Ask HN: I'm hesitant to helping colleagues, why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm hesitant to helping colleagues, why?

20 pointsocai41 comments

I have a couple of fantastic colleagues that are always willing to help and have built a large base of connections and influence. Their connections are helping them always know the latest news in the company and be exposed to more opportunities. They also get a much preferable yearly evaluation. On top of the benefits above, my definition of a good person includes helping others.

But, every time someone asks me for help, or sometimes when I find an informative article, I'm hesitant to sharing it and helping others.

Anybody had the same issue? What could be the causes?

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It took me a decade of work to realize that in corporate America you are almost always paid for being nice and helpful to your colleagues, rather than your individual contributions, no matter what level you are hired at. And this becomes more and more true as a company scales in number of employees (currently at a FAANG and couldn't be more true).

For me personally it was a major shift that occurred over a couple years transformation. Before:

- I used to be extremely dogmatic about my thinking, would get into "fights" over adopting the perfect technical solutions (i.e. API design, specific ways of writing a component, ...). I was insufferable at times.

- I would find, honestly, a bit of pleasure at explicitly shutting down other people ideas, always in a polite-but-clearly-condescending way, bonus if in public with senior leaders in the room.

- I would generally not help people, thinking that if I did my relevance as technical expert would diminish. Very territorial behavior. When directly asked a question, I would typically reply as ambiguously as possible.

I don't remember what caused it, but I did a 180 degrees shift at some point based on the mantra "I am paid for being nice" and:

- I am genuinely nice in meetings. I always cheer people up, and if I see a suboptimal idea, I never ever belittle the person who suggests it, and start asking very polite and respectful questions (almost always in a private conversation to avoid "public" grilling) until the other person naturally sees the point I was trying to make. If the other person is not receptive to the engagement, I drop it quickly. It is not the end of the world if a mistake will be made as a result of a suboptimal idea, and I could always be proved wrong.

- When a person asks me for some quick help, it is common for me to thoroughly answer and then also offer a full 1-2 hours meeting and explain them everything I know about that area, including potential insights about the future. I still have a tiny bit of “cockiness” from my old days, enough that people don’t abuse my very open attitude to help.

I had to change company to pull off this transformation, because my reputation as "extremely smart and extremely productive brilliant jerk" was too ingrained in my old one, but I am generally happier now. I think most coworkers would describe me as "Helpful and generally competent guy, easy to talk to". I like that.

I can see many "old me" coworkers around, it is truly sad to witness and I can't believe I used to be like that.

Not brilliant and highly productive any more?

No. Mostly because I am now at a FAANG and the quality of engineers is much better than previously (large not-so-interesting Bay Area startups that get the quality of engineers they can afford to pay, aka well below FAANG), so it is more difficult to stand out.

And the few times I could stand out by making insightful observations in front of senior leaders, it is just not worth it and prefer to let team mates take the lead. I am truly happy being an averagely productive team member, my main goals in life are now towards reaching financial freedom in a few years, and with some luck I am on track even without swinging for the fences on the career side. Senior engineers at FAANG are paid unbelievably well.

I wish everyone on HN had these same realizations. Both your comments are gold, almost literally. And people would be much happier to go into software dev with realistic expectations. I would’ve been.

It takes a lot of self reflection and maturity to realize mistakes we’ve made in the past, so thank you for sharing this about your career.

I’m wondering if you felt forced out of the company where your reputation was a brilliant hard to work with jerk?

I’ve worked with people like this before and unless the company culture is set up to reward this kind of behavior from the top down, this always ends in said person being worked around and given less and less responsibility and slowly managed out no matter how brilliant they are.

This almost always happens in the polite Silicon Valley way of getting rid of people where no one gets fired and everyone just smiles and works around you until you leave due to “incompetent team members” or “work not challenging anymore”, especially at start up’s who really don’t have the time or money to deal with wrongful termination lawsuits.

Not implying that this is what happened to you, but more so wondering if you felt this at all or it was just self realization that prompted your move and behavior change?

