I am sharing one of the chapters from The Coder Habits, and its wisdom pill, among others, is one of the ones I like most in the book.
If you think that:
- Being the only one in your company or department who knows how to do something gives you an advantage…
- Feeling indispensable gives you value that helps you keep your position…
- Not sharing knowledge with your colleagues will make you more valued…
In short, if you believe that fostering islands of knowledge in your own company is good for you, then I have to tell you that you are wrong. It is like that proverb that says, “bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.”
And the reverse is also true: for a company, nothing is worse than depending on employees who are the only ones who understand a certain topic.
This is what I believe: as a professional, you are not interested in being the only one who understands something essential to your company (unless you want to dedicate the rest of your life to it…). And conversely, for a company, nothing is worse than depending on people who possess those islands of knowledge.
Are you good at innovating and providing unique solutions? Perfect. Then do your job, prepare it so others can take it on (delegate), and keep developing your best virtues in other areas and other solutions, because that is where you create value (and that is how you keep growing professionally).
To this day, I have not found any situation or area of knowledge in any project that a good, astute professional cannot take over in a few weeks. So the feeling of indispensability (if that word exists) is just that: a feeling.
I have had some painful experiences in this regard (and I think I learned the lesson), and I fear that this personal attitude can only put stones in your professional development, apart from the fact that a company should never depend on individuals with that mindset.
For that reason, one of the habits I like most (because of the value I believe it brings) from The Coder Habits is habit 32, whose title is precisely, “Do not foster islands of knowledge,” and I want to share it in this post.
Believing that being the only person who knows how to do something extraordinarily complex or technical gives you some advantage is the attitude of naive and beginner professionals: what you think is an advantage in the short term becomes a heavy burden in the medium and long term (preventing you from progressing in other areas of your career by getting stuck in that one thing you are so good at…).
Here is the chapter, which, like all the others in the book, is brief and to the point.
#32 - Do not foster islands of knowledge
This is a pattern that, unfortunately, I have found often and that I believe causes a lot of harm in our sector, which is why I include it as a habit (more like an anti-habit).
Some people have the temptation to think that if they are the only people who dominate something specific in the company or department, the only ones who understand that essential issue, or the only ones the company can turn to to solve that problem, then they have secured their job (they have barricaded themselves in it and, without realizing it, are digging their own professional grave).
These people are far from knowing the basics of all those “soft skills” I have spoken about earlier.
And they are also insecure people with very low self-esteem, I’m afraid.
The security of a good professional does not lie in appropriating for yourself something that no one else in your organization can do, believing that this will allow you to keep your job, your status, or whatever for life. True security consists in knowing that you can solve problems because your skills and attitudes allow it, nothing more. In this way, the good professional does not run away from new challenges (which always arrive disguised as problems) but faces them with the energy of personal growth. Appropriating an island of knowledge, besides being mean, makes you weak, because it prevents you from growing professionally, and believe me, anyone will end up dominating what you want to protect unless they decide to.
I once fell into this error myself (a long time ago, of course!), and in fact I talk about this episode in “The Programmer’s Black Book.” Result? I realized that “being the only one who knew how to do that” was blocking me on the corporate ladder and limiting my growth. I took note and reacted in time.
Seen from another angle, if you have responsibilities over a team, prevent knowledge islands from existing; it is a risk that can cost you, and your team, dearly.
This and other habits that help you improve as a professional are described in my latest book The Coder Habits: Los 39 hábitos del programador profesional.
