Knowledge Sharing

Just curious how you senior guys operate as far as knowledge sharing goes?

One part of me believes in the whole karma thing and strongly believes in passing information on, then there is the other side. Why should I spoon feed someone who hasn't put the time in and put myself at potential risk and devaluing my worth to my organization.

This is how I rectified my situation, I stacked my top 10 skills that I currently possess, all technical in nature. Soft skills I freely share without reservation. The top 2 - 3 I don't openly share I keep them to myself, that way I protect myself. 4 - 10 I share with my younger co-workers to help bring them along. These are truly hard skills that lead them to greener pastures, but I still refuse to show my top 2 - 3. Note -- I have seen several younger guys/gals go on to make even more than I through the skills I taught them.

A former director told me a funny story that addressed this very scenario.

Summarized version

Tiger is sick and unable to get food
Cousin cat shows Tiger how to hunt stalk etc.
Tiger gets hungry and tries to jump on cat to eat
Cat jumps up in tree avoids the attack
Tiger says to Cat I thought you taught me everything you know
Cat replies I have to survive as well

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Comments

Trucido

"Teamwork makes the dream work."

DatabaseHead

Mentor relationship has to happen organically for me. Both for learning and teaching. If I am not feeling a bond between the individual I'm not going to pursue that.

Also the statement about being weak because you don't share is ridiculous. Some of the best engineers / developers don't share they simply don't see value in it. It's not right or wrong it's a personality trait and they don't want too.

What's even more scary is the "mentor" who goes around training when they themselves don't have a clue. That's the most frightening. Very shocked and surprised this hasn't come up. This is one of the worst, the know it all who doesn't know jack......

alias454

Remedymp wrote: »

Get out of IT then.

Yes, this seems like a logical reply to my comment. The fact that I am not going to insert myself into someone else's project without them asking doesn't somehow make me unhelpful. Sometimes people need to learn on their own otherwise it doesn't stick.

Is the alternative to go around telling everyone what to do all the time?

Kinet1c

I've no problem sharing my knowledge. I also don't want to work with people who don't want to share, I've moved jobs in the past because of this.

Remedymp

alias454 wrote: »

Yes, this seems like a logical reply to my comment. The fact that I am not going to insert myself into someone else's project without them asking doesn't somehow make me unhelpful. Sometimes people need to learn on their own otherwise it doesn't stick.

Is the alternative to go around telling everyone what to do all the time?

But, that's not what you said. You specifically said you don't like "askholes" either. That implies a disposition for those with either less knowledge or those with a different learning complex in an environment where technology changes by the business day. If it bothers you that much, you should leave.

mbarrett

I like how MIT made all their course material online to the entire world - sometimes it's not about the knowledge, but what you are able to do with it.

ivx502

Depending on the circumstance to share or not to share depends on the expectations. If the person asking for help for example is a co-worker then I will simply ask what is it that they tried? Just to cut to the chase rather than retracing the same ground. When I reached management I had an employee who just wanted to constantly be spoon-fed answers. Often times he would go over my head, and for my manager who he was on friendly terms with to force me to cough it up. When that manager left and the new boss realized what my level of expectations was that employee did not last very much longer.

I have no problem sharing knowledge. If you are unwilling to research, try, fail, and repeat until you learn then don't expect to last long. Those words was spoken by my college professor in the late 90s, and have stuck with me ever since.

Remedymp

ivx502 wrote: »

Depending on the circumstance to share or not to share depends on the expectations. If the person asking for help for example is a co-worker then I will simply ask what is it that they tried? Just to cut to the chase rather than retracing the same ground. When I reached management I had an employee who just wanted to constantly be spoon-fed answers. Often times he would go over my head, and for my manager who he was on friendly terms with to force me to cough it up. When that manager left and the new boss realized what my level of expectations was that employee did not last very much longer.

I have no problem sharing knowledge. If you are unwilling to research, try, fail, and repeat until you learn then don't expect to last long. Those words was spoken by my college professor in the late 90s, and have stuck with me ever since.

