4 ms·

Group work has all the bad attributes: - can't be fired - reward is low - members often have the exact skillset. - nobody has superior authority. How does o

Group work has all the bad attributes: - can't be fired - reward is low - members often have the exact skillset. - nobody has superior authority. How does one even make a decision where people disagree? Teachers have no experience working in the real world and will often say "you will need to learn to work with bad people". Meanwhile every successful person will tell you to fire bad people as soon as possible. If you assign a bunch of low performers to Steve Jobs and tell him he can't fire them and have to give them work, even Steve Jobs would probably fail.

lucb1e 4y ago
School group work doesn't have to be bad. We had a semester-spanning 6-person group project during my software engineering study. Long story short, by the fourth and final semester project, I cooked up a recipe that solved some of these problems. I had re-invented having a manager. Because I was good at coding, and by this semester this was known so people trusted me to not just idle around, I could propose on day 1 that I'd just be the 'manager' with no assigned share of the work. I'd be the solver of problems as they popped up, the person that goes around making sure nobody is stuck and everyone can work. And also that everyone does work, which turned out to be important because the notorious Joel was assigned to us and, indeed, he barely showed up and didn't do work at home either. After some conversations, going back-and-forth, and spending time on this, I managed to convince the teachers to officially kick him out after about three weeks (into a ~half-year semester). The rest of the semester, I spent most of the project time helping with problems that others were stuck on. (Not that I was a superbly amazing coder, but two know more than one and this really helped our pace.) It's a real shame that was the last semester of that study because the setup worked like a dream. Two of the group members weren't so strong in coding and we were one person down with roughly the same workload (though for this, too, I had some time to spend on 'lobbying', and we got a slight reduction), but by juggling tasks correctly and sitting together when necessary, it ended up working really well. One guy in particular I remember wasn't too good at the job, but he would always work hard and, once unstuck, make good progress for the day. Great guy, always in good spirits, fun to work with and I'd hire him today if he applied despite the mediocre skills. I think knowing his strengths and weaknesses (knowing what tasks to assign and do some pair programming) is all you need to have a great colleague in him that cheers up five others and is still a net-positive in the amount of work done.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  > a great colleague [who] cheers up five others and is still a net-positive in the amount of work done. I wanted to clarify here that I mean he would be a net-positive in the amount of work done regardless, and in addition cheers up anyone who's around him. I have positive memories and not sure that really came through when speaking of 'net positive' which is a rather low bar to reach.

lucb1e 4y ago

School group work doesn't have to be bad. We had a semester-spanning 6-person group project during my software engineering study. Long story short, by the fourth and final semester project, I cooked up a recipe that solved some of these problems. I had re-invented having a manager. Because I was good at coding, and by this semester this was known so people trusted me to not just idle around, I could propose on day 1 that I'd just be the 'manager' with no assigned share of the work. I'd be the solver of problems as they popped up, the person that goes around making sure nobody is stuck and everyone can work. And also that everyone does work, which turned out to be important because the notorious Joel was assigned to us and, indeed, he barely showed up and didn't do work at home either. After some conversations, going back-and-forth, and spending time on this, I managed to convince the teachers to officially kick him out after about three weeks (into a ~half-year semester). The rest of the semester, I spent most of the project time helping with problems that others were stuck on. (Not that I was a superbly amazing coder, but two know more than one and this really helped our pace.) It's a real shame that was the last semester of that study because the setup worked like a dream. Two of the group members weren't so strong in coding and we were one person down with roughly the same workload (though for this, too, I had some time to spend on 'lobbying', and we got a slight reduction), but by juggling tasks correctly and sitting together when necessary, it ended up working really well. One guy in particular I remember wasn't too good at the job, but he would always work hard and, once unstuck, make good progress for the day. Great guy, always in good spirits, fun to work with and I'd hire him today if he applied despite the mediocre skills. I think knowing his strengths and weaknesses (knowing what tasks to assign and do some pair programming) is all you need to have a great colleague in him that cheers up five others and is still a net-positive in the amount of work done.

lucb1e 4y ago
> a great colleague [who] cheers up five others and is still a net-positive in the amount of work done. I wanted to clarify here that I mean he would be a net-positive in the amount of work done regardless, and in addition cheers up anyone who's around him. I have positive memories and not sure that really came through when speaking of 'net positive' which is a rather low bar to reach.