All I can say is that with both experience, and after getting into the groove and flow of working with a particular team - one starts to learn how to read the tea leaves, as it were, and to make reasonably accurate judgement calls about such things.
I'm not saying the "soft, guarded" approach is never suitable; quite often it is.
Most of the time, though -- especially after we've gotten to know the people we work with -- it's more efficient (and genuinely less distracting / bothersome to the other party) to just get to the point.
I think devs are often prone to misjudging that though. Especially when there's a power imbalance. A senior or staff engineer talking to a junior or mid-level ALWAYS needs to be cognizant of the effect your actions and words have on other people.
"after we've gotten to know"
In my experience, once you've built solid rapport, you generally can always be less direct.
"hey man did you just deploy xyz? I noticed there's some weird error prints, wanted to make sure you saw"
"yeah thanks, just saw them a minute ago, already on it"
There's no need to be highly structured or direct, just a small nudge/hint/check, and they know you have their best interests at heart and aren't upset or annoyed.
"Hey man did you just deploy xyz? I noticed there's some weird error prints, wanted to make sure you saw"
That sounds totally great of course. What I'm concerned about is when people think they need to get all long-winded and and jargon-y to avoid sounding "blunt". Per the example in the ancestor comment which tipped this all off (slotting your values in):
"Hey - it seems the XYZ deployment is causing some weird error prints. I think you might have the context on this - can you drive a solution?"
I'm not saying the "soft, guarded" approach is never suitable; quite often it is.
Most of the time, though -- especially after we've gotten to know the people we work with -- it's more efficient (and genuinely less distracting / bothersome to the other party) to just get to the point.