(un)professional e-mail skills -- was Re: JOB: Linux System Administrator

[Von Fugal]

<quote name="Levi Pearson" date="Fri, 17 Sep 2010 at 02:48 -0600">
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Almost without
> > exception when someone in the management hierarchy replies to my email
> > with top-posting it signifies that he or she did not read anything I
> > wrote and is just replying to what he or she thought I said.  It's very
> > frustrating because it represents simple laziness on the other person's
> > part.  If he's too lazy to read what I actually wrote, what else is he
> > lazy in?  Are my ideas even mattering to him and my company?  I bet that
> > many of you can say similar things about so-called professional e-mails
> > at your companies too.
> 
> This reminds me of how computer-techie types tend to look down on
> people who aren't terribly interested in acquiring the same skill set.
>  Look at the derision poured upon the CS professor's head behind his
> back when they learn he doesn't even know how to install Linux on his
> PC and can't get his laptop to talk to the projector!  Never even
> heard of the GPL, and made his webpage with Microsoft Word.  Must be a
> total dumbass.  Nevermind that he published a ground-breaking paper in
> the field of complexity theory.  He's just an egghead with no
> tech-cred and probably top-posts as well because that's what everyone
> else does, and he couldn't care less about what a bunch of old-school
> unix weenies think about how email should be used.

Yeah, backstabbing is never good. Also, this reminds me of how moral
relativist types look down their noses at anyone with a concrete opinion
about anything.

> Grow up, guys.  There's a world outside of unixoid operating systems,
> system administration, and internet tradition.  Not everyone cares

This list is ABOUT unixoid operating systems, so I think you're the one
out of place.

> about what you care about.  Nobody has to conform to how you think
> they should communicate with you.  Whining about it just makes you
> look petty and ridiculously anal.  Sure, you've got good reasons for
> why you do things the way you do, but they're *your* reasons, not
> universal ones, or they would actually *be* universal rather than
> adopted by only a tiny minority.

At least you have the sense to degrade us to our faces. ;)

Von Fugal
-- 
Government is a disease that masquerades as its own cure
-- Robert Lefevre
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