Can a "DIY Mindset" Keep Programmers From Growing?

We programmers love to "do it ourselves", and this can help us stay productive and keep ourselves busy. But the dark side of this tendency, is when it makes it harder to get help - when we actually need it.
In this episode, I share some ways I've learned the software engineers are trained by society, the workforce, and the software industry to resist getting help from others. Then I offer some practical questions you can ask yourself to know if you're in a situation where you should really adopt the DIY mindset - or avoid getting trapped into learning something you don't need to.
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CHAPTER MARKERS
0:00 Introduction
1:22 1 3 Reasons Why Programmers Don't Get Help
1:28 1.1 Individualized Education
2:02 1.2 Corporate Reinforcement
2:41 1.3 Gossip over Substance
4:49 2 5 Reasons DIY Can Be a Bad Idea
4:57 2.1 Low Repeatability Activity
6:41 2.2 Outside Your Core Skill Set
7:41 2.3 You've Failed 3 Times
9:23 2.4 You Keep Putting It Off
10:41 2.5 Easy Access to An Expert
12:33 Episode Groove
#programmer #mentalhealth #productivity

[@HealthyDev]

Have you ever been tempted to learn or do something you knew was a waste of your time, or could better be done by somebody else? How did you decide what direction to go? What happened if you spent too much time on it? >> Join my Patreon www.patreon.com/HealthySoftwareDeveloper

[@chenxiaoxue6872]

Reaching out for help is a skill in itself. Knowing whom to ask and how to ask them is critical to the final resolution of the problem. I've experienced cases where 1) the other person diminishes you when you ask for help and 2) the other person is not very responsive/knowledgeable so it would've been easier for me to figure out things myself. The industry also keeps telling you that a "senior" person can drive things from end to end with little external assistance. So the moment you ask for help, you question whether you are still "senior" anymore. On the other hand, I do believe that asking for help can interrupt someone else's workflow (especially in an in-person environment), reducing the other person's productivity. So it is critical to have some tech lead whose job is to empower the entire team to get to the finish line together.

[@HealthyDev]

I agree it's a skill. I will say I think the industry's reinforcement that asking for help is bad is ridiculous and counterproductive. We are not manufacturing line workers who do dedicated tasks and don't impact each other. Software development is knowledge work AND teamwork. The work we do impacts each other, and we have overlapping skills. Getting and asking for help should be both encouraged, and welcome.

[@Erik_The_Viking]

Asking for help is a skill for sure. Sadly our industry likes the "lone gunman" approach to writing software. Often times when I've asked for help I was left hanging out the dry where the attitude was "you're smart - figure it out!". This is why I stopped asking for help after getting burned a few times. This desperately needs to be addressed at the company culture level, where they work together to get the job done instead of focusing on individual output.

[@rafael.aloizio1769]

I'm the guy who never say no, and I'm alway available to help... Got frustrated sometimes, it would be great to be your coworker dude

[@manishm9478]

Same, it's frustrating to not get help and also for my manager to not recognise how i help others. But I'm channeling that frustration into working on my own company, where i can shape the culture differently 😄

[@MEZOMEZO2011]

Just a quick advice, you can do your research first and try a lot of scenarios and then get back to the person you want to ask and tell them hey I tried these options and I am stuck if you can help me. This can give them the idea that you just didn't feel stuck for a second and thought to ask right away but instead you did your job and I think most would help you in this scenario.

[@tictac7877]

I am a senior developer with many years experience. I always tell any developer “Don’t be afraid to ask” but please do a bit of research first before asking. If the developer does not try then telling them the answer will not help them learn and grow as a developer. There is a limit to how much asking. Some days I get so many questions my own work gets affected and I feel a little burnt out. Team work culture definitely works as the team gets more work completed but there is a tipping point.

[@kishirisu1268]

Don’t be afraid to ask but do own research at first === translation: never bother me with your silly questions, just Google it yourself of get fired..

[@SweetTorment72]

@@kishirisu1268 I hear you're not the one getting bombarded with questions. I had to f'ing leave my last job to get some peace of mind.

[@MgelikaXevi]

@@kishirisu1268 it is more like "If you tried and failed - you will understand why and how said advice helps you, and you become proficient in this." If someone in a "tutorial manner" guides your hand, and says - write this, and now copy this, and add this line - and you have no clue why something should be done like this, you just don`t learn much. Trying yourself is not just about saving someone else`s time (but this is important too), it also about the fact, that you memorize and learn A LOT better, if you have a pair "this failed - this succeeded" . This is just a universal educational thing, many teachers will use it.

