Over the years, I’ve noticed that regardless of the work I’m thrown at, I usually get my work done, and more often than not, I get it done on time. However, there are a plethora of engineers that are wayyyy better than me. After all, I get to work with some of the brightest engineers I’ve ever met. Interestingly, however, not all of them get their patches in, or their work done in a timely fashion, which has got me thinking… call it old age, reminiscing, or too many beers. Â What makes it easier to ship things on time when you need to appease so many people in an open source project?
I’m actually quite happy to be surrounded by very smart people. That in part, has been part of my secret. Surround yourself with people much smarter than you, and entice or coerce them to review your work. Everyone’s better in the process.
A colleague once told me, “in our industry, smart is a dime a dozen, but people you actually want to work with… that’s a very small subset”. I really hope he meant me. Then he added, “and people that also ship stuff on time– that’s very rare”. And that has been my goal at work for a long time: be that guy– be the guy that ships stuff on time, and is a joy to work with (well, mostly ;-)).
