The Dumbest Reason To Get Fired? - Navigating LinkedIn Nonsense

there are no stupid questions right well what if I told you you could get fired for asking dumb questions hi my name is Nick centino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft no I don't actually think that anyone should be fired for asking dumb questions because I don't think that there are dumb questions but in this video I wanted to walk through a LinkedIn post where someone was suggesting this the reason that I think that it's important to go over stuff like this is because many of us are online consuming information there are people that we might look up to and there's information that we need to try and figure out whether it's true or not of course we want to sit there and believe that everything we read is true but I think it's important we can actually analyze what's being put in front of us now a full disclaimer that I don't know this individual well my goal here is not to try and pick on them I mean no hostility by this but I want us to be able to go through this content and think about what's presented here ultimately at the end of this I just want you to have a little bit more critical thinking when you start to go through stuff that you see posted online a quick reminder to subscribe to the channel if you like this kind of content and check out the pinned comment for my courses on D train with that said let's check out this LinkedIn post this post starts off by saying the number one reason that Junior Engineers struggle is because they think there are only two options and this is with respect to asking questions right so ask questions or don't request any support right so two complete opposite ends of the spectrum I do see a little bit of this so there's a little bit of kind of Truth in here obviously it's generalization but then he says there's actually a third powerful secret option here and that's ask questions that don't suck kind of interesting I think when we read stuff like this online obviously some of the goal here is to try and catch your attention they're trying to it's called a hook right like you read it and you go well what do you mean like kind of catches you off guard makes you curious might get you triggered right so then it goes on to say we all learn how to ask questions as children especially in school but it's weird because we rarely learn how to ask what is calling air quotes here good questions because of this I've seen many engineers get put on a Pip this is a performance Improvement plan and even fired for asking lowquality questions and a side note generally when you hear about people getting put on Pips it's not like it's not all the time but like there's usually people getting put on a pip it's kind of like you're put on this performance Improvement plan to kind of be phased out um I have absolutely seen people get put on Pips and make what I would call like a very good recover recovery they actually work on these things improve and then can uh continue on but sometimes or maybe a majority of the time when people are put on Pips The thought process is like Hey we're not going to fire this person outright we're going to see if they can try and then they're usually kind of phased out again generalization but so even fired for asking lowquality questions especially at meta where there's zero tolerance for what he's calling handholding and again disclaimer here I've never worked at meta I've never heard heard anyone online mention this and we'll kind of go through some of the comments as well but he's saying I mean two things here right like one is that there is basically no tolerance for handholding at meta specifically which is interesting and then this idea of like people technically getting fired or being put on Pips for these lowquality questions so some interesting claims um again I don't work at meta but however this doesn't mean you shouldn't ask questions at all which is right because now you have this fear of like well is my question dumb I don't want to get fired and then never getting help with anything is another Prime recipe for pip so or or in his case like he was kind of saying like getting fired so it just comes slower this is kind of fascinating I've already read this right but I kind of reading through it again it's making me go like holy crap um so he's also suggesting that it comes slower like you're getting put on a pip or being fired comes slower by not asking questions at all I mean that's a remarkable claim to me there are many tricks you can pick up in just 5 minutes to ask better questions so if you're not familiar with the structure of posts and stuff on social media right a lot of this is kind of like hook get you interested and intrigued with what's going on like deliver some type of information and then like a here's where you go to find out more so right only 5 minutes wow like that's awesome that's not much time at all I can learn how to not ask dumb questions and I just have to go visit the this link cuz I don't want to get fired right a bit of urgency around this too you learn them in my explainer walking through a detailed example here so again I want to mention this disclaimer that I'm not totally familiar with this individual I know that he posts a lot on LinkedIn so my goal here is not to Flame this person in fact I will say on my video right now that if my editor is able to kind of blank out his uh profile picture or name as it comes up I think that would be great it's not going to prevent you from going to search this kind of stuff I just really don't want people to go like attacking because that's not the goal here I want us to go through this information not only to highlight how you can dissect it but the other thing is that I want to talk about what it means to work in a what I would call a safe environment okay let's go through some of the comments um so you can see there's a lot of interactions and stuff a lot of them are laughing reactions which is kind of funny and there's a theme in the comments a lot of people are basically disagreeing with this logic here you should never refrain from asking questions the way this post is framed I don't believe reflects the culture at meta so um interesting right oh you have Juniors went through leak code grind um management which introduced this rules needs to be fired completely fired called out publicly and eated for everyone to know what they did okay this is just sad this meta workplace attitude if true smack of arrogance right like some people are saying I don't know if this is true but like this doesn't seem like a good thing the only stupid question is the question not asked right so people supporting like you should be able to ask questions that's the only stupid thing that's a pretty toxic culture if answering questions is seen as handholding let's keep going here uh this one is kind of a little bit all over um let's see if we can blank that part out cuz I don't want this uh name to be called out here Jade is pretty good here on LinkedIn and I've had her on the channel as well for an interview right so low tolerance for low quality questions and you know quotes around on the low quality and then she says I have low tolerance for low quality management personally right like pretty good given how fast technology changes every engineer is a junior engineer for Life very