How to Ask Good Questions (Julia Evans)

What it is

"How to ask good questions" is a blog post by Julia Evans, published on 31 December 2016 on her site jvns.ca. Julia Evans is a software engineer best known for her zines and posts that explain technical topics clearly, and this post is one of the most shared pieces of advice for new engineers.

Why it matters in a first job

In your first weeks you will ask more questions than at any other time, and how you ask decides whether people are happy to help. Juniors tend to fall into two traps: staying stuck for days because they do not want to look slow, or asking vague questions such as "how does this service work?" that nobody can answer in a message. This post fixes both.

What it covers

The post is organised as a set of practical habits:

• State what you know. Say your current understanding and ask whether it is right. It is easier for someone to correct a wrong model than to explain everything from scratch.
• Ask questions with factual answers. Specific questions get useful answers; broad ones get broad answers.
• Be willing to say what you do not understand. Stopping someone to ask about an unfamiliar term is a sign of confidence, not weakness.
• Identify terms you do not know. Build your own dictionary of team and domain words.
• Do some research first. A few minutes of searching often turns a vague question into a sharp one.
• Pick the right person. Think about who knows, whether the timing works for them, and avoid always going to the most senior person.
• Ask questions that expose hidden assumptions. Basic questions often surface knowledge the team never wrote down.
• Answer questions yourself when you can, which also cements what you learned.

How to use it

Read it before your first week, then turn it into a template you actually use in chat: what I am trying to do, what I have tried, what I expected, what happened, and my specific question. Pair it with a rule for yourself, such as trying on your own for about 30 to 60 minutes before asking, and adjust that time with your manager.

Is it worth it?

Yes. It takes fifteen minutes to read and changes how you work from day one. It is free, has no sign-up and is written in plain English, which also makes it easy reading if English is your second language.

Common questions

Is it only for engineers? No, the advice works for any job, but the examples come from software.

Is it out of date? No. It is from 2016, but the advice does not depend on any tool.

Where next? Her post on brag documents, also in the Sefism library, is the natural follow-up once you are settled in.