Balancing Effective Querying and Improving Documentation Reading Skills
I would like to ask for advice on a habit of mine. I tend to ask a lot of questions before starting a task or problem, and this has had a positive impact on my work—helping with timely deliveries, promotions, and overall efficiency.
However, as I progress in my career, I’ve started to feel that this behavior is not fully satisfying me.
The actual issue arises when I interact with distinguished engineers or principal engineers. I often compile a long list of queries, and while they are usually patient and responsive, I’ve noticed that they sometimes point out that my questions have already been answered in comments or complex discussions. Upon rechecking, I realize that the answers were indeed there, but I hadn’t noticed them before asking.
My main weakness is that I don’t like reading documentation, lengthy tickets, or going through hundreds of Jira comments to find answers that have already been provided.
How should I handle this situation? On one hand, I receive appreciation from directors for asking questions rather than making assumptions, as it helps me deliver better results. But on the other hand, I feel dissatisfied and want to improve in this area.
Additionally, I struggle with reading extensive documentation, whether it’s technical docs, research papers, or language references. I tend to avoid them due to laziness. How can I develop the discipline and efficiency to go through necessary documentation without losing productivity?
I would appreciate advice on both of these challenges.
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 22 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Self-sufficiency is indeed critical as you get to higher levels. My mental model for a Staff+ Engineer is that you can make things happen if you're dropped into a project. i.e. you're able to make meaningful progress and resolve ambiguities without needing much input from others.
A few thoughts:
- Can you take notes as you read through comments or design docs? Even if you don't share them with others, the act of taking notes with help a lot with your own retention of the material.
- Can you reframe your questions as opinions, and perhaps even take a stance? Follow the conclusion of what happens if the answer to a question is X, and why that could lead to a difficult outcome. And therefore, your question is "Have we considered Y instead of X?"
- Finally, I don't have experience with this in a Big Tech Co, but could recent AI tools help? e.g. Cohere is one of the biggest players for B2B AI solutions, and I believe they have a solution for document/discussion summarization in the enterprise.
- 22 months agoEng @ Taro
My main weakness is that I don’t like reading documentation, lengthy tickets, or going through hundreds of Jira comments to find answers that have already been provided.
For very specific questions or technical details, I would try to build up a habit of spending 10 minutes to look for any related documentation (chat logs, wikis, tickets like you mentioned) that can either help answer your question or guide you in the right direction. (I'm guessing that you are asking about more lower level details if you are looking at those resources.)
It's really important that you do this because the paper trail was created intentionally to save people's time in the future. If you have done your due diligence and read all of the docs, when you ask people questions, you can lead by telling them you looked at X, Y, and Z docs but couldn't find them there. If someone answers your question, update the doc and let them know that you updated the docs because it'll give them a sense of relief that you are doing your part to help other new people that might have the same question. I am very appreciative when people lead a discussion by listing out the resources they looked at and explaining their thought process because it shows that they have thought very deeply about the issue.
It can be time-consuming to give 1:1 direction to a single person if it's taking time away from them working on something more impactful. There are opportunity costs for how each engineer spends their time, and they are more incentivized to use their time on work that will reflect well for them on their next performance review. These engineers are more experienced in their careers, so they could have families that they are responsible for, which makes them prioritize their time even more ruthlessly.
But, there is a balance here, because you obviously don't want to spend the whole day looking for something that doesn't exist, so the key is to timebox your search.
