How do I politely tell a colleague to RTFM?

Posted by Jason Baker on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jason Baker
Published on 2010-04-15T18:11:17Z Indexed on 2010/04/15 18:13 UTC
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I think by now, I've transitioned from a junior developer to an "intermediate" developer. Previously, whenever someone would ask me a question, I'd gleefully answer them simply because I was happy to be of use to someone and wanted to prove my worth as a developer. Now it's gotten to the point where I can't get work done because I'm constantly answering questions that can be answered just by spending a few seconds looking at documentation or searching google (sometimes from developers more senior than I).

On one hand, I genuinely want to help them out and enjoy teaching other people. However, I just don't have enough bandwidth to keep answering these kinds of questions. How do I handle this kind of thing politely?

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