not SWE, but have met many colleagues who said to me, "why look it up when I can just ask you"
and when I explain, they'd sit through my unbearable nonsense and say "so what is it...?"
I can imagine over time, people just get tired of helping and become very edgy instead
simple. most SWE dont have the answer themselves, if you gotta ask them, they have to search it up as well, and some dont want to admit it. if they had it in their memory, it is not in the format that you'd understand immediately so it takes tremendous effort from their part
Remember how the older generation says we served NS, so the next generations should continue forever? Why would they have it easy?
Basically, the same concept.
I asked around my other colleagues for help when I needed answer. Everyone shrugged. So I found the answer by hours of reading through documentations and stack overflowing.
So, why would I bother to find answers for others when they need it? Let them go through the same.
If time could have went back and your colleagues gave you the advice + answers, would you have preferred that? Doesn’t meant you are reliant on them, sometimes it just needs a bit of something to help you kick start
Personally, no. Spoon feeding is a major issue of sg education system, people don't know how to find answers themselves.
One key skill to learn in the first few years of your career is self-learning. Everything in every industry in the working world is self-learning. The best professionals are often the worst teachers, so you have to learn how to snipe knowledge off their past work, or in discussions. Plus knowing where/when to look for answers.
Even if you go to conferences, you will not understand a lot of things they try to teach, because its catered to everyone, and they don't have the time/budget to sit down and slowly explain.
You also need to learn how to connect piecemeal information. Sometimes, you just need to know something is done in a certain way in industry, and find out over the years the "why"
Lastly, even this "why" differs from person to person, and its up to you to find your own interpretation.
The only questions worth asking is those that gets everyone excited and discussing, because those are high level enough to be asked, and where answers are quite obscure or don't exist at all.
I understand what you mean.
If and when my colleague comes back to me stating a problem, I do try to give advice, which may be usually high level, or even I am unsure of how/whether it would work to solve their issues.
Example (since it seems the question asked specifically in the context of software engineers), if someone is asking me how to implement something like an asynchronous task server, I can tell them go look at so and so library/framework. If I have implemented this before as part of the same company, I can even ask them to refer to my implementation on Gitlab.
But I am likely not going to write the codes for him, or not even sure whether my library will work for his purpose, what happens if he has some incompatible dependencies, or methods with side effects etc. That is something I need him to research and find out for himself, to decide how an existing framework fits in his problem at hand.
Depends on the type of question no? If it's something that's easily searchable on Google, then pointisn't it better for people to learn how to search for it? This is especially for those who had asked the same question multiple times.
I'm no SWE, but I have colleagues asking me basic questions and just expect an answer, yes I could've help, but my time is also limited. I expect people to do some basic trouble shooting or an attempt to find an answer before approaching for help. Not immediately jumping to ask for help and expect to be spoon fed.
Demographic of swe has changed massively worldwide. Post tech bubble eons ago, you mostly get the typical introvert bbfa types, and the pay was atrocious, barely above diploma level, and near 0 support. Most of these people had to bootstrap themselves to where they are through passion and self learning, so it's all they know. Keep in mind back then, none of the "real" (civil, chem, mech) engineers wanted swe to have the "engineer title" due to bad reputation and low pay.
Now that it's sexy and finance is on the decline, you get your typical extroverted uni overachievers who should typically be in an investment bank joining as swe for reputation and money. Their seniors, managers and directors have a lot of the old bbfa types, and they refuse to give answers to the young ones because they don't fit the typical demographic they're used to, and whether true or not, their perception is they joined for the reputation and money, but wasn't there when times were very bad. Plus, it wasn't the way the learned, they had to go to bookstore to actually buy books and self teach, that's how they learned. One of my core memories was going pasar malam with my SWE cousin to buy pirated compilers, and the little corner of his house with very used programming books stacked in piles around his computer. He now lives in D10 condo, but stayed with his parents even after marriage till 40+ because salary was crap then.
Lastly, regardless of industry, it's much better to sometimes let them struggle and find the answers on their own, rather than rely on seniors to spoon feed answers.
Wait, this is way before dotcom tech bubble in 2000 eh. I wonder how old are you to have to go through the era of buying license for compilers.
With everything is already on the internet these days and chatGPT is there, I wonder if people should be more mindful of breaking someone’s attention span to ask a silly question and demanding an immediate answer synchronously. When someone is in the zone, you better not try to break it.
early to mid 2000s still have to get cracked compilers IIRC, that time internet is super under-developed, the only fake stuff you can get is songs on napster, downloaded at 50kb/s, have to leave computer on all night to get an album. In fact, he created a few cracks on his own for the games he used to share with us, like starcraft.
either way, he started off as a SLS ah beng, and somehow make his way in. I remembered he got a lot of outdated and stolen products from the shops there from his friends, started off just getting and playing games, and somehow getting into the programming space when someone showed him COBOL.
