If a person hasn't used some of their time to find the basic, easily obtained, obvious information about a subject that interests them, I see no motivation to use some of my time to spoon feed their interests to them. Pointing out that their question is of such a nature is a way to suggest they overestimated their question's complexity or difficulty.

On the other hand, if they show that they've put some effort into educating themselves on a topic and ask a question that isn't on the first page of google results for the exact keywords they used in their question, I have no problem helping such a(n at least slightly) motivated and passionate person discover the deeper depths of their distraction.

Attempting to teaching somebody that doesn't want to learn doesn't seem like a good use of my most limited resource - spare time.

Of course, there is an allowance for people that have a positive posting history - almost everybody gets lazy once in a while, but you should save sharing such style until after establishing yourself as somebody actually interested in knowledge (whether as a means or an end).

I am currently in the airport on my way home from GDC and I thought I'd rant a little bit on the subject. I was at a presentation today (Today was student pass day) and I had a question for the presenter, which wasn't readily available on google or could be easily answered online. I spent almost 40 minutes waiting for high school students asking him the same questions "What would you recommend if I want to get into game design and not programming or art?", "What major/school/whatever is right for what I want to do?", "Can you look at my portfolio book quickly?", etc. ALL OF THIS INFO IS READILY AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR THE MOST PART. A lot of it available on this site!

I ended up kinda line skipping to get his card and run to the next seminar without asking the question I wanted to ask him because all these kids spent 40 minutes asking him the same question (One person actually asked a question at the mic, then proceeded to follow him outside and ask the same exact question wasting more time).

RAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Slightly more on topic, I hate when people ask me to do tech support for them (family/friends) when all I do is end up googling their problem to solve it. My friend called me the other day and said "My computer is fucked up and I don't know what to do," without any extra information. Needless to say I got off the phone quickly.

It's simple why I say "Google it". Because I'm a really helpful guy but really lazy too. So I won't take time to answer a trivial question, just say "google it".
Or what I'm doing recently: link a thread from gamedev.
Some examples: point in triangle and fps camera is asked one or two times a day.
I just link a previous thread, because I made long illustrated posts on them once already.

And, for some reason, I'm annoyed about these questions. After all, I figured out everything myself (partly because I only have net for 2 years, partly because that's a passion of me to implement everything myself).

Then why can't anybody else do it? I'm not a genius, I haven't done CS courses. I just sit on my ass and work things out (paper and pen - the unknown magic tools). All with basic vector algebra (basic means I know what a dot and a cross product is, and I know the equation of a plane and a line - wow, big knowledge...)

The reason it annoys me: because it's not only in CS, it is in any kind of engineering too. People can't (or refuse to) solve anything for their own.
And I see these people as incompetent people, who flood the employee market, and it's extremely hard to stand out from this crowd, and get to a f.ing interview, so I'm unemployed for 8 months now. And all I can hope is I get "lucky" to get to an interview. Or I guess I will end up as a cleaner (which is very hard to get in as well).

Sorry for the rant, and some one please correct my English!

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
I hate when people ask me to do tech support for them (family/friends) when all I do is end up googling their problem to solve it. My friend called me the other day and said "My computer is fucked up and I don't know what to do," without any extra information. Needless to say I got off the phone quickly.

Haha, actually I had someone text message me just the other day asking if I could help them with a problem they were having with their PS3. I don't own a PS3 and wasn't about to try to have such a conversation over text messages so I offered a couple simple obvious suggestions and politely recommended that they look up their problem on Google.

They then asked me if I could Google it for them. Actually their exact words were "Could you do that for me? Thanks I owe you one." It was at that point that I just stopped replying to him entirely.

So yes I DO understand where you guys are coming from, I guess I just get frustrated with people less easily :P

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
I spent almost 40 minutes waiting for high school students asking him the same questions "What would you recommend if I want to get into game design and not programming or art?", "What major/school/whatever is right for what I want to do?", "Can you look at my portfolio book quickly?", etc. ALL OF THIS INFO IS READILY AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR THE MOST PART. A lot of it available on this site!

