Ask the “obvious” questions
One of the perks of being a senior engineer is the freedom to ask questions that might seem painfully obvious. These are often the questions nobody else dares to voice, yet they can be crucial in steering a project in the right direction.
Here are a few examples:
- “It sounds like you’re planning to run a mission-critical microservice in a team with only two engineers. How do you intend to handle on-call for it?” Translation: What’s your strategy for ensuring 24/7 support without burning out your team? Have you considered the risks and the practicalities of such a small team handling a critical service?
- “I assume you’ve evaluated what it would take to move off this old system instead of working so hard to keep it alive?” Translation: Are you sure that continuing to maintain this legacy system is the best approach? Have you conducted a thorough cost-benefit analysis comparing modernization versus maintenance?
- “What will happen if users start to depend on that incrementing field in your API that you’re telling them to ignore?” Translation: Have you thought about the implications of undocumented features becoming de facto standards? What’s the contingency plan if users start relying on this feature?
- “You’ve run this proposal by security, right?” Translation: Before we proceed, has this proposal been thoroughly vetted by the security team? Are we certain there are no hidden vulnerabilities?
- “What would it take to support this use case that we keep asking people not to do on our platform?” Translation: Instead of just telling users “no,” have we explored what it would take to actually support this demand? Is there a potential market or value we’re ignoring?
As a leader, it’s your duty to surface these implicit questions. When junior engs ask these, they might get brushed off with a “yes, obviously,” but when a senior asks, it prompts the team to include explicit answers in their design documentation. Sometimes, it’s the first time anyone genuinely considers the question. And yes, it’s not fair, but delegating these crucial questions through neglect is a recipe for disaster.
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