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Nice story but I find it hard to believe you would keep helping this person after it was obvious they were looking for someone to do everything. The author shou

Nice story but I find it hard to believe you would keep helping this person after it was obvious they were looking for someone to do everything. The author should have quit long before some poor employer got stuck with them. Being a mentor is one thing, being an enabler is another.

yorwba 10y ago
It may appear obvious to you, with the benefit of hindsight and a condensed explanation. As someone who has been in superficially similar situations, it can be hard to tell the difference between someone who only wants some help learning and someone who wants to offload all the work. When someone asks me for help with some practice problem they are supposed to solve on their own, I'm now trying to stick with never ever giving the solution. Instead, I give at most a description of the next step towards the solution. If they get stuck, it's sometimes really tempting to just show them the solution, but I think it is better to find out what they are missing and then give yet another explanation. The process may take hours, and fewer people ask me for help a second time, but I believe this way I'm helping more than if I just did the work in 5 minutes.
- coldcode 10y ago
  Yes that makes much more sense. Implementing a simple exercise for someone teaches them nothing. Helping them understand why theirs didn't work is much better.
- twic 10y ago
  I also think this is the right way to do it. But moreover, i thought this was well-known to be the right way to do it. After all, if you ask your teacher for help with something at school, do they tell you the answer, or write the essay for you? No, they point you in the right direction. It may be the case that fewer people ask you for help a second time, but that sound like an effective filter - people who actually want to learn will come back, but people who just want the answer won't.

yorwba 10y ago

It may appear obvious to you, with the benefit of hindsight and a condensed explanation. As someone who has been in superficially similar situations, it can be hard to tell the difference between someone who only wants some help learning and someone who wants to offload all the work. When someone asks me for help with some practice problem they are supposed to solve on their own, I'm now trying to stick with never ever giving the solution. Instead, I give at most a description of the next step towards the solution. If they get stuck, it's sometimes really tempting to just show them the solution, but I think it is better to find out what they are missing and then give yet another explanation. The process may take hours, and fewer people ask me for help a second time, but I believe this way I'm helping more than if I just did the work in 5 minutes.

coldcode 10y ago
Yes that makes much more sense. Implementing a simple exercise for someone teaches them nothing. Helping them understand why theirs didn't work is much better.
twic 10y ago
I also think this is the right way to do it. But moreover, i thought this was well-known to be the right way to do it. After all, if you ask your teacher for help with something at school, do they tell you the answer, or write the essay for you? No, they point you in the right direction. It may be the case that fewer people ask you for help a second time, but that sound like an effective filter - people who actually want to learn will come back, but people who just want the answer won't.