But there's gotta be a balance. It's totally conceivable for a new/junior employee to spend hours or days solving a problem that's already been solved in your

But there's gotta be a balance. It's totally conceivable for a new/junior employee to spend hours or days solving a problem that's already been solved in your codebase, and someone with experience could fix the issue in literally 5 minutes or less. Yes, it's good to learn things on your own. But especially in a small environment, sometimes you gotta move faster than that. Sometimes getting an answer 1:1 is "empty calories", and you're not learning how to solve the problem. But that might be because the problem doesn't need to be solved, and you were wasting hours or days trying to solve it.