Hey everyone, and welcome to Developer Team. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and in today's episode, I answer listener Mojtaba's question about what to do when you don't know. Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. With Linode, you can instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode cloud. You can get a server running in just seconds with your choice of Linux distribution, resources, and node location. We will talk more about what Linode has to offer to you as a developer later on in today's episode, but first, I want to answer Mojtaba's question, Mojtaba's question, and simply asked, how do you answer your client or boss when they ask you a technical question that you don't know the answer to? I imagine a lot of you have had this scenario occur. Your boss or perhaps your supervisor or even just a coworker has come up to your desk and asked you a question. You have asked a question that you don't know the answer to, and it's easy to feel a sense of panic. It's easy to feel like it's your job to have the answer. You will continuously encounter problems that you don't have the answer to. We're going to come back to that over and over and over. You're going to have a hard time if you think that this job is all about having the answer on the spot. Your value is indeed in your answer. Your value is in your knowledge. You are being hired as a developer because of the knowledge that you have. But what kind of knowledge are you actually providing? Well, a lot of people confuse this specific point. In many fields, the knowledge that is used is based on a combination of specific skills that hardly ever change throughout your entire career and experience. And your experience will define how you apply those specific skills. Most of the time, it's going to be a combination of specific skills that you've been able to apply to. Most of the time, the variation isn't a complete overhaul of the skill set either. So when those skills do change, a lot of the time, they change only slightly. This is very different from the developer. Your value as a developer is that you know how to apply your experience and your previous skills in order to solve a myriad of future problems and acquire new specific skills and knowledge continuously throughout your career. So that's a very different thing. So that's a very different thing. So that's a very different thing. So that's a very different thing. In other words, as a developer, some of the value that you provide is not necessarily in knowing everything that you need to know, but rather knowing how to learn, knowing how to acquire the knowledge, acquire the skills that are necessary to do your job. You will encounter problems that you don't know how to solve right away multiple times in the future. In fact, probably multiple times per day. Not knowing the answer to a problem. Not knowing the answer to a problem. A technical question is generally not an issue from a business perspective. In other words, you aren't going to cost the company money simply because you don't know the answer to a problem or a technical question right away. And we're going to take a quick sponsor break and we're going to come back and answer. How do you respond to this? How do you actually act this out at your job? Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. Linode. 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worth of credit just for being a listener of the show you can use the code developer t20 at checkout that's lino.com developer t that should automatically apply that that promo code developer t20 by the way as of july 1st linode now offers two gigabytes of ram for only ten dollars a month so if your boss comes to you and asks you how can we get a server up and running in the fastest amount of time your answer is linode go and sign up today linode.com slash developer t thank you again of course to linode for sponsoring the show and making it possible for us to do this show day in and day out thank you again to linode our incredible sponsor so we're talking about what to do when you don't know the answer when your boss or your co-worker or your supervisor or even a client asks you a question that you don't have the answer to the reality is your goal your goal in your job is to find answers finding answers is one of the most important things that you do in your job so you need to focus on how you answer this question right you need to focus on how you actually respond not only your body language and your word choice but your method of solving problems instead of saying you don't know for example explain the process that you would follow next to find the answer people see the response of i don't know as a dead end they see that response as i don't know and i'm not going to help you that's how that comes across finding the path to an answer is a more important skill than memory finding a path to an answer is the same value as if you were to have that knowledge in your mind memorized for later retrieval with that said it is important that you know and memorize certain important parts certain key parts of the domain you are working in for example if you're a web developer some of the information you probably want to keep in your working memory so that you don't have to look it up might be the basics of http requests or the primary set of elements in html the available properties and selector types in css or the control structures and other basic syntax of javascript things you don't necessarily know about the domain you're working in are the main things you need to memorize to be a good web developer might be the specific differences that specific technical differences between http and http2 or perhaps the full list of css compatibility differences between current browsers or every method in the library or framework you use in javascript assuming it's sufficiently large of course this kind of specific information is easily reachable with just a few keywords and you can easily reach out to people who are familiar with javascript if you know what to search for the specific knowledge of these things is useful of course but knowing how to find this information and knowing how to apply that information to solve problems is far more important than remembering it for yourself so focus on problem solving not knowledge retainment if your boss asks you a question that you don't have the answer to then the best thing you can do is explain to your boss exactly the next step you would take and perhaps the following steps that you would take in order to find the answer i remember the answer to any good question in development often starts with it depends the answer then would detail the options as well as the trade-offs between those options a specific technical question is often not the linchpin in the success or the failure of your career but it's often the answer to any good question in development focus on communicating what you are thinking how you are finding information and using that information to solve a given problem musaba i hope i helped you with this answer i hope that this is clarifying for you and i hope that the next time your boss comes and asks you a question that you don't have the answer to instead of saying that you don't know you immediately start in on your plan to learn what you need to know thank you so much for listening to developer t of course today's theme once again was learning and we've talked about learning so much in the past and we're going to talk about it more in the future so please if you don't want to miss out on future episodes that talk about this subject the subject of learning then go ahead and subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use regularly you just press the subscribe button and future episodes are automatically delivered to your device thank you so much for listening to today's episode of developer t and thank you of course to today's wonderful sponsor linode if you are looking for an ssd cloud hosting solution go and check out linode.com slash developer t use the code developer t20 for 20 of credit at checkout thank you again to linode for sponsoring developer t and until next time enjoy your tea