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I Don't Understand

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Re: I Don't Understand

#51

Post by j-kidd »

Evbn wrote: post #25
babarock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you but there's a fine limit between asking questions and asking to be hand held. And it also works the other way around: I cannot stand when a member of the team is too afraid/shy/... to say "I don't understand". (I'm not blaming the team mate as much as the work environment. Nevertheless it's still a very real problem). When I get out of a meeting with coworkers and they said they understood (…

What is wrong with hand holding? If someone never outgrows it, they may meet a lower salary for being inefficient. If someone succeeds without it, it doesn't happen. If someone needs it and doesn't get it, we spend twice as long cleaning up mistakes. In any case, handholding itself is never the problem, and avoiding it just masks more serious problems while regarding communication and relationship building. The offic…

If someone never outgrows it, it drags the whole team down by constantly having to answer the most basic of questions.

Re: I Don't Understand

#52

Post by 11001 »

ihsw wrote: post #39
11001 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are supposed to know it.

If you're supposed to know it and don't, then what do you do? Pretend you do know it and suffer in silence?

We might be picturing very different examples in our heads. I'm talking about straight up incompetence.

Re: I Don't Understand

#53

Post by dpcan »

I hope this isn't the case. I've been sure to speak up when I don't understand since the beginning. Don't people appreciate it when you want to make sure you get it right the first time?

Re: I Don't Understand

#54

Post by [deleted] »

rmc wrote: post #8

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher from 2,500 years aging said this. "Wisest is he who knows he does not know". And er, Donald Rumsfeld, when talking about unknown unknowns.

[deleted]

Re: I Don't Understand

#55

Post by jaggederest »

zaidf wrote: post #41
jaggederest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, people turn off their brains when they hear 'This was my fault'. They stop investigating further once the blame has been assigned. It's more important to do the classic 'five whys' than to assign blame. A scenario: Maybe Joe forgot to do the maintenance task. Maybe he forgot because he's been working overtime and is tired. Maybe he's been working overtime because there aren't enough sysadmins. Mayb…

Sure, the way I see that in order for the 5 whys to work, you still need to know that Joe made the immediate mistake. Now, as part of the process, you create ways to prevent that mistake. When doing that preventative analysis, the other whys should pop up and the solution may well be something beyond Joe.

Right my point is that saying 'It's Joe's fault' is wrong. The blame lies beyond him. It's cool to say 'he forgot to xxx' or 'he made a mistake and yyy', but to just categorically call it his fault is wrong.

Re: I Don't Understand

#56

Post by zaidf »

jaggederest wrote: post #55
zaidf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the way I see that in order for the 5 whys to work, you still need to know that Joe made the immediate mistake. Now, as part of the process, you create ways to prevent that mistake. When doing that preventative analysis, the other whys should pop up and the solution may well be something beyond Joe.

Right my point is that saying 'It's Joe's fault' is wrong. The blame lies beyond him. It's cool to say 'he forgot to xxx' or 'he made a mistake and yyy', but to just categorically call it his fault is wrong.

If the responsibility lies beyond him, then he shouldn't say it was his fault. You only say that if it was indeed your fault or you qualify how much of it was your fault.

Re: I Don't Understand

#57

Post by bmelton »

kstenerud wrote: post #7

I first noticed this effect in college, when the prof would be talking about something that didn't make sense to me. If I remained silent, he'd never explain (of course) and I'd remain ignorant. However, whenever I asked him, everyone would start furiously writing down his explanation in their notes. So I got into the habit of saying "I don't understand". Inevitably, there would be quite a number of other people who…

Another aspect for which you might attribute this to more senior devs is in their ability to know how deeply they need to understand something in order to implement it.

A lot of times when I'm building something in a problem space I don't know very well, I like to keep guidelines loose, because I know that I'll be taking some leaps in development, and I know I'll be working in areas where I'm not fully competent.

For those reasons, it's hard for me to envision the project start to finish -- I'll know the general steps, but each implementation detail is a variably sized black hole that I can't peer into until I get deeper into it.

For things I'm more familiar with, I'm able to ask better questions, and more easily identify when something isn't going to work, or at least not work as expected. To the lay person, I appear dumber on the things I know better because I'm able to ask more specific questions, so I ask more of them until I'm 100% confident that I do understand, and generally, at that point I can just do what I'm supposed to. Where I'm less competent, I ask fewer questions up front, but then way more as I'm doing to make sure that what I've ended up with is going to meet expectations.

Re: I Don't Understand

#58

Post by mikeash »

magic_haze wrote: post #22
ColinDabritz wrote: post #9

One expression of this that I hear from newer devs (and clients) sometimes is "Can't we just...?" and what it really means is "I don't understand", but in a more socially safe way. If I address the question as if it were "what am I missing that makes this seemingly simple solution not viable?" it usually addresses the question and spreads better understanding. I also find that if someone is having trouble understandi…

I've been dealing with this exact experience the last couple of weeks, after being asked to take ownership of a huge codebase. From what I've noticed though, saying "I don't understand" usually triggers a more detailed explanation of the existing design, leaving out the "why" part unanswered, and ending with me still completely baffled. I've had to resort more often to "Can't we just..." type questions, and while tha…

I usually go for something along the lines of, "I'm probably missing something, but it seems to me like it ought to be doing X here instead of Y. Is there a reason it's Y?"

Re: I Don't Understand

#59

Post by d0m »

I used to say I'm always right because when I'm not I say it (or I admit I'm not sure). It came out as being arrogant so I stopped using it publicly. But it's true. When I'm not perfectly sure, I never act like so. I'm only comfortable arguing back when I'm totally sure, i.e. can point to the right explanation in a book or something similar. Friends find it a bit annoying.. because whenever they ask a question, I'm rarely comfortable answering yes or no.. it's always, well, it depends ;)

Re: I Don't Understand

#60

Post by chernevik »

I am but an egg. Very new as a developer, not particularly good.

The smartest programmer in my workspace frequently looks for me when he's trying to solve something hard. There are a dozen people around us, at least, who are better able to _solve_ whatever problem he's working on. But they don't ask as many questions. I ask a lot of questions. Midway through explaining stuff he's solved his problem.

And meanwhile I've learned a ton.

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