As a team lead, I started at my last job to emphatically and regularly say that I didn't have the answers, I merely had lots of practice in turning my ignorance into questions that could then be answered with Google/Wikipedia/My IDE/Whatever.
So during our Slack meetings, I started the habit to share my screen, say "I don't have the answer here but what I would do is to ask me whether xxx, so I would search for yyy in zzz (do it live). Oh here I find that xxx but I wonder if yyy so I would do zzz (do it live). Oh guys I think we have the solution now".
After a few sceances, my colleagues were like "holy shit, I'm now pretty sure I could find the answers myself by using the same method".
IMHO Socrates would have been the best developer of his time
The Socratic method is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions. It is named after the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates and is introduced by him in Plato's Theaetetus as midwifery because it is employed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutors' beliefs, or to help them further their understanding.
Top comments (6)
I used to be in a team where the turnover rate was fairly high. After a few years, I had been there the longest (other members had come and gone from the company). I mentored the new juniors, helped the new seniors to gain domain knowledge and find their way around the codebase, and helped other teams to debug and integrate their outputs into the main product.
I asked for a promotion to senior, but was declined. I asked in a one-to-one for a list of things that would change their mind. They told me they'd get back to me on that and never did.
I agree that titles are mostly meaningless, but it's disappointing when things you do aren't recognised.
It's absolutely disappointing and that's precisely why it's better to be cynical about them and consider them meaningless.
That's when you move on and find a job that will value your work.
The Socratic method is my go to technique when a junior developer asks me for help. That "ah ha" moment when they realize they found the solution on their own is priceless. Sometimes it's not possible due to time & energy levels, but when it is, the payoff is big.
Thats cool with the comment thing, how do you do that? Are they embeds?
Yes, embed with the permalink to the comment (not the thread).
Feel free to steal the idea like an artist!