When I was younger and sort of just starting out, I thought this way. My boss had given me a set of goals to work on, so I would focus on these goals to the exclusion of everything else. If somebody came and asked for help, I'd tell them I didn't have time to help, because I was busy focusing on the stuff that I was supposed to be doing.
What I found, the hard way, is that all of those people I refused to help badmouthed me behind my back, and I got a reputation for being unhelpful (which was fair, because I was!). Come review time, all of this negative feedback was a big topic of conversation.
Finally I got the hint and did a complete 180 - if somebody asked for my help, at any time, I dropped everything and focused on helping them. I fell behind on what I was "supposed" to be doing, but I also kept close track of where the interruptions were coming from, just in case.
Now, come review time, my boss didn't even seem to care that I never met any of my goals, and talked on and on about what a great reputation I had. One boss after another, consistently, every time.
Help enough to build that reputation for being a team player. When you can't fully help, don't just say no, give them some starting pointers and offer to review, or assist more if they get stuck, so even then you are still being supportive.
Help people to help themselves. Don't just do something for them, guide them in how to do it themselves so next time they don't even have to disturb you.
Listen out for opportunities to use your skills to help people when they don't even realise they need help. I've lost count of the number off little scripts, tools or reports that I've knocked out in a couple of hours just because someone absent mindly moaned about something they found annoying. These things build your reputation far more than just plain helping, and if you're observant they are often simple and quick to do.
But also, make time to progress your big goals too, which does mean you have to say no sometimes.
Get help in return from those you have helped to move your goals forward faster than you can on your own.
Generally when I engage with people I'm looking for opportunities to teach them in a way that they won't need me anymore. More simply, I treat "help" like issue triage.
a. If the help is production impacting or blocking an issue that is due soon then they'll get more direct feedback but I'll continue on with (b) as well.
b. Send the person in the direction of resources that aid self-learning.
Habitual help seekers
Some people are habitual in their search for help. I don't run into this as much as I used to, but when I figure out that someone is placing me much higher up on the help tier than my time allows me to be I will generally start continually referring them to (b). If things are bad enough then I'll generally talk to their mentor about refining their learning process. I usually find this where folks haven't "learned how to learn" yet; although software engineers do have a good reputation for learning things outside their domains, there's no shortage of folks who just know how to string code together.
If the question should be in a document, then I respond by opening the documentation and checking to be sure the documentation is right, and then fixing it as needed. That done I tell them to read the documentation and let me know if anything is hard to understand so I can fix it.
When writing it is very easy to skip steps that are obvious. So when "asks too many questions about the obvious" can figure it out from the documentation I know the documentation is finally good enough for everybody - including the person who doesn't ask enough questions.
That's an interesting approach. Generally speaking, my organization doesn't maintain large document repositories because they go stale quickly and our products are too vast to document in such a way.
For some context on my reply:
- We maintain one design document per project. This document references everything from the application specifications to the automation that puts it in production.
- Most documentation is written in line with code. Finding documentation is about as complicated as finding the right repository.
This is also why peer review (in our org) isn't limited by level. Ideally we'd get feedback across the experience spectrum to make sure not only code but comments make sense to everyone.
That is why step one is review the documentation. If documentation isn't reviewed regularly utility is useless. By using questions as opportunity to review it I can keep it useful.
This comment resonates with me as I'm currently the one habitually asking for help! Coming to the realization and accepting the issue has been tough but I'm actively working on it these days.
The way I've found to do this is just do stuff, then have people think it's awesome, then teach them about it. At least that's been my experience, but then I've been a computer nerd so long it's basically become my path to a niche sort of mastery.
Beware the opposite trap: once you get a reputation for being a team player willing to do work that nobody else will, people will appreciate you but also throw more of this kind of work your way. After a few years you may wonder why you are not being promoted and find out that your reputation is now of someone who cannot handle a large project. Fighting my way out of this particular pit right now and learning how to say no a lot more often.
