How many times have you sat there trying to solve a technical problem and thought:
Is it okay if I interrupt someone and ask them to help me?
- Almost all engineers have this experience
As I work with companies that are transitioning to cloud native technologies, there is often a huge knowledge and experience gap between the "early adopters"/"pioneers" and the rest of the organization.
Closing this gap is a very expensive process that involves a combination of methods such as formal training, technical mentoring, gentle persuasion and internal documentation.
Very often, junior technologists are very wary of interrupting their more senior colleagues because their time is considered more valuable and their knowledge and experience inhibit them from asking for help.
The issue is
Most of the time, this isn't a huge problem because engineers negotiate among themselves when it's okay to interrupt others' work by observing how often others interrupt, building good relationships with their peers, etc.
This becomes a problem when people cannot feel safe interrupting others. This could be caused by
- They feel "abandoned" by the team.
- They feel they "should" be able to figure this out on their own.
- They think asking for help is a sign of failure.
- They don't want to "waste other people's time".