Be careful of who you work with
chadfowler.com
Be careful of who you work with
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#2Excellent points on the spreading of behavior and emotions via social networks.
In "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" (an excellent book on social network behavior within large organizations), Rob Cross reports work looking at the effect different people had on energy. Some people, when you meet with them, everybody comes out energized ... others, you come away totally meh. Who's it more productive to associate with? I don't know of similar studies with startups, early customers, and partners, but I'd bet dollars to donuts there would be similar patterns.
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#3Hey Chad, seems like a good post. . . not being one of those crazy typography guys, but it was very hard to read this post. I'm in Chrome, xp, and on a 21 inch monitor. The letters look like they are weighted differently in thickness. Maybe move to a more standard font? Anyways, just an fyi.
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#4Hey Chad, seems like a good post. . . not being one of those crazy typography guys, but it was very hard to read this post. I'm in Chrome, xp, and on a 21 inch monitor. The letters look like they are weighted differently in thickness. Maybe move to a more standard font? Anyways, just an fyi.
Ya, thanks. I need to get my designer friend to help with that :)
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#5Hey Chad, seems like a good post. . . not being one of those crazy typography guys, but it was very hard to read this post. I'm in Chrome, xp, and on a 21 inch monitor. The letters look like they are weighted differently in thickness. Maybe move to a more standard font? Anyways, just an fyi.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having that problem - site is nigh-unreadable with both firefox and chrome.
Also, there seems to be a continue reading link on the page that doesn't actually do anything.
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#6"always be the worst musician in every band you’re in" -- GOLD!
FYI, the continue reading link either shouldn't be on the page, or it should take you to the rest of the article - not sure if I got everything or not.
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#7I would have preferred the title, "Recognize who you're working with"
I have worked with many programmers and it's not always readily apparent who is better than me and who is not. And of course, some are better than me in some things but not others.
We don't always have the luxury of choosing who we work with, and have even less chance of only picking those better than us. So it's probably more practical to learn which habits to emulate and which to avoid in those we actually do encounter.
For example, that database whiz may suck at algoritms, so just because you learned one great thing from him, it does not necessarily follow that you should learn others. Also, I have often found a big difference between the perceptions of others (especially bosses and users) and my own assessment of their skills.
There is something to be learned from everyone. Just get good at figuring out "what" from "whom".
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#8Hey Chad, seems like a good post. . . not being one of those crazy typography guys, but it was very hard to read this post. I'm in Chrome, xp, and on a 21 inch monitor. The letters look like they are weighted differently in thickness. Maybe move to a more standard font? Anyways, just an fyi.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having that problem - site is nigh-unreadable with both firefox and chrome. Also, there seems to be a continue reading link on the page that doesn't actually do anything.
https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets
The version of the bookmarket I use [edited to code, because its length was mucking up the whole page]
javascript:(function(){readConvertLinksToFootnotes=false;readStyle='style-newspaper';readSize='size-medium';readMargin='margin-wide';_readability_script=document.createElement('script');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x=+(Math.random());document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('link');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css;_readability_css.type=text/css;_readability_css.media=all;document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement(link);_readability_print_css.rel=stylesheet;_readability_print_css.href=http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css;_readability_print_css.media=print;_readability_print_css.type=text/css;document.getElementsByTagName(head)[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();Re: Be careful of who you work with
#9"always be the worst musician in every band you’re in" -- GOLD! FYI, the continue reading link either shouldn't be on the page, or it should take you to the rest of the article - not sure if I got everything or not.
It sounds great but most places seem to hire based on current abilities or previous accomplishments, not potential, so how does one go about implementing this advice for anything other than an entry level position?
Re: Be careful of who you work with
#10Excellent points on the spreading of behavior and emotions via social networks. In "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" (an excellent book on social network behavior within large organizations), Rob Cross reports work looking at the effect different people had on energy. Some people, when you meet with them, everybody comes out energized ... others, you come away totally meh. Who's it more productive to associate wi…
An extreme version is to work for energy, not money. Instead of choosing clients, customers, markets, suppliers, angels based on profitability (or future profitability), base it on energy.
There's a reasonable probability that energy will translate into value creation and then into money, anyway. And even if not, would you rather be full-of-life and poor, or half-dead and rich? (to dichotomize for dramatic contrast.)