[xarope]

During COVID, as a CTO, I tell my team to DM me after stand-ups if they aren't sure about their tasks or work, or even how to get started. I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. Often this then sparks them to go through their own discovery, and the next day or 2 they will request yet-another call to then propose their design and implementation, and this is yet-another opportunity for us to discuss and hone their work.

So in-short, yes, self-learning is required (always is, always will be), but if your senior can do some sort of guided self-learning, I'd like to think you would then gain the confidence and be more than capable of picking up the necessary skills, along with the sometimes-serendipity that comes from such paths to discovery.

(sadly, my CEO is does not share this remote work mindset, which is why if anybody is looking for a CTO, please DM me...!)

[credit_guy]

> I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture.

I'm sure you are.

If you have time.

Thing is, at most companies, most employees are perpetually swamped. Or at least quite frequently.

I'm a new employee (3 months) at a company. The documentation is quite bad. In other words, it's quite standard compared to all other companies out there. There are some wikis, tutorials, confluence pages, etc, but the links tend to get reused, and in the end you have just a handful of true documentation sources, all being 10 or 15 or 20 years old. My team members are friendly and eager to help. They have all gone through the same pains as me. But they are super busy. Some times, I say "hi" on chat, and tell them I have a question, and sometimes they help me, but some times they tell me "can you write your problem in an email, and I'll take a look by tomorrow". And sometimes they tell me they are super-busy "this week".

In the end, I got the most help from another new joiner, who joined 2 weeks after me. He's helping me, I'm helping him. We really depend on each other. Because of him, I'm probably twice as far as where I'd be without him.

But here's the thing: our company has a 3-day-a-week policy. And his desk is just next to mine. Whenever we are physically next to each other, we interact a lot. But when we communicate on zoom, the interaction goes down maybe by a factor of 10.

[parkerhiggins]

Always include the question with your greeting.

https://nohello.net/en/

[KptMarchewa]

I hate no-question-his because people always assume any response is synchronous after response.

[david38]

If your team is that busy it’s grossly mismanaged. Get a new job.

I’ve never worked at a company where the programmers were so “busy” they had no time for at least ok documentation and time to train.

It’s simple. You assign an onboarding mentor, and it it one of his deliverables that you get onboarded and proficient in say three to four months.

[matwood]

> I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual

Bingo. I've been doing the same with new remote hires (especially jr). I try to block off a couple hours every other day that are 'open'. When they send their first few PRs, I'll call them and go over it which inevitable leads to lots of random questions about the code base.

Finally, I make it clear this time is open to them as long as it's needed.

My goal is to replicate the ability for someone to stop by my office. I think so far it's been ok.

[thewileyone]

I try to do the same or I'll pair a junior with a senior if the hand-holding required is beyond my capacity.

[noloblo]

how to dm?