I guess a lot of it comes down to what you expect of your employees. If you expect them to figure out it for themselves, and you give them enough time to do it, then maybe it's OK. If you are constantly demanding everything & offering nothing, then you have a problem.

My advice is that if you know what someone needs to work on, and they don't, just frikkin' say it. Don't wait until they are burned & trying to drag a merge request across the finish line. Also invest in tooling & processes that encourage people to figure things out & generally do better (which may be simply don't give them excuses to do worse).