interesting right kind of like this is a a growth mindset framing that we have here this is a a good one and I just want to like read one more maybe because truly Mark Zuckerberg needs to fix the culture at meta because if what have said this post is true the culture at meta sucks right like a lot of people are saying like I don't know if this is true but this doesn't seem good but I want to go back up to this one because I want to talk about what's being presented in this cuz I want to kind of get a couple of different perspectives here right we can see that a lot of people disagree with this including myself I think that this is really kind of a ridiculous thing to say but uh before you ask a coworker ask Google right like go go be resourceful make an effort come to your coworker with what you've tried and what isn't working and I really like this and I think that this is an important thing to call out and I didn't click the guy's link maybe one of the first things he says is this but the point is no offense to this guy I'm never going to click a link that he posts because I think this kind of thing is ridiculous and like I I don't want to support anyone who says this kind of stuff to get people to click links personally if I go back and if I kind of try to take what he's saying here if we look at it maybe reading between the lines I think personally to to sort of indicate that you know generally potentially asking questions is seen as handholding that you can get fired for asking bad questions I want to park that for a second because I think one thing that we could maybe try to extract out of this is that there are ways that you can ask better questions or approach problem solving more effectively I think that's something that we could make a claim about but to say that someone could or should get fired for air quotes here bad questions to me that doesn't sit well okay Nick so what does it mean to be able to ask a better question or approach problem solving in a more effective way well that individual whose comment we just looked at I think that's part of the framing here I can't find where my comment is on here exactly doesn't really matter cuz I'll just say it in this video right I think that when it comes to asking questions and this is primarily for more Junior Engineers or Engineers that are newer to a company or a team right I like to think that there's two main categories of questions that come up this is of course a huge generalization so I'm not trying to say this is the only way it works but two major themes I see are one that you need Clarity around what's being asked and number two is it you're problem solving and trying to weigh out options okay a lot of the time what happens is if you're asked to do something you have a challenge that you need to go solve sometimes you're in a situation where you can't get started because you're not entirely sure what's being asked of you and I think this is the type of thing and I recommend this to all the engineers I work with where we talk about this that that's the kind of thing you don't want to remain blocked on if you don't know or understand what's been asked of you I think it's very important to as soon as possible try to get that Clarity this is the kind of thing where if you were say you're working remotely because a lot of us are doing that now you're sitting at your desk someone said here's your task to go do when you're going great like I was listening in the standup meeting or the sync meeting heard what I'm supposed to do but I don't know if I fully understand what's being asked of me then what you're going to sit at your desk for you know days a week more than one week and just kind of be like I don't really know what to do cuz I don't understand what was being asked I think that's not a good spot to be in I would highly recommend to people that if they can acknowledge this is happening that you do reach out for clarity as soon as possible right if I just got off a call with an individual or a group and they're kind of going back to their desk going man like I don't know what Nick was asking me to do or someone else on the team right I would have no problem at all if they messaged me called me and said like hey Nick like I don't think I get it could you spend a little bit more time with me in fact I would love that that's not a sign of weakness there's so many missed opportunities for Clear communication please believe me when I say that if you are working for me or other engineering managers that I think are managing teams well that they want to make sure they can provide you Clarity on things if you're not clear on things you're not going to be delivering what the expectations are so there's no harm and asking for clarity doing it sooner and I don't care how much time I got to spend with you to try and make it clear I want to make sure that we're on the same page that's one side of things one type of question or category of problem solving but the other side of it is truly like okay you understand what's been put put in front of you and now you're in this position where you might say okay like I know what I need to go do I just don't know the best way to go do it this is the kind of thing again going back to this other individual's comment where it's really about like you need to go try things and this is a huge thing in software engineering and I've seen especially more Junior Engineers like they're not totally familiar with this right there's a lot of pressure on people they want to make sure they can do it right they want to do it fast they want to you know they want to continue the momentum and saying like hey I can deliver but I think it's important that you spend a little bit of time in the beginning getting stuck on things that's okay if you're not getting stuck on things you're not basically putting yourself in these situations where you are trying things out engineering is all about pros and cons the different paths we can take doing an analysis on things and that means that you need to go try things out so for example if you were building a system and you're like I don't know I'm just totally making this up by the way I don't know if we should use Microsoft SQL Server if we should use uh postgress MySQL like whatever SQL light I don't know like you're trying to pick a SQL database which one should you go use if this were like a green field thing you might be in a position where you have to go figure out what the best option is and that means you have to go explore a little bit right this can come up in so many different ways including you know going to solve bugs not even going to build new features it's okay to go down a couple of different paths and try to figure out maybe what might be the best way if we're thinking about like what a air quotes bad question would be in this case is if you basically didn't spend any time on it at all or you basically sat there and didn't try anything and then you just said to someone hey like can you help me with this and it's not that that's terrible right I think I've seen this happen a lot like I said especially with more Junior software engineers and it's really a coaching opportunity it's a coaching opportunity for them and as an engineering manager for other Engineers on my team team that are getting asked these questions it's a coaching opportunity for them as