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Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

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Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#41

Post by zaat »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #15
juice_bus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe IC is "Individual Contributor" in this context.

A most bizarre terminology the industry has come up with. Almost feels a bit derogatory.

That's the natural way languages develop, offensive terms replaces with euphemisms, given some time every euphemistic term become loaded with the same negative connotations of its origin and new euphemism get introduced.

see: https://thelingspace.tumblr.com/post/114432905996/the-euphem...

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#44

Post by dang »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #28
newsbinator wrote: post #8

> the biggest mistake I see engineers make is doing too much work on their own before looping in others.

Thank you... frustrating we do not help by putting the statement into the title and write "bait-like" wording to get clicks and traffic. Now also the server is down so I get no value and no insight.

It's sort of a reproductive strategy thing, only about attention. As I say about headline writers in media, it's their job to sex up the title and our job to knock it back down to size.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#45

Post by denimnerd42 »

jackblemming wrote: post #43

Why wasn’t this caught by a million different processes that most teams have? Scrum, team lead, n different managers, etc. This is on the process, not the engineer.

we are probably hiding the work and not looping in those mentioned precisely because it gets shut down

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#46

Post by waynecochran »

zachlloyd wrote: post #2

I'm the author of the post - would love any feedback / similar experiences / contrasting opinions!

I am an older software engineer and have noted that a lot of introverted engineers love to work in their own silos. Some of the smartest engineers are introverted and do not want to be bothered; worse yet, because of pride they often do not "suffer fools" well and avoid working with others. Working with a group of smart and humble engineers that are constantly "borrowing each other's" brain is very effective and enjoyable experience. And everyone has a good sense of what everyone else is working on -- sunk cost is more frequently avoided.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#47

Post by afarrell »

908B64B197 wrote: post #40
zachlloyd wrote: post #2

I'm the author of the post - would love any feedback / similar experiences / contrasting opinions!

In this industry we use "developer" and "engineer" interchangeably, but one is not like the other. They don’t hand out brass rats at the end of a bootcamp… > For early career engineers, it often happens because they lack practice working on teams. They train in school environments where they do classroom projects on their own, or work on long-term intern projects in a silo. Serious engineering school would have stude…

Yes, MIT’s university culture does genuinely encourage a collaborative project-based approach. However, some grads will believe that the business world expects them to be as brilliant as Tony Stark and able to “carry a message to garcia”[1]. If a course-VI grad wearing brass rat thinks a request for help/feedback will be rebuffed as impostor syndrome (it happens), they can make the same mistake. Ego is the enemy. The blog post’s advice still applies.

[1] https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/hubbard1899.pdf which is both historically apocryphal and only good advice when dealing with an impatient and incurious leader.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#49

Post by irrational »

> Throughout this initial period there are standup updates of the form “I’m exploring X, or working through problem Y, but should have something for others to take a look at soon”

What is really going on is the developer has basically been given permission to not turn anything in. They are spending maybe an hour a day actually exploring/working on the issue and the rest of the day they are working on their own pet projects, playing games, watching netflix, whaterver. Heck, they might even spend just one day doing all their "exploring" and then see how long after that they can just show up for standup and extend out the "exploring" phase while doing whatever they want the rest of the day.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#50

Post by jackblemming »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #45
jackblemming wrote: post #43

Why wasn’t this caught by a million different processes that most teams have? Scrum, team lead, n different managers, etc. This is on the process, not the engineer.

we are probably hiding the work and not looping in those mentioned precisely because it gets shut down

That’s understandable. The nuance here is senior engineers going off and doing things they know need to be done vs juniors getting lost in the weeds. If you’re the former, and you’re always shutdown from doing things you know are important, you probably need to find new employment.
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