The killer concept here is to ask. Just ask your boss, people are requesting help on X, should I help them, or stay focused on your goal? People get so mad that their bosses can't read their minds and tell them the answers to questions they were never asked.
It is very rare for a company to not pivot in some way over the course of the year. Those interruptions as often as not are not only taking you away from your tasks, they are also your notice that your tasks need to change.
Note that I used the word "tasks" not "goals"! They are NOT the same and I suspect you have mixed them up. Tasks are what you do to meet your goals, and can be interrupted. Goals are where you want to be, not the tasks you do to accomplish them. Goals can be accomplished in many different ways, and often take years.
I have a goal to help people out. I have another goal to see if we can port some of our software to a cheaper/slower CPU. The second goal might or might not be worth doing this year - CPU prices are coming down (as always), and there is a cost to inventory of the slower parts so I need to always keep my ear open to the possibility I should give up on the second goal because it no longer makes sense. However helping out other people in my company is generally good, so it is the more important goal in general even if the cheaper CPU might - if it works out - be what it takes to stay ahead of competition.
I have a co-worker who does this, and everyone likes him, especially the boss, since he will jump on anything and get it done. He also seems to work really long hours and weekends, even though he has a family. He also does not seem to want to negotiate for a raise. I've chosen to not be likey coworker and so far I've been promoted, gotten 10 and 15 percent raises, etc. I do tend to rub coworkers and leadership the wrong way sometimes, but that's a trade-off I am fine with. I would rather be happy with my work hours and well paid than well liked.
- drop what you are doing and focus on the person. In a face-to-face situation, body language matters.
- figure out if it's something you can do quickly. Because you've already lost your focus on whatever you were doing, it's efficient to just go ahead and knock out small tasks.
- if you can't do it quickly, either because it's a lot of work or it takes time to explain what the problem is, you must negotiate and schedule the task for later, or have a meeting. Interpersonal skills are important: be sure the person goes away feeling like you care as much about their problem as they do.
- follow up with your scheduling.
Yes, frequent interruptions are bad for focus. Part of becoming the sort of person people feel comfortable going to is to help people know when it's OK to interrupt you and when they should wait for another time, or communicate in a way that is less disruptive. There will always be that sort of person who doesn't "get" it, and will interrupt you when they want to.
Great point. Yes, over the years I have come to hate the question that's awkwardly worded, or fails to provide even the most basic information needed, I've made peace with the fact that people are, well, people.
I don't really miss the days when asking a question "the wrong way" on a forum would risk an avalanche of insults.
I feel like there is a middle ground. At a previous job, a common compliment during my quarterly review was that people thought I was very helpful and a joy to have around the office.
I am the type of person who is helpful to a fault though, and I sometimes end up neglecting myself and my responsibilities in order to help others and make sure they are happy. Later on in that job this tendency to always help others lead to burnout as I tried taking on too many responsibilities at once and spread myself too thin.
Nowadays I still try to be as helpful as possible, but I make sure to not spread myself too thin and take into account my own responsibilities and mental health when deciding to help someone. Even then the answer wont always be a solid no, but sometimes just asking if the issue can wait until I'm at a point in my current work where I can stop and help out.
To some extent, you just need to look at the hard data: promotions and raises. See who's getting them. Whatever they're doing is what's actually rewarded.
It sounds cynical but I learned too late that a company's success is only incidental to your own success as someone who works there. If you think this is too negative, I'll just say I've seen a lot of "executives" run companies into the ground, then get great, high-paying jobs at acquirers, because they managed the politics well. It sucks but it's life.
Most tech management, especially young founders of VC-backed startups (vs. larger companies or owner-operated companies where the owners have a lot of skin in the game) is frankly pretty bad. It's just not celebrated or taken seriously the way it is in other industries, or fields (e.g. the military). I'm not saying this pessimistically, quite the opposite--I've seen a lot of bad management and I think there's better out there, but it does seem to be vanishingly rare.
It sounds like the boss should have publicized a primary goal of helping others and prioritized that over whatever you were assigned to do, if that matches the primary metric of those reviews.
