Collaboration over heroism

No amount of intelligence can compensate for poor collaboration. Don’t make the mistake of believing we’re playing the “who’s the smartest” game.

We’re not. It’s a team sport.

A few years ago I was working on a project with four more colleagues. It was a months long project with a fairly large codebase. It wasn’t particularly complex domain, but the codebase was complicated. It was over-engineered beyond reason, but we somehow found a mental model to work with it.

One Monday, I’m clocking in as usual. Open the IDE, pull latest from master, only to realize four hundred files have been changed. This will be fun.

One of our colleagues has refactored the common library to match a fluent api pattern. On a Saturday, without talking to anyone. Merging to master, without an approval.

It was an improvement, don’t get me wrong. Emotions aside, the thing worked. They’ve handled the breaking changes and introduced a new interface which was easier to work with once you understood the usage.

But this isn’t how you collaborate. This is how you build your pet projects, not production code.

Needless to say, the team wasn’t thrilled about the new changes or the approach taken. Or the fact it was done on a Saturday and merged to master. This was clear disrespect towards the rest of us.

Distrust was created. Will they do it again this Saturday? Will they do something else when no one is around to stop them? Do they understand we’re all collaborating on the same codebase and need to be aligned? Do we need branch protection rules for a team of four now?

Generating value isn’t enough. If we generate value by directly blocking others from generating value, we better think twice. Firstly, are we generating so much value that it outweighs the value we’ve obstructed? If not, we’re a net-negative value generators.

Secondly, how is this going to land? We stare at the monitor all day, yet we mostly work with people. People have opinions, emotions, ego, etc. Rare are the occasions where it’s worth stepping over your teammates in order to push something over the line.

Don’t think you can outwork respect. There’s no way. If people don’t respect you, they won’t like to work with you. Your projects, the value you bring, and your career will all be undermined. And it will be your responsibility.

A simple conversation, document or literally any respectful heads-up would have been sufficient. The story would have an entirely different sentiment.

So, think twice. Not only about the value you bring, but the consequences of the path taken.