I did not feel forced out, actually management tried to convince me to stay with a pretty compelling counter offer. I knew I was stuck in a rot of most coworkers and management seeing me as this “brilliant but unapproachable authority”, and I wanted to start fresh in a new place with humbleness. Much easier to do in a new company.

I know what you mean and I have seen other people being managed out of the company with smiles, via gradual marginalization and removal of responsibilities.

If I had to guess why that happened to them is because they were “more jerk, less brilliant”, in my case it was slightly the opposite as my contributions happened to be really significant for that company.

Do you get embarrassing flashbacks of previous behavior or any pangs of worry that you'll regress?

Have you ever tried nudge those "old versions of you" towards your current direction?

No offense, but I sense from your writing that English may not be your first language. I am American but have done business all over the world. In the USA a more collaborative business/work environment is the norm vs Eastern countries where win/win is not really a concept and business/work tends to be much lower trust and more adversarial.

I have no way of knowing but perhaps there are some cultural tendencies at play here? If you think that might be the case, and you do want to be more helpful and collaborative I would suggest a therapist to help you work through these feelings. It may sound like overkill but if you posted about this it is clearly important to you and worth exploring a bit.

I disagree. I find a lot of the people I work with insufferable leeches of my time. I work with one guy who asks me a question, I'll spend an hour with him as he writes it all down, and he will ask me the same question a month later and repeat the same cycle of writing it down. I have the expectation of my colleagues that they would put in some base level of effort for their pay. Many do, some do not, and these people are the ones I do not enjoy helping.

Maybe you are scared that they won’t find the article as informative as you think it is? I would start by sharing things with your closest colleague and branch out from there with incremental sharing/helping. That first time someone says “I think I heard about x from you initially actually” the positive feedback loop will have started.

Honestly, this took me years before I saw it but it will happen.

Think of it this way: social norms mean that you will likely only ever receive the positive feedback from your sharing, not negative feedback. And even if you got negative feedback, how bad could it be? “I already knew that” or “interesting.. but i couldn’t finish it” “but thanks for thinking of me!!”

Hope this helps :).

You ask the wrong questions.

If you are considering doing something, ask yourself if it's a win for yourself and whoever you're relating with.

Is it an important relationship to you? If the answer is yes, then consider investing in it. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

If they are asking for help doing something they are perfectly capable of doing themselves, you should consider passing.

If you help someone who doesn't reciprocate or takes credit for your time, then you're just enabling bad behavior. Don't do it. It's not good for you, it's not good for their growth and it's not good for your company.

So, if it's a win-win, just do it and with confidence that it's right for you and right for them and don't waste energy on /hesitation/trust-issues/feelings/whatever.

"Helping" others in of itself doesn't make you a good person. It makes you a caretaker. Caretaking babies is appropriate and a good thing to do. Doing things for capable adults that they are prefectly capable of doing themselves isn't. It makes you a tool and people will lose respect for you. Even the person you just helped.

"Know thy self"

Others can only grasp at reasons you find this difficult, only you will really know. Think about what it is that puts you off doing it, how does it go when you have done it in the past, what (if any) direct or indirect consequences are there afterwards.

Motivation is a key part. If you aren't a fan of the colleagues who ask for help then it's harder to be motivated. Especially if you think they are ungrateful (although it appears in your case that those who help are recognised for it).

The other aspect is that people asking for help are often lazy or at least have not tried sensible steps before asking - there is sometimes a legitimate concern that if you help someone for one thing, they'll be back with a dozen inappropriate requests for help and this is more likely the less effort they've put in. This is where it helps to have a clear sense of what is and is not reasonable for help - with my skillsets I can usually help people with a huge swath of problems even where I know less than they do about the topic but typically one needs to politely draw boundaries (usually) or you end up making no progress.

Back on the point about how it goes when you help people, it's worth thinking about how well / badly it goes. Is it easy or is the communication awkward? Do you feel you are knowledgeable enough to help or does it show up your limitations? Do you get shy? Do you resent them during or after it? Do you struggle to make the connection between helping and having a positive outcome? Would you be uncomfortable helping even if there was never going to be a clear benefit for you personally (ie altruism)

These are all really things only you can answer. Some of them will only be clear if you give it a go sometimes. I'd suggest you have a go and after try some introspection. It'll probably be fine. Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Why are you hesitant? Ask yourself that and write out what feelings/thoughts you have associated with helping people in this situation. Envy? Insecurity that those you help will exceed your abilities? Impostor syndrome? Etc.

