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This just has not been my experience at all. I've never had a problem with a junior asking too many questions. Never. I have, however, had issues with them no

by astura 3y ago

This just has not been my experience at all. I've never had a problem with a junior asking too many questions. Never. I have, however, had issues with them not asking enough questions.

kdmccormick 3y ago
I have had both problems. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, it varies from person to person. It can also vary within a single person. They might, for example, ask questions too quickly when stuck on a technical question that could be solved by reading docs, but ask questions too slowly when stuck on an ambiguous product requiment that can only be personally answered by the PM or UX person.
spenczar5 3y ago
Right. I never got upset with a question. The only issue is getting the same question multiple times. Not necessarily the same question verbatim, by the way. When I answer a question, I am trying to “teach to fish,” and so there is some system that I am explaining. My hope is that the asker will show curiosity - ask follow-up questions - and then be able to generalize. “I learned there was a lambda for sending emails, in the sysops repo. Maybe there is a lambda for sending slack messages in there too?” Software systems are imperfect so the generalizations might break. In this case I want another question quickly, like “I couldn’t find a slack message sender like the email one. Does one exist?”
rincebrain 3y ago
Asking questions quickly is optimal for resolving the immediate problem, but not necessarily for understanding the components involved in the answer, or the time of the person being asked. Even if you write off the latter as ~free, the former is a significant benefit to someone familiarizing themselves with a new environment, and even someone walking the junior person through the process of reasoning through how to get there probably won't cover the same benefits as they might have experienced doing it themselves because they likely don't think exactly the same way. Of course, it's an immediate versus long term tradeoff too, and a personal tradeoff for when to ask, and with how many people tend to just refuse to ask questions because they've been trained to think this makes them look bad, it probably makes sense to aggressively incentivize asking by default, but there are benefits to spending time on a problem yourself if you have enough tools to bootstrap your way into more understanding, and I have met enough people who never understood things more than just how to lookup the answer from someone knowledgable to think this isn't something to also be concerned about.

by astura 3y ago

This just has not been my experience at all. I've never had a problem with a junior asking too many questions. Never. I have, however, had issues with them not asking enough questions.

kdmccormick 3y ago

I have had both problems. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, it varies from person to person. It can also vary within a single person. They might, for example, ask questions too quickly when stuck on a technical question that could be solved by reading docs, but ask questions too slowly when stuck on an ambiguous product requiment that can only be personally answered by the PM or UX person.

spenczar5 3y ago

Right. I never got upset with a question. The only issue is getting the same question multiple times. Not necessarily the same question verbatim, by the way. When I answer a question, I am trying to “teach to fish,” and so there is some system that I am explaining. My hope is that the asker will show curiosity - ask follow-up questions - and then be able to generalize. “I learned there was a lambda for sending emails, in the sysops repo. Maybe there is a lambda for sending slack messages in there too?” Software systems are imperfect so the generalizations might break. In this case I want another question quickly, like “I couldn’t find a slack message sender like the email one. Does one exist?”

rincebrain 3y ago

Asking questions quickly is optimal for resolving the immediate problem, but not necessarily for understanding the components involved in the answer, or the time of the person being asked. Even if you write off the latter as ~free, the former is a significant benefit to someone familiarizing themselves with a new environment, and even someone walking the junior person through the process of reasoning through how to get there probably won't cover the same benefits as they might have experienced doing it themselves because they likely don't think exactly the same way. Of course, it's an immediate versus long term tradeoff too, and a personal tradeoff for when to ask, and with how many people tend to just refuse to ask questions because they've been trained to think this makes them look bad, it probably makes sense to aggressively incentivize asking by default, but there are benefits to spending time on a problem yourself if you have enough tools to bootstrap your way into more understanding, and I have met enough people who never understood things more than just how to lookup the answer from someone knowledgable to think this isn't something to also be concerned about.