[mindondrugs]

Oh man, I relate to this feeling tremendously. I am a junior dev on an apprentice program (just shy of 1 years experience to date) and the times I have struggled with something because I let my pride, or fear of bothering people with inane questions, have been the lowest points in the last year. I always get to the otherside wishing I just talked to a senior dev - because more likely they could have saved me a stressful week.

[justapassenger]

Few random thoughts as someone who mentored many junior engineers:

- don’t care about your pride. You’re here to learn, so do everything you can to learn. Imagine even the worst possible scenario - people get fed up with you - you’ll go and find different job (benefits of being in a booming industry). Your old coworkers won’t follow you but knowledge will

- don’t think about all the time you spent looking for answers yourself as wasted. Some if it was, but you learnt also tons of other things that may not be relevant now, but will be in a future

- ask your mentors not only for direct answers to your questions but also for reason and/or how they came to that conclusion. Most important skill for you to learn is how to think about problems and how to find solutions, not the actual solutions to few problems you came across

[Silhouette]

For whatever it might be worth, here is my advice to juniors about being mentored:

It mostly is true that the only stupid question is the one you didn’t ask.

Please don’t ask the exact same question twice. Take notes if you need to. Asking for clarification or following up for more detail is fine.

If you have many questions and your mentor has other responsibilities, try not to keep interrupting them all the time. Discuss the best way to balance your needs and theirs, perhaps finding a time/place/medium where you can have a larger discussion and deal with several questions at once.

Assuming your mentor has accepted that responsibility voluntarily, they’ll probably be happy to help even with the basic stuff — we all had to start somewhere — but will appreciate it not taking over their whole day.

[hobs]

Also - make sure they understand your goals instead of your hyperspecific question - a lot of time can be saved by avoiding the XY problem.

http://xyproblem.info/