What I Learn From Work - Chapter Two

In the last post, I was so angry and posted some essential problems in a real development flow and my reflection on my present job. After that, I was chilled and wanted to talk about the relationship between you and your colleagues or your user. It is the background of this post, I hope it can you to reflect something.

See something through another's sight

Sometimes we should try to see some problems through others' eyes, then we can figure out somewhere that can be improved in your product. As a software engineer, I think a feature is pretty 'straightforward' like I just want the user to enter the product ids so that they can get the data they want in the system. That's too straightforward to make the user confuse. What we can do is to ask your users or treat yourself as a new user to think it whether is friendly. I have some ideas recently about building an app, so if I had time, I would try to talk to my app's potential users face to face to know what they want.

Don't be afraid of asking questions

I think this should be split into two sides, ask too many questions and ask too few questions. On the one hand, some colleagues are afraid to ask questions when they faced some problems that they can't handle. Because they think it would make them weak and sometimes make their leader angry when the problem is too general. I say, don't that. Don't waste your time with your 'Evil DJ' and solve issues as soon as you can.

On the other hand, someone who likes to people first whether the question is general or not. Sometimes we should judge the type of questions. I got a pretty simple formula. You can put your question to search engines or some ai tools like chatGPT. If you couldn't find an answer through the top five links from search engines or five answers generated from ai, you should ask your colleagues for help. It is really helpful to filter some general or 'well-known' questions and make you effective.

Be kind to people

Sometimes when you were busy and were asked for help from other colleagues at the same time, you found that question is simple sometimes stupid in your position. You become impatient and answer with a harsh tone. These scenes I have seen so many times in the office when our UI colleagues or junior developer ask seniors for help. Be kind and chill out, no one has the same background and knowledge as you. If you are busy, just say 'I will help you later.'

Don't have any bias. I see so many situations in which leaders or colleagues throw trouble at others after they have some unfriendly argument. I think these problems are so general in some companies in China because of some hierarchy stuff. I appreciated foreign companies' diversity. No one is your enemy, you should cooperate with your colleagues to fix issues and build features. You can imagine you can not build a business app without a UI, UX and project manager.

All in all, this is my reflection on the relationship between you and your colleagues or customers. I am just a general software engineer who worked in a small company for nearly two years. If I wrote part three, I would make it when I become a manager or a senior. Welcome to leave your thought in the comment below. See you next time.