How to Seek Help Effectively in Your Software Engineering Career?

In a software engineer's career, most people encounter problems they cannot solve alone. In such situations, "seeking help" becomes crucial. However, many hesitate to ask for help due to fears like "not wanting to bother others" or "worrying about rejection." This indecision can leave problems unresolved for extended periods, causing frustration and wasted time.

On one extreme, never seeking help is counterproductive. On the other extreme, asking for help with everything can make you appear to lack initiative and problem-solving abilities. Over time, this behavior can cause others to avoid collaborating with you.

Therefore, finding the right balance and learning to seek help effectively is a key soft skill in your career. In this article, we explore this topic by extending concepts from our course [Online Course] 10 Essential Soft Skills for Software Engineers to Advance to Senior Levels.

Mindset Shifts Before Seeking Help

To avoid the two extremes on this spectrum, we need to adjust our thinking: one extreme is never asking, and the other is asking about everything.

Most People Actually Enjoy Helping Others

Let's start with the "never asking" extreme. As mentioned earlier, many people hesitate to seek help even when stuck because they fear negative judgment. Senior engineers sometimes worry that asking junior engineers questions looks unprofessional or beneath their level.

In reality, most people genuinely enjoy helping others and don't judge those they help negatively. Think about how you'd feel if a stranger asked for directions. You'd likely help willingly and feel good about it—you wouldn't think less of them for not knowing the way.

The workplace follows the same principle. Even when asking someone from another team or a complete stranger, remember the directions analogy: most people are happy to help. Don't hold back from taking that first step.

Do Your Homework Before Asking

Now let's address the other extreme: asking for help with everything. You've probably heard that when joining a new team, you should ask questions if you have problems—there are "no stupid questions." Based on this idea, some people ask about everything without trying to solve it first.

While "no stupid questions" is meant to encourage participation, in practice, this approach can backfire. Others may think "this person didn't even do basic research," leaving a negative impression.

However, this outcome is avoidable. The most effective way to avoid asking questions that suggest you didn't do your homework is to actually do your homework. In other words, think through the problem first and try to find answers yourself. As you work through solutions, you'll likely encounter new questions—and these will be higher quality questions.

For example, when joining a team, you're trying to set up a local development environment to run the server. Following the README, you encounter an error message and the server won't start. If you just ask "My local server won't run, can you help me?", people will think "this new person didn't even attempt basic troubleshooting."

However, if you've tried to troubleshoot, you can ask instead: "I'm setting up the local development environment and ran into an issue. I've installed Docker and dependencies per the README (version XXX), but when I run docker-compose up, I get this error message [full error message]. I've already checked a few things: the 8080 port isn't occupied and the .env file is being read correctly. What else might I be missing that could cause this error?"

This example illustrates an important point: "no stupid questions" assumes you've already attempted to solve the problem. First mention what you've tried, then describe what you're still stuck on. This way, people won't think you asked a silly question. Better yet, if you explain the different troubleshooting methods you've attempted and where you're still blocked, people will be much more willing to help.

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If you want to learn how to ask questions and seek help effectively as a software engineer—without seeming like you're asking basic questions—we dive deeper into this in our E+ Growth Plan. Interested readers are welcome to join (link).