alt Hacker NewsI don't think that's true. A lot of people are afraid to ask basic questions that everyone would think are important because they'd feel stupid asking them.
The thing is that in many a case those basic questions have not all actually been asked and answered because everyone involved thought the same: it's stupidly simple, I better not ask for fear of being marked dumb.
I get the feeling that it's because of fear of being marked dumb by people like you actually.
But then it often turns out that one of those stupid questions has not been answered sufficiently or people were thinking of completely different answers to the question. So it was a good thing that someone brought it up.
And if the question did already get taken into account and people did have the same answer(s) in mind then if a senior person asked, it will probably just be taken as "this guy knows his stuff and is just dotting Is and crossing Ts" VS a junior "asking dumb questions that everyone should know the answer to, duh!"
All I'm actually arguing for is exercising judgement in deciding whether to ask something that might be considered "a stupid question", rather than following black-and-white advice to always ask it anyway. All I'm arguing is that there exists a question that is too stupid to to be worth the reputational damage of asking.
> I get the feeling that it's because of fear of being marked dumb by people like you actually.
I make positive and negative judgements about people based on things they do, which is an imperfect heuristic but the best one available and much better than nothing. So do you.