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>Also a confused guy stopping meetings is the worst - taking time out of the entire team who now has to listen to stuff they already understand explained again.

>Also a confused guy stopping meetings is the worst - taking time out of the entire team who now has to listen to stuff they already understand explained again. Pull someone aside afterwards for clarification. "Also a student stopping lectures is the worst - taking time out of the entire classroom who now has to listen to stuff they already understand explained again. Pull someone aside afterwards for clarification." You are part of the reason why people are scared to speak up and ask "stupid" questions, and I feel like that ends up being a net negative.

Gibbon1 7y ago
Friends of mine that are teachers say, if one student speaks up and says they don't get it. Then most of them aren't following either.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  had this in Uni. I was the annoying student who asked questions all the time. After a few units, I had other students thank me for asking all those questions, because they also didn't understand but were too shy to ask.
  - agustif 7y ago
    Well the old adage of not caring of looking stupid or asking stupid questions. If one is engaged in conversation, one should not restrain himself from asking whatever for politics/social issues. Let the question be asked, it can be esaily dismissed or ignored if it's a bad/not useful question, but it can be asked too anyway!
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  Like someone else said - this is entirely different from a team setting - when you have a team of say 5 people and a newcomer - the new guy interrupting the meeting for every thing he doesn't understand is just sucking the time out of 4 other people on the team. Thinking that you get to ask for clarification whenever you feel like it just because you don't understand something is very self entitled - you have to consider the context first. If someone is explaining something to you directly or the purpose of the meeting is to teach something to the whole team by all means ask for clarification.
watwut 7y ago
There are simple questions that are being asked just to show initiative or to show that the student came up with question. A student asking simple question he could answer by himself or by looking into book in front of him if he bothered to think for 4 seconds is not gain for anyone. There is trade-off to which questions should be asked right now and which should not. Both in lecture hall and on meetings.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jordanpg 7y ago
  Yes, exactly. Just made the same point. IMO, instructors who indulge this kind of thing do the whole class and especially the asking student a disservice because the opportunity for self-teaching is lost. Self-teaching is much more important than whatever the lesson of the moment is.
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    Wow, I don’t agree with this at all. The odd question in a lecture can mean the difference between you following along the whole lecture and losing track completely after 5 minutes. The reason you are in the lecture is to absorb the lecturer’s exposition of a subject. If you miss out on that because you didn’t understand one small point near the beginning, you might as well just read a book and not attend lectures. The whole value of being lectured by an expert in your field is that you follow along the material with them and can ask for clarification where necessary.
    - bluesign 7y ago
      This is maybe good on one on one lecture, but when situation is one to many, it is better to assume the part you don’t understand as a fact, and try to move on, then later try to figure out off lecture time. Unless there is a Q/A time, interruption of lecture for sure not good for the whole group.
jordanpg 7y ago
Right, but there is another side to this coin. There are good questions, and then there are questions that evince/exhibit: * basic reading comprehension issues * trivial matters that could have been looked up in an obvious reference * completely unrelated tangents, asked out of idle curiosity * questions asked solely to demonstrate "participation" (nothing wrecks a classroom like a "participation" grade) In my experience, these comprise the bulk of questions that are asked in non-STEM university and graduate settings. I don't call these questions stupid, but they are a waste of time, do not move the ball down the field at all, and discourage self-learning.
- sailfast 7y ago
  Agreed, provided one is not so aggressive at preventing the questions you list that you effectively chill the environment for questions out of fear subsequent questions are “the bad ones”. That for sure is a much worse outcome than the occasional “really?” kind of question. Some simple nudges to colleagues as checks (did you do the reading? Did you try to answer it yourself first?) before asking questions to keep things productive, for example, might be a good starting point rather than a Potentially more hostile approach that could frustrate well-meaning questioners.
- bobongo 7y ago
  > basic reading comprehension issues The student was assigned reading material beyond their level. They will need mentoring, which a good teacher (i.e. senior developer) is well equipped to provide and should be willing[1] to provide. The teacher should also ensure that no other student is in the same situation but is hiding it due to risk of the social stigma. > trivial matters that could have been looked up in an obvious reference Student is not aware of resources available to them or does not yet have this habit. Provide them with pointers to resources, or engage them in habit-forming exercises for looking up references[1]. > completely unrelated tangents, asked out of idle curiosity Idle curiosity is the best attribute (correction: skill) you can ask for in a student (any developer). Stifling it will cause a drop in creative thinking and therefore damage problem solving skills. An unrelated tangent is unrelated only if the teacher (senior developer) does not possess the skills necessary to relate the question back to the topic at hand. Something made the student think of the so-called tangent. In such occurrences, explore[1] the tangent and how it may possibly relate to the topic at hand, with the help of the student, as a learning opportunity (an opportunity for the teacher, rather than the student, to learn). > questions asked solely to demonstrate "participation" (nothing wrecks a classroom like a "participation" grade) If a student participates just to demonstrate participation, this is usually because the class dynamics (work politics) are skewed against the student (damaging their self-esteem), or the rewards for good performance are not distributed evenly -on merit. When you think a student is participating just for show, assume good faith. That is, assume that the student is genuinely interested and explore the idea together[1] with the student. If it turns out that the student was actually interested, you just prevented a misunderstanding caused by your own burn out. If they were participating just for show, you just helped them hone in on their skills and provided guidance on how to better participate in class (meeting/workplace). -- [1] If you are not willing to do this, stop teaching (read: either stop hiring non-senior developers or quit). Your role in the university (read: workplace) as an instructor (read: senior developer) is not only to manage and produce research (read: projects and deliverables) but also to develop your students' (read: non-senior developers') skills. Earn your salary.
nothrabannosir 7y ago
One notable difference between meetings and lectures is the variance in skill level. In a lecture, it is reasonable to expect that if one student didn't understand something, he was not alone. A junior (or newcomer to a project) in a meeting, however, is a different story. That's a relevant distinction for deciding whether to write down your question for later, or speak up.
- sanderjd 7y ago
  When a team hires a new person, they expect a lot of things to slow down for awhile as they explain things to that new person. This is the cost of onboarding. You pay the short term cost for the long term benefit. It is not fair to the new person or good for the team to refuse to invest in onboarding.
hashkb 7y ago
Lectures are explicitly for learning. Meetings aren't. Apples and oranges. There are stupid questions, and asking them predictably without awareness of the cost is a performance problem.
coldtea 7y ago
>"Also a student stopping lectures is the worst - taking time out of the entire classroom who now has to listen to stuff they already understand explained again. Pull someone aside afterwards for clarification." Well, for a classroom with high velocity that would indeed be an issue. Mixed capacity classrooms might help less apt students, but can at the same time slow down more advanced ones.
dkarl 7y ago
There has to be a balance. Usually in work meetings it is not so bad, because the groups are smaller and people asking questions are a bit older and more socially mature, and they can judge from people's reactions when their questioning should be taken outside the meeting, but in college lectures it can be absolutely devastating when there are a few underprepared or inattentive students who convince the lecturer to run the entire class at their pace so they can put in less effort outside the classroom. A teacher doesn't have to be cruel, but they absolutely should politely but firmly turn aside persistent questions that indicate that the student has not done the reading or does not have a grasp of the prerequisites. I sat through several classes in college where the professor decided to spend the first eight hours of lectures in a physics class, for example, reviewing basic calculus or linear algebra. That's an insult to students who have prepared for the class and showed up expecting to be taught physics, especially when there are plenty of seats in the calculus and linear algebra classes for students who need to learn that material, and it adds insult to injury when the final exam for the class is consistent across different lecture groups, and your lecture group is handicapped by skipping or rushing through the difficult material at the end of the semester.
rubber_duck 7y ago
The purpose of a lecture is learning and the entire class is expected to have some minimum level of background knowledge. In real world projects you often get new people assigned to the team, outside people and some of them are very bad at evaluating context for asking questions. I just had a cross-team sync meeting where this annoying guy from another team with no clue about our requirements or what we attempted started to drill questions on some random library choice - wasting the time of 10 other people and not arriving at anything other than being curios about the tech and wanting to talk about libraries. Or the other day we had a junior argue with a PM about the requirements because he clearly miss-understood it - it took 10 minutes for the PM to drill down to the source of confusion and wasted 10 minutes of 4 people on the call ! Meanwhile two of us were eye rolling after 2 minutes about how stubborn this kid was when he was completely missing the point - this could have easily be don one a call after our sync meeting.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Friends of mine that are teachers say, if one student speaks up and says they don't get it. Then most of them aren't following either.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
had this in Uni. I was the annoying student who asked questions all the time. After a few units, I had other students thank me for asking all those questions, because they also didn't understand but were too shy to ask.
- agustif 7y ago
  Well the old adage of not caring of looking stupid or asking stupid questions. If one is engaged in conversation, one should not restrain himself from asking whatever for politics/social issues. Let the question be asked, it can be esaily dismissed or ignored if it's a bad/not useful question, but it can be asked too anyway!
rubber_duck 7y ago
Like someone else said - this is entirely different from a team setting - when you have a team of say 5 people and a newcomer - the new guy interrupting the meeting for every thing he doesn't understand is just sucking the time out of 4 other people on the team. Thinking that you get to ask for clarification whenever you feel like it just because you don't understand something is very self entitled - you have to consider the context first. If someone is explaining something to you directly or the purpose of the meeting is to teach something to the whole team by all means ask for clarification.

