The Things You Learn In A Community

I've had "funny" days before, where I learn things about people - things that you know exist and things that you know end up happening to some people anyway, but sometimes forget and think "nah, not them", et cetera. Well, today has been one of those days. I'm not going to name names or discuss why this subject is particularly relevant to me - at least not in detail - but I will touch on what I've learnt in the last couple of hours, and what its made me think about...

To properly (but perhaps poorly ) dissect this subject and explore, I'm going to start by explaining (sort of) why I left Gentoo last year/this year. Basically, I was going through a really bad time mentally, and physically; mentally because I wasn't able to speak to many people about my problems, thus my head was virtually defunct for a large part of last year (September to November); physically because I spent a large chunk of the last part of Q3/much of Q4 2005 either in bed/elsewhere hiding from my problems, not doing much at all. As some already know, it took me a long time battling against these d[a]emons (hah!) to make a comeback. Now enough with the personal stuff...

Today, I've spoken to three people about my problems (you all know who you are <3), and I feel a lot closer to these people. Now, the question that's probably running through your mind is something akin to: "Why is this at all relevant to Gentoo?" Well, here's why:

• Knowing a person you're working with (for example, a fellow developer or user) decreases the chances of heavily misunderstanding something;
• Knowing the people you will have to work with helps just as above, but also you build bigger and better and most importantly stronger relationships, and you build social networks too.

Again, you may be still be wondering why this is appearing on planet.g.o, and why it is relevant. It may not be to all, but I do think it is relevant to how we, as colleagues - and perhaps friends - work and interface with others, and could help/encourage us to sit down and think for a little bit... I'll give an example so everyone is (hopefully!) on the same page:

I started working for $telco in *thinks* late 2004, and when I started I hardly knew anyone. I quickly made friends with a few people, but a lot of people just wanted to keep to themselves, which is fine, until this way of thinking starts damaging the work flow of your peers. Not only this, but the atmosphere was bad because hardly anyone knew each other. Sure, there were small circles of friends, etc, but the fact that nearly all of my staff (hah, yes, my staff... and yes, I'm only 21 going on 22 ;P) were strangers to all the other, uh, strange staff, it made things difficult to say the least... But this situation was soon flipped, and I'll explain why.

Basically, I decided that things needed to change. My boss wasn't happy; my staff weren't at all happy; their boss (me) wasn't happy, and it was very very noticeable. But this story has a happy ending: through initiatives others and myself started - and saw through to the very end - we all started to socialise, and get to know one and other. (We even had a [jokingly] forced "social time" where we'd go up to the roof for a cigarette and chat about life, work, and generally anything.)

It took a few months for this to start to work, but it did; we quite quickly saw the rise in our productivity level; we were not only having fun getting boring work done - sometimes by playing silly games while fixing equipment or dealing with customers! - but we all made new and exciting friendships. And not only this, but because of the very apparent change in how we worked, we got more work done, and all of us - my entire department no less - got a pay rise. And guess what? Internal "flames" on internal extranets/mailing lists completely disappeared!

Now, I'm going to leave this story there and let people think about it a little before I take it somewhere else, but I hope this story has made at least some people think. I think the common term for people smarter than I (yes, I'm quite dumb without caffeine - and high dosages, too!) would be "Food for thought."

And happy Wednesday/Thursday to those in the right timezones!