
Pybites Podcast
The Pybites Podcast is a podcast about Python Development, Career and Mindset skills.
Hosted by the Co-Founders, Bob Belderbos and Julian Sequeira, this podcast is for anyone interested in Python and looking for tips, tricks and concepts related to Career + Mindset.
For more information on Pybites, visit us at https://pybit.es and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Julian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliansequeira/
Bob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbelderbos/
Pybites Podcast
#166 - Don't Fear Asking for Help as a Developer
In our new podcast episode we explore the importance of asking for help and pushing through the fear in order to do so.
We delve into how sharing your expertise can create valuable reciprocal relationships and emphasize the benefits of asking questions, especially for junior developers.
We share personal anecdotes, highlighting how overcoming fear and leveraging your network can propel your career forward, in all professional endeavors really.
As usual we also talk about wins and books.
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Where if someone comes to you for help, help them, because you might be in a situation to need their help another time, right? So if someone comes to you and says, hey, I need your help figuring out this cloud service provider that you seem to be an expert in, give them the 1015 2 hours that they might need to solve the problem or help them troubleshoot, because then one day you might be stuck on Python and they might be the Python expert, and then you go to ask them, they'd be like, oh, yeah, will you help me with AWs or Azure or whatever a couple of years back? Of course. I make three days for you. Hello, and welcome to the Py Bytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Hey, to the Pyrites podcast. This is Bob Ellipso. I'm here with Julian Sequeira. How you going, man? Hey, how was that intro? It was good. Still got it. I want to do the next one. It has been too long, right? Yeah, I know. That's every time we say, I think we're just going to come to terms with this once a month. Yeah, I think that's just a realistic expectation. What are we talking about today? All right, so we're going to jump straight in, everyone, because we thought we're going to change it up, shake it up a little this week for this episode, and get straight to the point. And then we'll do our wins and books and just some little commentary, whatever, at the end. So that way we get straight to the point of what we were, what this episode is about. So this episode we're talking about how fear can be your worst enemy and how people we've noticed so people around us, people in the python universe and the coding universe, people that we speak with, that sort of stuff, how they can let fear hold them back from their success. So we want to just quickly discuss how fear plays a role in your success, or lack thereof. So, Bob, do you want to jump in first? Do you think that was a good intro? Yeah, man. And just a heads up, like, my audio is not that great as julians, because right before the podcast, my microphone broke. But that aside, we're going to focus actually on asking questions more as a junior developer, right, for reaching out with questions, or in general reaching out with questions to your fellow developers. Right. Yeah. That's what you're going to discuss. Subtheme. There's more. Ok, well let's start there then. Yeah, no, so definitely seeing that trend with more junior developers that they don't reach out to senior or colleague developers and yeah, that's all related to fear. And what will they think of me? I might not be asking good questions, but first of all, yeah, you have to realize that there's an opportunity cost, right. Because if you stop doing that or nothing, reach out actively, especially when you're learning and in that growth phase there's a huge opportunity cost because you basically keep getting stuck. I mean, there's AI tools and all that, but ultimately there's a before and after when you start to work with a senior developer or fellow developers on your team in how much you will grow. So if you proactively ask a lot of questions, you will grow faster and it will be a point that you will have less questions. So a lot of it is pushing through the fear. I can definitely relate because when I back in Oracle joined a new developer team, I definitely had that apprehension of asking questions because I thought I might ask dumb questions or I should know more. People are busy, why would they help me? And that's definitely a whole game we play in our heads and it's very detrimental. Right. So as soon as I got over that boundary takeoff, right, I grew exponentially. So we need other people to learn and we have to push through that fear. No, I love that. And, and that, that's a perfect example for our audience, especially the developers among us, because it's so easy to sit there and just be like, oh, so I'm on the new person. I don't want to annoy people. They're going to think I'm stupid, like why am I here? How do I get the job? All those kinds of things. But I just want to point out as well, this is plaguing experienced developers too, people who've been developers for a couple of years to many years, and it might be because they didn't have a senior to even talk to and ask. And so I think people fall into this trap of just not knowing how to ask for help. So