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When should you ask for help?

Kayla Sween on October 04, 2019

One of the biggest challenges I've seen for new developers is knowing when to ask for help. There are two ends of the spectrum: asking for...
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barbadurkel

The last step is underrated.

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Kayla Sween

Absolutely! And I’m guilty of not doing it too often.

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Martin Beentjes

Writing down the problem you were having and how you did solve that problem is so underrated. That is one of the most powerful tools you have.

I wrote some stuff down in our documentation half a year ago, and now I read it again. It helps so much, and writing stuff down always helps.

Great piece!

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Kayla Sween

I totally agree. I know I’ve run into the same problem in AngularJS countless times over the past few years and never wrote down the solution. I finally did, but I was kicking myself for not writing it down sooner!

Thanks!

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Sebastian Vargr

My rule of thumb is to ask for help if i am out of solution-leads, or what i am working on has high priority and i do not have time to pursue all the leads i have.

Leads include, google, docs etc, like the article mentions, but also code debugging, library source-code exploration, testing, and other shenanigans.

Do these things, if you have the time.
You will come out a slightly better problem solver each time, i promise.


I find 90% of the time, i already know the solution.
I just gotta poke the old relation engine a bit to bring it about.

A couple of tools i use to do this are, list all probably solutions down, and if that fails, use a colleague as a canvas and list up your possible solutions to them, without their feedback (speaking aloud to your-self also works, but i usually only do this at home).

This is usually enough to get the creative juices flowing.

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Sebastian Vargr • Edited

Also, as rule of thumb, i never try out solutions before i have listed up the possible solution's first.

I might end up pursuing a detour, or sub-par solution, otherwise.

Unless ofc. i am limited by time.

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Kayla Sween

Those are good suggestions. Thanks for sharing! I like to try out solutions as I go, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes I will look at a few places and try to summarize (for lack of a better term) my findings into another solution.

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Aaron

Thanks for the tips Kayla. I have found that asking the question on StackOverflow etc can help. Quite a few times I have written the question out and when I have broken down the problem I have then worked out the answer myself before I have hit send on the question. Some people find those sort of communities unfriendly and unwelcoming but in terms of forcing you to ask a well prepared question I think its great.

Thanks again! Have a great day.

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Kayla Sween

Definitely. It’s a fine line to walk between being unfriendly and explaining the need for a specific question. Thanks for reading!

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CamCode

There are good suggestions, but in the third point sometimes it's very hard, because not always seniors or bosses help you (this is my experience, but it's not always true, depends where you work)

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Kayla Sween

That’s a good point. I’m very fortunate to have worked in places where senior devs and managers were willing to help whenever. Thanks for bringing that up!