How to ask for help from people who don't know you

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• Hacker News
• The complete article hinges on the fact that, it's not X; but Y.
  by navigate8310
• Put attractive female image into your profile. Create secondary profiles with activity if you have to.

  Starting yet another project on my primary GitHub profile has zero return. My secondary profile with trivial code is getting job offers...

  by throw949484
• I have a shorter list:

  1. Be Rich

  2. Be Attractive if you didn't complete step 1.

  3. If you failed to complete steps 1. and 2., don't bother.

  by bobbytheblkbear
• > demonstrate that you are a serious person

  a LOT of people miss this

  by sherlock-holmes
• From what I have seen online like for Reddit discord and online forums is that the questions with the most responses tend to be almost the exact opposite of what this post says. What you got to do is bait the audience into responding. It usually follows the following formula: Title: “woe is me this problem with well documented answers is troubling me!”

  Body: a vague description of what the problem is and what they’ve tried. Leaving out key details that would drastically change the answer.

  Response to answers: now that you have them hooked most answers will be actual questions about what your original post lacked to clarify. Be sure to respond to these as the more engagement on your post makes the algorithm show it to more people. And the second round of answers has a higher chance of answering your question.

  Wait until a critical mass of people have seen and attempted answering your question to exhaustion. Hopefully you will be able to piece together a solution.

  by jak6jak
• Yeah, but that's Reddit; everyone loves to spout off to show off.

  Gotta get them points?

  by ChoGGi
• This was really good but an example would have really helped.
  by ecountry
• This is very well put and much in line with how I think about the matter
  by burnished
• Pretty Insightful. I'm going to have to be serious now.
  by Dinjure
• Connect, show your own commitment, size for success their requested commitment, leave them an out.
  by CGMthrowaway
• Simpler:

  Show Respect, Be Polite, Be Specific and finally; always follow-up with a Thank You whether you got help or not.

  by rramadass
• Really liked the point that asking for help is not about sounding impressive, but about making it easy and natural for another person to say yes.
  by andreylangovoy
• It's incredibly difficult for me to ask for help because I was raised to always pull myself up by the bootstraps. This attitude has seeped into my moral framework. If I get help, it's special treatment; it's an unfair advantage that I'm getting which will harm other people who have to compete against me.

  I wish people would just stop 'helping' each other (as it is currently). Help should only be given to people who are in dire need and it should only be enough to allow them to stay afloat. Helping someone to become a multi-millionaire is not 'help', it's injustice; it only exacerbates the problem. It creates a system where success is impossible without receiving help. This, in turn, creates a totalitarian system where people are just trading favors with each other since everyone who succeeded helped each other to various extents and everything they're doing is balancing favors.

  'Paying forward' really means; giving favors to someone new in order to obtain favors from them in the future. It's not good for anyone.

  Also, no real trust is being built here. It's not trust if you need to keep paying. It's dependency.

  by jongjong
• Many have different definition of 'help' where they expect the job to be done for them, and not just a help in a form of advice.

  That's flaweed though.

  by ValdikSS
• Very thoughtful of you overall.

  As a corollary, I'd also say that it's is the helper's best interest to help someone *'deserving' not just someone asking for help. This is easier said than done. For one the helper must do a lot more wok than helping.

  *=one could have a big discussion on who is truly deserving.

  Also we there are many definitions of 'help' which of course I'm sure you are aware of.

  by dennis_jeeves2
• Thinking that all help that you get comes at the direct (even if diffused) harm of others is a fixed-pie mentality. Everyone gets help; most everyone gives help to others; it’s essential to the functioning of our complex society and is how we aren’t living in trees and caves anymore.

  Success is impossible without receiving help. I have someone that I’ve never met who helps by ensuring that reliable power arrives via overhead wires to my house. Someone else’s help ensures that my garbage is carted away, clean water arrives under pressure, and 100s of other things that would be incredible drains on my time before I could do the first thing that was valuable to me or my family.

