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awesome_dude

My Entire career

"Why the f*ck are you asking, you should know this"

"Why the f*ck can you not look that up"

edit: There's an entire chapter of the internet with "LMGTFY" responses because people ask questions.

"Isn't it f*cking obvious"

"Do I have to f*cking spell it out for you"

There's a strong chance that I am autistic, which means, yes, I need people to be (more) explicit.

AI has done a hell of a good job making it easier for me to search for subtexts that I typically miss. And I receive less of the negative feedback when I have something to ask that does help.

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Asking questions is a good thing but that doesnt mean ALL questions. It doesnt include questions you could answer with a google search or by reading documentation, obviously.

Got it - ask questions, but not ones that you already know where the answer is.

edit: well, except when you search the documentation and get (literally) 70+ results because you don't know the exact phrasing used in the self hosted wiki...

Or, when it's a question that is domain specific (meaning that the SME is supposed to know it, which you only know if you are... an SME...)

etc

Provide context when asking.

: “hey bob, I looked here and here and here and didn’t find the correct information. Can you show me where to look or tell me the answer so I can document it”

Because most people don’t bother doing the tiniest amount of their own research before asking dumb questions it becomes a huge headache to answer the same thing a million times.

However, if you can show that you did put in the effort to look up the answer first people will be much more willing to help.

So far I have two examples (in this thread) of people making (potentially toxic) judgements about the fact that someone asked a question

Can you show why you assumed that what you are asking for wasn't provided?

Can you also explain why your response is to make rather harsh judgements rather than work out what was going on in the first place?

You can tell that this is a toxic environment because I am getting voted down, by toxic individuals, for pointing out that people in this thread have made the massive misjudgement of claiming that the blame for the issue lies in one person - despite having ZERO knowledge of the actual context of the responses received (and spoken about in the gp), or questions being asked.

Which pretty much sums it up doesn't it.

> Got it - ask questions, but not ones that you already know where the answer is.

More of, ask do the quick google search or check the doc before asking that question. If the quick search or look into the doc does not contain the answer, ask.

I agree - there is a baseline amount of effort that should be expected. I was once dealing with a co-worker who was treating me like an llm. I had to encourage him that our job isn't about knowing things, but figuring things out. There's also that slack DM's don't scale like documentation does.

A completely flipped perspective:

> "Why the f*ck are you asking, you should know this"

Because you mentioned NZ: my father, a toolmaker, said there was a huge difference between Europe and NZ. In Germany/Netherlands, he'd be working under a more senior toolmaker. When he took a job in NZ and asked the boss something, as would have been the proper thing to do in Europe, he got a response just like that: because he was the expert, and his NZ boss was just a manager.

I am sorry that has been your experience. I have worked in a lot of "rough/gruff/hardcore" environments, almost all of my career, at companies that are widely recognized to be fairly political and antagonistic, and none of them have ever, ever been even remotely like this.

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