[king_panic]

I resent doing other people's work for them, I don't resent helping them when they can no longer help themselves.

Interrupt me after you've tried as many ways as you can to solve the issue, and present them to me so either I can determine the remaining set you haven't tried or we can brainstorm. It shows initiative and thoughtfulness and creates a starting point for our solutioning.

[schoolornot]

How do you reply when they haven't invested much time in solving the problem? You ask, "what have you tried?". They say XYZ. What are you going to tell them to go back, try some other things, and then come back? Sometimes I too need to brute force my way through problems. It sucks, it's how I got where I am. No one has to suffer like I did early in the career but an ounce of effort from some folks every now and then would be nice.

[SilverRed]

>Interrupt me after you've tried as many ways as you can to solve the issue

Depends on what you value more. If you are optimizing for personal productivity, sure this makes sense. But if you are optimizing for team wide productivity, it doesn't make sense for someone to spend 3 hours trying everything they can think of before asking if you could have given them the answer in 5 minutes.

Something like spending 30 minutes trying and then asking even though you could go on makes more sense team wide.

[etripe]

I honestly prefer teaching people to fish over providing them shortcuts. Giving them the answer doesn't often help in my experience. Helping them frame the question better does. There are some cases where the person is lacking fundamental knowledge about the domain or technology, of course.

Ultimately, team productivity isn't about enabling people in the codependent sense. It's better to build them up than to merely support them.

[ben0x539]

The OP is pretty much a refutation of your answer, you don't think it has a point?

[pcthrowaway]

Isn't this basically what the OP is saying? Interruptors should try things first, and write down the things they've tried and what happened. After that, they can interrupt without wasting too much time from the interruptee.

[waheoo]

This assumes the time interrupted is more expensive than the time spent by the interruptor trying other things, often needlessly.

There is a balance here. Hard and fast rules don't cut it in my experience.

I prefer new hires have a culture of problem solving, but not at the expense of being afraid to ask for help. That is more important than my uninterrupted time.

This usually means some people need to be incouraged to reach out sooner, and others need to be encouraged to try a few things on their own first.

The worst thing I could to is create a culture of fear around asking for help, and I'll err towards having more interruptions to make sure that isnt the case.

[ben0x539]

I'm reading the OP as "use these considerations to determine when to stop trying and instead interrupt me", and the comment I replied to as "you should never interrupt me unless there is no other option". The former seems to want to optimize for overall productivity between all participants, the latter seems to want to minimize interruptions.