Comment by bongodongobob

I have the perfect story to illustrate this.

I had a junior helpdesk employee that I was training/mentoring years back. He was 20 years old, fresh out of tech school. He was good at what he did, but he only did things he knew how to do. When he didn't know something, he'd ask me. Which is great. I'd say "Well, this sounds like DNS, it's like a phone book..." or "That's an APIPA address, it must not be getting DHCP. The computer shouts out to the network asking for an address..." and so forth. However, he kept asking the same questions.

After a few months in one of our monthly meetings he kind of broke "I don't understand what I'm doing out there, you need to train me! I need to be trained!" Completely perplexed I asked him what he was talking about. "You just answer my questions, but you're not training me!" I realized he was expecting me to learn him the answers to everything. I had to explain to him that the responsibility of learning was actually on him. "This isn't school, there's no study guide. We have documentation and Google. It's your responsibility to read it and make sense of it."

I told him that I can give him all the puzzle pieces but I can't put them together for him. To be fair, helpdesk is kind of about making things work and remembering the quick fixes and tricks for things to close out your tickets.

So I said, "Ok, I think you need a project. What do you do at home for fun?"

"Well I play a lot of video games."

"Perfect, we're setting up a Minecraft server". He laughed.

I said "No, I'm serious. We're using like 5% of this massively overblown server that was sold to us. Maybe this will help you put the pieces together."

I gave him a restricted vSphere account for his DMZ'd VM, sent him a guide and unleashed him.

"Well, I've never done this before..."

"Exactly. That's how you learn my dude."

"But..."

"RTFM"

"This VM doesn't do anything."

"Right, it needs an OS."

"We'll how do I install one?"

"Here's a guide."

"I installed the OS, how do I get into it?"

"SSH"

"No I mean the desktop."

"There isn't one."

And so he learned that a computer isn't the Windows desktop.

"I can't SSH in, it says connection refused."

"Right, that's the firewall."

"Well what do I do?"

"Google UFW"

"I can't SSH in anymore, it says connection timed out."

"Can you ping it?"

"No."

"Check the IP address in vSphere"

"It changed..."

"Why?" I asked.

"DHCP...! That's what a static IP is for!"

From then on he finally understood that learning actually takes a little effort and curiosity AND yes, it's OK to Google things. He had this idea that he had to know everything, memorize everything, and looking things up was "cheating". Not knowing something and feeling dumb is actually where learning happens rather than pure repetition.

About a year later he thanked me and said that he completely misunderstood my motivations initially and that he thought I was brushing him off and being lazy, when in reality I was giving him the opportunity to learn by not feeding him every detail. He felt like he was failing because he didn't know all the answers and said that he looked back at himself a year ago and couldn't believe what he was doing now and how far he'd come. "I had no idea what an IP address was but now I understand how the packets move through the switches, request an address..." etc.

We both ended up quitting and going our separate ways as the IT department there was an absolute shitshow. He's now a sysadmin and we chat now and then and he's mentioned that he's actually glad he learned in such a fucked up environment because you were absolutely forced to understand due to all the ridiculous hacks and workarounds that had been piled on over the years. Nothing could be taken for granted.

I learned in a similar way and I think trial by fire may be one of the best teachers. "Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor."