I'm hesitant to helping colleagues, why?

It took me a decade of work to realize that in corporate America you are almost always paid for being nice and helpful to your colleagues, rather than your individual contributions, no matter what level you are hired at. And this becomes more and more true as a company scales in number of employees (currently at a FAANG and couldn't be more true).

For me personally it was a major shift that occurred over a couple years transformation. Before:

- I used to be extremely dogmatic about my thinking, would get into "fights" over adopting the perfect technical solutions (i.e. API design, specific ways of writing a component, ...). I was insufferable at times.

- I would find, honestly, a bit of pleasure at explicitly shutting down other people ideas, always in a polite-but-clearly-condescending way, bonus if in public with senior leaders in the room.

- I would generally not help people, thinking that if I did my relevance as technical expert would diminish. Very territorial behavior. When directly asked a question, I would typically reply as ambiguously as possible.

I don't remember what caused it, but I did a 180 degrees shift at some point based on the mantra "I am paid for being nice" and:

- I am genuinely nice in meetings. I always cheer people up, and if I see a suboptimal idea, I never ever belittle the person who suggests it, and start asking very polite and respectful questions (almost always in a private conversation to avoid "public" grilling) until the other person naturally sees the point I was trying to make. If the other person is not receptive to the engagement, I drop it quickly. It is not the end of the world if a mistake will be made as a result of a suboptimal idea, and I could always be proved wrong.

- When a person asks me for some quick help, it is common for me to thoroughly answer and then also offer a full 1-2 hours meeting and explain them everything I know about that area, including potential insights about the future. I still have a tiny bit of “cockiness” from my old days, enough that people don’t abuse my very open attitude to help.

I had to change company to pull off this transformation, because my reputation as "extremely smart and extremely productive brilliant jerk" was too ingrained in my old one, but I am generally happier now. I think most coworkers would describe me as "Helpful and generally competent guy, easy to talk to". I like that.

I can see many "old me" coworkers around, it is truly sad to witness and I can't believe I used to be like that.

No offense, but I sense from your writing that English may not be your first language. I am American but have done business all over the world. In the USA a more collaborative business/work environment is the norm vs Eastern countries where win/win is not really a concept and business/work tends to be much lower trust and more adversarial.

I have no way of knowing but perhaps there are some cultural tendencies at play here? If you think that might be the case, and you do want to be more helpful and collaborative I would suggest a therapist to help you work through these feelings. It may sound like overkill but if you posted about this it is clearly important to you and worth exploring a bit.

Maybe you are scared that they won’t find the article as informative as you think it is? I would start by sharing things with your closest colleague and branch out from there with incremental sharing/helping. That first time someone says “I think I heard about x from you initially actually” the positive feedback loop will have started.

Honestly, this took me years before I saw it but it will happen.

Think of it this way: social norms mean that you will likely only ever receive the positive feedback from your sharing, not negative feedback. And even if you got negative feedback, how bad could it be? “I already knew that” or “interesting.. but i couldn’t finish it” “but thanks for thinking of me!!”

Hope this helps :).

You ask the wrong questions.

If you are considering doing something, ask yourself if it's a win for yourself and whoever you're relating with.

Is it an important relationship to you? If the answer is yes, then consider investing in it. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

If they are asking for help doing something they are perfectly capable of doing themselves, you should consider passing.

If you help someone who doesn't reciprocate or takes credit for your time, then you're just enabling bad behavior. Don't do it. It's not good for you, it's not good for their growth and it's not good for your company.

So, if it's a win-win, just do it and with confidence that it's right for you and right for them and don't waste energy on /hesitation/trust-issues/feelings/whatever.

"Helping" others in of itself doesn't make you a good person. It makes you a caretaker. Caretaking babies is appropriate and a good thing to do. Doing things for capable adults that they are prefectly capable of doing themselves isn't. It makes you a tool and people will lose respect for you. Even the person you just helped.

"Know thy self"

Others can only grasp at reasons you find this difficult, only you will really know. Think about what it is that puts you off doing it, how does it go when you have done it in the past, what (if any) direct or indirect consequences are there afterwards.

Motivation is a key part. If you aren't a fan of the colleagues who ask for help then it's harder to be motivated. Especially if you think they are ungrateful (although it appears in your case that those who help are recognised for it).

