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

thezbook.com

21–30 of 395 posts

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

#22
I feel like one of the biggest antidotes to this is just a simple daily standup. My team does this, a daily 30 minute meeting, and everyone says what they're working on as well as any blockers. Seems to work very well in terms of course correction at an early point.

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

#25

I feel like one of the biggest antidotes to this is just a simple daily standup. My team does this, a daily 30 minute meeting, and everyone says what they're working on as well as any blockers. Seems to work very well in terms of course correction at an early point.

I think because most people give very short descriptions in their standups i.e. "Working on x today, with a bit of y, no blockers". Perhaps due to things mentioned in the article, people don't want to or feel the need to invite feedback

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

#27

I've been guilty of this at times but what I would add is a certain type of environment encourages this behavior. If the business or teammates are very reluctant to let engineers work on what they want or give harsh feedback it encourages people to retreat into their safe space and try to create something they feel is worthy of feedback.

Yes. I do this because interactions with others are a net negative at my place of work. In terms of quantifiable rewards, 99% of interactions are +5 or +10, etc, mixed in with the occasional -15000. In the end the expected value of interactions is negative. All because of one or two very bad interactions a year; the rest being positive, but close to neutral.

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

#28

> 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.

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

#29
I was more often than not 'guilty' of what the author describes. And I actually love being the lone detective on the hunt for a cool solution.

I am not a dev by trade (data analyst) but still love to work on problems solved in code.

A lot of the advice hit home, but what struck me was this part:

> Encourage engineers to get something end to end launched internally as quickly as possible.

This is something my boss never ceases to tell us. When we build something we shall strive to have some first small thing end 2 end done as soon as possible. Rough around the edges, not refactored, code being repeated - all fine. But it has to work end to end.

Because we can brush it up and make it stable later. Because when starting we only have a vague feeling for the problem space and we need to learn the lay of the land by navigating it.

I will always cherish this advice.

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

#30

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

Please write the insight into the title of the post, rather than hiding it under a click-bait. Your site is down now due to traffic and the original HN title (reflecting the title of your writing) provides no value.
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