"Can you look at my portfolio book quickly?" is a pretty darn important question to ask in-person at GDC... I mean, if you get the opportunity to show your work directly to the programmers and a hiring manager live in person and make sure it is seen it could be the difference between having your resume lost in the garbage before even being seen and getting ushered into the back room for an on-site interview (chances are low or zero for a student with no industry background, but you know what I mean).

The other questions are less valid, certainly... But that said, they vary from studio to studio and so unless they are answered in a public way (which most companies don't really do) they could be valid. There isn't exactly a global FAQ for them as they do depend on studio, personal experience, and how hard you rock the party.

My guess is that some of the inane questions you heard were born from desperation to be heard and seen by someone who might potentially hire them for a job they want... But also born out of laziness and lack of true dedication which it would take to create a real opportunity to talk with the people there.

In any case, lines longer than two or three people at GDC I tried to avoid, but I had that luxury as I was able to hit up the big studios before all the students flooded the hall. It sucks that you weren't able to talk to the guy, however. Out of curiosity was your question much different than asking him to see your portfolio/resume/business card? Not judging, that's basically what I was there to do, but it seems to me that at a "Career Pavilion" it really makes a lot of sense for job seekers to ask that type of thing.

Quote: Original post by M2tM

"Can you look at my portfolio book quickly?" is a pretty darn important question to ask in-person at GDC... I mean, if you get the opportunity to show your work directly to the programmers and a hiring manager live in person and make sure it is seen it could be the difference between having your resume lost in the garbage before even being seen and getting ushered into the back room for an on-site interview (chances are low or zero for a student with no industry background, but you know what I mean).

It wasn't a hiring manager. It was a game designer. They have a whole career area for HR people to look at your resumes/portfolio. This was a speaker after a session. I completely understand having to wait in line in the career pavilion, and I did for a few companies, but I had a question about this guy's speech and there were 20-50 high school students in the way asking questions that have more than readily available answers online.

I'm slightly more piturbed at the way a lot of the kids asked their questions rather than their actual questions. It was something along the lines of "Here's some really unimportant question. Now let me try to have an unrelated conversation with you for 5-10 minutes while there's 20 other people waiting to ask you a question. Just to wrap up, let me ask the original question a different way now just to drive home how clueless I am."

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care

Quote: Original post by M2tM

"Can you look at my portfolio book quickly?" is a pretty darn important question to ask in-person at GDC... I mean, if you get the opportunity to show your work directly to the programmers and a hiring manager live in person and make sure it is seen it could be the difference between having your resume lost in the garbage before even being seen and getting ushered into the back room for an on-site interview (chances are low or zero for a student with no industry background, but you know what I mean).

It wasn't a hiring manager. It was a game designer. They have a whole career area for HR people to look at your resumes/portfolio. This was a speaker after a session. I completely understand having to wait in line in the career pavilion, and I did for a few companies, but I had a question about this guy's speech and there were 20-50 high school students in the way asking questions that have more than readily available answers online.

I'm slightly more piturbed at the way a lot of the kids asked their questions rather than their actual questions. It was something along the lines of "Here's some really unimportant question. Now let me try to have an unrelated conversation with you for 5-10 minutes while there's 20 other people waiting to ask you a question. Just to wrap up, let me ask the original question a different way now just to drive home how clueless I am."

Ah, I understand now. There were a few presentations within the actual Career Pavilion, so it wasn't clear you meant a session presenter. Then yes, rage on my friend, rage on!

You can always be just a tad more helpful. Here, let me Google that for you.

Quote: Original post by CandleJack
I guess my curiosity was why people more often choose to respond in a more smug manner when I suspect that in a scenario outside of the internet, this wouldn't be the case.

Maybe because outside of the internet you're not sitting in the middle of the largest library ever constructed with one of the easiest to use card catalogs ever made a click away.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by CandleJack
I guess my curiosity was why people more often choose to respond in a more smug manner when I suspect that in a scenario outside of the internet, this wouldn't be the case.

Maybe because outside of the internet you're not sitting in the middle of the largest library ever constructed with one of the easiest to use card catalogs ever made a click away.

What are you talking about? Don't we all spend all our free time in the library of congress?