watwut 7y ago

There are simple questions that are being asked just to show initiative or to show that the student came up with question. A student asking simple question he could answer by himself or by looking into book in front of him if he bothered to think for 4 seconds is not gain for anyone. There is trade-off to which questions should be asked right now and which should not. Both in lecture hall and on meetings.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jordanpg 7y ago
Yes, exactly. Just made the same point. IMO, instructors who indulge this kind of thing do the whole class and especially the asking student a disservice because the opportunity for self-teaching is lost. Self-teaching is much more important than whatever the lesson of the moment is.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  Wow, I don’t agree with this at all. The odd question in a lecture can mean the difference between you following along the whole lecture and losing track completely after 5 minutes. The reason you are in the lecture is to absorb the lecturer’s exposition of a subject. If you miss out on that because you didn’t understand one small point near the beginning, you might as well just read a book and not attend lectures. The whole value of being lectured by an expert in your field is that you follow along the material with them and can ask for clarification where necessary.
  - bluesign 7y ago
    This is maybe good on one on one lecture, but when situation is one to many, it is better to assume the part you don’t understand as a fact, and try to move on, then later try to figure out off lecture time. Unless there is a Q/A time, interruption of lecture for sure not good for the whole group.

jordanpg 7y ago

Right, but there is another side to this coin. There are good questions, and then there are questions that evince/exhibit: * basic reading comprehension issues * trivial matters that could have been looked up in an obvious reference * completely unrelated tangents, asked out of idle curiosity * questions asked solely to demonstrate "participation" (nothing wrecks a classroom like a "participation" grade) In my experience, these comprise the bulk of questions that are asked in non-STEM university and graduate settings. I don't call these questions stupid, but they are a waste of time, do not move the ball down the field at all, and discourage self-learning.

