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Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

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Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#21

Post by seanwilson »

buckbova wrote: post #2

> Spend more time trying to figure things out for yourself before asking for help. Isn't this obvious and don't most developers want to do this? I work with someone who basically refuses to figure things out for himself and goes from person to person trying to get us to tell him how to develop something. Eventually he throws so much cruft at a project until it works. It's been years and he asks the same questions. I'…

There's a difference between not asking for help and asking for too much help though. Frequently a team member can save you hours by giving you a few minutes of help e.g. maybe they know about a useful library for something when you were about to implement your own one. That's not the same as asking for help every time within minutes of encountering a tiny problem like your example though. I agree that's not a good thing to do.

Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#23

Post by wyc »

tashoecraft wrote: post #10
wyc wrote: post #3

I think this is a dangerous and terrible rule of thumb that will definitely damage culture. It's such an egotistical view that you're so smart, you don't need anyone to help you ever. I would rather work with a bunch of "non-rockstars" than a bunch of assholes. IMO, this deification destroys values like modesty and is generally counterproductive. If you're really looking to save everyone time, a good balance may be t…

I feel that when he makes the claim of "never" is where you are having a problem. You really should try to figure things out on your own because that is the only way to are going to permanently attach the solution to the problem. When others help you, the solution doesn't always stick and you are left coming back when you run into something similar months down the line. Now if you are banging your head into the desk…

The argument that not asking for help results in resilience and therefore debugging prowess sounds like an X/Y problem to me. If the real goal is to have better debugging skills, then more direct advice might be "understand fully why your solution didn't work" instead of "don't ask for help".

Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#24

Post by shubhamjain »

phillipuniverse wrote: post #4

I came across this a while back and is what I tell all the newer people that I mentor: https://blogs.akamai.com/2013/10/you-must-try-and-then-you-m... Some people tend to miss the "You MUST try" part. I am more than happy to take a million questions of the "I tried x, y, z and saw a, b, and c; what's up?" variety. Where it gets frustrating are questions like "I haven't really tried to hunt this down yet, but how do I…

Although, I agree that trying a lot before putting up your problem is an important aspect of a good developer, sometimes, after building up something, an experienced developer might suggest you a solution that makes you wonder if you should have asked for it before.

Like, a game developer, might be able to suggest "Object Pooling", "Dirty Bit" to optimize the game's performance, that a novice might not have much idea about.

Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#26

Post by jquast »

It's also important to ask questions well: "here's what I did and what I expected, but this happened instead. Here's what else I've tried and researched before asking you, and these are the things I'm not sure about".

Forming a good question often leads to the answer in of itself. By writing it down and emailing it instead, the person can answer it at their own leisure, and the response can be easily shared with the whole team to learn from.

Even better, if that fails, you now have a copy you can easily post to a github issue or mailing list (or stack overflow, if you prefer).

When I have trouble with something, instead of reaching for colleagues, google, or stack overflow, I just read the manual(s) top to bottom, multiple times if necessary, or the source code, or write prototyping test cases.

Even if it doesn't always solve my problem, the things I learned in the meantime always pays back later. The downside is I inevitably become the person to ask for help, and I'm always told "How do you know so much?", and I tell them exactly that, but they don't seem to get the hint, I'll see them again in the near future. I've even been previously termed as a kind of "real life stack overflow".

I suspect it may be a generational issue -- those of us who were left to solve difficult problems without the help of the internet have developed methods that do not include google and stack overflow.

Anyway, I do ask for help. I've studied destructive forces in software development teams, my current hypothesis is that ego is behind them all.

Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#27

Post by [deleted] »

buckbova wrote: post #2

> Spend more time trying to figure things out for yourself before asking for help. Isn't this obvious and don't most developers want to do this? I work with someone who basically refuses to figure things out for himself and goes from person to person trying to get us to tell him how to develop something. Eventually he throws so much cruft at a project until it works. It's been years and he asks the same questions. I'…

[deleted]

Re: Why Rockstar Developers Don't Ask for Help

#30

Post by rkangel »

phillipuniverse wrote: post #4

I came across this a while back and is what I tell all the newer people that I mentor: https://blogs.akamai.com/2013/10/you-must-try-and-then-you-m... Some people tend to miss the "You MUST try" part. I am more than happy to take a million questions of the "I tried x, y, z and saw a, b, and c; what's up?" variety. Where it gets frustrating are questions like "I haven't really tried to hunt this down yet, but how do I…

That's a great article that I hadn't seen. It's a good way of looking at it.

The original post is very wrong because he sees it as an absolute. The trick, as with many things, is that it's a balance to be struck. You'll never learn anything if you ask someone else every small question, and you miss out on the full benefit of everyone else's skills and experience if you never ask anything.

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