When you're stuck on a bug, how long do you try on your own before asking someone more experienced, and how do you ask?
Suggested answer
The interviewer wants to know whether you can balance working things out yourself with respecting your teammates' time: not asking in a hurry before you've tried anything, and not staying silent all afternoon because you're shy.
A good answer shows that you have a rule rather than going by feel. For example: if a requirement is unclear, ask right away before you build anything, because going in the wrong direction costs far more than one question. For a technical bug, try on your own for a set amount of time (many people pick about thirty minutes, and the number depends on the team), or sooner if you've already tried two different directions and neither worked. Anything you can look up in a few minutes in the project's documentation, look up first.
As for how to ask, send a message that lets the reader answer straight away without asking you questions back: what you're working on, the error or result pasted as text, what you expected and what actually happened, at least two things you tried with their results, the environment (operating system, versions, branch or commit), and one specific question at the end. If you have a hypothesis, state it.
After you get an answer, go back and report the result, write down what you learned, and if the thing you tripped on was a gap in the documentation, add it there so the next person doesn't trip too.
A bonus point: give a concrete example of a time you asked well, and say how you find out the asking culture of a new team, such as asking your mentor directly which channel they prefer to be asked in.