fostered offshoring of IT and other work includes this help forum aspect. I suspect the pundits haven't even considered it yet.

But I can't see any reliable mechanism for discriminating based upon locale even if one chose to. So your only choice would be to either avoid this sort of mutual-assistance site entirely or else delete your FAQs and become a sort of leech only asking questions, never answering those of others.

Don't feel lonely though BJCooperIT, you aren't the only one with concerns along these lines. It is tough trying to figure out "the right thing to do" when there are moral and practical issues on several levels.

 

[BJCooperIT]

Thanks everyone.

dilettante,
Interestingly, I did live in a steel town at the time!

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000

 

[kiddpete]

I recently saw a post at another site by someone who claimed to be soliciting contacts who might have work available to move overseas. No one offered up any names or addresses.

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

BJCooperIT don't feel bad or defensive. You're thoughts are normal and you face your feeling truely. Only by knowing our faults can we become better. CC once agian hits it on the head. We should try to keep this a professional learning environment. Those that just come here for an cut & paste answer so they can get a task done but don't care about learning the why we should not answer but that is hard to gadge some times.

I, just yesterday, got a reply to a thread I was pinging back and forth with the poster for a fairly large statement that he/she couldn't get his/her head around. All in all I probably spent close to 1 hour trying to figure out what they where doing to give them the actual answer they needed an truthfully a few time I just looked at their post and thought "What the @#*$ are they doing there". I continued on and it all clicked into place for me and I posted the final result that they could just cut and paste to finish the task but made sure to explain how I was working throughi it. To this I got the response of.

"Wow!, I think I get it... .... Your solution worked like a charm... I can also see where I can use this in quite a bit..."

That their is the best reward. Knowing you've been there and helped someone else get a piece of the puzzle into place and you know they understand the bigger picture a bit better now.

Saddly there are many people out there in positions you would be better qualified for but lionehill points out you probably wouldn't be very happy there.

 

[fredericofonseca]

I'm not going to address anyone in particular.

As I am one of those &quot;bloody foreigners&quot; some people refer to sometimes, I have always consider a very bad attitude to refuse to help someone just because he/she is not from <insert country of choice>.
I am, in my own area, considered an expert by most, and I will give my support to anyone that asks (though sometimes it will not be the answer they want!!).

Although it is sometimes obvious that the poster is not a native English speaker, many of those that I have identified so far (on the reduced number of forums I read) are from either South America (specially Brazil and Venezuela), or from African countries. None of these fall on the group of countries that is normally used for outsourcing either from Europe or from US.

Refusing to help them based on the fact that they may be &quot;stealing&quot; our jobs is highly unethical in my opinion.




Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[BJCooperIT]

Frederico,
I agree with you that it is unethical to withhold help based on any bias (nationality, skin color, religious beliefs, etc.).

I met a lady from India on a contract last year and wound up being her mentor. She is much better skilled at forms now and I have learned much from her as well. I now consider her to be one of my best friends. This spirit of give-and-take is what Tek-Tips is all about.

There were also 5 gentleman from India on the contract. Three came to me regularly for assistance and I was happy to teach them. However, one seemed very intimidated by me and would contradict me to make himself look better. Often the statements he made were wrong and all he accomplished was to make himself look foolish. Despite this, I still offered to help him when he needed it. I treated him no differently than I would have an American citizen in the same situation. The last gentleman knew everything (or so he thought) and would not accept help from me. When he needed help he asked my lady co-worker, she then asked me, I answered her, then she went and told him!

When the contract ended 4 of the 5 came to me and thanked me for helping them. The foolish fellow simply looked over his shoulder at me and walked out the door. If any of these gentleman asked me for help today I would still do what I could for them. It is the right thing to do.

There basic factors that influence a decision to help:
- Do I understand the question?
- Do I know the answer?
- Can someone else answer this better than I can?
- Does this appear to be a student posting homework?

Then there are the factors we may not be proud of:
- Does this posters attitude annoy me?
This might include demanding you provide the code
because they are tired of trying.
- Does this poster have a history of abusing the forum?
Do they ask questions that they could easily
answer by looking in a manual.

and the list goes on. I was simply looking for a discussion on conquering this relatively new bias.

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000

 

[SQLSister]

Frederico, I believe most of the most highly knowledgeable people here don;t care if the person is from some other country or is a native English English speaker.

But as in all things, anytime you have a group of people some will be prejudiced. Generally I try my best to ignore the idiots who think they are better than someone else becasue of their skin color country of origin religion or some other irrelevant factor.

I admit that I will give more slack to an arrogant person if that person actually does know more than most people. But that happens to be my personal prejudice, I'd rather deal with an arrogant competent person than a really sweet incompetent. And an arrogant incompetent sends me right over the edge.

But I think that it is good the BJ brought up the subject so we can openly discuss it. It's difficult for people to see their own job opportunities being diminshed. They then tend to view things differently than maybe they did in the past. However, pretending those feelings don't exist doesn't make them go away; I believe it may often make people more likely to reactly negatively than if they have a chance to air their feelings and see how others think on the same subject.

As to my views on the subject. I have received lots of help here when I first was learning SQL, some from Americans and some from people overseas. I think it is my obligation to return the favor without discriminating on a basis of who you are and where you are from. Yes, I could be giving information to someone else who will be directly competing for the same job as I am, but that was true all along.

