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Comment by southphillyman | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I have just had bad experiences but a lot of developers do this thing where they answer a question with a snarky question. Sometimes it's annoying to be asked basic questions but behaving in a condescending way lends to people not asking questions at all and not communicating issues. It doesn't matter if the person is Jr. or Sr. I've seen good capable Sr. developers miss stories because they would rather be silent and struggle trying to research and figure something out instead of asking questions due to the snarky competitive nature of the team. At my last company I became the default mentor of a non Jr. team member because his real mentor, who was also my mentor, was so condescending the guy was terrified to approach him. Having been in his shoes I had no issue repeatedly helping him get his build working or helping him understand the undocumented proprietary framework etc. A little empathy goes a long way

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I think it comes down to trust. In a lot of teams where the trust is poor, one can't ask a question without your competency coming into question in a subtle way: many developers will latch onto it and try to exhibit their business-specific or technical knowledge in a form of one-upmanship. So they have turned it into a competition instead of a conversation.

A good way to detect these environments is when you observe those who have been there longer not asking obvious questions. That usually means the trust issue is there. When you start asking those obvious questions, at first you get that feedback loop of slight condescension. But then others start asking questions and you often get a fruitful conversation.

Having worked outside of the startup world and in the startup world, I think this is a little more prevalent in the startup world because there is another axis besides experience involved in these conversations: how long the person has been with the startup. It's common to have an official or unofficial hierarchy based on experience but in the startup world, there is another hierarchy based on how long you have been at the startup. That additional axis means it comes up a little more in the startup world (in my experience so far).

> Maybe I have just had bad experiences but a lot of developers do this thing where they answer a question with a snarky question.

Extends far further than the workplace. A few minutes in some of the more popular IRC channels on Freenode, you'll get the same experience. It's extremely frustrating, especially seeing it happen as an outsider to communities you like.

I feel like, in the same way that power generally corrupts people, "feeling smart" can corrupt the same way, coming down to the same attitude of feeling like you have an advantage over other people. Regardless of whether you actually are smart or not.

On one hand, I get it. Especially the popular channels on Freenode or places like the Arch Linux forums can get swamped with people who could not care less for rtfm'ing. Ungrateful, entitled, obnoxious folk, robbing people of resources and time who're putting in work for free, at least in a lot of cases. Sucks. I usually get splendid answers from these sources because I don't even bother unless I have a specific question or error, logs to back it up maybe. Yesterday I had somebody on #Openvpn help me with an issue in three lines. Nice.

But if the snark is heavy without being warranted at all, it more than pisses me off. It reflects poorly on whatever you're representing and it's just bad communication. If all you have to offer is a lmgtfy.com Link, don't bother. Those immune to that train of thought won't, the others already have.

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