Thursday 16 July 2015

The Burden of Knowledge

Your best software developers are not the ones you turn to for everything. Your best are constantly distributing knowledge, removing themselves from being a key-man dependency. Your best have delegated sufficiently that they have freed themselves up to learn new skills. 

It is a natural instinct for software developers to want to learn more, to consume all of the knowledge in their vicinity. Like a sponge growing heavier the more it soaks up, it feels good to become the owner of more knowledge. This applies to good software developers anyway; you can spot the bad developers a mile off as the ones who have closed their minds off and don't want to learn anything new. I know what I'd do with a sponge which refuses to soak up anything new.


"Find the most talented person in the room, and if it's not you, go stand next to him" Harold Ramis