LEARN TO DETACH AND GROW | STRIVE FOR SIMPLICITY NOT PERFECTION
Can you recollect the occasions where you became defensive and was not paying attention when your coworkers and team are sharing frank feedback and opinions. The tough part is when you get attached to something you have built and never separated yourself from the system. The challenge is unable to accept feedback which is a critical attribute to improve and help us become better version of ourselves. Let me give a good example of myself and the lessons I learnt. I was working as a Ruby on Rails developer in an organization and I was with the team for 5 years and pretty much contributed to almost 50% of the entire code base with snippets flying around in all the major components. The team started growing and our business was expanding. We were slowly seeing challenges with our code base as we were not willing to not ask but take an assessment of how efficient our system has been so far and what are the decisions we took in the past that no longer are valid for our future growth and are shaking our foundations.
Most importantly, we were spending more time writing more code to fix issues, manage the existing legacy code which was fine for the past but no longer efficient for future. On a one fine day, one of our technology leaders asked us to do an audit of our system and at the same time explore a POC on looking for any frameworks or technologies that we can try which will be ideal for our system needs and cater to our business objectives. Remember, technology and business coexist and that is how systems have to be built. If someone looks at our system architecture and if it screams Java, Pascal, C++ , Java script, we failed in reflecting the use cases of the system and an end user perspective. For example, if someone looks at a medical health system architecture , it should scream “user relationships, medical procedures, cpc codes, etc…. . Anyways, coming back to our discussion, the team decided to pick AngularJS as our POC framework and went through a voting process across the team to see if anyone has concerns with adapting to this framework.We had a workshop and training on AngularJS. In parallel, we had the team build a back end layer using nodejs.
Most of the questions that were asked from the team were due to lack of awareness and better understanding which the technology leadership helped by answering all the questions. That was easy. But the challenge was addressing the questions that I was asking and debating. Because I took it personal and started raising fences around me as I was assuming that I am best the Ruby on Rails developer on the planet and I was not willing to accept any feedback even if it was going to make me a better developer and improve my skills in writing code. The leadership knew that I was a good engineer and collaborates well, but I was making everyone’s life hard by constantly defending and not willing to take critical feedback. WHY ? Because I was attached to this code and I was treating this system as my baby and not willing to accept the reality and shortcomings of it. I had a great relationship with my manager and architect and they tried explaining me that this is not personal and none of the systems in the world are perfect. What we are striving for is simplicity. I ended up accepting the migration to Angular JS but with a unhappy mindset and not looking at this shift as opportunities in life to grow.
Over the next few months, I ended up writing code in AngularJS and eventually was enjoying every bit of rewriting the system from scratch, extending it and meeting the business needs and giving a great developer experience, I repeat developer experience as my team was struggling to add new functionality on my old complicated code in ruby and they were nice to me. I eventually went back to my team and conveyed that “I WAS WRONG IN MY THINKING. I WAS DEFENSIVE. I COULDN’T DETACH MYSELF FROM THE SYSTEM AND WAS TREATING MYSELF AS THE EXPERT”.
I am sure all of you are much better system thinkers with holistic perspectives of putting the team always first and want to succeed as a team. To understand this single sentence, it took me so many frustrations, arrogance and not being able to detach and cultivate a growth mindset. Just assume how many uncomfortable situations and hard times I have to go through to learn the most essential skill of detaching when its time.
Hope this post helps anyone who is having a hard time accepting the reality which is , none of us are perfect and we don’t have to be. Listen and Seek Feedback All the Time. Strive for Simplicity, Not Perfection!!!! This is the only way to grow and become a better version of ourselves.
