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4 Ways to Ask Better Questions as a Software Engineer
How to ask better questions
No matter how experienced you are, everyone eventually has to ask someone else a question at work.
However, not all questions are made equal.
The thing that separates people is how they ask their questions.
By following the tips below, you can ensure that you are being respectful of others’ time and maximizing your chance of getting the answer you need.
1. Research Beforehand
Before asking for help, try to find a solution yourself. While you should not feel afraid to ask questions, you should also be respectful of others’ time and first try to see if you can do it on your own.
The key here is to timebox your investigation to a set amount of time. Exactly how long you should wait is up to you and your company’s culture, but typically this should be between 30 minutes and a few hours.
If you repeatedly ask questions that can be answered with a few minutes of research, you will probably end up being overly reliant on others and deprive yourself of the opportunity to develop your searching skills. Conversely, if you often waste hours or days searching for answers that others could have told you within a few minutes, your productivity and your team’s productivity will suffer.
Finding this balance is an important component of developing your own skills while still remaining productive.
2. Give Context
Once you have determined that you should be asking your question, it helps to provide as much context as possible to the person who will answer your question.
Consider these two ways of asking the same question:
- “My deploy failed. Can you help?”
- “My deploy on service X failed with Y error message in the logs. The most recent change I made was Z. Can you help take a look? You can view the logs at [link] and you can view the pull request for my change at [link].”
With the first approach, you are either going to get no response or force the person you are asking to have a lengthy back-and-forth with you while they try to…
