Coaching: Support and Strategies

coaching_support_and_strategies.md

Coaching: Support and Strategies

Hey Everyone!

I wanted to share that I have been feeling more than a bit guilty about not being able to support all of you this past week. I currently hold a very strong tension around not being able to spend as much time with you as I want. I am also finding it difficult to complete work on projects that require uninterrupted focus time, including:

• Starting another OSS project
• Improving the usefulness of the Goal Library by commenting on goals you’ve submitted, iterating on goals I’ve created based on feedback from learners who have worked on them, and creating new goals in response to your interests
• Forming partnerships with Bay Area tech companies to bring in engineers to help you with mock interviewing and to participate in panels on topics you have mentioned they want to hear more about

To help me better support you all, I am making a request that you start scheduling meetings using my Calendly here: https://calendly.com/deonna.

How to Best Get Support from Me

When you calendar time, please include your name (as well as the name of any team members who also need assistance) and a few words about what you need help with (no longer than a sentence).

• Use a 15 minute slot for simple conceptual questions.

  Examples:

  • If you have a working code snippet and need further explanation of why/how it works
  • If you need a recommendation on, say, the best JavaScript standard library function to use to manipulate your data

• Use a 30 minute slot for questions that require looking at your code and stepping through it to debug an issue.

• Use a 1 hour slot for larger conceptual questions or debugging questions that require looking at several files within a large codebase.

  Examples:

  • Discussing a topic like how a particular data structure or algorithm works
  • Discussing how to approach designing an API, or reducing redundancy for a database schema you created
  • Discussing your personal software development goals and how to reach them
  • Debugging an issue on a project with a large codebase (e.g., Trossello or Floworky)

How to Best Find Help for a Problem

I have also noticed situations in which folks end up solving an issue themselves within a few minutes after they've asked for help. Based on these and other observations, I am adding my thoughts on how to be more strategic when asking for help.

My hope is that this section will help you can get the most out of your time, and how to improve learning habits in general, regardless of whether you eventually reach out to me or another pro player for help.

Please consider:

• If your question is Googleable

  • Questions on what CSS properties to use to achieve a certain effect
  • Questions from a site with a lot of solved solutions online, e.g., if you are working through a problem on a site like FreeCodeCamp, HackerRank, or SQLZOO

• If your question is a matter of trial-and-error. If you find yourself arriving at a solution that works, but you don't know why it works, consider calendaring time

  • Many CSS and SQL questions fall into this category

• If your question can be answered by other learners

  • If they have previously worked on or are currently working on the same goal
  • If they have experience using similar technologies that you might be struggling with

  NOTE: please make sure to respect other learners' time and deadlines if you need their assistance

• If your question can be answered via a Direct Message (DM) on Echo

  • If you need a recommendation for a good resource/reading on a conceptual topic
  • If you're writing a snippet of SQL that doesn't run, or some simple JS code, you can send it via a JSBin

• If your issue can be solved by stepping through and debugging your own code

• If you find yourself spending an undue amount of time on an issue

  • Working for 30-45 minutes on what appears to be a small bug after making an honest effort to solve it using the above strategies is a good indicator that you need outside assistance

Final Thoughts

I'd like to emphasize that I'm not singling out any one person or team, but rather responding to patterns I have noticed over the past few weeks of coaching.

Please reach out to me if any of this is unclear or if you want to have a conversation about it.

Thanks to @tanner for providing extremely helpful feedback on this Gist, and thank you all for helping me in my efforts to support you better, and your open mindedness while considering the suggested strategies for improving your own learning. It means a lot. :)

@deonna do you mind if I edit this to make general guidelines for seeking help? :)