there is the fear element of, but then there's also the, I just don't know how to ask for help. I'm used to going it on my own that I just don't know how. And then when you're in a situation to do it, you just don't do it and it shoots. You're shooting yourself in the foot when you just don't do it so. Right. And I don't think they're really dumb questions. As long as you do the research and you show what you've done and where you get stuck and you can really back that up with the effort you've done, documenting that, and I think you're good. As long as you put in the work and you show what you've done, then I think people always respect it. Yeah. I think that's what builds the confidence. Right. Some people just don't want to reach out to the senior on the team because they might have a reputation as, oh, that's the crack developer on the team. Right. But it's all about building confidence and having confidence in yourself. Just realizing as well as a side note that people like helping people. Most people just intrinsically will enjoy helping another human being. So if you have the confidence to reach out and ask, then you'll most likely get the outcome that you want. And as you were alluding to Bob and indicating that, making notes, documenting all the stuff you've tried, documenting the mistakes you've made, the things that didn't work, the things that did, troubleshooting the test, the output, whatever, if you have that, then you can go to this person and they'll immediately have a bit more respect. They'll be like, oh, wow, you've actually tried. You've actually made the effort. I'm more than happy to help you figure out where you got stuck. Yep. I think it's also important to realize that we all were new before, so the expert person on the team, my team, intimidating, but they were new as well at some point. Right. And they probably had a lot of questions and they probably worked with a mentor themselves and. Yeah. And I remember one manager saying to myself when I had kind of these struggles, they're so expert. They're so like, yeah, well, they, they're working in this position, like, for 15 years plus, they're specializing on XYZ, so they really got to get deep on certain areas. Right. So I think a lot of this is also to see it in perspective on a timeline. Yeah. So I think that can help as well. I think the thing as well for people to really consider here is when exactly are you going to be in this situation again? So if you're fortunate enough, and I want to use the word fortunate here, if you're fortunate enough to have someone that you can reach out to, to have a coach, to have a mentor, to have a senior on your team or someone that you can actually ping and say, hey, I need your help, or could you please give me five minutes so I can run a problem by you? You're in the minority there because the vast majority of people don't have anyone that they can ask to. They resigned to, say, asking on some sort of forum, like on Reddit or on, um, you know, wherever else. Right. So if that's all they have, they would kill to have a senior person, an individual they can directly point to and say, hey, can you help me get through this problem? So if you have the opportunity to ask someone like that, just remember, you won't have that opportunity forever. Now I will because I've got Bob. But, um, on the flip side, most people don't have a bob. Most people don't have a senior on their team. So take that chance. Like, you're shooting again. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You, you're completely steamrolling yourself and ruining your own career, perhaps slowing down your career, perhaps if you don't make these decisions to reach out, because one day that person's not going to be there, and then you're going to say, oh, damn, wish I'd done that when I had the chance. Now, again, you keep staying stuck, right? Which is not fun. Another thing that occurred to me was not in the prep, but just usually what happens, we start talking and then we double the bullet point. A bit of barter. This comes back to putting content out there and being inquisitive. The person very expert in a might be newbie and b, so if you are curious and put a lot of content out there where you really look up to the person for a, maybe next time this person comes to you for b, where you happen to put on the block. Right. So that's why I call it barter. You might need some person for potatoes, but you can offer spinach or that's kind of a bad example, but you know what I'm saying. So I just want to say it never hurts to be curious and proactively put a lot of stuff out there because it's almost like trading. Right, where I've had that happen many times, where I needed somebody, and then later on, this person found something I had discovered and we reversed the roles. Right? So. Yep. And there's a slight side note to that, where if someone comes to you for help, help them, because you might be in a situation to need their help another time. So if someone comes to you and says, hey, I need your help figuring out this cloud service provider that you seem to be an expert in give them the 1015 2 hours that they might need to solve the problem or help them troubleshoot because then one day you might be stuck on python and they might be the python expert and then you go to ask them and they'll be like, oh yeah, will you help me with AWS or azure or whatever a couple of years back? Of course. I'll make three days for