职业与工作方法pindancing.blogspot.com
对“你愿意指导我吗？”的回答是……不
The answer to "Will you mentor me?" is...No.
2010 — 2019，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是开发者博客 pindancing（作者即 HN 用户 plinkplonk）2010 年的一篇短文，对「你能指导我吗？」这类请求给出的答案是「不」。作者认为，成长要靠自己动手做事、先做出成果，再去找同样在做事的人交流，而不是找一位导师替自己指路；空泛的「求指导」邮件往往是在逃避真正的投入。
为什么经久不衰：它说的正是每个有经验的人都会反复收到的请求，把「先做事、再求助」这条朴素原则讲得干脆直接，十多年后读来依然切中要害。
HN 评论精选
答应帮忙是有条件的：对方要了解你、做足功课、请求精确；博取同情式的求助效果最差。
我通常默认回答「可以」，但另一种做法是「以后再说」；如果我不能马上回复，那些不是小学英语老师的人很少会再看第二眼我的邮件。我没统计过，但我觉得现在大约六成的人会得到「可以」。让我放下手头的事立刻去帮某人的因素有：1）表现出你了解我——熟悉我做过的事、写过的东西、我本人或我身边的人；2）表现出你在某件事上投入了大量工作，并且能从我专业的具体应用中获得帮助；3）一个我能满足的精确请求。「你能教我做生意吗」不算精确；「我做了个做 X 的应用，想提高它在 X 上的自然搜索排名，我做过功课，知道这意味着要搞外链，你能给我一个和 X 相关的链接诱饵点子吗」才算。人们常试但往往不如预期的做法是「帮帮我，欧比旺，你是我唯一的希望」——我喜欢支持弱者，而不是失败者，两者有区别：勇气和干劲会让你听起来像前者，道歉和缺乏自信则不会。
patio11查看英文原文
I generally default to "Yes", but the alternative is "Put this off for later" and folks who are not elementary school English teachers very rarely receive another look to their email if I can't address it immediately. I don't keep track of it but I think this means about 60% of people get yes these days. Things which induce me to drop what I am doing and immediately get to work on someone's behalf: 1) Demonstrating that you know me well, either through familiarity with what I've done, what I've written, myself personally, or someone close to me. 2) Demonstrating that you have put a lot of work into something and can benefit from specific application of my expertise. 3) A precise request which I can satisfy. ("Can you teach me about running a business?" is not a precise request -- well, OK, it is, but only if you accept "I could." as a complete answer. "I have built an application which does X. I want to increase its organic search rankings for X, and having done my homework about SEO, I understand this means I need to get links to my website. Can you give me an idea for an X-related piece of linkbait?" is a precise question.) Things which people frequently try that are not as successful as they probably hope: 1) "Help me, Obi Wan, you're my only hope." I enjoy backing underdogs, not losers. There is a difference. Pluck and vim and tales of what you've managed to do make you sound like an underdog. Apologies and lack of confidence and telling me who you've already asked who ignored you totally make you sound like a loser. (By the way, it very rarely improves any negotiation to tell the other party that they were the first person you thought of after the first four people you thought of said no.) 2) "This will only take..." Asking me to drop what I'm doing is much more disruptive than many people would assume it is. Also, folks have a tendency to underestimate how much work is required or how thoroughly I tend to answer requests which I answer. 3) Napkin stage ideas. Most of them will be culled before shipping. Why should I dedicate my limited time on a project which will probably be shelved, when I could instead work on something which will, with certainty, help people?
作者自述：这是私下的吐槽，诱因是层出不穷的「速成式」求指导邮件。
哎呀，我的吐槽居然上了 HN，有点尴尬。在 HN 上我会尽量保持克制的语气；在自己的博客上我就随便写、随便吐槽，不管什么「声音」之类的。而且虽然我喜欢见人、参加聚会，但我也同样乐于待在幕后，不在乎「个人品牌」或者组建群体推动变革。我只是收到第 N 封「请指导我，再发我一些代码，好让我完成学士学位要求的酷炫 AI 项目，我下周就要」的邮件，实在受不了了。
plinkplonk查看英文原文
D'oh I am somewhat embarrassed that my rants land up on HN. On HN I try to have a measured tone. On my personal blog,I just write(rant!) without regard to "voice" and so on. It doesn't help that, while I enjoy meeting people and parties and such, I am equally content to stay in the shadows and don't care about "personal brand" or building a group to bring change and so on. I just got frustrated at receiving the nth "please mentor me and send me some code so I can do a cool AI project for my bachelor's degree requirements. I need this next week." email. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670453 is the original thread , with many nice comments.
老师用物理课作类比：时间有限，只值得投在已经努力、只是卡住的人身上。
好文章。为自己的智力发展负责，你会比有人直接告诉你问题的现成答案收获大得多。我在物理入门课上经常看到这种情况：如果学生来说「我不懂」或者「我没法开始」，我实际投入的时间反而比一个努力但卡住的学生少。不肯或不能开始的学生会被我送到辅导中心，我把时间花在用功的学生身上。我的时间有限，我想让它花得值。
dannyb查看英文原文
Excellent post. Take responsibility for your own intellectual development and you will do much better than if someone were to show you the exact solution to a problem you're working on. I see this a lot with students in introductory physics. If they come to me and say "I don't get it" or "I can't get started" I actually invest less time than if I get a good student who has hit a wall and can't get through. The student who won't/can't start will get sent to the tutoring center and I will spend the time with the kid who works hard. There's only so much of me to go around and I want to make it count.
「先做出东西再谈交流」是一条合理的门槛；只聊点子的人会消耗别人。
这算是守门吗？往好的方向说。用行动而不是嘴上说，证明你在乎，这一点意义重大。我参加过本地一个面向开发者的聚会，结果一半是想多社交的在职开发者，另一半是「超级热爱」编程、只想不停聊自己点子的人。不幸的是我因为座位坐到了后一半人中间，整场都在应付各种「你觉得这个点子好吗」，很难受。
wehrkeoruw查看英文原文
It's gatekeeping, isn't it (in a good way)? Demonstrating you give a shit (rather than saying it) goes a long way. I went to a meetup around where I live that was meant for developers on my area. What ended up happening was half the group were practicing developers who wanted to socialize a bit more, and the other half were people who were "super passionate" about programming and wanted to talk nonstop about their ideas. Unfortunately I got stuck with the latter half, due to seating, so I had to field all kinds of "Do you think this is a good idea?" questions the whole time. It sucked.
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