[dahart]

Yes exactly! Devs resist asking for help when they need it, and this is why as a manager I have to insist on asking questions to discover blockers.

I can see why this happens, and I was (and still sometimes I am) guilty of thinking as long as I have a little more time, I can solve the problem myself. We are all capable of figuring out how things work, we all want to learn, and we all have fears that admitting spending time spinning our wheels might reflect poorly or reveal weaknesses, and/or might be used against us in reviews.

Part of making people feel comfortable surfacing blockers is making sure the environment is supporting that behavior. Devs need to be rewarded for working together, and rewarded for being proactive about telling their manager or the team they need help on something. If these highly paid engineers have had negative experiences in the past, they might have learned not to bring otherwise important issues to light. Occasionally there are also people who learn what they can get away with and will optimize for the minimum.

IMO, the environment also needs to allow devs some space to go slow for a while, solve unfamiliar problems, and learn new things - so for me there’s a certain amount of being okay with blockers, when people are still being proactive. I’d rather talk about them than not and make a conscious decision, but I do try to be sensitive to what I label as blocker.