Genius is Not Perfect /// Ben and Fitz /// EP146:Part2

No matter how much effort you put into something, it's never done alone. This applies to everyone, including the smartest or most athletic.

A genius doesn't create without supplies, funding, or assistance to contribute to their field of study. Like an athlete doesn't get to show their skills if the structure of sport doesn't exist. 

This is highlighted by Ben and Fitz in this Part 2 episode of their conversation. They talk about the Genius Myth and the importance of recognizing it when building highly collaborative and effective teams.

 

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Brian (Fitz) is the Founder and CTO of Tock, and he started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005. An open-source contributor for over 13 years, Brian was the engineering manager for several Google products, and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation, a former engineer at Apple and CollabNet, and a Subversion developer,

 

Ben is a co-founder & author of Subversion, a popular version-control tool to help programmers collaborate. He also co-authored the main O'Reilly manual for the software. He is currently the engineering Site Lead for Google's Chicago office, having joined Google in 2005 as one of the first two engineers in Chicago. He manages multiple teams working on Google's Search-serving infrastructure.

 

Together they have collaborated on multiple talks and books regarding the social challenges of software development. They have given dozens of talks at conferences (many viewable on youtube), and authored a popular O'Reilly book on the subject: Debugging Teams: Better Productivity through Collaboration.

 
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Topics we discuss:

 

• Privilege
  • The relative nature of privilege
  • Seeing privilege
• Their Book - Debugging Teams
  • Genius Myth
  • Working together in a creative space
• Peter Principle
• Understanding others
• Pursue what makes sense for each

 

References:

• ORD Camp
• Crucial Conversations
• H.A.L.T. - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
• Free Book - Debugging Teams
• Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison
• Peter Principle

 

Credits:

 

Music:

Main Theme: "Eaze Does It" by Shye Eaze and DJ Rufbeats, a More In Common Podcast Exclusive.

All music created by DJ Rufbeats