Nerd Elitists #1: Anti-Microsoft

Recently a group of people have started responding to questions about why things aren’t working with the answer “because you are using Microsoft” (or similar). A conversation may play out like this:

timeinints: I’m getting a crash when installing Software X

Elitist: Are you using Windows?

timeinints: (excited because they know how to solve it) Yes I am

Elitist: Well, there is your problem!

It reminds me of my university days when people said similar things. Also, people were just obsessed with Linux, but even though the Graphical User Interface was perfectly fine, they would always use the command line. Those Linux extremists would then respond with statements along the lines of “it would work if you did it on the command line”.

Recently, we have been having troubles with conference calls on Slack, but when we try using Microsoft Teams, the audio is perfect. After announcing that we will switch future meetings to Teams, we had several Slack fanboys react to our announcement with an “anti-Teams” emoji on our Slack channel. These people don’t usually contribute to our channel, they were just lurking, but they jump at the chance to show their anti-Microsoft agenda.

I don’t think that elitism creates a good working environment, especially when people are struggling with some problem, then they get an arsey, dismissive response instead.