[@xEndgameRA]

I agree on this. I have spent a lot of time coaching newer developers and most of the times the questions are great and I'm happy to help. However, sometimes you can see that they don't put any effort in and start asking questions right away. I might as well do the work myself here as they won't learn anything until they reach the struggles. Most of the time I respond with I don't have time right now but I do in 30 minutes and the issue just magically disappears.

[@aliancemd]

We are definitely very different. I do the things "far outside my core skillset" because that's what drives me, learning new things and expanding my knowledge of how things work is what I find motivating and interesting. I initially started doing it myself because I didn't like asking for help and that was hard for a few years, now I find it very easy to pick new things, even outside programming, like electronics, woodwork, painting, etc... not just software technologies - this actually turned me over time into a DIY person, 3D printing my own designs, optimized for my use-case, etc. DIY Mindset is bad short term but could be good for your self-development overall, over time.

[@HealthyDev]

Everybody is different, of course. Are those other things you're learning proportionately contributing to your career income and progress?

[@aliancemd]

​@@HealthyDev That would assume I am doing it to increase my "income". Just like open-source, not all people in this world gain fulfillment by enriching themselves monetarily - some find it hard to understand it, because it's not how their mind is set. Lots of things excite me and money is not it. Saying all that, the fact that I jump at the opportunity of learning new things(I think it's coming from DIY mindset), over the years started reflecting in my CV and I do find it a lot easier to find new interesting jobs(literally starting at a new company on April 8), some of which didn't even require a technical interview, just a technical talk about the projects I worked on. So, you could say: yes.

[@HealthyDev]

@@aliancemdI understand. Just wondering if you knew that distinction, and you do. If developers are frustrated about not having enough time, or not being paid enough, but they don't make strategic learning decisions - that's sometimes due to their own curiosity. Doesn't sound like that's a problem in your case!

[@Panic_1]

I too get enjoyment of stepping out of my own field of expertise and broadening my horizons. These are done outside of any professional presures and count more like hobbies. Sometimes the skills learned are transferrable to my job, sometimes they are not. They mostly work for me to balance my mental state. This video to me sounded like we shouldn't even try if there is nothing financial to gain, and to stay in our lane. To me that feels counterproductive and stifles innovative thinking.

[@HealthyDev]

@@Panic_1I can see that view. I also find many people are stressed out and feeling life is meaningless, and it's because they don't do anything but tech - on and off the job. If that's not you, awesome! If you suspect it might be, check out the episode I did "Is Programming Stealing Your Life Away?".

[@dominionofgod4715]

If the environment is toxic reaching out for help will result in your team not trusting in your word in the future. I experienced this firsthand. From that point forward everything I said was placed under a microscope and questioned by my own team and other teams.

[@HealthyDev]

Seems like a fast way to know if your team is toxic, no?

[@HazeAnderson]

Last time I was stuck out on a limb I decided to quit. Two week sprints per the norm, I did no work when the current sprint started. Each stand up I invited others to join me and each time they gave me lip service. At the end of the sprint I simply said I was not finished. Next sprint starts, but half way thru the new "junior" programmer takes the ticket and our lead tutors him. Each of that sprint I give them my two week notice. I had put in multiple requests to my manager to get me off that team prior. Not the best strategy ... in fact it was a TERRIBLE strategy 😆but it felt great when I quit. 😆

[@HealthyDev]

I'm so sorry. I have seen this many times. It usually starts with the leadership, unfortunately. They will permit people to help juniors. But "seniors shouldn't need help". Ridiculous!

[@benjaminthorp2208]

Had a recent experience where I was completely stuck and asked the team for help multiple times, was ghosted for days, only to get a wrist slap for my work being delayed. Apparently it was on me to be more aggressive and demand the attention. Fortunately this has not been the norm.

[@John__K]

This hits home and there lots of politics, cliques and hypocrisy behind the whole "asking for help" topic sadly. For example some other team member may get 10x more assistance-time than you get from the same person, just because they get along better or he is more pressing than you.

[@hyperborean72]

that tune that you played is amazing. I would love to attend your show

[@DagarCoH]

In my first proper job, #3 happened to me (failed a bunch of times). Many things you said here applied (not being used to cooperate due to how degrees are earned, not quute getting there from multiple angles, putting work on the thing off because it stressed me out). The thing that I needed to learn was that it is not a bad thing to admit defeat and seek help or organize a change in strategy around the thing I failed at. All of these are things I now know I could have done.

[@HealthyDev]

I didn't learn this stuff for many years. It happens to all of us!

[@guledomer]

The episode grooves at the end of each episode deserve a channel of their own 🔥

[@theburntcrumpet8371]

There's definitely a balance to be struck here - there will always be certain things that fall outside your area of expertise and it's up to us as developers to decide when it's worth expanding our area of expertise. I do find it incredibly frustrating when I have no choice but to learn something that will be applied once and never again.

