1---
2location: Warsaw, Poland
3description: Using tools for work, thinking, and interacting with people
4date: 2026-02-16
5tags: ai, technology, learning
6---
7
8# Tools, thinking and people
9
10September 2007. I'm still a student but got my first job as junior software engineer working 30 hours a week after my classes.
11
12As a junior person I was assigned a mentor. His name is Vitalik. 
13He is kind and extremely smart. He is well respected and works on important projects.
14
15I got lucky, he was a catch and other people got matched with way less brilliant engineers.
16
17I sit next to Vitalik. He is older, but we can chat casually and I can ask him questions.
18
19I work on my project and hit some problem, I turn my head and ask him if he knows the solution. He replied. I did it again 5 minutes later with another question.
20
21He turned to me (very slightly irritated - I can see his frustration, but I admire him, because I don't have as much patience as him). He says to me:
22
23> You cannot come to me with a question as a first stop. You try to solve it yourself by thinking, then you google and do research online. After trying for 15 minutes you can come to me and say, "I have this issue, here are the things I tried, but hit those specific problems. Can you help me?"
24
25This stuck for me for the past 19 years.
26
27When I interact with younger people, I try to do the same thing Vitalik taught me all those years ago, explain and try to help.
28
29But I do get frustrated interacting with older colleagues that do not follow same rules.
30
31Fast forward to 2026. I open Slack and I see messages from engineers who are past 30. They post a question on Slack and tag specific people.
32
33They do it without trying anything personally first. And wowadays, you can get better and faster answer by typing exact same question in your Claude Code!
34
35Type a question -> discuss -> think. Then if something is still unclear do post to Slack and do ask people.
36
37If you ask someone a question directly without doing any prep work you show that you are being lazy, have no agency to solve the issue and also don't respect other people's time. You are just passing problem you have to other people.
38
39Pinging someone on Slack, so that that person stop what they are doing and then go and find answer to your question is such an irresponsible use of time and resources. Please do type your question in your AI tool of choice first, think about it and be mindful of people's time.