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I disagree, with the caveat that I prefer working on a team versus a group of individuals. Taking a sports metaphor, if one of my teammates isn't carrying thei

I disagree, with the caveat that I prefer working on a team versus a group of individuals. Taking a sports metaphor, if one of my teammates isn't carrying their weight, it harms the entire team and puts our objectives at risk. I have been in situations where it's every individual for themselves, and agree with your advice in those. I also quickly left those roles to find a team that works together to achieve common objectives that are more impactful than I could achieve on my own. Hurt the team, and I am going to say something (first to the IC directly, then to the manager). If the manager doesn't care about making the team better, then they don't care about the same things that I do, and I will move.

mindcrime 5y ago
I actually agree with you, to the extent that I agree that the sports team metaphor is applicable. It just happens that I don't find sports teams to be a good metaphor for the kinds of teams one usually (IME) finds in the corporate world. But yes, in the specific case where an under-performing individual is hurting the team in a way that is ultimately hurting the other individuals on the team, then it does make more sense to call them out. No disagreement there.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  In many ways, I think joining or creating those teams is the secret to long lasting fulfillment in engineering. We focus so much on the compensation aspect that of course we underindex on quality of life at work. Theres a reason that Ted Lasso is such a phenomenon - people want to be on a team where they can trust their teammates and everyone is trying to accomplish a shared goal.