41–50 of 87 posts
Please ask me any question, regardless of how dumb you think it will make you look, after you've spent at least 5 minutes trying to answer it yourself. Bonus Points if you summarize your quick research efforts. Extra Bonus Points if this leads to more questions. (Caveat emptor: _many_ engineers are decidedly antisocial, but if you show that you did prior research before asking, you're showing to them that you value t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Collect your questions, research them yourselves, come with the bundle.. when im obviously not concentrated or it really holds up your work.
How does a junior engineer working remotely tell if you are obviously not concentrating?
Write down where they were, move on with something else until they get a reply.
I see these articles all the time and I don’t really get it. Are people walking around just terrified of looking stupid? When did that become a cultural value? Where is that being taught and reinforced? I just don’t get the need for this article. Asking questions is foundational. It would be like seeing a flurry of “Don’t be afraid that drinking water at work will make you look dehydrated” articles. Or “Just drink co…
Power and politics at the macro level.
Communicating effectively is way more complicated than applying a 4 paragraphs long blanket advice.
Please ask me any question, regardless of how dumb you think it will make you look, after you've spent at least 5 minutes trying to answer it yourself. Bonus Points if you summarize your quick research efforts. Extra Bonus Points if this leads to more questions. (Caveat emptor: _many_ engineers are decidedly antisocial, but if you show that you did prior research before asking, you're showing to them that you value t…
I've asked a number of people, including uni admins, and none of them are based on words from the people whom actually hire. Especially in software where resumes and hiring are worlds apart from accounting.
How can I train / learn recognizing and employing OOP patterns or industry standards so I don't have to bother colleagues with my ignorance? (No CS background, education in the humanities.)
Please ask me any question, regardless of how dumb you think it will make you look, after you've spent at least 5 minutes trying to answer it yourself. Bonus Points if you summarize your quick research efforts. Extra Bonus Points if this leads to more questions. (Caveat emptor: _many_ engineers are decidedly antisocial, but if you show that you did prior research before asking, you're showing to them that you value t…
After a while I started to have specific tickets assigned to me from other techs. And then emails with people of the chain asking me to take a ticket.
Later I realized was that the engineering team several layers separated from me really liked my documentation and working with me.
I wrote accurate summaries. I was honest about what I did and didn't know. I remembered what they told me to ask customers from other tickets. The engineering team loved it.
The honest part was a big deal. In a place where folks tried to show how smart they were people were reluctant to admit they didn't know something or didn't ask the customer, it caused all sorts of issues that engineering hated.
I ask "stupid" questions all the time, and I haven't been a new software developer for decades. Don't like it? Think I'm stupid? Go ahead. It's a free country. Think what you like. Whatever creams your twinkie. I'd say an important attached property of this "rule," is "Don't treat any question as 'stupid.'" That way, we don't become what is known in the vernacular as "assholes."
"Don't treat any question as 'stupid.'" There definitely are stupid question that shows the person asking them was too lazy to think for a moment or at least google it. If people do not value my time, they are not worthy of it. But yes, it is important to seperate that from beginners question, as it is easy to forget, that we all started as beginners.
Even this is rare. If you're getting too many "now what? now what?" questions in a row when the answer is literally right there, yeah, that's annoying. So much of the time I find it's just one of those things where people's cognition works completely differently. They might have thought really hard about it but were barking up the wrong tree. Or they might not have even known what the right search terms were for the problem.
How many times have you searched for something and the highest ranking result is from StackOverflow, but the thread says "this question is closed because it's a duplicate" or "this question is closed because it's a tools question and off-topic".
These are obviously valuable questions as indicated by their search ranking, but the collective acts like they are dumb questions or like someone isn't paying attention.