you to help you with your python. Exactly. Wasn't Kelly saying like, we're all teachers, that's it. We can be, I think, great asset. Most people like being a teacher. So the last thing to end this on, and I'll do this briefly, is this doesn't just apply to the coding realm or tech skills, this also applies to networking in general. And I want to again touch on the recruiting topic because there are so many people out there who are suffering, who are trying to find jobs and can't. And one thing I've seen time and time again is people who are too afraid to reach out because they feel that, one, again, similar sort of mindset as the coding thing we just talked about, but they feel like they, that this person doesn't have time for them or that they'll be annoying this other person and that they're not good enough and all these different things that they tell themselves when really this other person doesn't even know that you're thinking about them. Right. So Bob, let's use you as an example. If you are applying for a job at a company and I happen to already work there, or we happen to have worked together as we did previously at Oracle, but we haven't spoken to each other in say five years. Right. What I often see now is people in that situation, you in this instance, you won't reach out to me because I haven't worked with Julian for five years, he won't remember me. Oh, he's super senior there now. He's a director. He doesn't have time to chat with me. Oh, you know, we work together, but that was a long time ago and he won't want to do that. I remember this one time out of the thousand times we worked together that I annoyed him by booking too many machines in just twelve weeks. Pyrites elevates you from python coder to confident developer, build real world applications, enhance your portfolio, earn a professional certification showcasing tangible skills and unlock career opportunities you might not even imagine right now. Apply now at Pibe, DS, PDM. So by me applying for this job, he's probably going to stop me from getting the job. And you can see how the anxiety, the worry, all those things just snowball into you just not taking the chance. And then you decide, yeah, you know, I'm not going to reach out to him. I'm going to apply cold, not going to go for the referral, I'm not going to ask someone to connect me with Julian again. I'm not going to do all these different things. And then you go for the job, and you could have had you start out at the same level as everyone else who's applied for the job when you could have come in at with ten times the chance of getting the job, had you actually had the courage to reach out to me and ask for that help. Right. And so it really rings true. What you tell yourself matters. So if you tell yourself, actually, I can do this, I deserve the opportunity, and I'm going to use every possible connection that I have and utilize them and hit them up and chase them to get what I deserve and to get what I need, in this case, a job to put food on the table. And that will give you that confidence to ask for help and say, hey, julian, hey, you're at this company. You're at pie bytes. I've loved pibytes forever. It's such a great company. I want to work there. And then I'll be like, hey, man, so good to hear from you. I was just thinking about you the other day, and you never know, these things will come up in conversation and then, you know, you go flying from there. It's hard to imagine that example sending WhatsApp audios like every hour, but there was no one else here. Iron man on the wall behind me, you know, Tony Stark. Call Tony. Yeah, that's a great point. We're not saying like, become like a super shark and aggressive and all that, but we often see the. The other side. Right. The opposite that people are too modest. Right. And it's totally reasonable. And as an example, to reach out to an old contact. Yeah. And people don't do it. And then it's a form of underselling, I think. Yep, 100%. And I think that's a nice segue, actually, to the wins. Almost just the last thing on that building confidence thing a bit. It gets easier if you make this a habit. Right. So it's a flywheel momentum thing, like do it once, twice, in three times. Then it becomes something you always do. Right. So it's. Come again, like the workouts, right? You go every day. It's not painful anymore. Yeah. You go two weeks out gym, you go back, and. And you die. That's not fun, right? So it becomes harder if you stop doing this. Right. So I think it's important as well with this, to make it a habit to reach out when you need help. And usually that means, like, every week. And, of course, always give something in return. But keep this in mind and do it regularly. And by having it succeed, even just a couple of times, because, you know, you won't always get a favorable response every time I. But you will most of the time. So once you know that you can do it and that it works and that you're getting somewhere, you're making some movement, your habit becomes much easier, and you're more likely to reach out again and again and again. And then your success follows no single line of code in this episode. Plus, one for mindset. You win. Damn right. Damn right. So, I wanted to move into the wins because I think my win closely ties with what we were talking about. Do you mind? Sure. You go. Yeah. All right. So, everyone, thank you for listening to our TED talk. We want to learn more, send us a