Well...I think people percieve me as the newbie I am, unfortunately. I certainly wouldn't claim to take 3 hours to fix a misspelled word on a menu, but it might take me a lot longer to complete a task than the guy next to me who has 2+ years experience in The Industry(TM). Of course, something like that would never take 3 hours. :)

Do you immediately deny that it's your problem, or immediately offer to look in to it?

Well, there are two programmers working on the project I'm involved with: me and my supervisor. We know fairly quickly who made what mistake, so "denial" doesn't help (and is so unhackerly anyways :). I look at the problem and fix it as fast as I can.

Do you help out other people, just because it's an interesting problem, or if you're work is done, do you just sit and surf the 'net?

Well...unfortunately, every other programmer in the office has 2+ years of experience, so I'm never approached for help. I'm usually the one who does the asking! Unfortunately, I must confess that I used to spend too much time surfing (hmmm...I wonder where? :) This was due in large part to the fact that my job is very much NOT what I was hoping to get into when I finished school, and so my interest in it was and still is fairly low (Powerbuilder..blahhh, why can't I be a SysAdmin or ANY kind of Perl programmer? :).

That said though, I don't surf the net anymore, because I realize that in the end, I won't learn anything by doing too much of that. I want to someday be the programmer that people look to for answers, and will trust my technical accuracy.