sailfast 7y ago
Agreed, provided one is not so aggressive at preventing the questions you list that you effectively chill the environment for questions out of fear subsequent questions are “the bad ones”. That for sure is a much worse outcome than the occasional “really?” kind of question. Some simple nudges to colleagues as checks (did you do the reading? Did you try to answer it yourself first?) before asking questions to keep things productive, for example, might be a good starting point rather than a Potentially more hostile approach that could frustrate well-meaning questioners.
bobongo 7y ago
> basic reading comprehension issues The student was assigned reading material beyond their level. They will need mentoring, which a good teacher (i.e. senior developer) is well equipped to provide and should be willing[1] to provide. The teacher should also ensure that no other student is in the same situation but is hiding it due to risk of the social stigma. > trivial matters that could have been looked up in an obvious reference Student is not aware of resources available to them or does not yet have this habit. Provide them with pointers to resources, or engage them in habit-forming exercises for looking up references[1]. > completely unrelated tangents, asked out of idle curiosity Idle curiosity is the best attribute (correction: skill) you can ask for in a student (any developer). Stifling it will cause a drop in creative thinking and therefore damage problem solving skills. An unrelated tangent is unrelated only if the teacher (senior developer) does not possess the skills necessary to relate the question back to the topic at hand. Something made the student think of the so-called tangent. In such occurrences, explore[1] the tangent and how it may possibly relate to the topic at hand, with the help of the student, as a learning opportunity (an opportunity for the teacher, rather than the student, to learn). > questions asked solely to demonstrate "participation" (nothing wrecks a classroom like a "participation" grade) If a student participates just to demonstrate participation, this is usually because the class dynamics (work politics) are skewed against the student (damaging their self-esteem), or the rewards for good performance are not distributed evenly -on merit. When you think a student is participating just for show, assume good faith. That is, assume that the student is genuinely interested and explore the idea together[1] with the student. If it turns out that the student was actually interested, you just prevented a misunderstanding caused by your own burn out. If they were participating just for show, you just helped them hone in on their skills and provided guidance on how to better participate in class (meeting/workplace). -- [1] If you are not willing to do this, stop teaching (read: either stop hiring non-senior developers or quit). Your role in the university (read: workplace) as an instructor (read: senior developer) is not only to manage and produce research (read: projects and deliverables) but also to develop your students' (read: non-senior developers') skills. Earn your salary.

nothrabannosir 7y ago

One notable difference between meetings and lectures is the variance in skill level. In a lecture, it is reasonable to expect that if one student didn't understand something, he was not alone. A junior (or newcomer to a project) in a meeting, however, is a different story. That's a relevant distinction for deciding whether to write down your question for later, or speak up.

sanderjd 7y ago
When a team hires a new person, they expect a lot of things to slow down for awhile as they explain things to that new person. This is the cost of onboarding. You pay the short term cost for the long term benefit. It is not fair to the new person or good for the team to refuse to invest in onboarding.

hashkb 7y ago

Lectures are explicitly for learning. Meetings aren't. Apples and oranges. There are stupid questions, and asking them predictably without awareness of the cost is a performance problem.

coldtea 7y ago

>"Also a student stopping lectures is the worst - taking time out of the entire classroom who now has to listen to stuff they already understand explained again. Pull someone aside afterwards for clarification." Well, for a classroom with high velocity that would indeed be an issue. Mixed capacity classrooms might help less apt students, but can at the same time slow down more advanced ones.

dkarl 7y ago

There has to be a balance. Usually in work meetings it is not so bad, because the groups are smaller and people asking questions are a bit older and more socially mature, and they can judge from people's reactions when their questioning should be taken outside the meeting, but in college lectures it can be absolutely devastating when there are a few underprepared or inattentive students who convince the lecturer to run the entire class at their pace so they can put in less effort outside the classroom. A teacher doesn't have to be cruel, but they absolutely should politely but firmly turn aside persistent questions that indicate that the student has not done the reading or does not have a grasp of the prerequisites. I sat through several classes in college where the professor decided to spend the first eight hours of lectures in a physics class, for example, reviewing basic calculus or linear algebra. That's an insult to students who have prepared for the class and showed up expecting to be taught physics, especially when there are plenty of seats in the calculus and linear algebra classes for students who need to learn that material, and it adds insult to injury when the final exam for the class is consistent across different lecture groups, and your lecture group is handicapped by skipping or rushing through the difficult material at the end of the semester.

rubber_duck 7y ago

The purpose of a lecture is learning and the entire class is expected to have some minimum level of background knowledge. In real world projects you often get new people assigned to the team, outside people and some of them are very bad at evaluating context for asking questions. I just had a cross-team sync meeting where this annoying guy from another team with no clue about our requirements or what we attempted started to drill questions on some random library choice - wasting the time of 10 other people and not arriving at anything other than being curios about the tech and wanting to talk about libraries. Or the other day we had a junior argue with a PM about the requirements because he clearly miss-understood it - it took 10 minutes for the PM to drill down to the source of confusion and wasted 10 minutes of 4 people on the call ! Meanwhile two of us were eye rolling after 2 minutes about how stubborn this kid was when he was completely missing the point - this could have easily be don one a call after our sync meeting.