Alternatively, the goals should be set with the understanding that some portion of your time will be allocated to helping others.
I don't think this means you shouldn't say no. It just means that you need to understand how to decide what to say no to. If your boss is the one who decides your performance, and they would rather you dropped everything to help others than do what you're "supposed" to be doing, then you need to say no to what you're "supposed" to be doing.
There is a bigger picture version of "saying no" in play here as well, though: is a company where your boss doesn't even seem to care about what you're "supposed" to be doing one that you want to work at? Will it make the best use of your talents?
I love solving problems for other people! If you know how to help, they are really happy, which will make you happy too. And if you don't know how to help, it's somebody else's problem!
This is spot on with my experiences as well. I've never told any coworker that I didn't have time or wouldn't try. Same exact experiences with management being very happy.
> We want to be the type of person that helps someone. But saying yes carries a cost. One that’s often paid in the days, weeks, or even years in the future. What starts as a single meeting becomes a weekly one...
There's a delicate balance here, because saying "no" often carries a cost too, it's just less visible than the cost of saying "yes." Saying "no" too often can mean missing opportunities for relationships, projects, promotions, vacations, etc. But since we never see those things, it's easy to think saying "no" was free.
That's probably true, but I can tell you that in my previous two jobs, I said "no" a lot, and I basically managed to maneuver into a spot where my boss let me essentially work on what I wanted. I got raises and commendations. I was surprised, but it's like, to some extent, the more assertive and confident you are, the more they respect you.
My personal experience has been that when it comes to getting promotions/raises, being liked by your coworkers (including your boss) is 10X more important than the amount of output you produce. You should try to be on friendly terms with your boss... And of course, if a friend asks you to do something, sometimes you say yes, sometimes you say "I would like to help, but I'm feeling saturated with the projects I already have going on right now, to be honest", and a good friend/manager understands that.
An extra dimension to this is that you don't necessarily need to get promoted in your current job. In the software industry, it's easy to move from one job to another, and when you move laterally, you can often negotiate a better salary. Again, here, being liked by your coworkers is particularly important. If your coworkers like you, they will give you good referrals. If you can get a referral from your previous boss, that speaks volumes.
> being liked by your coworkers (including your boss) is 10X more important than the amount of output you produce
Is this really true? I can think of people I like very well as a person, but they are extremely unproductive and I would not want to have them on a project with me. On the flip side, there are people that I would not say I am friends with (not enemies either, just neutral interactions) who do an excellent job at getting work done and who I have given very positive peer feedback to.
I always hope that things like promotions aren’t popularity contests, but I never can tell for sure how much that’s the case, particularly at higher levels of management...
Yes, but context is important. Most people separate personal likes from office likes to at least some extent. Part of being liked in the office is being seen as productive enough. You can like someone personally and hate them on the job. You can hate someone personally and still like them on the job.
10X is a huge factor, I would say it's about half-half. One thing to keep in mind is that these things are not exclusive. Having a good relationship with your superior usually means more trust, better projects and much better communications which is key to actually getting what you need to fulfill your assignments.
It works with both extremes. If your work output is awesome but you have a harder time with inter-personal relationship then of course in the greater picture you will be left out because people just won't come to you.
Unfortunately, unless you have someone to vouch for you, it kind of can be a popularity contest. This is from a corporate point of view, where lower managers have to appeal up the chain to fight for promotions for their people. It’s much easier for the higher ups to grant promotions to the people they’ve heard of.
In one job I was a tech lead, and said no to my boss a lot to maintain my team's focus. We ended up delivering, the boss was pleased, my teammates were happy, and I got a raise.
You want the type of person who helps someone help themselves.
Part of that, often overlooked, is doing a summary at the end explaining what were the concrete steps taken to get the result (if you have to poke around a bit to find the right spot, that can be disorienting). It's also giving people tools with guard rails built in so they can trust doing the task themselves.
