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by xavian 4097 days ago
Many many years I was this annoying jr team member that came and asked other people tons of questions. In my case, the other members of the team has something like 10 - 15 years more experience than I. Ultimately what worked was it was requested that I try to find out the answers on my own for a minimum of an hour before I pop up and ask a question of another dev. If I had questions that were non-blocking, I was asked to write them down and email the set at the end of the day instead of having multiple interactions. Nowadays, we use ticketing systems and have watchers and stuff on active tickets and any questions that come up generally get asked within a ticket and other team members are able to respond with timing that is convenient for them. If I am working on something, an interruption could cost me 15 minutes to get my "working stack" back into my head if I am working on something complex. I now have folks that report to me. I basically tell them if they are hung up to work on it for at least a couple hours trying to solve it but consider reaching out to a team member if it takes longer than that. If they are utterly blocked can cannot work on something else, my door is open at any time, but if its just curiosity, gather questions and email and I will get back to them when I can. Ultimately, I try to cultivate as much autonomy as possible on my team so folks can, for the most part, solve most issues on their own. :)
1 comments

One thing is 10-15 years ago, Internet was wasteland and people have to ask questions to learn.

But now, when someone unable to spent 5-10 minutes to find answer on SO on their own, make me wonder if they choose profession correctly.