[jauer]

I've worked in various teams on the infrastructure side of a FAANG from early career/L4 to sr staff eng/L7 and have always been encouraged and rewarded for asking questions, even when those questions have led to unexpected multimillion dollar costs and in one case a loss of ~1% of fleetwide compute capacity.

I think this comes down to how you go about asking. You have to take the time to understand what is and how it's seen by others by being curious, reading docs, etc instead of rolling in making assertions disguised as questions to assert authority like so many are wont to do.

I suppose it's possible that I'm the designated court jester and that's why I can get away with questioning, but I don't think that's the case :)

[iyihz]

How did the questions lead to costs? Like your questions highlighted issues that already existed that you all then had to fix?