Be the lion’s tail rather than the fox’s head!
—Tractate Avot
I found this pattern interesting, but at the same time, a pattern that has a lot of space to describe from different perspectives. “Be the worst” is the title that when you see it at the first glance doesn’t sound really good. It grabs your attention, and also sounds like a piece of advice.
In every work environment, there are employees who are not at the same level of knowledge. Someone is good at factual and theoretical knowledge, someone is good at accessing and applying information, another one is good at coding, someone in communications skills, and someone in the way of organizing the work. A company might have also a person that is capable of doing all of these, but also it might have people that can’t do any of them.
There is an expression of Mahatma Gandhi. It says: “Practice as you are the worst, perform as if you are the best!” This quote looks the same as the pattern that Tractate Avot talks about. Even if you are the worst on the team, you still need to practice and learn from the best ones. But at the same time, whatever you learn, you have to share and perform as the best thing you can do.
The solution that the author gives here, is to be surrounded by developers who are better than you. Based on him, also the solution is finding a stronger team where we can be the weakest member. Okay, when I read in this context it looks like advice that I can learn from. But at the same time looks a little challenging to me. Being in an environment where you are the worst of all the employees, firstly could make you feel as inferior. You might feel uncomfortable in a place where you know less than anyone. I think that nowadays anyone has the possibility to be informed about something is not sure about. Nowadays everything is well explained through information, tutorial videos where anyone can learn something new or when you are not really sure how something works. In this way, it might not be necessary to feel like someone that is just “the worst”. Of course, we can look for help when we are not sure about something or for learning something new and unseen before. But I don’t agree with being the worst.
To sum up, the point where I totally agree with Tractat Avot is when he says that one thing that can help us maintain a more accurate self-assessment, will be collaborating with great developers. Only in that way, we can have a successful software project on our teams.
From the blog CS@worcester – Xhulja's Blogs by xmurati and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.