Everyone Knows
A while back I asked one of the Solaris engineers how we could set up a
system
to give credit to community members for their contributions to the
OpenSolaris project. I was just looking to bounce around
some ideas. I wanted to create an elaborate, multi-phase, multi-tier
system, and I even described some of it, too. We have to make sure that
we give people credit and reward them for their efforts, right? We have
to track this in detail and offer incentives, right?
Well, this engineer's response set me right back on my heels: "Why?" he asked. "Everyone knows who did the work."
Everyone knows? I keep running into this here, and I've had this very same conversation in one way or another with a dozen guys inside and outside the company over the last two years. It keeps coming back to the simple principle: in communities everyone knows who does the work and those who do the work get to make the decisions. But why and how does that work? It certainly didn't work that way in most of my previous jobs, that's for sure.
I've also noticed that credit, power, and authority are widely distributed and many times shared -- not stolen, hoarded, or channeled upline to the guy with the big hairy title who then commands downline. And people readily defer to others and offer the names of colleagues who are the experts and who actually did the work on a given project, they don't remain silent and quietly imply that they themselves deserve the credit. But why? What holds this together?
Well, I'm not sure exactly, but I've spoken to some people about what I'm thinking and here are some common themes that bubble up:
To me, working from within an engineering community environment offers the opportunity to grow in your own way without the fear that someone will come along and steal your stuff. And the fact that your stuff is contributed to the community and you benefit based on what you contribute is pretty wild, too.
So, we still need to put together a little program to recognize community members for their contributions (code, content, etc), but my perspective on this has changed somewhat. I'm no longer thinking that we have the power to give credit; instead, we are now simply drawing some well deserved attention to someone for their contribution since they earned credibility from their peers. It's a subtle shift, but I think it's important. Instead of us leading with the giving, it's the community member earning with the contribution because in reality everyone already knows who did the work, right?
Well, this engineer's response set me right back on my heels: "Why?" he asked. "Everyone knows who did the work."
Everyone knows? I keep running into this here, and I've had this very same conversation in one way or another with a dozen guys inside and outside the company over the last two years. It keeps coming back to the simple principle: in communities everyone knows who does the work and those who do the work get to make the decisions. But why and how does that work? It certainly didn't work that way in most of my previous jobs, that's for sure.
I've also noticed that credit, power, and authority are widely distributed and many times shared -- not stolen, hoarded, or channeled upline to the guy with the big hairy title who then commands downline. And people readily defer to others and offer the names of colleagues who are the experts and who actually did the work on a given project, they don't remain silent and quietly imply that they themselves deserve the credit. But why? What holds this together?
Well, I'm not sure exactly, but I've spoken to some people about what I'm thinking and here are some common themes that bubble up:
- Engineers build things,
- The building of those things is generally done in the open so others can see,
- The things themselves are usually complex enough with multiple dependencies that the people doing the building prefer to work in teams, and
- Out of this process grows a culture of mutual respect where credibility is distributed among peers.
To me, working from within an engineering community environment offers the opportunity to grow in your own way without the fear that someone will come along and steal your stuff. And the fact that your stuff is contributed to the community and you benefit based on what you contribute is pretty wild, too.
So, we still need to put together a little program to recognize community members for their contributions (code, content, etc), but my perspective on this has changed somewhat. I'm no longer thinking that we have the power to give credit; instead, we are now simply drawing some well deserved attention to someone for their contribution since they earned credibility from their peers. It's a subtle shift, but I think it's important. Instead of us leading with the giving, it's the community member earning with the contribution because in reality everyone already knows who did the work, right?
Jim, look at the 4th comment there: Chris comment.
Now, the basic idea is that "The Code" is what's important, and is what survives.
The coders know each other because they read the code, and they debug the code together.
There's no need to "recognize" people. The people that write the code are the only ones worth recognizing, and that already works.
To be fair, by "code" I mean everything in a project. It could be the C that gets Made into an exe, or it could be the german transtation of the user's manual.
Posted by Christopher Mahan on December 13, 2005 at 10:30 AM JST #
Thanks, Chris. Ok, so I think I'm moving in the right direction then. I don't want to go overboard on the "recognizing" bit, I agree. I'm learning this as I go. :) Also, we already name community members who are directly contributing code <a href="http://opensolaris.org/os/bug_reports/request_sponsor/">in this bug report. So, I'm looking to do some more of things like that. Low key, basically.
Posted by Jim Grisanzio on December 13, 2005 at 02:02 PM JST #