4 Comments

Kent, this is great insight. Those who ignore background work have stunted growth.

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Also, I think you will find those who do background work are those who take personal responsibility for their outcomes as opposed to blame external circumstances.

Or contraposutively, those who do not take personal responsibility for their circumstances do not do background work.

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Very interesting and lots to take on board. Side question... What if the "Someone who habitually digs deeper than strictly necessary" person continually uses language like "you are wrong", "you should just stop", "you should not do that". I've found that when those people often tell other what they can and can't do in an authoritive (authoritative?) manor then they tend to not get on well with others and are even perceived as unapproachable.

So yes dig deeper, but also know that you can't just make commands after a bit of reading. There's still a collaboration aspect after doing background work

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"Curious" & "asshole" are orthogonal skills. Ignorant people also say "you are wrong". Coaching someone who is subtracting value from the team like this is a management responsibility or, barring that, a senior engineer responsibility.

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