[@rutkowk]

I've also thought about this concept when trying to decide when to push my kids when they're learning something new. I have always thought that it's good for my kids to push beyond their comfort zone to expand their learning. However, at some point, I realized that pushing too much is counter-productive. I thought about how I would learn in different situations. For example, if I was trying to learn Mandarin, I'm sure that an entry level college class would be challenging, but I could succeed if I pushed myself. However, if I signed up for a masters level course in Mandarin literature, I doubt there's anything I could do to understand what was going on in class. I'd likely sit there listening to everything and looking at the assigned books, and I'd end the class with little or no new knowledge.

[@medical-informatics]

Where I work (university) many young (including me) programmers are desperate for seniors. There are some, yes, but this question comes up a lot: *is my code good enough?* DIY is very, very, I'd say 100% at the university. No trainings, no workshops in general - you are on your own. Recently I had enough and convinced the head of the institute to invest in a professional git trainer becaue I have a good connection to the staff here and they all use git more or less like to store their code "some where in the cloud". I had my own little workflow which turned out to be kind of the official "git workflow" but we got a 2 days training for 8 co-workes here and it was great! at a university this seems to be kind of rare becaue for this very experienced trainer, it was his first time to have a training at a university. Usually he has trainings at banks etc. Me personally I gain lot of extra knowledge through your videos and other youtubers.

[@HealthyDev]

That's awesome you were able to get them to put on a training program! Nice work taking initiative.

[@rushabhshah485]

Really amazing points made. In my early days one of senior developers taught me these principles and added the principle of time boxing. Timebox spikes, and also reaching out to community members (this can be slack channels of like working fellows or stack overflow) and clearly stating what you explored and what is that you are trying to do can really help us. To add trading in favours is the main key, if u expect to learn something from the community, share what you have learned. It can be very difficult for newcomers but try at whatever step you can.

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

The "You have failed 3 times" rule is ingenious. I just this week had a moment like that where I spent a whole day trying to figure out one specific thing and didn't get it to work like I wanted. I then decided to forward it to a colleague and it felt a lot better tackling the problem together.

[@MyCodingDiarie]

You have such a knack for explaining things clearly. Awesome job!

[@Kytreeswerving]

You’re more exploitable when you’re alone. Remember that always.

[@Tumorlike]

Nice musical section transitions!

[@HealthyDev]

Thank you! It's from a song I wrote 20 years ago when my kids were little ;)

[@shahindohan23]

Half the time I've had to ask for help, the people I've asked are reluctant to help and barely point me in the right direction by giving super minimal and high-level answers. I'm like, my friend, you are an expert in this area right? Is it too much to ask that we sit together for an hour and bang this thing out? Why do you have to put me through this? Yes I want to learn, but time is money and we're working here, not in school.

[@HealthyDev]

Agree 100%.

[@necbranduc]

Omg, you are the best developer out there! The realest that can be, I wish I could have your wisdom one day.

[@HealthyDev]

I don’t know about that, but thanks for the kind words!

[@kenito2050]

Thanks Jayme for this video. Regarding your comment on doing things that are outside your core skill set, I also must fight the urge to try to be a "renaissance man". I have learned, the hard way, that it is better to ask for help from others than to try to do things that are outside my skill set. Further, I've learned to try to avoid "re-inventing the wheel (especially if there is a good chance that that wheel will turn out wrong). In sum, sometimes, the time for the renaissance man WAS during the renaissance (but not today).

[@lesediamondamane]

Playing a guitar in between is so hypnotizing.

[@christianbaer2897]

"I am not planning on starting a tube amp repair business" Wise choice. There is really not much money in it... I get what you are saying and you are right, but the comparison is somewhat limping. Fiddling around with the amp was probably more of a recreational activity, than an investment where you hope to get a substantial amount of money from it. I might be totally wrong and projecting my situation onto your story (yes... software dev by day, guitar player at night). Also... when you said "Not the one behind me" I was internally screaming "Of course not that one. That is a VOX and you said Fender at the beginning!" ;-)

[@xlerb2286]

I'll ask for help if it's something that I don't have a good handle on, or if it's something that has to happen on a tight schedule. It's good to have some buddies you can bounce ideas off of. There was one fellow where I used to work and we'd bounce ideas off each other all the time. What came from that was always better than what either of us would have done by themselves. Another thing to consider, over the years you get tired of always going back to kindergarten. It gets harder and harder to tackle those new things, even with someone you can call on for help.

[@siddb09]

Please also talk about self learning as a beginner. how to study and what path to follow. that would help many.

