Also, on teamwork it seems to be the case, often, that the competent people do all the work, and are expected to share credit, but will take all the blame if they get something wrong. At least, that’s how it works in corporate. It’s exhausting. As a so-called “lone wolf”, you get to finish early and go home.
Sounds like a situation I've found myself in before. The majority of the work is done, and it's become more work to organize and maintain a team than to simply do it on your own.
This isn't true even with a organized, disciplined team. What happens is the responsibilities of get divided out to other people on the team. Usually not the entire team, so some people are stuck with unacknowledged overhead.
Assembling the right team is important, but sharing the load is way more important, imho. I've been on teams where one person does the bulk of the work and the others take credit. If you can track what is being done and by whom, you'll be more successful.
The team can be lone-wolf organized thou since (for on-site competitions) each team only has one computer. The one I did we were 3 in the team. We divvied up the problems and each took turns hacking out the solution. Yes we consulted each other on the solution we were doing but mostly we worked on our own problem. This might have been a defective strategy since we missed the top ranked team by one problem, but had 3 nearly finished solutions when the buzzer rang.
The point isn't to stroke your teammates' egos. It's to find out why the code is written that way, and to build consensus around a different way of writing it. Consensus building is a great way to improve the cohesiveness of the team. It lets teammates operate with a set up implicit, shared assumptions, which means they can spend more time on business problems and less time on these kinds of discussions.
Generally, lone wolves worsen the team dynamics, because they reduce team cohesion.
I mean, this varies team by team and company by company. To spit an anecdote into the bucket, I asked some teammates to help me take care of a problem, and they did - and I don't think I hold a particularly large cache of informal power.
I think one point is that it's not always about maximizing efficiency. Being on a team really requires some communication that isn't strictly about completing a task.
I'll take working solo any day, over working with those who can't. Been there, done that.
P.S. Also applies after s/can't/won't/ . And corporate life is full of cases that leave you wondering which apply and in what percentages. "Team" is not a panacea -- not from my perspective.
P.P.S. I do not mean to ignore the roles and need for training and learning. But there are people who hardly seem to benefit from, or even genuinely engage in, these.
Another problem is the expectations it puts on others in a team. Is it ok if there are people working 40+ hours and people working constantly 60+ hours in the same team? I guess this can lead to serious tensions.
Team always shares the responsibility. We do a ton of work to establish trust inside a team so you would share things that are affecting your work instead of trying to hide them so you don't get sacked in performance review.
We also make it very easy to change teams so everyone would find the best environment for themselves.
All dependent on context. In the context of a team, one can rarely solve all problems by herself. More importantly, it can cause greater disfunction when work isn't coordinated/communicated appropriately. The whole point of working in a team is to get more work done more efficiently because the work load is shared and each member focuses on her specific skill, and doesn't do everything.
And how do you resolve this contradiction? Teach your employees that if you don’t want to be interrupted you better write good documentation. And have one dedicated team member each day responsible for supporting other teams. I think both of those are mentioned in the article, but it was a little a while since I read it.
Working with someone else who holds me accountable creates a bizarre amount of motivation for me. There is certainly something hard-wired in humanity about working in groups.
It is accurate description of group projects in school.
Real teamwork on the job does not work that way, unless management sux. When management checks out and stops managing/leading, it can descent there too.
Not to forget that you might have multiple part-timers on your team who are doing different work hours. The shared work time dimishes which makes it more difficult to hand over tasks etc.
I've worked on teams historically that did pairing (even pairing all day), and mobbing all day, and I don't get the hate.
If the main issue is burnout, then what's up? Even working solo you can burn out, so I don't think that's a valid argument unless someone can convince me that specifically pairing is causing the burn out.
The biggest thing is you need a team that can trust and support each other.
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