I had a customer once that wanted me to hire a team of the best consultants we could find.
So I spent about a month reviewing resumes and doing interviews. At the end, we had about 8-10 folks who had top-drawer experiences, top-drawer credentials, and top-drawer recommendations. (Their rates were top-drawer too, but that's a different post)
Once they started, I found that I was wrong all of the time. If I said it was raining, one person would say nope, it's misting, another would say that a better term would be scattered showers, while a third person would point out that the technical meteorological term was BR.
It went on like this for weeks. Whatever my opinion, technical or not, was wrong. Drove me nuts.
Then I realized that these really sharp folks were simply acting the way they had their entire careers. People who criticize and correct get noticed as being smart. You can either be a wallflower or you can stand up and show how much you know.
These were great guys, but they weren't working as a team. Instead, each was jockeying to look good.
Not sure if my example directly applies, but it at least seems to me that a lot of folks are simply playing for points, ie, looking to nitpick instead of trying to learn.
People are tough, you know? Computers are a lot easier.
I've been in the situation you've described (and I've been part of the problem). And yes, it can be really frustrating. Some teams don't work. And sometimes a single person makes or breaks a team. This is fascinating by itself, but a bit off topic.
The big difference is that online the reader to writer ratio is way different. Online, when somebody points out that a hash-map insert is amortized O(1) instead of O(1) hundreds or thousands of people benefit.
When the contractor tries to convince you that a scattered shower is different from a heavy mist (even though you're not in the least interested) nobody benefits. It's just noise.
So I spent about a month reviewing resumes and doing interviews. At the end, we had about 8-10 folks who had top-drawer experiences, top-drawer credentials, and top-drawer recommendations. (Their rates were top-drawer too, but that's a different post)
Once they started, I found that I was wrong all of the time. If I said it was raining, one person would say nope, it's misting, another would say that a better term would be scattered showers, while a third person would point out that the technical meteorological term was BR.
It went on like this for weeks. Whatever my opinion, technical or not, was wrong. Drove me nuts.
Then I realized that these really sharp folks were simply acting the way they had their entire careers. People who criticize and correct get noticed as being smart. You can either be a wallflower or you can stand up and show how much you know.
These were great guys, but they weren't working as a team. Instead, each was jockeying to look good.
Not sure if my example directly applies, but it at least seems to me that a lot of folks are simply playing for points, ie, looking to nitpick instead of trying to learn.
People are tough, you know? Computers are a lot easier.