well so I want to explain this when you have someone that's very new and Junior it can be very uncomfortable to not have confidence in knowing the right answer imagine you're in a situation you're just trying to do the right thing and you're like I don't think I know what the right thing to do is here you go ask someone for help they probably know they can probably give you the answer you feel like you're being resourceful you're getting the job done and that is better than nothing for sure what happens is that when people on the receiving end of this question this isn't for everyone but it like I said a coaching opportunity is when they're asked to help someone they might go yeah I do know how to do this yeah I have spent time on this let me let me tell you how to do it so you feel like you're helping that person and you're getting your time back right so you've helped them you know go off and go do it now I'm going to get back to my work the problem and this kind of goes back to handholding that we see in this post here right so the hand holding thing and I'm trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt that maybe this was just like I don't know a little bit too iny face and a little bit too much attenion catching and it's you know a huge exaggeration but when it comes to handholding this is an example of handholding right where someone is basically just giving you the answers now you go do it I don't think that that's good but I like I said I think it's a coaching opportunity what I would tell that software engineer that's being asked the questions like hey I know you're trying to get your time back but probably what you notice is that this person keeps coming to you with questions and why do they do that well that's for a few reasons one they're not learning on their own because you're giving them the answers and number two kind of like I just said you're giving them the answers now they're being resourceful they know that if they ask you they can get the answers and they can progress so the coaching opportunity here is one simple thing that you can ask back to people and that's what have you tried so far it's really simple and it's not meant to be like offensive when someone's asking for help it's a really basic thing you say what have you tried so far because if the very first thing they say is nothing you can either say well do you need clarification right going back to point number one we made that type of question do you need clarification because if you don't you know what what is stopping you from trying something it's okay to go try things and explore a little bit to figure it out you coach people to say this and that way if the person says hey I haven't tried anything you say well go try something right like if you don't have another excuse for why you cannot go try something it's okay this way it teaches you to kind of go down some paths and you try problem solving right so now you're telling this other person you haven't problem solved yet or attempted to please go do that and it's going to be uncomfortable for sure that's okay you have to go learn these things so then they go try one thing at least right maybe a couple and then they come back and they say okay well now I've tried this now you can dive into it a little bit more because often what happens is there's this discrepancy in like maybe what we value more so hey I found these couple of options I think if I go down this path we might get better CPU usage but this other path we get better memory usage or I'm just kind of picking some random things right but you have a couple of different things to consider you might not be totally sure what we value the most and even more senior engineers and principal level Engineers right this is something where you're in a position where you can and should be asking colleagues for input there's nothing wrong with this so going through this approach coaches two different people you coach the very Junior person how to go problem solve so that they can ask not bad questions right they're asking better questions and then you can teach the more senior soft engineer like hey this is how you coach other people so that's also a very valuable lesson and it works better long term because that other individual won't keep coming back to you for questions if they do they're going to be again good questions because it's just going to be trying to go figure out which path to go down I don't know if this individual was trying to get at that in his post like I said I'm definitely not clicking a link that someone's posting when they're talking like this because I think that it's way too much either clickbait rage bait whatever you want to call it but I don't really um you know like to support this kind of thing with all of that said what I wanted to remind you again a couple of things here one is that when you're looking at content like this online please don't just see it read it and go this must be fact because if you go through the comments and try to do a bit of analysis you'll see that people aren't agreeing with this that's a interesting sign that maybe what's being presented here isn't totally fact ual and if there's some at least opinion being presented here that other people may not agree with it too so different perspectives we can look at and I think there's always multiple perspectives so please go you know do some analysis before you just assume something is true the next thing and I hope that kind of made sense those examples we walk through is that sure you can ask better questions I think that there's ways that you can always do that better but it's not a matter of saying that your question is bad in the first place and certainly I can't speak for different companies different managers but I can't imagine firing someone or creating an environment where people feel like they can't ask questions because they're not sure if it's a good question or not to me that feels completely ridiculous which is going to bring me to my final Point here which is if you do feel like you're in an environment I'm not trying to call out meta here cuz I based on the comments I don't think people agree that this is how it's like at meta at least not the way it's represented in the in the post if you're in an environment this could be anywhere your current team your next team and you're finding that it's not like what I would call a psychologically safe place right you can't ask questions you can't be curious you can't ask for clarity because you're afraid of consequences like this if you feel that you can drive positive change I highly recommend you lean into this and try to see if you can help shape the culture to be better this may feel very difficult as a junior engineer but the more senior you are if you're an engineering manager watching this I think if you can leverage your influence to try and change this I think that this can go a very long way and ultimately I would say if this feels like something that does not change because it's just the way that the culture is I don't think that that's a good place to work at you are not going to see Innovation and you are not going to see growth at the rates that you could if you have a psychologically safe environment so I hope that helps thank you so much for watching I hope you got some value out of that I'll see you next time [Music]