My boss tells me what I already know; I'm not playing well with my coworker. I've failed. Well, maybe not; lemme esplain:
- My coworker (my senior) is in another state.
- Our personalities don't mesh.
- She has less experience (in time and most definitely in variety) than I do.
- Our development philosophies are polar opposites; hers is git-r-done / hack it together, mine is do it according to widely accepted good development practices (although we both think our philosophy serves our customer best).
- She wants to continue to follow the ancient existing architecture, I want to change it wherever possible.
- And so it goes.
Because of the above, we don't communicate much. It's not terrible; but far from optimal. My boss suggested that he may move another developer (who is much more happy-go-lucky) to my spot and me to his system (a one man show).
So on the one hand, I've failed to be a team player - that's evident. But should I have been one? That's not evident. If I'm relegated to a one-man system should I simply embrace that as an opportunity to call all my own shots and flourish as perhaps I can best, or should I consider that a step down and always strive for collaborative development?
I believe one thing about lone development - it can be very fruitful. The Mythical Man-Month and copious other writings detail the difficulties with team development and I believe that applies right down to teams of as few as 3. 2 may be a unique situation what with XP and all (or even w/o XP as long as 2 developers are on the same page and communicate well). Yet, even with 2, the rule may apply. Could this cat have done what he did with a partner? A partner would surely have only slowed him down. Maybe that's only because he's a genius, but I suspect it applies to anyone who frequently gets in the zone during development.
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