message. But, yeah, so, look, the wins. My win is quite personal with pie bytes, and that is, as you all know, my role at AWS terminated a couple of months back in April. Whatever blah had the last day over a month ago now. And I. I think the biggest fear for me was will my efforts on pibytes full time actually have an impact? There was a significant impact on the business when you went full time years ago, Bob, and I thought, oh, man, I got big shoes to fill here. And so my win is that getting through the fear, pushing through the fear, building the confidence, reaching out to my network, talking to people, has built so many bridges and created so many opportunities for us for pie bytes, that I'm just so grateful for all the people that I've come across over the past decade or so, maybe even beyond that, maybe 15 years, you know, all the relationships I've built, the. What do you call it? The conversations I've had, the times I've stayed out and networked with people and chatted and spent time with them, it's all paying off, because as I reach out to them now and build the confidence to do it, their business is just organically growing. It's just amazing. So, yeah, very happy, man. That's my win. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Very grateful for that. And it's kind of a weird month, right, when you go out, like, kind of finding your routine and stuff and it's definitely paid off. It's definitely visible, noticeable. We have more clients than ever, so. Oh yeah, we are more concurrent clients in our coaching programs than ever before. We've had to bring in and interview, you know, more coaches have to think about scaling in that respect because, yeah, the influx that are coming in, we almost have to like the waiting list. We have to start creating a waiting list because people having to wait weeks before they can start now, which is. I know that's the current programs, right, that one to one stuff. But then you're working on the next things already, so it's, it's nice to see that in tandem. Yeah, exactly. And that's going to lead to a lot more scaling and craziness. So yeah, it's going to be good. Anyway, that's. What about you? Thank you. Get to do a focus on the coding. Is that your win this week? Coding? That's a win because I was stuck on trying to get rust working on eight O's lambda to do code validation because we want to add some exercises, rust bites. And it was just tough because I think lambdas are pretty limited in what you can do on them, which is great for small services and stuff. But Pytest, it's all scripting. It's relatively easy to get that working. But fully compiled language was a different story. And then after a week being stuck, tunnel vision, which we spoke about in the email, that stackle is another way. I just built an API with Rust and then put in our Roku and then it started working. That's also maybe also the wind and is that we have a microservices architecture because I could basically, instead of using AWS gateway API for what we always use, I could just point to another API and get it working that way so it's nicely decoupled. We can have different APIs for different languages if you want. And that works all fine with the platform. That's cool, man. Is not there yet, but it's possible now to do them, which is very exciting. I love it. It's so cool. So that we have PI bytes, which are the exercises technically it's also named the company, but. So we have bytes of PI for the Python exercise and now we're going to have rust bytes. So exercises that are probably JavaScript or typescript. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Love it, man. Thank you for the co challenge. The domain is on codechange. Yes. So it's generic enough, right? So yeah, now that, see, for all the people who said why should URL code challenges. Well, now, you know it is scalable because we thought that far. We thought big from the start. Maybe one day we do more than Python. Our love clearly is with Python, and that will probably always be. But I think it's also good to offer some other languages if you want, because usually you have that offset of. Well, I want to do web development, then it's probably good to know some JavaScript as well. Right? I want to do some performance work or make things faster, like pedantic did. Well, maybe look at rust. Right? So we're not going to be pros in that, but at least it can offer a set of, you know, exercises to get people familiar with it. And I think it's really cool. Yeah, that's cool, man. I love it. The. I also love how you said I just created an API in rust. Well, just in my sleep, I just woke up and I didn't mean to say like that, but I know you didn't. You didn't. I'm kidding. But it is true, though, that building the API was relatively easy with a library and AI and stuff, compared to deployment, that was the easy part, so to say. Deployment was really where I got stuck and had a lot of quirks and things I had to figure out. But building an API was fairly easy. The messages I got from you when you successfully deployed you, I felt like Hugh Jackman in that movie, Chandra Volta. Oh, yeah. But. And no, that's not good. Let's not get into that. Yeah. So. All right. He drank more wine when doing it. Well, speaking of media, what are you reading? Oh, man, you're gonna love this. A three body problem. