Look back over the last year and count who actually got your help. Not who you would have helped. Who booked the time, sent the message, caught you after standup.
Most people find the same thing when they count. The help went to the confident ones, the ones who were already doing well, and quite often the ones whose career looks a bit like yours did. That is not because you favoured them. It is because help in most teams is pull based, and pull rewards whoever finds it easiest to ask.
The people who need it most are usually the worst at asking. Somebody who has been told twice that a question was obvious has learned what asking costs. Somebody who is not sure they belong will not spend the only credit they think they have on a favour. Somebody who joined during a busy month watched everyone look harassed and drew the sensible conclusion. None of them will ever tell you this. They will simply not appear in your calendar, and you will read that as them being fine.
So stop waiting to be asked, and be specific instead. Not a general offer to the room, which sounds generous and commits nobody. A named person, a named thing, a named time. I have half an hour on Thursday, can I go through the migration with you. That is a much easier thing to accept than it is to request, and accepting it costs them nothing socially, which is the whole point.
Then watch for the quiet signals, because they are reliable. Whose pull requests sit for days without them chasing. Who has stopped speaking in standup after something went wrong. Who is doing careful work that nobody in the room could describe.
And keep it small. You are not adopting anybody. Half an hour, once, aimed at one thing they are stuck on, is enough to change whether that person asks you anything for the rest of the year.
The cost of getting this wrong is not dramatic. It is just that two people on the same team, hired the same month, quietly end up with different careers, and everybody involved thinks it was about ability.
Monday: pick the person on your team who has asked you nothing in three months, and offer them one specific half hour.
– Asael Shinder
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