Really liked the point that asking for help is not about sounding impressive, but about making it easy and natural for another person to say yes.
How to ask for help from people who don't know you
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#52This was an excellently written, salient post with some good tidbits. I've learned some of these lessons the hard way. I'll add a few. Proof of work is important, but it's not about the magnitude of energy you spend. I went through two iterations of reaching out to my college network. The first time I put so much time into handwriting notes and trying to provide my relatable background. 100 notes, not a single respon…
> Thirdly try to pay it forward.
The thing I've found is that often what's simple and easy for me (the person being asked) is difficult or overly cumbersome for the person asking (or even not asking). Often it's due to simply being in the right position or knowing the right people. We're all in this together and there's so much to success that's beyond talent and skill. All the small little actions add up even if you don't get to see how
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#53[flagged]
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#54This was an excellently written, salient post with some good tidbits. I've learned some of these lessons the hard way. I'll add a few. Proof of work is important, but it's not about the magnitude of energy you spend. I went through two iterations of reaching out to my college network. The first time I put so much time into handwriting notes and trying to provide my relatable background. 100 notes, not a single respon…
I disagree with everything you said. It's basically just pure luck in terms of something like repairing a flat tire, etc., and then in a professional setting none of this applies at all.
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Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#55Adding to the canon, something I started awhile back, maybe worth revisiting: https://pizarrowrites.substack.com/p/the-book-of-help
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#56From what I have seen online like for Reddit discord and online forums is that the questions with the most responses tend to be almost the exact opposite of what this post says. What you got to do is bait the audience into responding. It usually follows the following formula: Title: “woe is me this problem with well documented answers is troubling me!” Body: a vague description of what the problem is and what they’ve…
Yeah, but that's Reddit; everyone loves to spout off to show off.
Gotta get them points?
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#57One thing that always bugs me at work is when I get a slack message from someone I don't know along the lines of:
"Hello John, are you available to chat later today about Foo Product?"
Or sometimes just:
"Hello John"
I know they want something from me, but I have no idea what, how much effort it will require, how urgent it is, or whether I am even capable of helping.
A much better approach is more like this article outlines:
"Hello John. I'm looking into in a client-reported issue with Foo Product. The customer states they are unable to do X. The support ticket is . I've done some investigation and think I have identified the root cause with . Are you available for a brief 30 minute call this afternoon to discuss the issue as well as some potential fixes?"
That way I have some idea of context, priority, and what they are looking for from me. I can also review the details of the ticket prior to the call, which makes for a more productive conversation. Or if there is someone else who is more knowledgeable than me, I can request that we add that person as well.
If you're in the habit of starting work conversations on slack with just "Hello" - I would highly recommend that you start including additional context when initially reaching out.
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#58There is plenty advice around for "how to ask" (really, it's the same if you know the person or not). It all boils down to a Calvinistic "show you're worthy" kind of exercise. But what about advice for giving help to someone? There's plenty of ways that giving someone help can go horribly wrong, and I think that it's not uncommon for people to be blindsided by such a request.
A pretty incredible answer to your question comes from a perhaps wholly unexpected source: Hunter S. Thompson, in a letter responding to a friend's request for life advice: https://fs.blog/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
Beautiful!
I did have in mind something more like the Socratic method, asking pointed questions of your mentee, guiding them but not pushing them. I suppose that in a weird way that essay is the Hunter S Thompson idea of the socratic method.
I really do think it's important to give thought to HOW to give help.
Especially in the technical communities, there's such an over-emphasis in "asking correctly". It perhaps started with usenet (think Eric S Raymond's INSUFFERABLE FAQ on "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"), and ended with the persnickety and now thankfully moribund stackoverflow gameified and toxic question-and-answer forum.
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#59I think the most important thing to be aware of is that your own personal estimation in how willing some group of people is to help is regularly off by several orders of magnitude.
I've had people assume that person X must be asked several times a day for help when they're really asked once every few years. Alternatively, I know people who assume they are sending some totally unique request to someone who gets a dozen of the same inquiry every single day.
Until you get a good baseline figure of how competitive your request for help is, everything else is pre-mature optimization. The best thing is to just be lightweight about it and dash something off as soon as you think of it and to not be too emotionally invested in whether you get a response or not. Only when you gather evidence that the response rate is below what you expected should you try to optimize how you ask.
Re: How to ask for help from people who don't know you
#60One thing that always bugs me at work is when I get a slack message from someone I don't know along the lines of: "Hello John, are you available to chat later today about Foo Product?" Or sometimes just: "Hello John" I know they want something from me, but I have no idea what, how much effort it will require, how urgent it is, or whether I am even capable of helping. A much better approach is more like this article o…
sending nohello website [1] back to people who just say hello without additional context is a classic solution