Yes? No? Maybe?
I also expect my co workers to both ask and forgive a simple question once in a while. Otherwise it might be time to seek a friendlier work environment.
I also expect my co workers to both ask and forgive a simple question once in a while. Otherwise it might be time to seek a friendlier work environment.
It's completely reasonable, even expected, to ask your co-workers dumb questions when you get stuck. If they can tell you in ten seconds and it would take you five minutes (and you're not interrupting them in the middle of something) then why not ask? It's a more efficient use of your team's time.
But on a public forum, where you're talking to people who are volunteering your time, and you get a wider audience, it's a different story. Asking before you've done all your homework is abusing the time of the other people, both because they give that time freely, and because using 10 seconds each from 50 different people is more than using 5 minutes of your own time. Here, if you don't have the time or motivation to sit down and work through the question properly, wait to ask it until you do.
After awhile, people started to berate him for this behavior. He apologized, but kept doing it. He kept getting answers, and kept learning.
Last I heard, he'd gone on to be a team lead, then run his own, successful company. He didn't let fear of public annoyance or seeming stupid hinder his own progress.
I'm not saying everyone should gleefully annoy others, but I've met far, far too many technical people who spend more time on their anxiety than they spend on actually learning and doing. You have to find a balance, and obsessing over the theoretical time expended across a group of people is probably not productive.
If you're doing things right then there won't be any anxiety when asking your question in public, because you'll have done all you can on your own and be in a position to ask intelligently. If you're abusing other people's time because you can't be arsed to put in effort on your own, you should feel anxious about it.
But you'll never reach that point.
If you're abusing other people's time because you can't be arsed to put in effort on your own, you should feel anxious about it.
Why? What's the better thing they have to spend time on, and why aren't they already spending time there? You're talking about people who spend time on some forum because that is, essentially, a hobby for them. You're not "wasting" someone's time when their time has no particular value in the first place.
You're assuming that all kinds of help are equal in the eyes of someone who practices this "hobby," and that's simply not true. It's basically the equivalent of, "You just waste your time in that soup kitchen anyway, why not come cook me a meal in my mansion instead?"
That's pure conjecture on your part. I rarely see newbies asking for help on interesting problems, yet I see plenty of people willing to answer their questions.
It's basically the equivalent of, "You just waste your time in that soup kitchen anyway, why not come cook me a meal in my mansion instead?"
No it isn't. It's the equivalent of, "you just waste your time in that soup kitchen anyway, why not allow me to come to the soup kitchen as well?"