  Take the help when you need it.

  Give the help when you can.

  by sokoloff
• Good piece. However "can I pick your brain?" isn't great unless you lay out the boundaries. About what? Be clear.

  OTOH,

  > make it easy to say no

  is the best piece of advice amongst many other pieces of good advice

  by kayo_20211030
• What do you mean by "however" - it literally says not to say that

  > asking for a resource to start with is better than “can I pick your brain?”

  by nickrj
• >asking for help is a skill, not an attribute you are assigned at birth like green eyes.

  Nitpick but this phrasing always confused me. Who assigns it? God?

  (Also I think that happens slightly before the birth!)

  by andai
• Alright, after reading this, I'll put it into practice right away. First, I'll make a list of people I want to get close to, and then I'll shoot them an email to see if they'd like to stay in touch with me
  by jdw64
• Adding to the canon, something I started awhile back, maybe worth revisiting: https://pizarrowrites.substack.com/p/the-book-of-help
  by fapi1974
• I'd add two recommendations:

  * No abbreviations like "plz"

  * No wall of text (and no AI walls of text)

  by gus_massa
• There is plenty advice around for "how to ask" (really, it's the same if you know the person or not). It all boils down to a Calvinistic "show you're worthy" kind of exercise.

  But what about advice for giving help to someone?

  There's plenty of ways that giving someone help can go horribly wrong, and I think that it's not uncommon for people to be blindsided by such a request.

  by crispyambulance
• A pretty incredible answer to your question comes from a perhaps wholly unexpected source: Hunter S. Thompson, in a letter responding to a friend's request for life advice:

  https://fs.blog/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/

  by willturman
• I'm surprised no one posted Eric S Raymond's treatise on the whole thing in a lot more detail!

  https://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

  It reads a bit harsh in some places but well warranted IMHO.

  by legends2k
• Showing what you have done to help yourself is by far the most effective way to get help in my experience - not only does it show that you aren’t just helpless and will be a drain on resources, it also gives the person helping you a jumping-off point, avoiding potential troubleshooting and back-and-forth questions.

  I make sure to do this at work, when I’m asking questions about things outside of my domain. I do it when talking to tech support for my ISP or phone, when I contact maintenance for my apartment and when I take my car in for service.

  by devmor
• 100% in terms of people before project.

  Especially when starting something yourself. It sounds obvious but it took me far too long to long to go to people actively talking about their problems and help them vs asking them for problems they are facing.

  Making that switch was a big difference in terms of outreach.

  by joshuapanka
• Proof of work is tricky, IMO. I think I tend to over-prove my work. I'll explain the request, and then mention the first three-or-five-or-whatever things I've tried, including what went wrong. I always thought it was most important to show I'm serious and that I've tried everything I can try before asking for help, but I think this hurts response rates. I think the reality is that most people don't want to read a wall of text before they can begin to engage with the idea of helping you.

  I'm trying to inoculate myself against the imaginary idea that I'm an idiot, but the reality is, by the time I get to idea #5, I'm probably grasping at straws. The 5 most obvious solutions might not be someone else's 5. What I need their help with is not coming up with idea #6 in terms of likelihood, but _their_ best first idea -- which might send me in a totally different direction!

  by rconti
• I do the same. But the benefit to me is that by the time I've written out the message and checked my work I've usually solved the problem. So it's like rubber-ducking but with social consequences attached which makes my brain actually pay attention.
  by anitil
• In text, you have the advantage of putting things in any order, with the assurance that the reader knows exactly how long the message is.

  Always start your email to a busy/important person with exactly what you want from them. Within the first two sentences. Then peel the onion, giving details from more important to less important.

  This gives the reader opportunity to stop reading at any point having decided to help you or not, with the least waste of their time. In many case, the person can skill your description of your work, and just tell you what to do.

  by abdullahkhalids