Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Collaboration” is bullshit

joanwestenberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 193 posts

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#61

Post by gdulli »

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…

> Groups of people can produce more than lone wolves.

It's not a linear scale. A lone wolf can't produce the latest Assassin's Creed game. A committee can't produce Stardew Valley or Balatro. They're different capabilities, not a simple matter of more/less.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#62

Post by diogenes_atx »

It's interesting that the author does not even consider the impact of incentives on performance. As Charlie Munger famously said, "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes." It is true that collaboration becomes increasingly difficult as the team grows in size, but collaboration is not the fundamental problem. To manage a large team, the real challenge is to design incentives that properly reward those who produce and perform, and penalize those who don't. People respond to incentives (yes, it is a tautology, and that is precisely the point).

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#63

Post by pas »

Levitating wrote: post #51
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.

yes, it seems that the author is against the typical corporate bullshit faux collab (where people are overloaded with distractions, and the whole culture is about "managing expectations", managing up, showing impact), not against delegation, supervision, review, and a few well positioned veto points

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#64

Post by stevemadere »

jmward01 wrote: post #20

I think our processes are terrible as an industry. I have brought this up many times but we don't understand what actually works when something goes right and what failed when something went wrong. Adding to this is that engineers love tools and process so they tend to credit tools and process with success because we like the machine. Giving it credit where credit wasn't due leads to slowly growing more elaborate pro…

This.

What everybody keeps forgetting over and over again is that software is super complicated even if it can be changed from a keyboard without the use of physical morphing tools.

People who do not themselves generate software are in the position of telling the people who generate software how to do it and what the constraints should be on the outcomes.

Accept that it is complicated and that you cannot know in advance when it will be done unless it is a super simple request.

It is indeed more like oil field exploration than it is like sweeping the floor.

You cannot really know where the solution to a complicated problem lies in advance and therefore you cannot predict how long it will take you to find it.

People on the finance side just need to face the fact that there is risk that cannot be eliminated in advance or even quantified particularly accurately.

If your investors cannot stomach this, they probably need to invest in something other than software development.

Good luck with finding that in 2026.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#65

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mememememememo wrote: post #39
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Prices law is relevant here: 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

Probably of the value, not work per se? I have worked with 1 person of 1000s who I thought was literally doing nothing work related all day.

You work with them all the time but don’t realize it

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#67

Post by t43562 »

Individual responsibility can just become a blame culture. I remember sitting near a team that worked like this - meetings with everyone trying to prove that some screw-up was actually due to someone else.

In such scenarios nobody wants to stick their neck out at all, everyone hates everyone else.

At a higher level the usual problem is with incentives being different from one team to another. If you want something done you have to start with the incentives rather than expect people to work against them and there does have to be leadership to break deadlocks.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#68

Post by righthand »

I have a coworker that will take projects out from under you and do all the work themselves if you ask to collaborate with them. It happened twice, one of them he out right took all the credit and handed me peanuts. The person knows this so they try to keep you involved by having you review their work, which is usually pointless because they’ve already done all the work and there are no alternatives or caveats to consider. I will never work with them again even though they do good work and are sharp, purely because they’re a control freak and it slows everyone down.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#69

Post by timcobb »

diogenes_atx wrote: post #62

It's interesting that the author does not even consider the impact of incentives on performance. As Charlie Munger famously said, "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes." It is true that collaboration becomes increasingly difficult as the team grows in size, but collaboration is not the fundamental problem. To manage a large team, the real challenge is to design incentives that properly reward those…

What kind of incentives are possible in your average tech work environment? A raise? A bonus? Raises usually come with more responsibility. I'm not familiar with tech companies doing bonuses.

Re: “Collaboration” is bullshit

#70

Post by PKop »

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?

Yes, but that's also why the claim isn't true and has been criticized for years. It is so much more instinctive to simply pull the trigger even in a panic than sit there and do nothing.
Post reply on HN