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As an adult: it's 80% because I'm afraid of looking incompetent in front of my peers. It can be pretty painful to see people systematically dismiss anything yo

As an adult: it's 80% because I'm afraid of looking incompetent in front of my peers. It can be pretty painful to see people systematically dismiss anything you say, or always seek out a second opinion, for no other reason that they have a hard time believing anything reliable can come out of your mouth. I won't let that happen again.

giantg2 4y ago
What's all this talk about peers? I just don't want to seem incompetent to my manager and get fired.
tharkun__ 4y ago
Not saying this is you but this reminded me of two types of people I've witnessed over the years. One of them I would look at as you say `incompetent`, while the other I'd say is `smart`. You're new to something? Ask for pointers if you can't find something relatively quickly yourself. That's `smart`. You're new, the documentation might be inaccurate, out of date or not in the place you'd expect it unless you've already been at the company and learned their structure etc. You're stuck on something and can't figure it out? Ask for some help to double check your own logic. Run them through all of the things you've already tried. This shows that you're not incompetent but have in fact already tried all those obvious things they'd ask you about. Also do actually run them through those steps, don't just talk about you having done them already. Sometimes you've overlooked something the first 2 times and showing it to someone else makes you notice (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging if you'd like to first use a non-human just in case). You wouldn't believe the amount of times where I've been the helper and all I had to do to help was to ask them to run me through what they had already tried and the above happened. They showed me something as "and see I tried this and then it doesn't ... oooh" ;) Do not ask for help on the exact same thing 5 times in a row. That definitely makes me think you're `incompetent`. Happens way too often too unfortunately.
- watwut 4y ago
  Meh, what you call smart can be easily used against you. Many people fix their opinions of you quickly and won't change them later. Will instead seek to patronize you going forward no matter what you learned. Learned that the hard way. I am not going to ask beginner questions in new social group. Way better is to Google them in the evening. People will treat you better as a result I swear.
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    I might not have been accurate enough. I don't mean to ask about things that are easily Googled. I really meant things that are company specific. If you ask me a question that I will then Google myself to answer you, I will also very probably form a not so great opinion of you, agreed. I also expect you not to wait until the evening to Google it if it gets you stuck right now. Also I agree that not all companies reward this. Not all people do either and it's unfortunately necessary to 'hide your smarts' so to speak. That doesn't change my overall opinion though. At a good company / in a good team, you're going to be able to do that smart thing. And yes I see this all the time when onboarding new people. They're not used to it and 'hide' things. Ultimately it takes most of them way longer than it should to onboard and I might form a less than great opinion of them. On the contrary there was a team lead recently that asked lots and lots of "dumb questions" early on and asked them quickly as they came up. Instead of taking 2 weeks and still not being properly set up for everything, he was up and running without any issues within a day and could start working on stuff.
    - watwut 4y ago
      How does the new person distinguish between googlable question and company specific? They don't, especially if the tech is also new. You yourself said you will judge new one badly of they make bad guess. There is no to little price for not asking. There is serious price for asking.
      - tharkun__ 4y ago
        By actually Googling things?! Your specific experience might be different from mine as well. In most places I have been there were lots of 'standard' things in use that were easily Google-able. You may also mainly work in languages that make it hard to find things you don't already have a mental model of (scripting languages, untyped languages etc.) vs. where I like working: typed languages where I can let the IDE guide me through. Frameworks that make things easily string searchable etc. There's a price for not asking: To take the example I gave before. If you take 2 weeks to get up to "I can deploy code for development and debug it" that's a bad sign. If you're up an running in a day or two, you're usually golden.
blooalien 4y ago
In my case, it's not even fear of appearing incompetent. It's fear of being accused of or treated as if I'm incompetent when I'm clearly not. This past couple few decades the average population have become more and more downright vicious, cruel, and absolutely sure of themselves, even when they're utterly wrong about something they say or do, and as that problem grows, I become less able / willing to open myself up to that sort of potential abuse. I've got things rough enough already without that additional stress. In addition, there's what a previous commenter said about knowing that others also have their own things they're dealing with, and I kinda don't wanna be the guy who adds to that any if I can avoid it (just in case they're not that other type of person I mention here).
- failedengineer 4y ago
  hey hey, this is exactly what happened to my engineering career right here. "This code will never be used." "Oh, ok." proceeds to write garbage to test out various features and different ways of doing the same thing "Hey, this code is garbage and lacks consistency. Lets show it to everyone to warn them about this guy. We won't mention it until letting him struggle a couple years, but make sure he doesn't get any interesting work."