You don't want people who get off on owning a workflow, and are super-helpful but involved in perpetuity. There's a fine line between 'let Tom and Harry do it because they seem to enjoy it while I don't,' and 'everyone thinks Tom and Harry's solution is bullshit and I want nothing to do with it.' The latter leads to codependency, and these people are toxic to productivity, accidentally or intentionally.
I agree with this sentiment. As with almost everything in life the answer is not to have too much of any one thing. Moderately saying yes and no will help you go further in my humble opinion. The discussion should focus on 1.) Understanding how much you say yes vs. no and 2.) If you say yes far too often or no far too often here are ways to bring you back to balance.
Actually, i think it's likely that almost everyone at least unconsciously realizes the costs of no's, and that it's never really free. Hence the difficulty with actually saying no.
> Saying no is like saving your money in the bank, whereas saying yes is spending it.
The bank pays lousy interest payments that usually don't keep up with inflation. Spending it on things that save you time in the future pays huge dividends. Most places don't invest in boosting productivity. I don't know if it's Cloud-think (horizontal scaling) or if I'm just imagining that it's gotten worse over the years.
My experience has been to say "yes" to everything in early career when you are not in demand. Then slowly transition to saying "no" as your career develops. The transition point from "yes" to "no" is when you develop more unique and valuable skill sets.
When all you have to offer is energy, excitement, and smarts - "yes" opens doors, creates relationships, and gives you opportunities to learn. That's how you grow, not only in career, but in relationships.
After you can bring more differentiated value to an opportunity, you're going to be in more demand and need to filter the best use of your time and energy.
The Steve Job's part is absolutely correct when you are sitting in Steve Jobs' position. As a thought experiment, probably every Fortune 500 CEO would want to have a 1-2 hr meeting with Jobs circa 2008. That would be 500-1000 hours of meetings where arguably they would derive more value than he would. So while it would be insane for most to pass up on these meetings, he obviously would need to.
Don't confuse the "yes" vs "no" periods of your life.
I really regret helping people and taking on external work. For me it comes down to interviews for your next job (which realistically is the best chance for promotion).
When they're asking you coding quizzes and examples of being productive, all the times you helped out doing annoying paperwork, support calls and bug hunts count for nothing. They can be useful for some stories but not much.
Here is my secret to success. Projects are only successful when somebody knows how everything works together.
The person you feel comfortable approaching with a problem knows about problems nobody else knows about. If the problem turns out to be severe, they have more time to come up with a reasonable fix. They look smarter in the emergency meeting. If the problem is malingering, like architecture problems, they're constantly inoculated with details about broad parts of the system they might not otherwise be looking at.
If you are being helpful, your goal should be to get promoted into a mentoring or a leadership position. That gets you something concrete to put on your resume for the next place. Nobody knows how big your story points are so feature count tells them nothing at all.
I say learn to say yes first, then learn to say no. Saying no to everything because you think you can't do something is going to result in an extremely boring life. Find your limits first, you probably are capable of doing more than you think.
I used to work for a "NO" at almost any cost guy. He ended up shouting at me (and I shouted back) over a literal "this will take me exactly five minutes in SQL if I am being lazy about it" request that he said the requestor should have asked for two weeks ago, and they ought to have to wait. Now, at the end of his career, he works as an assistant (to someone who is almost an assistant themselves), where once he was the head of the department. He worked pretty hard for that reputation and it eventually caught up with him. Of course, it was still a ding on my review at the time but whatever.
On the other hand, too much "yes" can keep you away from your actual duties, you end up greasing a lot of wheels instead of making formal fixes, and you can saddle yourself with a lot of obligations from what you thought were one-off deals. You can be mired in place by a spider's web of dotted-line relationships, and often yes to one person, right now, means that someone else's possible yes gets blocked and you get problems from there. And, frankly, you can end up doing work better suited for someone else. That road ends up in being taken advantage of.
My only "solution," such as it is, is not to maintain just a middle stance, but to slightly vacillate back and forth from it, as time and your mood allows. This can cause people to actually evaluate whether or not you are the person who needs to do this. If you start gathering up all kinds of extra responsibilities, those need to be communicated, first verbally and then in writing, in numerous directions.