You won't be able to come up with a good path forward without being introspective and asking yourself these questions.

One thing you could consider is short-term versus long-term gain in future decision making. You already know that the colleagues who offer help and information are finding success at a greater rate than you.

Consider that information the next time you are approached. The short term cost of helping or sharing information will pay back in that longer-term success.

While some people may expect you to change your actions to be a good person, in reality, helping others and sharing helpful information will give you an advantage in future.

That's one of the things about doing good; it pays off in the longer term through personal contentment and often (but not always) in meaningful success.

I found the book "Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success" pretty interesting. At the very least you'd understand more about why it's useful to give and how that affects team dynamics.

This is gonna sound cynical but I don't enjoy being "helpful" at work because it often comes back to bite me in the ass.

I work in IT, and if you go the extra mile for a person one time they often expect that to be the norm from that point forward and may even tell other people about it who will then expect it to be the norm for them as well, and it just becomes extra work that's expected of you on top of your normal job duties, and if you complain or try to stop doing it you'll be seen as not a team player or lazy for trying to do less.

Or if you agree to do a favor for a co-worker one time, and then they ask a second and third time, and they start asking more frequently until eventually they're just coming to you every single time and it ends with you basically doing part of their job for them.

As you mentioned it can be helpful to do this because you do get those connections and influences with other people, you just have to decide if it's worth the effort to you personally to be doing what amounts the extra unpaid work to get those connections and influence.

I’ll move mountains for people as long as they’ve RTFM and have not demonstrated themselves to be idiots/leaches.

Sadly, most knowledge today is google deep and people don’t even know what a manual is.

It needs to be balanced - if something is documented then you can just point them at it.

But people you've done favours for are more likely to do them for you too. And that's a major force multiplier when it comes to your own goals.

I totally agree but the people I'm talking about are not the kind of people that will return the favor, they're just slackers who are looking to do the least amount of work possible and offloading it onto you is just one of many tricks in their toolkit of avoiding doing actual work. People that will return the favor do exist but the amount of coworkers that will do something for me is vastly out-weighed by the aforementioned slackers.

And the same thing about going out of your way to help out end users, it just ends up being expected of you and if the next time you say no they might raise a stink and get you into trouble, either for not following process the first time, or for causing a bad and inconsistent user experience by NOT helping them the second time.

It's easier to just do what's expected of you and nothing more, nothing less.

Maybe you’re just a lone wolf type. Maybe you’re burnt out from the pandemic / work-at-home dystopia we’re all suffering with. Maybe you just DGAF. It’s all valid.

It doesn’t matter, helping others: it’s part of your job.

I was stand-offish at work for a few years, until I got layed off and realized "being a stand up guy and getting along with your co-workers" is a hidden requirement on every job description. For people like OP, it may seem like helping others "isn't like them." Well, sitting in a cubicle for 1/3 of my life isn't my raisin d'etre either. That's what the money is for! I pretend I'm an actor playing "Software Engineer 8" on a hyper realistic TV show no one films or watches.

Perhaps you had a bad experience elsewhere. Dysfunctional companies exist. Sometimes a colleague will be hopelessly over their head, and will ask for help continuously to the point where you're doing all of their work. Or sometimes coworkers will hoard information and refuse to help you when you need help, leading you to feel that you also need to hoard information to have something to barter with.

Sounds like it might because you consider being nice and helpful to people as some kind of work affectation rather than a character trait. What kind of influence do you want to be in the world? If it’s negative so be it, otherwise consider being nice and helpful in general, in and out of work.

Maybe you have a cynical outlook that people will take from you but will never give back, people who grew up in poverty, or had a rough life will sometimes have this attitude, or it might just be pure selfishness, only you can know.

