Comment by nucleardog

Yeah, after the dozenth time with the same person where the "help" is "playing 20 questions to finally get the stack trace out of them which they should have sent in the first place and then then error explains exactly what is wrong and what they need to look at next" you might feel a little different about it. Or not.

End of the day, though, there's a huge, obvious difference between "asking for help" and "asking for someone to do all my thinking for me".

As a _person_, I'm very sympathetic to why that might be happening. I will do everything I can to help. And sometimes it does feel like I'm bordering on practicing psychology without a license.

As someone responsible for making sure _everyone_ is getting paid this month so they can keep a roof over their head and their kids fed, I do need to be mindful of and address issues that are dragging the entire team down. Regardless of why it's happening, if we're in a situation where you are doing the more company more good by _not showing up to work_ (you're contributing negatively), we have a problem and it needs to be addressed. We can work together on addressing it, but we can't ignore it.

For whatever it's worth, every single person on the team I manage says one of the things they love most about working here is how helpful and cooperative everyone is. Everybody's always happy to hop on a call and work through stuff together and really has a mindset of a rising tide lifting all boats--people are always volunteering to pitch in and help others before being asked. I like to think I've had some part in creating that environment. I am _more_ than happy to _help_. I had to starting making a distinction between "helping" and "doing someone's work for them" because I was getting burned out from overwork. I made it "formal" because I work with the kind of people who really appreciate clear rules and guidelines for things, including communication