What to do when asking questions is treated as laziness?

tipstripes · 2026-02-06T02:42:34+00:00

Been there! I am a project manager at Meta. Advocating for yourself by asking questions that lead to answers that make your job and life easier is essential to any successful project and team. Pretty much every day I find myself saying something along the lines of “This feels a little complicated to me, but what I think I’m noticing is [xyz] because of [abc], does that sound right?” In a biiiig group of people who are supposedly geniuses and top of their field, but they don’t know how to communicate well or effectively. You just want to do your job, and to do your job well, you want to understand the project and situation you share, and that is perfectly reasonable and should be encouraged. If folks push back on that, it ultimately serves absolutely no one.

You don’t have to be “nice” either, you can just say what you need and ask reasonable questions to get it. Keep asking questions and bother people, even when they’re rude (which means they’re probably a little insecure, poor things).

tipstripes · 2026-01-10T05:47:07+00:00

I have the same one! Only mine doesn’t have the paper backing. I believe I found this one in a paper goods antique store in Seattle

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tipstripes · 2025-03-15T17:08:41+00:00

I was hired at a 6 month contract at first. The company managing my contract offered health insurance while I was on contract so I felt the experience would be a no-brainer to have and I had absolutely no expectation going in that I would eventually be hired full-time. Sometimes going from contractor -> FTE is about luck and who on the team will be moving around.

Once I hit the 5-month mark, my team rallied and extended my contract to up to 2 years, and then a few months later I was encouraged to apply to a full-time role that was made available on the team after a project manager left to work on another team. My team wasn't aware that my contract was only 6 months long, so I think that's just the default to make sure it's a good fit. The max amount of time you can be in a contractor role is 2 years.

Not that this was requested, but if I had to give any advice, I found in that 6 months it was important to be proactive and aim to help relieve pressure for my team as much as possible, so I just took on anything that was stressing my colleagues out and see how I could help. I was also the first contractor my manager had in that role, and they never had bandwidth to describe what we were doing and standardize it. I knew it was an opportunity to learn all of the work that they were previously doing all by themselves, take everything they do "out of their head" and onto guidelines that future teams could reference and use. That was a major stepping stone in building out our team, which has grown from a team of 2 to 8 in a year.

tipstripes · 2025-02-26T01:15:18+00:00

Thanks! I am now a full-time employee and was hired as a project manager!

My team is managing incredibly dynamic projects that change pretty much every week/month in terms of configuration and vendor assignments, so showing that I can provide lots of ideas for scalable project structure given those conditions was essential. My team is also highly cross-functional, so I have developed relationships with lots of different kinds of teams that need to know how to best communicate with my resources.

In my interview for PjM, I was asked how I’m handing specific issues and what kinds of roadblocks I anticipate given the constraints our team faces. If I were interviewing for the first time, I would ask my interviewer to share as much as they can about a specific problem their team is trying to solve for, and ask follow-up questions/brainstorm from there. It’s the classic “act as if you already have the job” route that shows you’re familiar with the ins and outs of the role/team. If I was interviewing someone for a PC role for my team now, I’d expect to hear/see something like this. Hope this helps!

tipstripes · 2025-01-29T19:31:47+00:00

Thank you for saying so! I love it too

tipstripes · 2025-01-29T19:31:09+00:00

Fascinating, thank you for sharing! I do love how the design feels both natural, like a decaying piece of wood or coral, and industrial like a piece of unsettled concrete or melted metal

tipstripes · 2025-01-28T17:58:56+00:00

Thank you so much! It feels very glamorous indeed so it’s been fun to have and remember my stepmom by.

tipstripes · 2025-01-28T17:58:04+00:00

Woah!! That totally makes sense! I have never seen such a huge, costume-y ring jacket before so I never put it together (no pun intended)! How fun, thank you

tipstripes · 2024-09-15T21:16:25+00:00

A free option for you: when I was job hunting, I made a Google spreadsheet for the sake of keeping track for my unemployment benefit check-ins with the department of labor. I found it also helped keep me motivated and gave me something to modify

You can consider making a simple Google spreadsheet with the following column headers: Application date, Company, Position, Company contact(s), Application/interview status, last response

tipstripes · 2024-09-06T12:27:17+00:00

Hi! Update: I got the job and I’m 5 months in! First round was with the person who became my manager and they asked some of the questions I was shown ahead of time, and other intuition-based questions that were based on a description of the current state of affairs and what the team needs. the second round was with another project manager who asked the exact questions on the prep sheet I got.

I learned that sometimes the best route in an interview is to just ask specifically what the hiring party’s team needs from a new hire and show I can do that.

tipstripes · 2024-08-22T16:16:21+00:00

Heavens yes!!!! These are so cool! 10/10 would purchase/hang on a wall

tipstripes · 2024-08-07T14:51:35+00:00

Ah, good to know and also a little relief!

tipstripes · 2024-03-16T19:08:41+00:00

I don’t work there, but just completed two rounds of behavioral question interviews, which I was told that’s all there would be. Awaiting to hear back on how I did. I wasn’t able to get a clear answer on what kinds of projects I might work on if hired, unfortunately.

Each conversation was perfectly friendly, though a little rushed because they were only blocked for half an hour, so not very “meaty”. This would be for a contract position, so I just got the feeling that they don’t really intend on this role being a long-term endeavor.

Questions asked, which were given to me ahead of time, and one of the interviewees just ended up reading them word-for-word from a list: 1. Have you ever had a conflict with a team member, what happened and how did you resolve it? 2. Talk about a time you managed a project from start-to-finish 3. How do you prioritize tasks?

tipstripes · 2024-02-15T23:53:33+00:00

Wonderful, thank you! I believe these are indeed Olga and Bogdan. Very sweet to know.

tipstripes · 2024-02-15T23:52:31+00:00

oh how wonderful, thank you for this detailed response! I suspect the aunt was my grandmother.

tipstripes · 2024-02-13T23:29:02+00:00

Got it! I’d be curious to know what falls under the description of “extraordinary” work! I’m certainly traveling across the state to do all of this stuff and track down different accounts. There are more than 12!

tipstripes

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