Why You Should Ask AI Before You Ping Your SRE

I still get daily pings on chat. People ask me about error codes, how to fix a build pipeline, or why a deployment failed. A few years ago, I would just answer them. It was part of the job. But now, we have AI tools right at our fingertips. Almost every single one of those questions can be answered faster by just asking AI.

So why are people still pinging me?

The Habit of Asking a Human

I think it comes down to habit. When you hit a block, your first instinct is to ask the person who usually knows the answer. For a lot of teams, that person is the SRE. It feels safe to ask a human because you trust them. But waiting for me to finish my current task, read your message, and reply takes time. It slows you down.

AI is always awake. It does not have meetings, and it does not lose focus when you ask it a question. If you paste an error log into your AI tool, it will usually tell you exactly what went wrong in seconds.

Not Knowing How to Ask

Another reason people avoid AI is that they are not sure how to ask the right question. They might try it once, get a bad answer, and give up. But asking AI is a skill. It is just like searching the web. You have to give it context.

Instead of asking "Why is my build failing?", try giving it the actual error output and the last few lines of your config file. Tell it what language you are using. The more details you provide, the better the answer will be. As someone who studied computer science, I can tell you that systems need specific inputs to give good outputs. AI is no different.

Building an "Ask AI First" Culture

We need to shift our mindset. Before you reach out to a coworker, ask yourself if an AI could answer the question. If the answer is yes, try that first.

This is not about avoiding teamwork. It is about respecting time. When you use AI to solve the simple problems, it frees me up to work on the hard problems. It means I can focus on making our systems faster and more stable, instead of debugging a typo in a config file.

The next time you are stuck, give it a try. Open up your AI assistant, paste in the error, and see what happens. You might be surprised by how much you can resolve on your own. And if it really is a complex issue, then definitely ping me. I am always happy to help with the hard stuff.