I do reserve the right to help only people I feel are serious professionals. I feel no need to spoonfeed information to those who can't look up the format of a select statement in Books online. But I will tell them where to look because if you are a professional sometimes that's all you need, to know what to look up. There are few regular posters whose questions I never consider answering because they are so clearly unqualifed for their jobs and over a period of time, I've noticed no skill improvement whatsoever. To me the most helpful thing I can do for people like this is to stop supporting their incompetence so that they move out of a career they are clearly unsuited for. But a genuiine beginner who is trying to learn and not just have someone else solve all their problems; I'll go way out of my way to help those people whether they are from India or right down the street because that's an obligation of a senior professional to help transfer their knowledge to the next generation of professionals.

Well I've been overly long winded as usual.

 

[strongm]

Sorry BJCooperIT, wasn't specifically trying to get at you. It's just that 'not from the US' got me agitated; there are plenty of users of this site who are not based in America

 

[AnanthaP]

I once heard of a Mohan who is an IBM research fellow and publishes a lot.

&quot;Mohan&quot; gets the job because someone out there knows that since the pay is less, the quality is likely to be less. But still OK and managable.

Similar posts have been around. There was this post about this Irish airlne called RyanAir, who outsourced to cheap workers (its only now that cheap = &quot;Mohan&quot;'s land). Did they or did they not get what they want?

As to why people answer theseposts, God and their respective &quot;id&quot;s - a decent word for ego - know.

If it's any consolation, most &quot;Mohan&quot;s would probably like to migrate to USA.

Why &quot;Mohan&quot; in the initial post itself? Why not &quot;Ex&quot;? Please think of that.

AnanthaP from India.
End.

 

[TheRambler]

I will not address to anyone in particular either.

Some people may find useful the following reading:
The oneness of existence

http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/philosophy/oneness.html

&quot;The Self is everywhere, whoever sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none. For one who sees oneness everywhere, how can there be delusion or grief?&quot;
. . . . The Self is the essence of this universe, the essence of all souls . . . You are one with this universe. He who says he is different from others, even by a hair's breadth, immediately becomes miserable. Happiness belongs to him who knows this oneness, who knows he is one with this universe.

That is a very old teaching and quite opposed to the ethnocentrism still found today.

So, what's my point? when you help someone, your are helping yourself too. Let's build a better world for all.
If my name is Miguel, Michael, Mike, Mihail or Misha it really doesn't matter, I am the same human being.

 

[lionelhill]

Come to think of it, I've seen quite a few sensible answers written in poor english, to trivial questions written in excelent english.

Maybe if we're carefully keeping our knowledge to ourselves, we should be equally careful to keep to ourselves the pollution caused by our server farms and their power stations?

 

[BJCooperIT]

Originally I typed &quot;XXX&quot; and then I changed it. The reason? I thought &quot;Mohan&quot; gave a nationality clue, unlike &quot;XXX&quot;. Since this is a serious thread about how to personally overcome discrimination, I resisted making up a facetious user id like &quot;I_have_your_job_and_I_live_abroad&quot;.

I once worked with a fellow who believed knowledge is power, so he never gave any of it away. If asked a question he would slant his answer so that you still did not have the knowledge you needed. I disliked working with him because he would sabotage any situation to make himself better and you look stupid. That is unprofessional and simply not nice. I have always strived to be his opposite.

By asking the question I hope that each poster examines their heart to make sure they are not fostering a bias, especially if they may be unaware they are doing it. I pray we all grow stronger, and become a better technical community.

I sincerely hope that my legacy is:
&quot;When I worked with BJ, I learned a lot and would enjoy working with her again!&quot;

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000

 

[fredericofonseca]

BJCooperIT and SQLSister, I agree with you both on what you've said. (and the others also).

One of the things I hate is when the answer to a question is &quot;VERY&quot; clear on the manual, and even though my answer is RTFM (with some details of which manual to read), someone posts the full code. This does no good to the OP.

And SQLSister, I share your &quot;personal prejudice&quot; and your opinion on transfer or knowledge.

As for the &quot;job opportunities&quot; I am on a market that is suffering very badly with it, and is going to be even worst on the next years due to some big companies outsourcing their COBOL positions to India (UK and Ireland), and this has already affected me directly last year. This did not change my view over this subject.




Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[svanels]

I once worked with a fellow who believed knowledge is power, so he never gave any of it away.

I also have seen a lot of these guys trying to make themself indispensable, and they are getting what they deserve. If he/she has subordinates they will kill him with work, every problem they will bring to the &quot;boss&quot; to solve.
When I am sleeping, he gets a call from work 3:00 am in the weekend

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

Knowledge is power but something I learnt while I was in the USMC was that unless the information was classified giving out more information to the feet on the ground was a good thing. It means that other people can make better informed decisions and you never know when that is going to save your butt.

I'd like to think the reason I like helping is all idealistic and all ..... but in actuality a large part of it is me getting a &quot;buzz&quot; from seeing people learn from me. Forget I said that.....I do it just to expand the knowledge base of those around me selfishlessly

is &quot;selfishlessly&quot; an actual word or did I make that up?