Of course you’re supposed to put in work, that’s how you learn. You have to think through your problem, not just look at the back of the math book to copy the answer.

The problem with Stack Overflow is not that it makes you do the work—that’s a good thing—but that it’s too often too pedantic and too inattentive to the question to realise the asker did put in the work, explained the problem well, and the question is not a duplicate. The reason it became such a curmudgeonly place is precisely due to a constant torrent of people treating it like you described it, not putting in the effort.