[avmich]

I would argue that those hours can really be wasted. Yes, learning the system brings long-term benefits. But the way the system is learned can be of different effectiveness, significantly different.

Having a lot of questions could mean, that the onboarding isn't set right - and this can very significantly influence the developer productivity, even middle-term.

That doesn't mean the newcomer doesn't need to think or is allowed to abuse the system :) - in my experience, the situations when the questions are legitimate are just too frequent, so it makes sense to not consider questions undeserved out of hand.