giantg2 4y ago

What's all this talk about peers? I just don't want to seem incompetent to my manager and get fired.

tharkun__ 4y ago

Not saying this is you but this reminded me of two types of people I've witnessed over the years. One of them I would look at as you say `incompetent`, while the other I'd say is `smart`. You're new to something? Ask for pointers if you can't find something relatively quickly yourself. That's `smart`. You're new, the documentation might be inaccurate, out of date or not in the place you'd expect it unless you've already been at the company and learned their structure etc. You're stuck on something and can't figure it out? Ask for some help to double check your own logic. Run them through all of the things you've already tried. This shows that you're not incompetent but have in fact already tried all those obvious things they'd ask you about. Also do actually run them through those steps, don't just talk about you having done them already. Sometimes you've overlooked something the first 2 times and showing it to someone else makes you notice (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging if you'd like to first use a non-human just in case). You wouldn't believe the amount of times where I've been the helper and all I had to do to help was to ask them to run me through what they had already tried and the above happened. They showed me something as "and see I tried this and then it doesn't ... oooh" ;) Do not ask for help on the exact same thing 5 times in a row. That definitely makes me think you're `incompetent`. Happens way too often too unfortunately.

watwut 4y ago
Meh, what you call smart can be easily used against you. Many people fix their opinions of you quickly and won't change them later. Will instead seek to patronize you going forward no matter what you learned. Learned that the hard way. I am not going to ask beginner questions in new social group. Way better is to Google them in the evening. People will treat you better as a result I swear.
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  I might not have been accurate enough. I don't mean to ask about things that are easily Googled. I really meant things that are company specific. If you ask me a question that I will then Google myself to answer you, I will also very probably form a not so great opinion of you, agreed. I also expect you not to wait until the evening to Google it if it gets you stuck right now. Also I agree that not all companies reward this. Not all people do either and it's unfortunately necessary to 'hide your smarts' so to speak. That doesn't change my overall opinion though. At a good company / in a good team, you're going to be able to do that smart thing. And yes I see this all the time when onboarding new people. They're not used to it and 'hide' things. Ultimately it takes most of them way longer than it should to onboard and I might form a less than great opinion of them. On the contrary there was a team lead recently that asked lots and lots of "dumb questions" early on and asked them quickly as they came up. Instead of taking 2 weeks and still not being properly set up for everything, he was up and running without any issues within a day and could start working on stuff.
  - watwut 4y ago
    How does the new person distinguish between googlable question and company specific? They don't, especially if the tech is also new. You yourself said you will judge new one badly of they make bad guess. There is no to little price for not asking. There is serious price for asking.
    - tharkun__ 4y ago
      By actually Googling things?! Your specific experience might be different from mine as well. In most places I have been there were lots of 'standard' things in use that were easily Google-able. You may also mainly work in languages that make it hard to find things you don't already have a mental model of (scripting languages, untyped languages etc.) vs. where I like working: typed languages where I can let the IDE guide me through. Frameworks that make things easily string searchable etc. There's a price for not asking: To take the example I gave before. If you take 2 weeks to get up to "I can deploy code for development and debug it" that's a bad sign. If you're up an running in a day or two, you're usually golden.

blooalien 4y ago

In my case, it's not even fear of appearing incompetent. It's fear of being accused of or treated as if I'm incompetent when I'm clearly not. This past couple few decades the average population have become more and more downright vicious, cruel, and absolutely sure of themselves, even when they're utterly wrong about something they say or do, and as that problem grows, I become less able / willing to open myself up to that sort of potential abuse. I've got things rough enough already without that additional stress. In addition, there's what a previous commenter said about knowing that others also have their own things they're dealing with, and I kinda don't wanna be the guy who adds to that any if I can avoid it (just in case they're not that other type of person I mention here).

failedengineer 4y ago
hey hey, this is exactly what happened to my engineering career right here. "This code will never be used." "Oh, ok." proceeds to write garbage to test out various features and different ways of doing the same thing "Hey, this code is garbage and lacks consistency. Lets show it to everyone to warn them about this guy. We won't mention it until letting him struggle a couple years, but make sure he doesn't get any interesting work."