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“Collaboration” is bullshit

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#51

Post by Levitating »

igor47 wrote: post #2

Strong words. I wonder if the author has PTSD from poorly managed teams and has never had the fortune to work in a high performance well managed collaborative environment. I agree these are rare compared to the other kind, but they exist. Groups of people can produce more than lone wolves. One person didn't build the pyramids, the Linux kernel, or Amazon Web services. Even when responsibility for a top level domain r…

I can't say anything about how the Pyramids or AWS was build. But the Linux Kernels maintainence is full of responsibilities assigned to individual people.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#52

Post by rob74 »

igor47 wrote: post #2

Strong words. I wonder if the author has PTSD from poorly managed teams and has never had the fortune to work in a high performance well managed collaborative environment. I agree these are rare compared to the other kind, but they exist. Groups of people can produce more than lone wolves. One person didn't build the pyramids, the Linux kernel, or Amazon Web services. Even when responsibility for a top level domain r…

At first, I also thought that rejecting collaboration excludes any kind of teamwork, but then I noticed the quotation marks - so they're apparently only rejecting quote-unquote-collaboration (as in "collaboration theatre": endless calls with no tangible outcome, wanting to involve everyone in decisions etc.), not actual collaboration (which is also consistent with what the article itself says).

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#53

Post by xorcist »

bambax wrote: post #46

This article is so true. "Collaboration" is how nothing ever gets done; we have this expression: "designed by committee"; we should also have "made by collaboration". What's depressing is that it's like Fred Books' book never happened: most managers think the way to solve IT problems is just to trow more people / more money at it until it gets solved; and they're all surprised when it doesn't work, but try again the…

Right. But more often than not, the problem that's being solved is "we have gotten money to throw at things", so the answer of throwing in many more people to busywork kind of makes sense.

That's before we even think about all the consultants and similar roles where busywork really is work. Then all the organizational or agile roles.

The fact that some product gets shipped and we still have customers is good, because that's what pays for it all, but that is just the foundation we all rest on. Almost like background noise.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#54

Post by forgetfreeman »

stanleykm wrote: post #5
igor47 wrote: post #2

Strong words. I wonder if the author has PTSD from poorly managed teams and has never had the fortune to work in a high performance well managed collaborative environment. I agree these are rare compared to the other kind, but they exist. Groups of people can produce more than lone wolves. One person didn't build the pyramids, the Linux kernel, or Amazon Web services. Even when responsibility for a top level domain r…

Agreed. I came in the comments to say something similar. I think the author raises some interesting points worth consideration but their perspective is so incredibly cynical. He mentioned a small team that made the Apollo computer program. Well it took an awful lot more than a computer program to get to the moon. I don’t think anybody would argue that there are people who don’t pull their weight out there but there i…

I fail to grasp the basis of folks knee-jerk dismissal of just about anything that strikes them as "cynical". Like, what world do you live in that cynicism isn't a signal of clear vision?

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#55

Post by Devasta »

scuff3d wrote: post #8

Not sure men fighting for their lives in WW2 is the best comparison point for dev teams having too many standups and retros.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/taliban-bureaucrats-hate-wor...

Apparently the Taliban find office work far worse than being fighters, so you never know!

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#56

Post by wiseowise »

28304283409234 wrote: post #49
wiseowise wrote: post #40

A lot leaps from riflemen, who obviously didn’t want to die (did you expect them to rush Medal of Honor style?), to system features to model office work? Whole essay is incoherent mess written by one of those lonesome “no-bullshiter” who gets the job done but is so pulled down by modern day bureaucracy that even his clairvoyance can’t get through. > Dostoevsky wrote _The Brothers Karamazov_ alone. The Apollo Guidance…

You seem to ignore all the mountains of evidence that sense of responsibility drops in groups. The larger the group, the bigger the drop. This is not news, or non-sense.

Are you a C level at some company? If not, why do you care?

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#57

Post by wiseowise »

bambax wrote: post #44
wiseowise wrote: post #40

A lot leaps from riflemen, who obviously didn’t want to die (did you expect them to rush Medal of Honor style?), to system features to model office work? Whole essay is incoherent mess written by one of those lonesome “no-bullshiter” who gets the job done but is so pulled down by modern day bureaucracy that even his clairvoyance can’t get through. > Dostoevsky wrote _The Brothers Karamazov_ alone. The Apollo Guidance…

> A lot leaps from riflemen, who obviously didn’t want to die Yeah but you'd think not dying involves killing those who want to kill you, or at least shooting at them! Isn't it super interesting to learn that 80% of riflemen don't ever shoot?

a) other comment in the thread disproved the claim

b) even if it was remotely true, context matters. Refusing to shoot someone point blank because of reasons is one thing, refusing to go against Tiger 2 is another.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#58

Post by punkbit »

Can we start appreciating and respecting other people's professional experiences without dismissing and criticising them?

It's well written and brought to light a very interesting subject, e.g. "Marshall’s research showed that just 15-20% of riflemen in active combat positions ever fired their weapons".

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#59

Post by antisthenes »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3
igor47 wrote: post #2

Strong words. I wonder if the author has PTSD from poorly managed teams and has never had the fortune to work in a high performance well managed collaborative environment. I agree these are rare compared to the other kind, but they exist. Groups of people can produce more than lone wolves. One person didn't build the pyramids, the Linux kernel, or Amazon Web services. Even when responsibility for a top level domain r…

One of the features of my work, these days, is that I work alone. I worked in [pretty high-functioning] teams, for most of my career. Teams are how you do big stuff. I’m really good at what I do, but I’ve been forced to reduce my scope, working alone. I do much smaller projects, than our team used to do. But the killer in teams, is communication overhead, and much of that, is imposed by management, trying to get visi…

Communication overhead is a quadratic function. In teams with n people it takes n^2 time to keep everyone informed.

That's why the most effective teams are wolf packs - roughly 6-10 highly performant members where communication overhead is still low enough that it barely matters, but have enough people to be way more productive than an individual.

Obviously there's a minimum level of competence you need to have for this to work. The smaller the team the less freeloaders are tolerated.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#60

Post by vietyork »

i work in teams and collaborate with my AI agents,

and i feel that it's a much better way to work.

whenever i need real users feedback, i just ask my wife next to me to test out the features and give end user feedbacks

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