Again, people who think like this should not be in IT period. It's unreal to me how people are unwilling to share information that doesn't cost them anything.

If documentation is clear and concise, then you have less of these problems. The problem in this regard is the lack of documentation and the unwillingness to even want to create the documentation for this very purpose.

Knowledge dumping and Knowledge transfer are critical in IT and yet the comments here seem to be "mmm, why should i share this, it's sacred to me. Can't this person google it".

Smh, selfish people on this forum.

dave330i

Remedymp wrote: »

Again, people who think like this should not be in IT period. It's unreal to me how people are unwilling to share information that doesn't cost them anything.

If documentation is clear and concise, then you have less of these problems. The problem in this regard is the lack of documentation and the unwillingness to even want to create the documentation for this very purpose.

Knowledge dumping and Knowledge transfer are critical in IT and yet the comments here seem to be "mmm, why should i share this, it's sacred to me. Can't this person google it".

Smh, selfish people on this forum.

"Who is John Galt?"

In case you don't know the reference, let me google it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt

Remedymp

dave330i wrote: »

"Who is John Galt?"

In case you don't know the reference, let me google it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt

I know exactly what the reference is. I've been in diversity training for the last couple of years and all the experiences we hear from people who are sitting in this program are reflected within this thread. All I can do is be glad we don't have these types of people on our team or we would terminate them immediately.

thomas_

@Remedymp - You make it seem like people should go around forcing their knowledge onto people. Asking someone to do some basic research on some things before asking a question is not withholding knowledge it's helping make them more self-sufficient. If someone can't be bothered to look something simple up in a manual, why should I waste my time answering all of their simple questions that can easily be found by themselves if they put forth a little bit of effort?

If they don't know where to look for the answer I'm more than happy to give them direction on that. If it's something particularly hard I will probably answer their question. However, I'm not going to baby someone that refuses to lookup simple things on their own because they are either too lazy or feel like someone should spoon feed them every answer.

OctalDump

thomas_ wrote: »

why should I waste my time answering all of their simple questions that can easily be found by themselves if they put forth a little bit of effort?

If they are simple questions, they should be quick and easy to answer.

dave330i

Remedymp wrote: »

I know exactly what the reference is. I've been in diversity training for the last couple of years and all the experiences we hear from people who are sitting in this program are reflected within this thread. All I can do is be glad we don't have these types of people on our team or we would terminate them immediately.

Interesting study regarding diversity training: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

dave330i

OctalDump wrote: »

If they are simple questions, they should be quick and easy to answer.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_a_man_a_fish_and_you_feed_him_for_a_day;_teach_a_man_to_fish_and_you_feed_him_for_a_lifetime

cmztech

A good mentor is hard to find, indeed.

dhay13

Hard to be a team player when you aren't willing to help the rest of the team

Remedymp

This was one of the major problems when I got to this job. No one wanted to help the new people where english was either not their first language or they were being transitioned into new roles. The people who were tasked with sharing information, just out right refused to do so. Giving the new team members the cold shoulder, telling them to "google it" when in fact, they were supposed to be transferring knowledge to these team members.

There was no documentation on the process when I got here. It's 2016 and no documentation and the unwillingness to transfer knowledge because they wanted to someone to "google it' or figure it out for themselves?

I had to create documentation in layman terms so that anyone coming in as an intern or transitioned resource could grasp this. Even that was frowned upon as some of them keep mentioning this word called, "meritocracy". While they themselves came in off of nepotism. Smh...

sillymcnasty

I will help if there is an actual mutual interest for the help. If they're trying to figure something out, and ask for help, yes 100%. But my coworker is also trying the CCNA and is just asking what to memorize and what not to. It's kind of like, dude, just read it, learn it on your own, so you won't have to worry about memorizing certain things.

brewboy

I noticed a lot less sharing from co-workers back in my desktop support days and much more sharing now in my networking days. I always share everything