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Comment by Salgat | Hacker News Reader

This is one case where I agree, and I'd even argue that a person who acts as "the savior" in this fashion is not as high a performer as they would seem, since they're introducing a negative productivity multiplier to their coworkers. The best advice you can ever give to a high productivity person is to create a barrier of resistance to helping others. When someone comes to me for help, I always ask what they've tried and let them work through the solution, because if I do it myself, they'll never learn and in the future my productivity will suffer since I have to spend more time helping them on things a junior or mid-level should be capable of doing.

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When someone comes to me with a blocker, I help them get unblocked if I can make the time.

This means that my duties as CTO or lead might be more spread out, that I have to work extra hours to feel like I'm getting enough personal coding time after factoring in administrative work, but it's worth it for me because my entire team moves faster and writes more robust software.

Unblocking someone doesn't mean doing someone's work for them, it means being a mentor, understanding their problem, and providing surgical assistance while also teaching them the same process you used to arrive at the solution.

I've had coworkers push back on this style before, opting sooner to fire employees for not immediately being key players. Meanwhile, I've cultivated some tight-knit teams where everyone is in sync and motivated to work and assist one another, regardless of skill level. Over time, the culture matures and the team is capable of managing more problems on their own.

I can tell you've never been reprimanded for being a blocker, when management sides with the people asking ridiculous learned helplessness questions, instead of learning how to help themselves. Bully for you, but just be aware that not everyone works for people this understanding.

You're absolutely right. In the situation you describe, the culture is already so screwed up with perverse incentives that you end up not caring if what you're doing is best for the company, just what is best for yourself and your compensation/image at the company. And I don't blame anyone for acting this way when it's what bad management is rewarding and demanding.

Asking for help != asking the other person to do it

I completely agree that when the high performer jumps to “let me just do it” it creates a negative multiplier to the team as most of the work will be only understandable by that one person and the rest of the team can do less than one unit of work.

Which is why it is very important for high performers to either know how to work in a team, or be assigned work where they can just do their things on their own.

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