How can I get help from my work colleagues?
November 28, 2013 3:51 AM   Subscribe

The problem is that sometimes is is quite difficult to get a help from my colleagues - I can clearly see that they know how to help me, but just can't really get them talking.

I have recently changed jobs - and after a few months into it I am still struggling.

The problem is that sometimes is is quite difficult to get a help from my colleagues.

This is not my first job and looking back can I remember that I have always had a similar problems when starting jobs.

I am computer programmer and without a help of the person who, after a years of work, knows his way around millions of lines of code, even an easy task might takes days to finish instead of a few hours.

I noticed that while my new colleges are not actively refusing to help me, but rather not doing it very willingly which gets me to the situation when I can clearly see that they know the answer but can't really get them talking.

Some days when I go and ask the same question a bunch of people and get back with nothing helpful. I can email to everyone and the team, including the manager, and that sometimes gets me an answers, but still fees like a recognition if my failure to communicate my needs verbally, as we sit close to each other. Also, I don't think that such email practice will help me in the long run as it will likely to stop attracting responses.
posted by MittenLs to Human Relations (10 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
This might help. Sometimes it's a matter of asking questions in a way that makes it clear you are fully engaged in solving the problem, rather than just looking for a handout. People may be afraid that you are just looking to be spoon fed the answers, and even though you know that isn't true you still have to word your questions so that they know it isn't true.
posted by teh_boy at 4:10 AM on November 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


Can you give examples of what kind of questions you ask and how you ask them? That would in troubleshooting the problem.
posted by nooneyouknow at 4:24 AM on November 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think that teh_boy is on the right track.
Your emails or discussions should include the following in a brief, succinct way:

1) I have a problem
2) I have been working on the problem
3) I got into trouble when I reached this spot
4) Can you help me understand this trouble spot and show me how to solve this particular issue in case it comes up in the future and perhaps other similar problems
5) Thank you for your time, I appreciate it

When I was in the military, we didn't need to know the answer to every question, but we DID need to know where to go to find the answer.

Take notes, ask for reference book recommendations and learn to become the self-cleaning oven.
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 4:35 AM on November 28, 2013 [5 favorites]


"How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" is definitely a great guidepost. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that interrupting a programmer for even a few seconds can disrupt their productivity for more than that moment (see the cartoon "This Is Why You Shouldn't Interrupt a Programmer" for an example). In my experience programmers are often reserved in responding to people asking for help by interrupting them because
  1. they are desperately attempting to keep their memory and state of flow intact; or
  2. they are trying to discourage you from interrupting them in this manner; or
  3. both.
You should try emailing the people you want help from instead of approaching them in person and see how that works.
posted by grouse at 5:45 AM on November 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


looking back can I remember that I have always had a similar problems when starting jobs

It's not just you. Getting up to speed just takes a lot of time.

My usual approach was to take large slabs of the codebase home and study them in my own time; this helped a lot, as did reminding myself that feeling completely overwhelmed and incompetent in the face of a barrage of New was indeed a perfectly normal part of switching projects or jobs and had never actually caused me professional damage as far as I knew.

Seriously, it happens to everybody. Just let yourself not understand the stuff until you've been working with it for long enough that you do.
posted by flabdablet at 5:47 AM on November 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Talk to your manager. It's your manager's job to make sure you get training. Explain that you want to be productive and learning the ins and outs of their code base is taking a lot of time. Ask which team members would be best to ask, and ask to schedule 2 - 3 15 minute meetings a week with them for questions. Be really well organized as John KTO describes. Occasionally arrive with coffee, donut, or some other incentive. Having it scheduled helps with the flow. Maybe send the questions in email before the meeting.
posted by theora55 at 6:14 AM on November 28, 2013


They may also be resistant to helping because they know that if you spend six hours figuring it out yourself, you will learn about the codebase and be able to figure out more things by yourself. If they help you too much, you'll still be asking questions all the time in three years.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:39 AM on November 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


You need to strengthen your ability to figure out the large codebase yourself. Here's how I'd do it:

1. When given a task "add widgetX to pageY", do a search to find files that contain the words "widgetX" and "pageY". You can use the grep tool on linux, or the file search in windows/mac.

2. Figure out the few files that are most relevant. Use the skills that you built up from years of figuring out google search results. Look at the name of each file, and how many matches there are within the file.

3. Skim the structure of those files from start to end. Figure out how many functions each file has, and whether there are a few main functions within the file that do the most important work.

4. Look at the changelog (i.e. version control history) for these important files, to figure out when they were created, and what the important changes were. This also tells you who the important authors were, so that if you need to ask a question, you can pinpoint the exact person.

5. Now do a search to find the functions that call these important files, and also the functions that are called by these important files.

6. Do a search for the keywords "widgetX" "pageY" in your unittests, test plans, wiki documentation, and automation tests. Scan those to determine what the previous use cases were.

This should only take you a couple hours. It will remove the need to ask most of the questions you have.

Even if you do still have a question, you can go ask the specific author(s) identified in step #4. Rather than emailing the whole team, you are far more likely to get a response if you directly 1:1 email Bob and say, "Bob, I noticed you were the last person to change file XYZ, on Sept 15. I now need to add widgetX to that file. I'm thinking of adding it to function ABC which you wrote. Do you agree?"
posted by cheesecake at 8:25 AM on November 28, 2013 [4 favorites]


I don't know that work culture, or you, or your co-workers, but my first impulse, based on your description of their response, is that whatever your question is, they believe it has an obvious answer or way to find that answer, and it's something you ought to know how to do yourself.

Since you describe something similar as happening at multiple jobs, I think those above pointing you at more effective ways to communicate might be on the right track. If it's something that is reasonable for you to be asking for help on, that could work. If instead it's reasonable for them to expect you to be able to do it yourself, well, that would require a hard look at your own actions.

How to clarify which it is? A supervisor, a co-worker that seems friendly or at least courteous...?
posted by stormyteal at 1:06 PM on November 28, 2013


I noticed that while my new colleges are not actively refusing to help me, but rather not doing it very willingly which gets me to the situation when I can clearly see that they know the answer but can't really get them talking.

I can't speak directly to your situation of course, but I do this with some of my colleagues, and there are two reasons:

1) I'm really, really busy. I don't have time to help someone else to the level they require, and sadly it's not really my job.

2) I have become first port-of-call for someone. Rather than looking up the help file, googling, looking on internal wikis and documentation, they just ask me cause it's fastest. No lie: This really pisses me off.

I'm not saying that you are doing these things, but when people are busy helping other team mates is not necessarily top priority - especially if they have not tried to resolve their problem by themselves, or asked the person they should etc.

If I were you I would flag it with your manager. But also take heart in that everybody tends to feel totally useless at the start of a new job, and that they have to ask for help/reassurance too much etc etc. It's pretty common.
posted by smoke at 2:03 PM on November 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


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