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Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

nikitakazakov.com

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#61
post #28
post #3

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…

Very often you won't get that upfront research because juniors don't have the knowledge necessary to even start looking for themselves. Because you expect them to come to you with evidence before they ask you, your devs will just avoid asking you and spend hours wasting time instead. Any minimum requirements are a barrier. Barriers are bad for learning. You need to welcome questions even from people who have apparent…

I would argue that those "hours wasting time" looking for an answer yourself before you give up and ask someone more senior aren't a waste - they are an invaluable part of becoming senior yourself.

As a senior engineer, you will often spend hours and days stuck trying to solve hard problems with noone else to ask, and having the grit, determination and creativity to do this is one of the greatest skills you can teach an engineer. Having barriers and friction in the name of this self sufficiency is totally fine and likely beneficial to the development of a junior dev.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#62
post #3

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…

It's difficult for starting people to ask out of school because their curiosity has been butchered by ego-maniac professors. For every 1 good professor, there are 1000 ego maniacs (professor + their TAs).

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#63
One of the things that becomes obvious as I gain experience, is that I actually think I know less.

As I gain experience the number of things that I could know something about seems to increase at an exponential rate, but my knowledge still only increases at the same rate... So as time goes on, the level of knowledge of all things decreases.

So, I ask stupid questions all the time, because I know that something may be related to what we are working on, but I don't have the knowledge to be able to ask smart questions. At this point, any question can help you get to how the subject area can help.

Don't worry about looking stupid asking questions. Anybody in this game who claims they know everything lying, there is just too much to know.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#64
post #3

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…

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Mandatory reading for all new juniors. Better yet, in teams that rely on heavy domain knowledge sharing and complex problems or designs, annual review by everyone.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#65

As a young female software developer, I was told to ask less questions. This led to situations where I'd be stuck hours on end due to things like backend/config changes that no one told me about and I wouldn't have known. So just a tip that this advice doesn't necessarily hold if you're a minority software developer. Later I was told that I was a good dev but my confidence wasn't good enough. Hmm, wonder what could h…

Why are you writing as if being female is why you were told to ask less questions but then not explaining why that was actually confirmed to be the case?

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cases of sexism aren't "clear cut". If you're the only woman in the office, it can be hard to figure out what's going on. Believe me that you try to explain certain things away and don't want to go to sexism as a first choice or a choice at all. But when you're a year in and you still notice there are very real differences in the way you're treated versus your male colleagues you have to start accepting that sex…

> Most cases of sexism aren't "clear cut". If you're the only woman in the office, it can be hard to figure out what's going on. Believe me that you try to explain certain things away and don't want to go to sexism as a first choice or a choice at all. But when you're a year in and you still notice there are very real differences in the way you're treated versus your male colleagues you have to start accepting that s…

There are few positive benefits currently to reporting things like sexism in the workplace, sexual harassment, even rape. It sucks that it's like that but that's the reality right now. The reality is that they probably won't be addressed. If less than one percent of rapists actually get convicted, what kind of "positive impact" do you think will come of reporting workplace sexism? Like the other reply to this post, things aren't so black and white. Maybe you report it, nothing is done, you lose your job, you can't get hired at other places because other companies see that you were involved in a legal thing. Maybe now you have mental health issues from dealing with how it dragged out and how people in your life aren't supportive.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't tolerate workplace harassment or not report crimes or abuse, or that no one should report it, but I'm saying that there are actual legitimate reasons for people not to and some of those reasons are that it's personal and traumatic to be dragged through the emotions and public display of this, some of the reasons are financial, and so forth. If you're a minority you learn to protect yourself by choosing your battles because you encounter sexism/racism/ableism daily, and every time you do stand up for yourself it brings back all the trauma of the people who attack you for doing so, and tell you you're overreacting, creating problems, dramatic, lying, and so forth. Sometimes it's not worth it.

Please show some empathy. You have no idea what it's like to be in a situation like this. And I didn't have "Access to a group of female developers for support". What do you think it's like some union where even if this existed, the members of this could have any kind of collective power to do anything? And I'm willing to bet if there was something like this the group for sure would be respecting a woman's individual right to do what she thinks is best in the situation that she's in, instead of blindly telling her to fight back and expend that emotional labor, because the other women have lived that and know about picking your battles.

Put the onus on the organizations rather than the people who are minorities because you have no fucking voice as a minority. We need allies to be heard and taken seriously and "Well YOU SHOULD HAVE REPORTED IT" is not being an ally. Fostering an environment where that doesn't happen and the entire burden isn't put on the minority to do something about it is what needs to happen. This isn't a "women's problem" or something that will "help women as a class" this hurts everyone. So be an ally to women and be curious instead of judgemental because you haven't lived life as a minority. The fact that you are posting things like this about what "should" be happening means that you're already judging, and assuming, and contributing to the problem.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#67
post #38

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…

It's also fear. You're a new software developer and you just got your first job. You see how much more the other developers know than you and you're intimidated. "Well, I don't want to look stupid". You don't ask questions that you need to because of self-imposed fear and it stalls learning.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#68
post #28
post #3

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…

Very often you won't get that upfront research because juniors don't have the knowledge necessary to even start looking for themselves. Because you expect them to come to you with evidence before they ask you, your devs will just avoid asking you and spend hours wasting time instead. Any minimum requirements are a barrier. Barriers are bad for learning. You need to welcome questions even from people who have apparent…

How would you suggest helping a dev ask better questions? Explicitly giving them guidelines seems aggressive. Though sometimes I have a hard time understanding the problem, or what was attempted.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#69
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> There definitely are stupid question that shows the person asking them was too lazy to think for a moment or at least google it. 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 r…

"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."

Sure. Then it still might be a stupid question, but one worth answering. I know that I ask stupid question at times.

Re: Ask stupid questions as a new software developer

#70
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very often you won't get that upfront research because juniors don't have the knowledge necessary to even start looking for themselves. Because you expect them to come to you with evidence before they ask you, your devs will just avoid asking you and spend hours wasting time instead. Any minimum requirements are a barrier. Barriers are bad for learning. You need to welcome questions even from people who have apparent…

I would argue that those "hours wasting time" looking for an answer yourself before you give up and ask someone more senior aren't a waste - they are an invaluable part of becoming senior yourself. As a senior engineer, you will often spend hours and days stuck trying to solve hard problems with noone else to ask, and having the grit, determination and creativity to do this is one of the greatest skills you can teach…

I would argue that those hours can really be wasted. Yes, learning the system brings long-term benefits. But the way the system is learned can be of different effectiveness, significantly different.

Having a lot of questions could mean, that the onboarding isn't set right - and this can very significantly influence the developer productivity, even middle-term.

That doesn't mean the newcomer doesn't need to think or is allowed to abuse the system :) - in my experience, the situations when the questions are legitimate are just too frequent, so it makes sense to not consider questions undeserved out of hand.

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