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Collaboration sucks

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91–100 of 262 posts

Re: Collaboration sucks

#91

Post by ergocoder »

kristianc wrote: post #13

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together” I've often noticed that this is a favourite phrase of those whose preferred motion is narrating other people's work rather than doing it themselves. Teams do go further together. But only when everyone is rowing.

> But only when everyone is rowing.

Only if everyone is toward the same direction.

Not when one tries to redesign a new boat and the other person tries to row forward.

The popular "Thinking from the first principle" often leads to redesign a new boat. This is where it gets problematic.

Re: Collaboration sucks

#92

Post by commandlinefan »

I interpreted it as a joke, although I couldn't help but agree with a lot of what I think was meant to be ironic.

The problem I always run into is that the potential usefulness of collaboration breaks the insistence on predictability: nothing can be done unless it can be put to, and measured against, a date and a timeline. Collaboration is inherently unpredictable and worse, spreads blame around, so there's always this insistence that collaboration take place in very constrained ways (usually in the form of pointless meetings to review line items in a text document that doesn't end up being very useful).

Re: Collaboration sucks

#93

Post by joaohkfaria »

Everyone reading this article: Don't fall for it.

There're scientific evidence that collaboration > individualism. Please, just search online about it. If it wasn't the case, do you really think every company in the world would just work in collaboration without any particular reason?

https://atlas.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/De... https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1518/001872008X375009

Re: Collaboration sucks

#94

Post by m463 »

jesse__ wrote: post #15

While I don't agree with Charles' (clearly nuts) distaste for sparkling water, I'm happy to see people finally talking about this issue publicly. I've suffered through this at several companies, down to the level of sometimes spending like 3x the time it took to implement the actual feature on answering and 'fixing' pedantic stylistic nitpicks during code reviews. While having a homogenous style is important, I'm sol…

Can't help but think this is human nature.

Ask anyone in a relationship if their partner complains about unimportant stuff. With experience and practice you can get past this stuff.

so... experienced reviewers.

Re: Collaboration sucks

#95

Post by straydusk »

> I disagree on some of that, but it's your call.

This sucks. I can't believe they used this as an example to follow. "I think it's bad, but I'm not going to tell you why, I'm just going to say that and then tell you it's on you".

Re: Collaboration sucks

#96

Post by 46Bit »

criemen wrote: post #50
brendanfalk wrote: post #24

I think the real problem here is "decision making" as opposed to "collaboration" I can't think of a single time where having someone else review my work or give me feedback is a meaningfully bad thing. It's an opportunity to learn. But getting feedback is different to making the final decision. Instead, the real problem is the either 1) lack of knowing who makes the final decision or 2) requiring everyone must agree…

This is the key insight for me about this post, and I fully agree with you. No collaboration means less opportunities for learning from people (even the post admits!) that are "better at what you are doing than you are", which imo stunts personal growth. Decision makers need to be clearly appointed, accountable, and empowered to follow through. But that power then also comes with listening to feedback from all releva…

> if they can't explain what they want to do clearly and why, it probably shouldn't be done. Quality goes up by slowing down.

I kind of agree. Without what you describe, teams often get lost. But I’ve also seen that approach keep teams stuck in comfortable local minima. Sometimes you’ve got to take risks.

Re: Collaboration sucks

#98

Post by fhennig »

hinkley wrote: post #79
jesse__ wrote: post #15

While I don't agree with Charles' (clearly nuts) distaste for sparkling water, I'm happy to see people finally talking about this issue publicly. I've suffered through this at several companies, down to the level of sometimes spending like 3x the time it took to implement the actual feature on answering and 'fixing' pedantic stylistic nitpicks during code reviews. While having a homogenous style is important, I'm sol…

Every delivered feature is a liability not an asset. If you don’t believe me, consider two products that make customers equally happy and one has half as many moving parts. Which one is more profitable to maintain? The one with less shit. Because the rest is just more liability. So if I deliver a feature all by myself quickly and move on to something else, I’m digging a bigger hole and faster than the wisdom arrives…

> Every delivered feature is a liability not an asset.

> If you don’t believe me, consider two products that make customers equally happy and one has half as many moving parts. Which one is more profitable to maintain? The one with less shit. Because the rest is just more liability.

You're mixing up the feature and the moving parts.

A feature is an asset. Moving parts (or code) are the liability. They are not the same.

Sometimes you can even improve the product by removing code, or refactoring things so you have less or clearer code while at the same time improving the product. Maybe you unify some UI, so more functionality is available in more places, while also cleaning up the code, maybe reducing line count.

> So what do you all do when I’m hiking in the woods and the cluster is on fire? Sure would be nice if I collaborated on that functionality wouldn’t it? Then you’d have two other people to ask.

It's a fair point, but depends on the scale I would say. Some smaller things can be easily understood (but maybe that's not the stuff that causes the cluster to be on fire). Also, IMO at least one person should have reviewed the stuff, and therefore be at least a little bit knowledgeable about what's going on.

Re: Collaboration sucks

#99

Post by petralithic »

throwaway713 wrote: post #8

> Every time you see collaboration happening, speak up and destroy it. Say “there are too many people involved. X, you are the driver, you decide.” (This is a great way to make friends btw). Corollary for managers: Do not say "it's your call", then once the decision has been made (and you skipped all the meetings pertaining to that decision), comment about how you would have done it differently and then retroactively…

Exactly, these two sentences seem at first related,

> No deadlines, minimal coordination, and no managers telling you what to do.

> In return, we ask for extraordinarily high ownership and the ability to get a lot done by yourself.

but can be insidious if implemented incorrectly. High ownership to do what you want, but what happens if what you decide goes against the goals of the manager or the company itself? No company can succeed without at least some sort of overarching goal structure, from which employees will naturally avail and seek to benefit themselves.

Re: Collaboration sucks

#100

Post by stevage »

This is a fun piece, though I definitely don't agree with it for the teams I have been in.

OP seems to assume that code is better than no code. Often this has not been true, and collaboration has either pointed out that a feature already existed, or was a bad idea. So in this metaphor, it stopped the driver...from driving to a bad place.

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