

The new team member that bothers me every day - balahumbug

So I recently moved back to a project that I really liked, but now there is this new person in the group. He constantly comes in to ask questions. It wasn&#x27;t like that initially but as more days passed it seems like the frequency has increased. I won&#x27;t say I am necessarily irritated by it but rather sometimes I find him amusing asking questions and testing my knowledge. Do you guys have similar experience at work?
======
xavian
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. :)

~~~
vvSaKvv
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.

------
vvSaKvv
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you said you moved back to a project, and there
are new person. It seems like you are now the new person :)

I think he feel competition from your side, and want to know your level of
knowledge and confidence to feel more secured.

~~~
balahumbug
you won't call your ex "new". :P

------
twunde
This really depends on what exactly he's looking for. He could be asking
questions in order to understand the code base and design decisions. This can
be solved by running some training sessions. However if the person just seems
to be testing you that is unusual. It might be worth asking other co-workers
about the behavior.

~~~
twunde
Just remembered this article: [http://thinkfaster.co/2015/02/why-rockstar-
developers-dont-a...](http://thinkfaster.co/2015/02/why-rockstar-developers-
dont-ask-for-help)

------
bootload
_" The new team member that bothers me every day"_

So you let others be the driver of how you feel?

~~~
joejev
It is not that simple to _not_ be affected by the actions of others.

~~~
bootload
_" It is not that simple to _not_ be affected"_

True, divorcing emotion from decisions and action is a skill. From my point-
of-view, once the bozo-bit has been flipped you can filter this kind of
distraction out, re-checking it's state each loop.

~~~
kleer001
With a 30 day exponential weighted average on that state?

------
gesman
Solution is simple - stop answering.

