All we do is learn, learn, learn, no matter what
This is the third year in a row that I’m trying to stay truthful to my promise of documenting everything that I have learned over the year. As in case of previous years (hope you had a chance to check them out 2017, 2018) I have complied a list of top 10 things that I have learned throughout this year. So here we go.
1. Confidence
Very often people that really care about their work end up with a lot of stress, which is natural — we are stressed when we care about the outcome and we need to care in order to provide the best results. But as we all know being in a lot of stress never did good for nobody. So how do you avoid all the stress and still care? Because simply relaxing by not caring is not going to work. Well, that’s called confidence. It is called confidence when you are facing a difficulty, but you are relaxed knowing that you can handle it. It takes practice and perfecting your craft to build up your confidence.
2. Look in the mirror
Every service company should use services of another company every once in a while. There is a great deal to learn when looking in this mirror — make sure you remember what irritated you when working with another company and never do that to your customers, it definitely will irritate them too.
3. It ain’t always flawless
One of the most important things that I have learned from boxing is that not every victory can be a spectacular knockout. Sometimes it is just not possible, sometimes you just need to dance for 12 rounds and win by decision. There will be projects with missed deadlines, with wrong initial tech choices, with misunderstood requirements, you’ll need to reassess the situation and find the best strategy to deliver the project with minimal losses.
4. Negative adaptation
It is astonishing how quickly we adopt to everything, whether it’s a good thing, or bad. It took us a new team member to realize that the office lights have become dim. Just like the lights a lot of things are getting “broken” slowly and it is hard to notice it when you are a part of it, it takes an outsider to call out the problem. It is important to bring in new team members who will call you on your silent comprises and eventually make the company better.
5. The junior operator
I’ve noticed that for some reason junior people love to write down all kind of complicated statements using ternary operator, so I renamed to it junior operator :)
6. Be very attentive to your accounting
I know it can be boring, it does not seem to contribute to the growth of the company, but a simple mistake in the accounting can set you well back. It’s a shame when a company with a great tech and team is held back by finances.
7. Don’t call it a failure too early
We hear a lot of failure stories these days and the lessons that been learned from them. No matter how glorified failure may sound, it should always be bitter for you to learn. Never rush to call it a failure, ideas need time to be tested and polished.
8. Never bash your customer
Whenever you work with your customers or some other team make sure you understand their point of view. A simple miscommunication or lack of information may lead to an idea that people on the other end are not as smart as you are, once you voice this opinion it is Pandora’s box, it spreads like a cancer and eliminates any chance of successful collaboration. You can’t meaningfully collaborate with somebody you do not respect.
9. Don’t bent, polish
Do not hire people with an intention of changing them, but rather hire them with the intention of polishing their talent. The curve of changing is too big, and they might simply do better in some other place.
10. Same mistakes
Revisit your own “lessons learned” from time to time, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to forget and make same mistakes.
