[gwnywg]

Yep, this sentence from the article is good summary of the problem they had:

> The rest of the team observed them in admiration.

They should have been included in building base, they also should spend time learning what state of the art is (since, as article says, they had time before requirements started flowing)

[Arisaka1]

As far as I know, appearances win every time, so the appearance of you being (to put it in video game terms) "the carry" is much better than you being the one who teaches others.

Then we have the replaceability factor. It's not rare for someone to try to secure their spot by making themselves irreplaceable, and one way of doing this is by being the only person working on a project or the vast majority of the codebase. I'm currently onboarded in a (previously) 1-man project and I find myself learning why they designed things like that instead of learning the framework and best practices.

[sebastianconcpt]

I despise seeing appearances win over substance. I feel like every time illusion trumps over reality, whoever is involved in that is making humanity be pushed one little bit closer to asking to be fooled in a massive illusory lie ala Plato's Cave (or The Matrix 1999 if you prefer).

[Instantix]

I agree for an ideal world but the problem is often the wall of the reality i.e. TIME. Levelling the playing field takes time and it's not doable when you have to deliver now, not in a month. So playing at a level sustainable by everyone on the long run is certainly a better and more robust approach.

[sebastianconcpt]

Right but managers have the responsibility to validate everyone has not only the right level of urgency but that has it in the right thing. The natural thing to happen is small deviations escalating to misalignment and later lack of trust. Managers should check on the small deviations and gently (social skill) help teammates stream their energy and efforts to take the mission to success. And whatever the major constraint is for a given team, every business needs to de-risk their engineering investments and nothing does that better than a great team culture and great vibes among teammates. If managers aren't the protectors of that I see them as either incompetent, failures or frauds.