I really hate all the gatekeeping that people do to make themselves feel better about their crappy life. The following image showed up in my feed and it talks about finding ‘if they truly are car enthusiasts or not’. I mean what the hell. An enthusiast is someone who is enthusiastic about something. You don’t need to pass an exam to be considered an ‘enthusiast’.
Best way to find out if your “car friends” are really ‘car people’… Show them this, their response and how long it takes for them to realise will let you know if they truly are car enthusiasts or not.
This happens in all areas and its usually men who will do this to exclude folks they deem not worthy to join their special little group. A few days ago I saw a post on one of the tech forums (didn’t take a screenshot) that asked if someone called SQL S.Q.L instead of Seequel did they know what they were talking about and if you would trust them with your database. I would trust them but will probably think twice about trusting the person who asked this question with my code/database.
A while ago I was on a call with a group of American devs talking to a group of British devs and the discussion was about changing the configuring router configuration for network optimization. The brits kept talking about changing the rooter (the British pronunciation) config. After the call ended of the of guys in the office (American) went something like: “All that is well and good but what on earth is a rooter that they kept talking about”. (The Americans pronounce it as rou-ter) Which I found to be hilarious. Gaurang keeps making fun of my pronunciation because I tend to use the US version rather than the British one that he uses.
But that doesn’t mean that the folks on call calling it a rooter didn’t know what they were talking about. If I can’t identify the image above it doesn’t mean that I am not an enthusiast, I might be more interested in car tires or performance numbers or whatever. Now if they had put this as something like using this as a test for identifying good candidates while hiring it would be a different story (still not the best way but definitely better)
Stop gatekeeping folks. You are pushing out people who like the same things you do just not in the same way or detail.
– Suramya