Nah, let’s just alternate between micromanaging and being totally absent; fret about lack of productivity or lack of progress; maybe institute a daily stand-up.

Source: am a manager.

You actually expected that what I wrote was a literal quote from the only thing I ever said during those days? It probably was something more like:

"Tried to run project X but kept getting error Y. I tried to figure out where it comes from but it seems to missing some kind of value it pulls from somewhere. Tried every step in the README and installed twice. I think the information in the README is incomplete and there's another step. Nobody else had to use this repo before here so the guys here can't help me out either. Can you help me out @colleagueFromTheUS1 or @colleagueFromTheUS2?"

After 48 hours I get very specific about being completely blocked and that I have exhausted every way thinkable to get it running. So nobody would be living in the fantasy the problem was going away by just ignoring it long enough.

We're humans. Unless there's been a training day or a Readme file explaining HOW to report a bug, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect this protocol to work:

"I'm blocked!"

"Why?"

"{reason}"

If nobody ACKs the "I'm blocked" message, it's reasonable for someone to think that nobody cares or nobody is listening. This is a normal human protocol, as used in most human environments.

"{problem}!"

"What's happening? How can I help?" (any considerate person nearby responds)

I just cut your protocol complexity by half. ;-)

It’s rather unrealistic for the manager to be understanding all the time and coax a team member to give all details of every problem...

Dig as far as you can, record it all, then escalate. You also have to gauge how critical it is and how much of your time (esp. if other things are building up) to spend on it as a factor of when to take it up the line.

Tbh, I haven't had any managers lately that have been that great but I'm still holding out hope.

Those people should never be managers.

> Source: am a manager.

> I'm blocked, woe is me" is garbage

As a manager, are you prepared to put your real name to these comments?

This is an anonymous public forum with a massive audience and great content. Let's keep it civil and not target individuals. Please don't try and start witch hunts to ruin someone's career just because you do not agree with him.

Comment sounds like typical 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps', meant to put down new talent, ignoring that complex, modern dev environments have many parts that are completely out of reach for newcomers without adequate onboarding.

Like you said, why not both? The employee is already asking for help, that's their part. The manager needs to come in and assist, unless he enjoys churning his dev team.

That is not asking for help. Asking for help would be "Can somebody please help me? ... rest of message here...". Even better is asking an individual (or individuals) directly.

Say what now? Mentioning you are blocked, in a stand-up, multiple times is a cry for help. What is the point of having stand-ups if you're not assisting blocked team members?

The standup is for blockers to be announced. It's the 3 stage of the standup.

Sounds like poor management, don't blame the new guy, he did say he was blocked in standup. How is he to know who to ask. Whose time can he impinge upon. It might be he asks someone who helps him but he gets in trouble because he now took up that persons time from something else.

The manager should see oh he is blocked, I'll assign so and so to help unblock him.

Sometimes it's on me.

Source: I manage managers

When a member of your team can't perform because he's not given the proper resources(access, help, info, etc), it should be your number 1 job to find out why is that the case and do everything in your power to rectify that.

One could argue that it's your only job actually.

I just want to point out that that is a lot of assumption based on the limited (probably paraphrased) context we have here.

You can bet I was a hell more specific about both the problem and who should help me.

People ask for help in different ways based on personality, skill set and experience. It’s more important to meet them where they are than sit back and smugly suggest they lack individual ownership.

Good: "Hi, Sumitra. Can you help me with this or recommend someone who can?"

Good: "Hi, $MANAGER. Can you help me with this or recommend someone who can?"

I've never been at such a company and I hope I never will.

This is very good- something managers should do for all of their direct reports. If not every day, then often.

The bystander effect is real, but I wouldn't expect to see it in organisations with explicit hierarchies. Can you imagine this happening in the armed forces? If this happens under your watch as a leader, you're not good at leading.

Otherwise, a common issue for a team with colocated workers mixed with remote workers is a facility to ignore calls and messages.

Central people get easily overworked, interrupted and drown into tsunamis of requests. One of the coping mechanisms in these situations is to just ignore most requests, and only deal with people getting loud enough to be heard. In a mixed environment, the coworker siting 10m away has an easier time grabbing attention than the icon in the chat room with a unread badge.

Even simply knowing when someone is taking breaks can help to time requests to get them at the right moment.

I have remote days every now and then, and it’s interesting to see how the game is completely different, and how often I end up asking someone physically there to go talk to people on my behalf.

(Note that being remote in an otherwise physical team makes this significantly more complicated as well.)

It's the same thing.

CPR for example. It's one of the primary tenants. Assign individual responsibility to people to ensure this group paralysis doesn't happen.