[ First posted on jlottosen.wordpress.com, Sep 2023 ]
The more you learn in your role, the more important it becomes for you to share and build skills in others. If you hoard skills and practices you become a liability, a single point of failure. Rather you should move from “me” to “we” and learn to grow what you master in others. This will also help you grow yourself.
In my many years in the same role, I simply took on more tasks. We just dug in and worked, often putting in overtime. People grew and were promoted based on being scarce. We could never recruit as skilled as us. We were the Go-To team. Tasks and knowledge were often hoarded. After a change in the team, I realized that it was the wrong way around. Both for me, for the organization, and for all the new people in the field.
People Develop Where They Almost Can
Experienced people generally thrive with novel and emerging problems. They eat wicked problems for breakfast and know their way around the complexities of Cynefin. They will usually be bored by the more simple and rote tasks. Their preferred field is to work with new situations (Illustrated below, left figure).
To new people in the field, though, it’s the other way around. They love a good template, a cookbook, or an example. Their best work is, usually, to take some half-baked good enough and make it follow given (best) practices. (Illustrated below, right figure).
When experienced individuals disregard the red cross and monopolize tasks and knowledge, it may initially appear beneficial. They are praised for their perceived irreplaceability. However, over time, this can become a burden for the organization. New systems and patterns emerge, and the inability to adapt becomes a challenge. Work halts, People crack under stress and everyone stops using COBOL eventually. Over time, skills that are not shared move to the left on the evolution scale, but just lower down on the visibility to the stakeholders. (In the jargon of the Wardley Mappers). A pet project in a not-so-good way.
On the other hand, having new people sharing the load and contributing to the tasks helps build new people who can handle tasks like this. It’s easier to recruit people with an appetite for learning and training them, than hiring skilled staff. Thus making more people grow. You can’t be everywhere.
The Career Ladder: Senior vs. Staff
Another way to elaborate on this change is the difference between Senior (L5) vs. Staff (L6) as described by The Developing Dev in the drawing below.
As elaborated here:
Staff engineers uplift others around them. They should have the ability to help L5 engineers grow. There are a few ways they uplift others:
- Mentorship – Dedicated mentorship, preferably with senior engineers
- Knowledge sharing – Writing wikis, giving presentations, contributing to Q&A groups
- Collaborations – Growing others while working with them (e.g. code reviews, design reviews, discussions)
L6 engineers should also contribute to growing the organization. This means that they help with recruiting and partner with their manager to improve team health.Developing Dev, 2023
In the future, I will do my best to stop hoarding skills and start building capability in others. Not only actively sharing knowledge but actively sharing tasks. As I said a few years ago: As you are learning new stuff, I am unlearning to help you