How to be independent...but ask for help

You started your career as a software developer and you’re looking for that next step. How do you make the journey from junior developer to senior developer? A key aspect of senior developers is independence. Independence comes from experience, initiative and resourcefulness. Here’s how you can work toward the resourcefulness of a senior developer.

As a new member of the team, you are learning a new codebase. You will work with new languages, frameworks or libraries. It’s OK to feel overwhelmed. When reaching out to your team leads for help, you’ll hear them ask you a few questions: What do the requirements say? Did you read the documentation? Did you do a Google search? On the surface, this feels like they are trying to turn you away. They aren’t. In fact, they do those same things before they ask for help. Part of your growth as a developer is to first help yourself.

Requirements

Every task starts with requirements. Whether you work with Jira or Google Docs you have requirements for your tasks. As a new developer to the team, it's easy to accept the task with no questions asked. Accepting tasks at face value can lead to unnecessary churn. You’ll find yourself working for a day or so and realize you are missing some key information. Maybe the mockups are missing responsive layouts. Maybe they are missing edge cases. Maybe another task should come first. All things that could have been helpful when you picked up the task.

Senior developers avoid the churn by asking questions up front. When you accept the task, take time reading through requirements. Look for missing information. Ask project teams for clarification. Require mockups to be up-to-date. Get everything you need before you start.

Debugging

One of the first things senior developers do when there’s a problem is debug the code. Most development tools like Eclipse and VSCode have a debugger. Lines of code can pause while running and show you what it thinks it’s doing. You can also set a print or logger to display these same values in the terminal or browser dev tools. Trace values and information far enough and you’ll find the source of most issues. Web browsers like Chrome and Firefox can also help debug code. Dev tools can be set to pause code, display styles and show what is happening over the network.

Documentation

There’s a new framework or library created each week. Documentation is a great way to get answers you need. No, not every tool has good documentation. There are clues within any documentation to start understanding. Documentation includes official guides and wikis, yet they aren’t the only forms of it. Look into code reviews if it’s an open source or internal project. You’ll find questions like your own answered by developers. Bug trackers give insights as well. Video tutorials and updates are a great source of documentation as well. While there may be official videos and channels, you may find online courses given by others. Of course, your team has documentation of their own. Look into onboarding material, guides and best practices.

Google it

The entirety of human knowledge is online. Most likely, someone has asked the same question as you or has an answer. Errors thrown in code usually display error codes and a message. Start searching those messages. If the error comes from a specific tool or library, include those keywords in your search. Searches often lead to official documentation. Online forums exist to help developers with their questions. You can even search your company’s internal tools for answers.

Searching for answers online is more of an art than a science. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look up your questions. The skill in searching becomes more about context. Not every search result is helpful. Read and use context clues for good results. You’ll find some sites are there for link traffic but others are good resources. Make a mental note of common links you see and if those sites generally give good answers.

Ask for help

Senior developers are independent, but don’t mistake them for working “in a silo”. It is detrimental to any project if you miss your deadline rather than ask for help. Independence is knowing when to work on your own and when to reach out for help. Never suffer in silence. Your team is there to support you. They want you to succeed.

As developers, we learn many coding languages and tools, but there’s no way we can learn everything. A senior developer knows this and knows who to go to for support. It’s important to cultivate knowledge of other people on your team and what they’ve worked on.

Online forums are a great source for help as well. Reach out if you’re stuck. Ask questions in official tool forums to get specific answers. The developer community is helpful and wants to share their knowledge. Everyone started somewhere and asked questions.

You’re on your way to becoming a great developer. Independence is a hallmark of a senior developer. Learn how to help yourself but, you know, ask for help too.