You Suck at Helping. Now What — An Entertaining and Informative Story about Giving and Getting Help

When someone asks you: “what do you do outside of work at your free time?” People have various answers. Some people enjoy watching some great vintage films; some enjoy sports; some enjoy games or a few beers with friends. When someone asks me this question since a year ago, my answer might sometimes be that I am working on a nonprofit.

It’s actually an embarrassing and yet funny story that maybe by sharing the ups and downs that I can make you laugh at it with me too. Why it is embarrassing and funny is because it might not be something that you consider quote on quote “successful”. I did have a lot of fun doing it, and I have definitely learned a lot. This side hustle aka nonprofit might be like my brain child, or like a baby of mine, that I have nurtured with time energy and money to try to make it survive and thrive.

The idea of it is to create an online community for computer science students, CS graduates, and software professionals to motivate each other, share information, and support each other in practicing technical interview and land their dream jobs. I learn a lot from organizing this “business” of mine like doing basic market research using surveys, organizing online events using discord and meetup, creating a landing page by using Fiverr, or some entrepreneurship knowledge like what a founding team looks like, even trying to find a helping hand by recruiting people from Discord or Indeed. The lessons were so valuable that I wouldn’t trade it otherwise.

If I would do it again, I would probably put in more time into it every week instead of only doing it when I have free time. I usually spent 5–10 hours per week on it. And if I would do it again, I will probably have a founding team immediately through just working with some people I admire a few hours per week before jumping into putting financial commitment into it.

If you know this organization that I am talking about. Congrats! You might be the few that I “harass” to join the nonprofit or to help out in some way. But if you don’t, don’t worry, you might get to know about it in the next few minutes.

Before I started the whole thing, I envisioned it to be a 500-member community that people are actively sharing and talking to each other, helping and sharing resource, building things together and making each other better. There would be event every 4 months and there would be open source projects for everyone so they can great things to write on their resume.

The decision to close it down isn’t anything serious; it’s peaceful and it’s somewhat funny. After trying to persuade a friend to help me on some marketing stuff and at the same time helping him, and then getting the “It’s not you, it’s me” answer, and then realize I need to learn more about “getting help and giving help”; read a book named “Go To Help” (which is a great book that gives you all the strategies on giving help and getting help, if you ask me how it is), and then try my best to help my girlfriend on something important, and fail miserably. After the whole ordeal, I can tell I am pretty bad at giving help.

And after pondering about this revelation that I have, I realize, hey! My whole side-hustle is about helping people, and I have been doing it for a year now and the result is minimal, maybe it’s really not for me. Maybe it is sad to just give it up, but I still learned a lot from it, and made a lot more connections outside of my circle.

Funny if you ask because if you are in my inner circle, I am more of a “shove my help into your throat” kind of guy. If I see someone I care is struggling, I will try to help, whether they want it or not, which I learn that is endearing at best, annoying at worst.

However, even after all these, my people still stay with me, and I am very thankful for that.

And in turns of helping, I am still good at giving some types of help, like planning and executing, such as setting S.M.A.R.T goals, planning actions, anticipating and overcoming obstacles, reflecting on blind spots and encouraging commitment and accountability. (If you want to learn more about other types of helping, check out this book here)

Although my effort into this side-hustle is going to stop here, I will still love to stay active in the community. Something that I want to try out is, to try my hardest on getting a volunteer role at some big community, instead of charging into unknown land on my own. It will definitely be an exciting journey coming ahead!

Here is the book “go to help”.

Here is the nonprofit Leetcode Prepping Community Group. P.s: I might or might not be organizing anymore: www.leetcodeprep.com.