Comment by tilmonedwards
10 years ago
In addition to that, I like to try to answer every question I can at work, even if I have to just go Google it myself. Telling someone you don't know and they should just Google it is robbing yourself of an opportunity to 1) learn it yourself, and 2) explain it to someone else (which is a GREAT way of making sure you really understand it).
Plus, people seem to like it when they ask something, and you help research through it with them. They come back to you again, which gives you another free opportunity to share someone else's learning, and you quickly turn into that person who either knows everything, or knows where to find out.
I agree with you completely here, but you definitely have to be careful, particularly as you become more knowledgeable. Some developers get into the habit of simply asking every time they can't find an answer, or giving up after only a few minutes trying, without realizing that the searching builds a better foundation than the answer many times.
My general rule has been - always ask what they've tried first. If it seems a sincere effort has been put into it so far, by all means help out. It may be something you know immediately, but there is value in teaching people to learn for themselves.
For sure. If I'm dealing with a junior engineer, I take a much more hands-off approach. It ends up taking longer, but that's ok, because usually, the net long-term benefit of that engineer getting practice at self-directed research is much higher than the output of the task itself.
On the other hand, if I'm dealing with a "senior" engineer who's doing that, I'm actually less worried about whether there's been sincere effort. It's just the other side of the same coin: They've offered their learning opportunity to me, and I'm happy to take advantage of it.
Conversely, there's an easy-to-fall-into bad habit of googling up an answer every time somebody on IRC asks a question, rather than waiting to see if somebody else is actually knowledgeable about the area, or doing the questioner the courtesy of assuming they're capable of googling for themselves...