10 days ago, I completed the 12-week Full Immersion Program at a programming Bootcamp called Learning Fuze in Irvine, California. The journey was very rewarding and I am very grateful for the incredible staff and the resources they provided for us. The biggest takeaway lesson that I learned was the importance of teamwork. It may be strange that I say this considering that I volunteered to do the program’s final project solo when the solo option was made available. I remember my instructor pulling me aside to encourage me to join a group instead and that the institution offers awards to those who greatly help others in their teams.
The reason I declined was that I had spent 3 years in the programming industry where highly skilled developers were often worshiped by upper managers. I found tragic yet understandable that upper managers often overlooked these developers’ unwillingness to work with others, share their skill sets, and socialize with others as long as they got the work they needed to get done in a timely fashion. These individuals often indirectly promoted an air of fierce competition that now I see, was silently toxic to our department.
There were times when these developers politely declined the assistance of other developers explaining that their involvement would slow down their progress. I would agree with their decisions, but interestingly I cannot recall a single collective project that succeeded as a whole when these developers would have to come together and merge all their work into one product. What were superior apps individually became unusable, irreparable products when these apps had to be combined into one comprehensive product.
The unfortunate result was that individuals succeeded but groups failed. People like myself were incentivized not to work with anybody. I suspect the reason my instructor pulled me aside and encouraged me to join a group was that he too had seen these things happen many times in his professional career.
Yes, it is important to develop self-reliance skills, but I learned that there is only so much that only one person can do when developing a quality product. There is just too much workload and too many technical skill sets that are necessary.
I feel that teamwork is too often times undervalued in corporations and that upper management too often relies on the quick gains they can gain by glamorizing individuals. They do so at the expense of promoting collaboration and they sacrifice the health and benefits that could be gained for the whole in the long run.
The reason Learning Fuze was such a memorable experience was that the warm positive team atmosphere I got from my cohort was a welcome change in my daily life. I do not take for granted the time that I spent there and I will always remember the incredible level of dedication from my instructors. It is my hope that I continue meeting such wonderful people in my next journey.
