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Ask HN: Do you discuss work with coworkers?

5 points by oldsklgdfth ↗ HN
I've been at my latest job for a little over 2 years. The biggest distinction about this one over others is that no one talks about work or the product in or out of work. Everyone is off in their own corner. Even the people that are on the same team as me barely ever discuss work or programming related topics.

This is bizarre to me because when I hang out with friends and former coworkers we can't help but touch on programming and work in some way.

Is this situation common? Is this a red flag of sorts?

5 comments

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robin_reala
Sounds bizarre to me. Are you really implementing one product per person?
thisone
the entire programming team is a bunch of 'loan wolves'?

I'd say, yeah, that's a red flag. You aren't discussing issues and making decisions with input even from your own team members?

oldsklgdfth
the entire team is 3 guys. The lead, a senior guy and me.

We all have tasks that are pretty independent of each other, so there's no real need to talk and there's not real oversight in the form of peer-review or testing.

Every now and then there will be glimpses of discussing issues. For the most part I work alone till someone asks me what I'm doing. I tell them what I'm doing and the say I should be working on something slightly different than what I've been doing.

frou_dh
It's a big Opportunity Cost because if people aren't mutually learning from each other then they are most likely just treading water skills-wise. You know, the whole "5 years of experience -vs- the same year repeated 5 times" thing.

This kind of culture pretty much sucks and in my experience comes from the manager's conception of the software development process being akin to handing out individual long-running homework assignments. If someone is so out of touch that they literally do not know that deep collaboration in software development is even possible, then of course they will not promote it.

Anyone unhappy with the culture has a duty to put some effort into improving things, but if the total number of people who actually care is low...