As programmers, what do our teammates do for us, and how to give back to them.

Pour la version française c’est par ici.

A few weeks ago, annual interviews took place in my company. They are a part of feedback loops happening all over the year. Quite conventional I’d say, except that I was invited to my colleagues’ interviews as a guest, and that’s when it all started.

The first part of the interview consists in an open conversation between the employee, their boss and some of their co-workers, the said guests. Where I work, a two-employees constant seems to be the norm. Well, I was one of these two chosen ones… three times. Quick confession : I work on a four-developers team so the odds were great and my effect here quite childish; but I can’t help it!

That being said, I had only one job at that time : to do it properly. Simple at first sight : the guest has to give their opinion about specific macro criteria such as self-sufficiency, initiative, expertise and so on… Needless to say that I had the back of each individual in my team, and that this was useless since our boss works closely with us and is quite a member of our team.

Enough of the context, let’s talk about facts now.

How do I prepare for something like this? By gathering facts, always facts. And something did shock me, another fact. I was working to help them by remembering and gathering what they achieved during the year, maybe several months ago. Well, I quickly figured out that this was useless : they’d remember them better than me, that’s for sure. During this preparation, I was struggling to give them elements that would help them out but I couldn’t think of anything as useful as I wanted. Of course they knew what they achieved. Of course they built their case with more efficiency than I would. There’s nothing that I could bring on the table that they didn’t bring any better. And there’s where I was right, and why I was wrong reasoning like this.

If I can’t give them anything that counts, if all the elements I think of are worthless, what do I have left?

Everything they gave me.

Because that’s where the true value is regarding my invitation : their implication in the team through the eyes of a teammate. I then started to think about that during long sessions of doing the dishes at home. And here’s the modest result of this.

• do they make me want to go to work every morning? Hell, we see each other’s faces a lot, and hear each other’s voices too often. Interacting with people you don’t want to see is a nightmare. These people are truly amazing. We’ve become friends after all this time fighting each other and whining about code, about coffee addiction and each other’s favourite Sci-fi universe (Wars, Trek, Gate). They don’t make me want to go to work. They make me want to come to reunite with this second or third family that is ours.
• do they make me become a better programmer? That’s an interesting point because here is where all the facts above are. As a programmer I want to constantly improve my work, to go beyond what I know or what I think I know. This is a little part of what makes me love this job. Here, I can talk about how I grew up in my professional life, thanks to them. There’s where their expertise is : doing their job amazingly, but also sharing what they know, what they learned, how they help others… Each fact they put on the table, achievement or failure, contain something that I learned from. In the world we’re living in, helping others and sharing knowledge is priceless.
• do they make me become a better version of myself? This point on its own kind of sums up the two points above. Some relations transcend their initial boundaries. Work colleagues can become friends, friends can become best friends, or lovers, who knows. But there’s one thing for sure : for someone who wants to improve themselves, the company of inestimable people is a blessing. Not because we want to become like someone else or to be the opposite of someone else. Because they make us think. Learning from a friend about your skill-set is a thing, but learning about yourself, about who you want to be is an other.

I delivered this hey-I-made-the-dishes-analysis during these interviews. Not because it could help them, even if it somehow did. But because I wanted to share how I feel working with them. Thinking it is something, putting it into words and sharing it is quite another work. For someone like me who love to speak to say nothing intelligent, or nothing at all, that was quite a ride.

The work is now mine to do. I can’t let it be one-sided. The points above being developed, the best thing I can do to get even with my colleagues is to fulfil those points with them, every day.

Let’s return what others gave us. That could start with little things, by contributing, at our scale, to open-source projects, and by sharing this will. Open-source Friday might be nice events for that.

As a guy, a programmer and a human being, I write this article as a thank-you to my team, and to you, anonymous co-worker reading these lines and thinking the same about your neighbour.

It’s payback time, but in a positive way for once.