| > The dark side of this mentality is that it creates the same situations whereby people believe their own intuitions are equal to professional scientific research. If you believe no one knows what they’re doing and all adults are just making it up as they go, why would you listen to experts instead of inserting your own opinions based on your Facebook research or some quip you saw online? Or folks on your own team? I've got a colleague with over 20 years of software/web/dev experience, working as a contractor on a poorly run team. Routinely there are questions about "how should we do X?". My colleague has done much of these X situations for 10+ years, and says "we need to do it like Z. I've done Z for 8 years and this is the normal pattern for this scenario". There's always regular pushback from others on the team with "well, I read $foo which says Z can't scale!" and similar things. These are typically coming from people with ... 1-2 years experience. One guy just graduated high school last year, but the PM gives everyone's views equal weight because "well, no one can know everything, and everyone's got a right to their opinion!" Just because the 20 year old doesn't know how to do X, or read that Z is 'slow' does not mean their views are equally as valid as someone who has actually done X multiple times over years, and in some cases has already implemented the X on a project. He's likely not going to be there much longer - he's already splitting time with other projects, and will ramp down if there's not some bigger changes on that team. |