3 ms·
Well, let's look at it from the "the jerk"'s perspective. How would feel if other people accomplished 1/10th what you did? What if they got paid 80% of what yo
by alexandercrohde 10y ago
Well, let's look at it from the "the jerk"'s perspective.
How would feel if other people accomplished 1/10th what you did? What if they got paid 80% of what you got paid too?
What if teaching them took so much of your time that it was faster to do it yourself than hand-hold them through the process?
What if, despite producing more than the rest of the team combined, management saw you as a problem, and wasn't interested in your perspective now that you had a reputation?
Have you asked "the jerk" to be more polite about his feedback? Have you explained why it's important? Have you listened to his perspective?
- jayroh 10y agoYou work to raise your teammates up. Full stop. Productivity for a team is in aggregate - it's the entire teams productivity that's at stake, not an individual contributor's.
- dasmoth 10y agoThis seems to be a pretty ubiquitous view nowadays, but neglects the possibility that some projects might go better with an individual contributor just getting on with it.
- chillacy 10y agoAn interesting analogy is the tradeoffs in going from one machine to a distributed system: a single SQL server will outperform a 3 node cluster for small loads, but the 3 node cluster will survive hardware failures and eventually out-scale the single-node setup as you add more nodes. It feels like larger companies are always reluctant to have a single point of failure, whether it's a machine in Utah going down or Greg getting hit by a bus.
- dasmoth 10y agoIt's a good analogy. Setting up the three-node cluster is an awful lot more work, and if you don't do it right there's a real chance that you'll end up with lower real-world reliability than the single node. That said, I can understand why large companies worry about single points of failure. What perplexes me more is that the you-always-need-a-team mindset is filtering down to smaller and smaller organisations.
- alexandercrohde 10y agoNo, you work to get great stuff done. Whether or not your teammates are a worthwhile investment (or whether they even belong at the company at all) is a complicated calculation. In this case the author describes a jerk who's more effective than the rest of the team combined. In this case, I kind of wonder whether it was a mistake hiring such a team.
- manigandham 10y agoThat's not how reality works. People are self-interested. The team is secondary, at best. This isn't war, it's software development.
- daviross 10y agoWhy would you be concerned about coworkers making "too much" in relation to you? I mean, if the company were going to close as a result of pay, then I'd potentially be concerned (more that it's a failing company or a failure of management), but I can't imagine a scenario where I would look at a fellow coworker and have it harm me any that they're getting paid well.