This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Taro and delivered to your inbox for free!
In this week’s Career Alert, we start with an announcement: Over the past year, our partner Rahul Pandey has shared his insights and advice for how to advance your career. Now, Rahul is passing the torch to a new expert, and this will be his final issue. But don’t worry—we’ll continue bringing the most important news and recommendations straight to your inbox.
In the last issue, we highlighted a few of the most popular pieces of advice from 2025. To see all previous issues, check out our Career Alert archive.
The #1 rule about asking questions
As engineers, continuous learning is a fundamental part of the job. A huge part of learning comes from trying something, getting stuck, and then asking a question to your teammates.
Here’s what is often overlooked in that process: The quality of your question determines the quality of the answer. So it’s worth thinking about how you can level up your question-asking skills.
The guiding principle when it comes to asking a question is simple: Make it easy for others to help you. Let’s break down what that means.
Include the necessary information. In the software engineering world, for instance, asking something like “Can you explain why the app is crashing?” puts an enormous burden on the question recipient to collect more info before they can help you. They’ll need to know:
- What action caused the app to crash?
- Does the issue reproduce?
- What do the logs reveal?
It’s usually not hard to anticipate what follow-up questions you may receive after you ask a question. Include those details in your question!
Show your work. One of the most common replies to a question is “What have you tried?” This is critical information to include in order to (1) improve the chances that the recipient can help you and (2) prove that you did the necessary homework.
Common details to include are: prior team discussions, code snippets, and relevant data. But be careful not to overdo it. Including too much code in your question will overwhelm anyone who’s trying to help you. You should spend time identifying the snippet that captures the essence of your issue. Remember, the golden rule is to make it easy for others to help you, which requires your judgment on the right level of backstory to include.
Explain your goal. The backstory is deceptively important in any question, especially for technical topics. For example, you may think it’s obvious why you’re trying to add a parameter to a function, but it’s probably not clear to your teammates. An error I’ve seen frequently is that the question is asked at the wrong “altitude”—the asker made some incorrect assumptions that led them to ask the wrong question.
To get the best answers, include a brief explanation of your goals at the beginning of your question to set the context.
Address the right audience: A personal pet peeve of mine from when I worked at Facebook was when an engineer would ping me individually with a generic question that others could have benefited from. Instead of messaging me directly, I wish they had posted in a group forum. By posting to a broader audience, others could have learned from the answer, and there may have been fruitful follow-up discussions. Moreover, asking the group will lead to faster resolution; it removes a single person (me) as the bottleneck.
The question of the 1:1 vs. group forum is just one element to consider. Is your question best handled verbally or in writing? Could your question be answered by a junior colleague, or do you need feedback from your team lead or manager?
By considering the above criteria, the quality of your questions will improve significantly, leading to more effective interactions and learning.
—Rahul
If you work in academia, you’ve probably heard the phrase “publish or perish” used to describe the pressure researchers face to have their names appear in journals. AI tools make scientific research more efficient, boosting individual careers—but there’s a catch. A new analysis of more than 40 million academic papers found that, while AI tools help researchers publish faster, they also narrow the scope of questions scientists investigate. Instead, AI-heavy research clusters around data-rich problems, leading some to worry about declining originality and innovation.
Sergey Antonovich is an engineer with an unusual hobby: building digital accordions. In his day job, Antonovich develops embedded systems for self-driving cars. But when he rediscovered a childhood passion for music, he found surprising similarities in the skills needed to make his own musical instruments. Read about his career and watch Antonovich show off his accordions, including one he calls the “Partymaker.”
AI is reshaping expectations for entry-level workers in every industry, including engineer and tech roles. What does that mean for recent grads and other job seekers? Now, employers are seeking graduates who can work at a higher level from their first day on the job and use AI tools effectively. Practical experience, critical thinking, and AI proficiency could help you stay ahead in an evolving job market.
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web