[@FlavioMOliveira35]

In the current project I'm working on, when I got stuck and asked for TLs help, I got an answer, this is a bad practice. I said, ok, show me how to do it in a right way, let'd do somr pairing and solve this. I'm just still waiting for response 😂😂😂😂

[@HealthyDev]

Sounds like they need to watch my episode on being a Tech Lead...

[@BackyardniJuan]

Thank you

[@Skibbi198]

This guy is the most wholesome tech influencer.

[@zach4216]

i love your channel man

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks! Glad to have you here.

[@manishm9478]

One strategy I've been doing lately is to reserve an hour a day to go through udemy courses. I learn much better through a formal short course with exercises than on the job learning where the foundational concepts aren't explained.

[@kukulis100]

Teamworking is not naturally supported by companies. Only really good PMs are able to stimulate team synergy.

[@iltwrrm]

i have learned over my near 8 year career that asking for help when stuck shouldn’t be frowned upon. sadly though, i was recently let go because when i did ask for help, i was let go the next day due to “poor performance”. my manager, although rarely, had called and stated a few times that my work is excellent and i can think about edge cases, write tests, etc. so the reason was out of the blue. here i am, asking for help, and i get fired. to elaborate a bit more, my manager suggested i try something…. but i had already tried that…. and now i’m left confused as to what i should’ve done. should i have taken the advice, only to hit him back up 5 mins later saying it didn’t work??? appreciate your opinion

[@HealthyDev]

It's hard to know unless I was in the room where they decided to let you go, to be honest. It could be that they didn't like that you asked for help as you said. But it could just as easily been for any number of other reasons. If asking for help is grounds for firing in a software job, that doesn't sound like a place I'd want to work. And if you were let go for some other reason, and they weren't honest with you, that's a sign of dishonesty. It sucks to lose your job (I've been there twice) but it also sucks to be somewhere that treats you unfairly. I truly hope you find somewhere that's more honorable, I'm so sorry you had to be treated like that.

[@guatagel2454]

Every time I ask my colleagues for help, they try to eat a big chunk of my profits. I learned to solve my problems in my time because my colleagues are parasites.

[@user-xp8md1io3t]

The fact is, we need to use spare time to "do it ourselves" for challenging and learning. It can help us understand why the libraries matter, and sometimes just need to keep it fun. But avoid do it in company unless someone asks for it.🙃

[@saurabhpande7456]

In most cases, coworkers will give you just their tip of their finger for a complex unexplored project. They will only help you compassionately only if they like you or are impressed by your bantering. Atleast in India.

[@oswaldfife5183]

IT will tell you that everything will be automated....the file will be there the first day of every month....then random months the file isn't there and nobody has any idea what you are talking about...what file...where?

[@nexovec]

Point 1: I find myself quite often thinking something is quite hard to make, when in reality it's just analysis paralysis and it just calls for some arbitrary decisions and then it's easy. Point 2: Be careful not to try to ship something that sounds cool but would become the backebone of your infrastructure, like an event bus or a caching server, you won't be able to support it. Finally, it is possible to build a certain intuition about what's reasonable to write yourself, so don't just give up, give it careful thought each time.

[@kernelpanic5672]

My product manager doesn't even respond to my messages. And one of the developers did nothing for 10 months before he decided to leave

[@glorytoarstotzka330]

what's the name of the guitar song played in this video

[@HealthyDev]

It's from a song I wrote 20 years ago.

[@TheMattSturgeon]

Can't wait to see someone's reaction to this video 😅

[@deepfuchsia7204]

What's your opinion on ThePrimeagean? He seems to be funny and he does the reaction videos, but he also elaborates why he thinks this or that, and it feels like watching him can be fun and useful at the same time.

[@HealthyDev]

He seems like a nice guy, to be sure. I haven't watched his channel that much, but I've agreed with his take on things in the videos I've seen so far.

[@ZelenoJabko]

​@@HealthyDev don't watch his channel. He is almost completely incompetent.

[@HealthyDev]

@@ZelenoJabkowhat makes you say that?

[@zofo9990]

Townsends 21st century edition

[@someidiotwithnoname]

On the topic of DIY and getting stuck, for personal projects, I have a week rule. Lets say if I got stuck on a Monday I will spend my free time trying to figure it out until the next Monday then ask for help. Usually what happens is I spend a whole a few days researching the problem, trying out a few solutions, start a new project with just the feature I'm trying to implement to test it out on a smaller scale before I implement it in my project and if that is a bust to Friday I take a brake from it on Saturday. What happens is a reset and usually by Sunday afternoon an epiphany strikes followed by a facepalm ... if not Monday after work I ask someone who is more skilled than me. P.S. I'm not working as a dev, just learning in hopes of landing a job.