<OT> Did I do the right thing?

[Chong Yu Meng]

Happy brithday, Jerry !

I used to get people like your UNIX newbie friend writing to me on an 
almost weekly basis, a few months back, because of my StepByStep on 
Tomcat. All of them from the place where your President wants to 
outsource your American programming jobs to. At first, it was alarming, 
then it got rather funny. From the tone of some of the emails, it seemed 
some of them were rather reluctant to ask a diminutive Chinese guy in a 
supposedly backward country, for help (wrong on 2 counts -- Singapore is 
considered a developed country, and I am 6ft tall). A lot of them think 
that, just because we helped them once, we are the official Linux tech 
support and they have a support contract with us.

I have since stopped replying to emails that I consider rude or from 
people trying to get a free ride. My job got outsourced to that country 
a couple years ago, and if they want to get paid my dollars, they'd 
better learn how to earn it.

You shouldn't feel bad. If you knew how they viewed you, you'd wonder 
why you helped them in the first place.

Regards,
pascal chong



Jerry McBride wrote:

>I just finished answering a plea for help from a newly installed unix admin. 
>He needed help finishing off the install of a an applicaiton that the "old" 
>previous admin hadn't completed. My take of the situation was that the "old 
>guy" was chopped off at the knees, juist as the project he was working on got 
>started...
>
>Anyways, I politely pointed out where and how to gather the needed 
>documentation to complete the project. It's funny, I would have assumed the 
>documentation should have been there already. The response I got back was 
>kinda snotty, so typical of todays youth and it ended in yet another plea for 
>help...
>
>After finishing my brandy and pondering what to do about this last bleet for 
>help... I responded with a paraphrased quote I learned so long ago... 
>Something like...
>
>"If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day... if you teach a man how to 
>fish, he will eat for the rest of his life"... I then told the young MSCE to 
>"GO FISH".
>
>I'm not conflicted about what I told the guy... I'm just a tad bit concerned 
>that he won't groc it... :') Did I do the right thing?
>
>Cheers...
>
>P.S. Happy birthday to me... 48 and none the wiser. :') Uhhh... BudWiser...
>
>  
>