The other aspect is that people asking for help are often lazy or at least have not tried sensible steps before asking - there is sometimes a legitimate concern that if you help someone for one thing, they'll be back with a dozen inappropriate requests for help and this is more likely the less effort they've put in. This is where it helps to have a clear sense of what is and is not reasonable for help - with my skillsets I can usually help people with a huge swath of problems even where I know less than they do about the topic but typically one needs to politely draw boundaries (usually) or you end up making no progress.

Back on the point about how it goes when you help people, it's worth thinking about how well / badly it goes. Is it easy or is the communication awkward? Do you feel you are knowledgeable enough to help or does it show up your limitations? Do you get shy? Do you resent them during or after it? Do you struggle to make the connection between helping and having a positive outcome? Would you be uncomfortable helping even if there was never going to be a clear benefit for you personally (ie altruism)

These are all really things only you can answer. Some of them will only be clear if you give it a go sometimes. I'd suggest you have a go and after try some introspection. It'll probably be fine. Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Why are you hesitant? Ask yourself that and write out what feelings/thoughts you have associated with helping people in this situation. Envy? Insecurity that those you help will exceed your abilities? Impostor syndrome? Etc.

You won't be able to come up with a good path forward without being introspective and asking yourself these questions.

One thing you could consider is short-term versus long-term gain in future decision making. You already know that the colleagues who offer help and information are finding success at a greater rate than you.

Consider that information the next time you are approached. The short term cost of helping or sharing information will pay back in that longer-term success.

While some people may expect you to change your actions to be a good person, in reality, helping others and sharing helpful information will give you an advantage in future.

That's one of the things about doing good; it pays off in the longer term through personal contentment and often (but not always) in meaningful success.

I found the book "Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success" pretty interesting. At the very least you'd understand more about why it's useful to give and how that affects team dynamics.

This is gonna sound cynical but I don't enjoy being "helpful" at work because it often comes back to bite me in the ass.

I work in IT, and if you go the extra mile for a person one time they often expect that to be the norm from that point forward and may even tell other people about it who will then expect it to be the norm for them as well, and it just becomes extra work that's expected of you on top of your normal job duties, and if you complain or try to stop doing it you'll be seen as not a team player or lazy for trying to do less.

Or if you agree to do a favor for a co-worker one time, and then they ask a second and third time, and they start asking more frequently until eventually they're just coming to you every single time and it ends with you basically doing part of their job for them.

As you mentioned it can be helpful to do this because you do get those connections and influences with other people, you just have to decide if it's worth the effort to you personally to be doing what amounts the extra unpaid work to get those connections and influence.

Maybe you’re just a lone wolf type. Maybe you’re burnt out from the pandemic / work-at-home dystopia we’re all suffering with. Maybe you just DGAF. It’s all valid.

It doesn’t matter, helping others: it’s part of your job.

Perhaps you had a bad experience elsewhere. Dysfunctional companies exist. Sometimes a colleague will be hopelessly over their head, and will ask for help continuously to the point where you're doing all of their work. Or sometimes coworkers will hoard information and refuse to help you when you need help, leading you to feel that you also need to hoard information to have something to barter with.

Sounds like it might because you consider being nice and helpful to people as some kind of work affectation rather than a character trait. What kind of influence do you want to be in the world? If it’s negative so be it, otherwise consider being nice and helpful in general, in and out of work.

Maybe you have a cynical outlook that people will take from you but will never give back, people who grew up in poverty, or had a rough life will sometimes have this attitude, or it might just be pure selfishness, only you can know.

Does the reason matter that much? Next time you notice this hesitancy, you could talk to them anyways. After a while you could still decide whether it is net positive or negative for you.

Well, it seems like you cannot help yourself find the cause and that's why you are asking us. If you cannot help yourself I don't think you are in a position to help others.

The cause is that you are selfish and want to look after yourself. You need to let go of your ego and be happy for the success of others.

Have this same issue but it's for people I know are leeches. No idea how to deal with it properly.

"I'm 35, I have half a million dollars and I feel like shit because I don't go to parties anymore"

"I'm 40 something I am a millionaire I bicker with my wife over the next thing we will add to our high tech house so I feel like shit"

"I am a solo founder who got burned out and lost all meaning"

"I'm a deeply conflicted person who believes it is good to help people but I can't bring myself to do it, why oh why?"

Is HN slowly turning into some sort of psychological outlet for troubled men?