Dear new developer,

This post talks about how to ask for mentoring, but the principles apply to getting in touch with any busy person. Busy people are by definition busy, and get a large number of emails and requests every day. (Here’s a VC talking about the difference between ignoring and not replying, and how they look the same to a sender.)

The key is that you as the requester need to put in some effort. From the post:

In other words, when you asks for a busy person’s time for “mentorship” or “advice” or whatever, show (a) you are serious and have gone as far as you can by yourself (b) have taken concrete steps to address whatever your needs are and (optionally. but especially with code related efforts)(c) how helping you could benefit them/their project.

This effort on your part shows that you are serious. It qualifies you. Especially if you persist. (Now, you can’t persist to the point of annoying the person. There’s a line between persistence and bugging someone. I always preface any email I send to someone asking a favor with ‘hey, feel free to tell me to buzz off’, and I mean it.)

And

I hate to sound all zen master-ey but in my experience, it is doing the work that teaches you what you need to do next.

That doesn’t mean you can’t learn from reading (otherwise why have documentation or even this blog!) but that you need to actually try things outlined in docs. Even just typing the commands of a tutorial (instead of copying and pasting) will help you understand what you are doing.

The whole post is worth a read.

Sincerely,

Dan