Does the reason matter that much? Next time you notice this hesitancy, you could talk to them anyways. After a while you could still decide whether it is net positive or negative for you.

Well, it seems like you cannot help yourself find the cause and that's why you are asking us. If you cannot help yourself I don't think you are in a position to help others.

The cause is that you are selfish and want to look after yourself. You need to let go of your ego and be happy for the success of others.

While it’s possible that selfishness is involved in some way, reducing it to selfishness alone is unnecessarily judgmental. Examining the source of that selfishness would be more helpful for someone like OP who wants to understand/change.

Selfishness can come from many places. The need for self preservation is not inherently bad or wrong. But when it surfaces in a context like this, it provides an opportunity for someone like the OP to understand themselves better. We’re not competing for the last scrap of food, and so these instincts don’t always serve us well.

I grew up in a traumatic environment. My self preservation instincts are highly attuned. This led to some default behaviors that some would label selfish. I’m now one of the most helpful people I know, as shared by those around me and I find great satisfaction in it.

This didn’t come naturally, and I had to cultivate the mindset. I wasn’t selfish because I didn’t want to help people, I was selfish because I was afraid of my own failure and the perceived ramifications of that failure (ultimately: loss of income and starvation).

I eventually learned that being helpful can be one the most self preserving things I can do, because it helped me built a support system that now stands strong.

Selfishness is a symptom, not necessarily the cause. It’s worth examining, but saying “stop being selfish” could be as useful as saying “stop being depressed” if the source is something deeper.

Have this same issue but it's for people I know are leeches. No idea how to deal with it properly.

"I'm 35, I have half a million dollars and I feel like shit because I don't go to parties anymore"

"I'm 40 something I am a millionaire I bicker with my wife over the next thing we will add to our high tech house so I feel like shit"

"I am a solo founder who got burned out and lost all meaning"

"I'm a deeply conflicted person who believes it is good to help people but I can't bring myself to do it, why oh why?"

Is HN slowly turning into some sort of psychological outlet for troubled men?

I wouldn't say slowly. I feel like these types of posts only became common starting several months ago. I haven't run numbers, but I feel like the number of "Ask HN" posts has dramatically increased in the past couple of months. Maybe @dang can provide some insight.

That said, people need to learn introspection. All these questions are answerable if you sit down and think about things for awhile. Life is not mysterious; it's often boring and repetitive. Life is not supposed to be one dopamine hit after the next. Accept this, and a lot of the drudgery makes sense.

lot of people get through life without ever realizing we're all running on a hedonic treadmill. There's good times and bad times wherever you are in life.

Just appreciate that you're alive because as long as thats true, the story continues.

I think a lot of people here take 90% of their time and free time alone behind a computer.

After +15 years alone like that it take a toll on their mental health.

And after such a long time they are really far behind in social skill and they understand that doing a todo app with every new javascript framework is for most of people not the meaning of life and they don't know where to start.

Hey, sometimes I talk to customers too, so it's like I'm with others behind a computer. On a serious note, the pandemic really exacerbates this.

Maybe someone is running a social experiment on us.

Perhaps HN has an unusually high number of people experiencing the same thing - forced work-from-home, induced isolation, and 24 months of compounding effects from a pandemic. I'd love to holodeck this and see if a few months of beers, patio lunches, and watercooler coffees pushed the numbers back to 'normal'

You mean the joy of working from home and complete isolation?

You're the one mentioning men.

Those are real issues, made particularly worse due to covid.

They also make it to the front page so they ought to resonate with the crowd.

As a "vent-er" myself writing things to a group of strangers seems healthy. It is like a prolonged and much needed hug without the other person awkwardly patting on your back to signalling you to end the hug. People are honest here. Sure there is a delusional ambiance of success here but in the deep nests of the comment jungle you find solace that some one has your desired traits has gone through the same shit.

You can't find a place where people are honest yet direct with you without the burning bridges.

I personally wouldn't want to be in any place where you don't see the frustrations of people in the same page where people discuss their interest. Twitter and Linkedin is vent free and I find them to be hypocratic.

In the few hours since you posted this we have a person who makes about a million a year asking for career advice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30237425

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