How to ask your team for help

Introduction

Whether you're brand new to coding or you've been doing it for years, if you're working on a coding project with a team, you're going to need to ask for help to make personal progress, as well as progress within the project. Here are some tips to help you out.

1. Don't ask too late

If you've been struggling with something on your own for hours, and keep running into the same purple Google links, don't keep going without help from your team. If you're on a team project, it's not just your own time you're using. You need to consider the overall goals of the project.

2. Explain the problem

Define where you're at in the process, and where you'd like to be. This might mean describing anything from the stack you're working with, down to the desired outcome of a function you've been trying to write.

3. Explain what you've tried

Think of it like filing a Github issue. Explain what your teammate can do to replicate the problem. Otherwise, the problem won't have context in their minds, and they won't know how to help.

Example

Here's a template you can use if you'd like an example of how to ask for help:

Hi (teammate),
I've been working with x tools, with the goal of y.
I need help with z. 

I have tried this tutorial (link here), 
as well as following this example (link here). 
These are the results, which give an error/ don't match our goal.  

You can clone this repo and run (commands here) 
to see the issue I'm running into firsthand. 

Do you have input for me? 

Good luck!