
The downsides of collaboration between coworkers - prostoalex
http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-downsides-of-collaboration-between-coworkers-2016-1?r=US&IR=T
======
rurban
It's pretty easy for those overly successful coworkers (I've been such a folk)
to setup a knowledge collaboration platform, like a wiki, and share this way
the knowledge and let people read it instead of asking per email or phone.

That's what I did. It doesn't really make sense to answer each and everyone
individually.

~~~
sanderjd
This is the right answer, but in my experience, there's still a balance
between wanting to be friendly, supportive, and engaged with the team, and
wanting to protect your own time. At its worst, the approach you outlined
devolves to the "read the manual!" cultures that everyone hates, but if you
can strike the right balance between writing documentation and helping people
understand it, then you're in really good shape.

~~~
LukeShu
I've found a pretty good balance to be giving answers that have 3 parts:

    
    
        1. a short answer (about 1-2 sentences)
        2. what section of what manual to read for fuller information
        3. other resources; possible "gotcha"s
    

Then, if they come back and still don't understand, don't just take the time
to help them, but also update the manual with whatever you tell them!

~~~
sanderjd
Yeah, but this is a classic problem of long-term vs. short-term optimization.
In the long term having great, living documentation of everything the experts
know is clearly the best, but in the short term it looks very expensive.

------
slathrop
The "War Room" idea promoted by Scrum Masters and Project Managers has a
similar downside. War Rooms take your best people and force them to answer
questions all day long posed by your least-knowledgeable people. War Rooms are
one of the surest ways to reduce the morale and productivity of your best
people.

However, if you require real-time visibility of project status, you want all
of your people to be easily interchangeable and replaceable, and you think
that knowledge concentrated in a few good people is risky, then the War Room
is for you.

------
r2dnb
I didn't know people were so generous. The experience I have is that all
people want to keep their knowledge for themselves. In all the companies I
passed by - including Fortune 40 ones - the documentation was non existent.

In one of them, a magician who wrote a 20k lines of code Access program doing
fancy things like generating stored procedures on the fly, still knew more
about the program after 2 years of development than the 10 people team that
was in charge of migrating it.

More recently - last week - in another company, someone told me very naturally
that the requirements were in someone's head and in the database schema and
that we should rely on this person's expertise and avoid spending time to lay
the requirements down before starting the iteration.

The world I live in is much more political than the one that you guys seem to
live in. Please give me the address.

~~~
bitcuration
There is a world of difference between service rendered and sharing knowledge
voluntarily. This article specifically described the former which is precisely
due to the lack of latter, whether Business Insider Research realized it or
not.

Once work collaboration is viewed not as an effective means to add value but
the value itself, common job security motif can drive the work place to a
popularity contest. Meeting invites and social connection are some of the
examples of there are more to the service demands one must draw at work place.

Business Inside only scratched the surface and jumped on a convenient
conclusion.

~~~
r2dnb
I love your reasoning, very insightful thanks a lot for sharing. This is the
kind of wisdom and out-of-the-box thinking I like to read.

------
jedberg
eBay did a great thing in this regard -- they offered a sabbatical every five
years. It was a win for the employee because they got a nice long vacation and
it was a win for the organization because it forced everyone to figure out how
to get along without that employee for an extended amount of time.

~~~
timcederman
Google did the same, until they realised everyone was leaving immediately
afterwards.

~~~
blacksmythe
It worked really well for Tandem Computers.

People felt pretty happy with the company for about a year after their
sabbatical, and didn't want to leave for about 2 years before their sabbatical
(and miss it).

Don't know why this didn't work as well for Google.

~~~
zippergz
This is purely anecdotal, but I have a handful of friends who left google
after their sabbaticals. They all explained it with some form of "I was
surprised how much happier I was when I didn't have to go to work, and I
didn't miss it at all." A couple of them actually chose to not work at all for
a while, and one started his own company (a small lifestyle business, not a
unicorn-bound startup). Using the time to interview and heading off for
another full time job is not a pattern I've noticed at all...

------
niels_olson
This doesn't seem all that new to me.

At the receiving line for a party, back in 2002, the executive officer on the
USS Nimitz greeted my wife by saying "Thanks for supporting him, the Navy has
a long tradition of riding the good horses until they break."

------
zepto
Seems like the problem is that people are being given more responsibility
without the necessary power.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
I don't know if that is exactly how I would describe the problem. It seems as
though a majority of my highly skilled coworkers, management or senior
engineer, are CONSTANTLY having people come into their office for advice. It's
commonly known that if you have a problem or need help understanding something
to go ask the resident "expert". These "experts" are bombarded with questions
and visits so often it's a wonder they ever get their own work done.

~~~
zepto
And yet they don't have the power to hire assistants to help with organizing
disseminating their knowledge. If they are the constraint in the system, the
organization should be leveraging them.

------
orky56
That greatest way to ensure job stability is becoming indispensable. Being
indispensable entails providing a service or holding information that others
cannot fully attain without relying on that individual.

Many people, especially from the newer generations are looking for more than
stability from their current job. Democratizing information is great as long
as the bottleneck is not an individual and their resources.

------
rbrogan
How does this compare to, say, a Q&A site where one gets positive feedback for
answering random questions? Is the reason why people leave because they cannot
do the work that they want (time used up in collaboration) or is it because
they are not being given credit for the work they are doing?

~~~
morebetterer
Constantly being interrupted to answer simple questions is a thankless task
that has negative consequences to your own productivity. You ultimately have
to do their work and have less time for your own, which can be stressful when
on projects with tight deadlines (aren't they all?). At some point I realized
that being overly helpful makes you an enabler of this rude behavior - why
bother spending a few minutes researching something when the guy across from
you can answer it immediately? Often it's better to say no and encourage more
self reliance.

------
protomok
My strategy is basically:

-> Politely ask colleagues to send you an IM instead of discussing in person. The context switch hit from a conversation is significantly worse than from an IM.

-> Answer questions by making/editing a wiki page then send a link. Although I find this is less helpful for one off questions or during times of super high work load.

-> If you've helped person X with a similar problem in the past then simply outsource the question to person X.

-> Worst case (especially if someone asks the same question multiple times) play dumb :)

------
michaelfeathers
I wonder whether there is a "soft" Dunbar number for collaboration networks?

------
colund
People who know a lot and rarely have time to share knowledge will always get
questions about things they haven't yet shared with others. Personally, I find
it less effective to work in an environment where people don't share their
knowledge since less knowledge means frequent questions...

