If your company is practicing shared code ownership, meaning everyone on the team works together on the same set of code repositories, then there is too much code for any one person to understand. Collaboration is required.

In that environment, if your boss gives you a ticket, and leaves you alone to "figure it out," they are doing it wrong.

And as you work on that ticket, if you get stuck, don't feel bad. It's not your fault.

Being stuck means your team is not collaborating enough. It doesn’t mean you’re deficient.

Don’t spend any more time stuck in the mud, wondering how you’re going to explain why you still haven’t finished your Jira ticket.

Ask someone to pair program with you—and if that’s not an option, ask lots of questions. Unapologetic and unrelenting questions.

Don't feel bad about interrupting people. If they get upset, it's their problem, not yours.

When programmers (or more often their managers) decide to work as a collective, with a shared team stewardship, collaboration is part of the deal.

If you want team members to be able to work in parallel with minimal interaction, you should give people individual code stewardship and let them become expert in their specific domains. This was a lot more common in 90s and it works fine if you do it right.

But if you are all sharing the code, you've passed on that option. And you've passed on the option of expecting programmers to all work in isolation.

It will not yield good results.