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I was never a science fiction nerd, but this. This ignited it. Mandy, I haven't read it yet, so I've got. Yeah, but it's not spoiling it. If you talk about alien civilizations and how the earth, how the people here would react to it, and it has everything, like aliens, AI, computers, psychology. Some still in book two, but I couldn't resist. Already watching the Netflix series. Both are great. Yeah. Yeah. Did this. You just reminded me, did we not find that book in the bookstore in Pittsburgh? No, but I did buy it in the US in 2017 when I was meeting. So you already had it, Scott in Portland. Yeah. You had it for seven years, right? Before finally, man, I'm pretty sure it was on the floor of that old bookstore, and the books were just lined up on the floor like. Yeah, because. Oh, yeah, it must have been there. And then I think it was there. And we put it back because I said, yeah, I don't know. Didn't tell you. I go grab this one. I think you did. You gave it to me, and I put it back. Yeah. And then I ended up buying you as an in the art of motorcycle maintenance, which I have down here next to me. So they'll be making a presentation on the podcast philosophy triumph that day. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You will love it. There's everything. Also the whole three body problem with the three suns, and it's a lot of. What's that? Astrology and stuff. And science. The whole, um, astrophysics stuff. Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's pretty fast. I love that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. I'm gonna have to get it. You have to find it. Unless someone wants to gift it to me for my birthday in January. Hint. No, I'm joking. Okay, so what am I reading? Um, because we'll wrap this up. It's also, I want to go to bed, man. So I'm still reading that book, the anxious generation, because as I'm reading it, it's making me anxious about the future of our kids. So I won't go into that. If you have kids, don't read it before you have kids, before the screen time kicks in with always on apps and stuff. So aside from that, the anxious generation, I just finished reading and saddened that I waited so long to read some of these classics, right? But I bought them. They were on sale at the bookstore, a whole bunch of the classics, right? And I just read. Finished reading 20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. And so good. I loved the movie when I was a kid with Roy Schneider in it, and it was. I've never read the book, and I read the book, and I'm like, I'm dying to go watch the movie now because the book was just so exciting, and it's so short. It's like reading for 20 minutes every day. It took me a couple of days to read super quick, and I just loved it. I really enjoyed it. And then. So just the other book that I got as part of this sale that was going on at the bookshop, I got the call of Cthulhu. Everyone out there that's a Sci-Fi nerd, or, you know, just. Just a nerd in general will know who Cthulhu is. Right? And I hope I'm saying that properly or I'm gonna get crucified. But, yeah, I'm reading that, and it's got all these other stories in it. So I just turned the first page yesterday, the introduction. And then our three year old woke up and started screaming and calling for us. So right after this, I'm gonna go make a tea. I'm gonna go sit down with the book, and we're gonna start reading it. Can't wait to do it. Yeah, that's a hp Lovecraft, by the way, hP Lovecraft stuff. So I'm going to read some of those stories. Can't wait. It's going to be good. Awesome. Especially because, you know, I'll just say that his stuff is the basis of modern day Sci-Fi yes. So much of it, like, all the inspiration came from. From his Sci-Fi and horror, I should say, as well, so. Oh, my God. Who's the. The horror writer that you like reading? Stephen King. Yeah. Stephen King attributes so much of his stuff to HP Lovecrafts. Yeah. Great books as well. Anyway, I could go on. We could talk about this for ages. Yeah. But so much growing and. Well, just read. That's why I like reading. Don't start finishing books necessarily. Just read. Yeah. Just read for enjoyment. Just read to do what you like. All right, man. Well, look, everyone, thank you so much for listening and watching. If you're on YouTube and that's it. Anything from you, Bob? No, stay tuned. We will have some exciting guests coming. We have a couple of other episodes already planned out we want to do, so. Yeah, just keep it up. We're 160 plus, so thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Yeah, join the community if you're not done, so. Oh, yeah. We consolidated all the posts into one space. The other day, there were 285, and already I messed it up a bit of. We have to do some coding there unnecessarily, but, yeah, that's all good now. Happy that they had an API. We'll leave it at that, but, yeah, no, there's just a lot of good stuff happening there and people sharing and helping out each other, so, yeah. Yeah, it's time to join. Yep. Great place to be. Inspirational. I love it. Yeah, I think that's it then. Right? So, yeah, we'll be back next week. Beautiful. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next week. Ciao. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pybite friends. That is Pibit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show. And to join our thriving community of python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's pibit es. Community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.