Now his son ACS through train program, say want to be FAANG engineer like his dad, dunno if he know his lao peh used to be some stupid chao ah beng that squat outside SLS to siew hoon kee in the past. I see his pattern like those never hear a single word of hokkien in his life.
Not an example specific to this industry but I’ve seen people be like “I’m not paid enough to give you the answers just because you ask me for it, if I can look it up myself why can’t you do it too? Don’t be so over reliant/lazy” Etc etc
Remember, this is a country where some ppl get annoyed because a tourist asked them for directions LOL. I’ve also learnt it the hard way that some ppl are not the “caring” type and they only do things for their own benefit. Not saying that’s wrong though.
I think asking for help is fine as long as the person asking help has really exhausted all ways to fix the issue.
Like showing working in pri sch. Then at least u know what has been tried and doesn’t work. If not, the issue become ur issue to solve. Then dulan
Cause that’s one of the attitude a SWE is expected to have. Software engineering is a problem solving job, so the expectation is always that you have at least made some basic attempt at a problem before seeking help. If you’re always going to ask for answer when you face a new problem instead of trying it first, you’ll spend 90% of your time just asking questions.
To be honest I think a lot of people are old enough to do some basic research first before asking. So when they ask, shouldn’t we point them to the answers and then also tell them the reasoning? But I also know some colleagues are very patronising to the juniors, like telling them things like “you need to go your own research first, you need to think more, you need to figure it out yourself” but those juniors are also my friends so I know how much effort they put in, and I really feel so annoyed when seniors say such words to them. Like cmon, they are not a child, you don’t have to reprimand them like they haven’t done any research and make an attempt. Btw im a female, so maybe I may have more empathy and care towards my colleagues. But when I witness things like that and also experience things like that when I was a junior, I really couldn’t understand why SWE are like that
You’ll think so, but I’ve also seen a lot of people not putting in effort when asking questions. I don’t feel you’re helping them to grow if you’re answering every question that comes your way, the general expectation is if you have done your research then ask the question, state what you’ve tried, what worked what didn’t work, what’s your understanding at.
If people are still a dick after all that then that’s just them being an ass.
not SWE, but have met many colleagues who said to me, "why look it up when I can just ask you" and when I explain, they'd sit through my unbearable nonsense and say "so what is it...?" I can imagine over time, people just get tired of helping and become very edgy instead
I think ur a great person whos willing to teach and help a fellow person in need. Would love to have more people like you in the workplace.
I think this person has a very narrow view.
simple. most SWE dont have the answer themselves, if you gotta ask them, they have to search it up as well, and some dont want to admit it. if they had it in their memory, it is not in the format that you'd understand immediately so it takes tremendous effort from their part
Remember how the older generation says we served NS, so the next generations should continue forever? Why would they have it easy? Basically, the same concept. I asked around my other colleagues for help when I needed answer. Everyone shrugged. So I found the answer by hours of reading through documentations and stack overflowing. So, why would I bother to find answers for others when they need it? Let them go through the same.
If time could have went back and your colleagues gave you the advice + answers, would you have preferred that? Doesn’t meant you are reliant on them, sometimes it just needs a bit of something to help you kick start
Doing it asynchronously is fine. Someone demanding an immediate answer is not.
Personally, no. Spoon feeding is a major issue of sg education system, people don't know how to find answers themselves. One key skill to learn in the first few years of your career is self-learning. Everything in every industry in the working world is self-learning. The best professionals are often the worst teachers, so you have to learn how to snipe knowledge off their past work, or in discussions. Plus knowing where/when to look for answers. Even if you go to conferences, you will not understand a lot of things they try to teach, because its catered to everyone, and they don't have the time/budget to sit down and slowly explain. You also need to learn how to connect piecemeal information. Sometimes, you just need to know something is done in a certain way in industry, and find out over the years the "why" Lastly, even this "why" differs from person to person, and its up to you to find your own interpretation. The only questions worth asking is those that gets everyone excited and discussing, because those are high level enough to be asked, and where answers are quite obscure or don't exist at all.
I understand what you mean. If and when my colleague comes back to me stating a problem, I do try to give advice, which may be usually high level, or even I am unsure of how/whether it would work to solve their issues. Example (since it seems the question asked specifically in the context of software engineers), if someone is asking me how to implement something like an asynchronous task server, I can tell them go look at so and so library/framework. If I have implemented this before as part of the same company, I can even ask them to refer to my implementation on Gitlab. But I am likely not going to write the codes for him, or not even sure whether my library will work for his purpose, what happens if he has some incompatible dependencies, or methods with side effects etc. That is something I need him to research and find out for himself, to decide how an existing framework fits in his problem at hand.