Tightrope walkers do not stay exactly in the middle, but move slightly back and forth to maintain balance, and that is what I advocate.
I find that this applies much broader than just work projects.
Example: HN articles. I used to scroll through the front page, open every article with a remotely interesting sounding title in a new tab, usually another tab next to it with the HN discussion that I'd read after reading the article and where I'd keep reading quite a while after being done with the article. That's bad. Once I started prioritizing I'd have much more time for meaningful things. Saying no to reading comments about something I actually didn't care that much about. Saying no to actually finishing reading an article that I didn't really like that much. Saying no to even opening an article just because the title suggested it "could" be interesting but not really my cup of tea.
A recent new strategy of mine is to first scroll through the list and then pick the article with the most promising title. Saying no to everything else. I may have missed really good stuff, but the payout is fantastic.
If we all weren't taught the skill 'focus' in our early toddler years we wouldn't be able to read or write a single sentence here.
No. To Jobs, the bullshitter.
And after this little break and business administration fans bullshit, let's get back to understanding why the FFT is so practical when multiplying polynomials. Still don't get it 100%... still looks like magic to me... :)
"You feel a sense of wonder. A sense of awe at the
elegance of such an algorithm. It happens to not
actually by that useful or efficient as a matter of
fact. But we still study it just as we like to read
a work of fiction. It inspires us."
I think there's a more nuance here. Focus is saying no -- agreed. Giving help increases surface area for serendipity and opportunity -- agreed. I don't see these as being mutually exclusive.
Question about FS: I took a look at the root site, and it appears FS advertises values i have been seeking to improve. Thought patterns, knowledge, etc. They have book content, and paid podcasts.
With that said, can anyone comment on how good the content of FS is? Is their content worth buying? Is their content worth consuming?
Opinions would be appreciated. So far i like what they advertise, so i'm curious how it holds up to scrutiny.
Bad incentive structures prevent this ... root cause is in many scaled up systems of people, optics (appearances and visibility) are what you are judged by, as there is zero accountability or metrics in place other than how you make the decision makers feel about you, so focusing and delivering results is actually not what is rewarded! Basically all human systems at scale have this problem, consider politics. And you don't even get a seat at the table if you opt-out of the game. You either have to play or you can create your own bubble universe, like a startup, and do everything yourself, unless of course you want investors ...
As everything else in life it's a matter of balance and how you get your message across. You don't want to be the ass who never helps people if it's not his direct task. But then you also don't want to a pushover who lets himself constantly being distracted. I have done both.
I think most important is to be clear and compassionate when you say "No".
Traditionally the space of self-help/entrepreneurial/managerial advice posts has been of interest, but the bar needs to be high because only the top-quality slice is really worth spending time on. That's true of technical posts too, but even more true of this stuff.
Often the discussions end up being more interesting than the articles, as HN readers share their related experiences. In such cases we'll often leave the thread up even when the article itself is fluff.
The main problem with the current article is that it doesn't include enough detail. If there were a few interesting examples or case studies, that would go a long way. Saying no based on staying focused is an interesting topic and an important and difficult skill, the kind of thing it's easy to think you're doing when you're really not.
The comments here reminds me that post where everybody was saying it was terrible writing and not sure if it even meant anything ; then later came an article "IA wrote an article and nobody at HN noticed" revealing the IA-writing was in fact heavily edited
What I found, the hard way, is that all of those people I refused to help badmouthed me behind my back, and I got a reputation for being unhelpful (which was fair, because I was!). Come review time, all of this negative feedback was a big topic of conversation.
Finally I got the hint and did a complete 180 - if somebody asked for my help, at any time, I dropped everything and focused on helping them. I fell behind on what I was "supposed" to be doing, but I also kept close track of where the interruptions were coming from, just in case.
Now, come review time, my boss didn't even seem to care that I never met any of my goals, and talked on and on about what a great reputation I had. One boss after another, consistently, every time.