Next Fall I am taking a few programming courses at the local state college. So today I went to a campus computer lab to get an email account. Like elsewhere on campus, a part-time undergraduate is babysitting the lab. I filled out the form for an email account and gave it to the babysitter. "You will NOT get this email address because it's a reserved word! You WON'T," bellowed the undergraduate, who was assiduously reading a book on html. I said "uh, okay" and left the room.

The undergraduate wasn't in charge of creating email accounts. He wasn't a system administrator. He was just a part-time employee with an attitude, a nobody. I remember when I was an undergraduate and babysat a computer lab on campus. I started to develop an attitude myself. People would point it out to me. So when I encountered this rude person today, I couldn't help but think of myself. "Was I that much of a dick?," I thought . . . Naaaaahhhh

Eventually, I became a campus system administrator and having spent years in the IT field, I have to agree with you: a lot of IT people are mean. I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that one of the nicest people I have ever met was a former boss, also a system administrator (and heavy Perl user). The human population contains a disproportional amount of jerks. I think IT is a field that tends to accentuate the disparity.