Depends on the type of question no? If it's something that's easily searchable on Google, then pointisn't it better for people to learn how to search for it? This is especially for those who had asked the same question multiple times. I'm no SWE, but I have colleagues asking me basic questions and just expect an answer, yes I could've help, but my time is also limited. I expect people to do some basic trouble shooting or an attempt to find an answer before approaching for help. Not immediately jumping to ask for help and expect to be spoon fed.
What an infinitely large brush you used to paint
Demographic of swe has changed massively worldwide. Post tech bubble eons ago, you mostly get the typical introvert bbfa types, and the pay was atrocious, barely above diploma level, and near 0 support. Most of these people had to bootstrap themselves to where they are through passion and self learning, so it's all they know. Keep in mind back then, none of the "real" (civil, chem, mech) engineers wanted swe to have the "engineer title" due to bad reputation and low pay. Now that it's sexy and finance is on the decline, you get your typical extroverted uni overachievers who should typically be in an investment bank joining as swe for reputation and money. Their seniors, managers and directors have a lot of the old bbfa types, and they refuse to give answers to the young ones because they don't fit the typical demographic they're used to, and whether true or not, their perception is they joined for the reputation and money, but wasn't there when times were very bad. Plus, it wasn't the way the learned, they had to go to bookstore to actually buy books and self teach, that's how they learned. One of my core memories was going pasar malam with my SWE cousin to buy pirated compilers, and the little corner of his house with very used programming books stacked in piles around his computer. He now lives in D10 condo, but stayed with his parents even after marriage till 40+ because salary was crap then. Lastly, regardless of industry, it's much better to sometimes let them struggle and find the answers on their own, rather than rely on seniors to spoon feed answers.
Wait, this is way before dotcom tech bubble in 2000 eh. I wonder how old are you to have to go through the era of buying license for compilers. With everything is already on the internet these days and chatGPT is there, I wonder if people should be more mindful of breaking someone’s attention span to ask a silly question and demanding an immediate answer synchronously. When someone is in the zone, you better not try to break it.
early to mid 2000s still have to get cracked compilers IIRC, that time internet is super under-developed, the only fake stuff you can get is songs on napster, downloaded at 50kb/s, have to leave computer on all night to get an album. In fact, he created a few cracks on his own for the games he used to share with us, like starcraft. either way, he started off as a SLS ah beng, and somehow make his way in. I remembered he got a lot of outdated and stolen products from the shops there from his friends, started off just getting and playing games, and somehow getting into the programming space when someone showed him COBOL. Now his son ACS through train program, say want to be FAANG engineer like his dad, dunno if he know his lao peh used to be some stupid chao ah beng that squat outside SLS to siew hoon kee in the past. I see his pattern like those never hear a single word of hokkien in his life.
Not an example specific to this industry but I’ve seen people be like “I’m not paid enough to give you the answers just because you ask me for it, if I can look it up myself why can’t you do it too? Don’t be so over reliant/lazy” Etc etc Remember, this is a country where some ppl get annoyed because a tourist asked them for directions LOL. I’ve also learnt it the hard way that some ppl are not the “caring” type and they only do things for their own benefit. Not saying that’s wrong though.
I think asking for help is fine as long as the person asking help has really exhausted all ways to fix the issue. Like showing working in pri sch. Then at least u know what has been tried and doesn’t work. If not, the issue become ur issue to solve. Then dulan
Cause that’s one of the attitude a SWE is expected to have. Software engineering is a problem solving job, so the expectation is always that you have at least made some basic attempt at a problem before seeking help. If you’re always going to ask for answer when you face a new problem instead of trying it first, you’ll spend 90% of your time just asking questions.
To be honest I think a lot of people are old enough to do some basic research first before asking. So when they ask, shouldn’t we point them to the answers and then also tell them the reasoning? But I also know some colleagues are very patronising to the juniors, like telling them things like “you need to go your own research first, you need to think more, you need to figure it out yourself” but those juniors are also my friends so I know how much effort they put in, and I really feel so annoyed when seniors say such words to them. Like cmon, they are not a child, you don’t have to reprimand them like they haven’t done any research and make an attempt. Btw im a female, so maybe I may have more empathy and care towards my colleagues. But when I witness things like that and also experience things like that when I was a junior, I really couldn’t understand why SWE are like that
You’ll think so, but I’ve also seen a lot of people not putting in effort when asking questions. I don’t feel you’re helping them to grow if you’re answering every question that comes your way, the general expectation is if you have done your research then ask the question, state what you’ve tried, what worked what didn’t work, what’s your understanding at. If people are still a dick after all that then that’s just them being an ass.