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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Why would you care? He's not actively harming his coworkers, he's doing what is asked of him work wise, and his colleagues presumably are too - and are themselves getting apparently slack jobs if there is 6hrs per day of easily automated work. Imagine if your coworker told management about an efficiency hack that made you responsible for 4x the output per day. Would you rather work with that person?

Personally, I wouldn't want to work at a company that apparently is not incentivizing creativity. I'd rather work somewhere where I knew if I did something like this I'd get more money or career progression or something, not just more work to do. But I certainly don't blame the employee for this

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Assuming its not trivial, its hiding a useful tool from your coworkers. Why share any knowledge at all? Why mentor someone if it just gets them more work?

Seems pretty toxic to me.

This isn't any different than keeping a bunch of text snippets that you use as a starting point for creating things. Text snippets may seem trivial in comparison to some tool that writes code or checks for your common errors, but when there is a bug in your text snippet, you own the bug.

Let's say he gives away his tool and all of a sudden he is the guy who has to work on it when other people have problems. Now his coworkers have more time, he has less, and he is the scapegoat for when things go wrong. Not only that but since it is not a real product of the organization, no one will recognize the time he works on it so he will have to work over time to meet his other goals.

Now if someone wants to ask for a copy of what I use, sure but they own their copy and I own mine.

Sure, there's plenty of reasons to not push every line you've written. However, the stated reason is to keep a "competitive advantage" against their coworkers.

I took the competitive advantage comment as the short story to a much longer reason.

We started to share those kind of snippets in Operation manuals and knowledge sharing session.

This helps other people to grow.

Cause some of the tools are completely outside of the scope of work or company culture or tech stack.

We do share knowledge but not all of it is relevant, so not every little thing needs sharing. If I come to meeting and share everything in my head I might as well crab a box to stand on and preach to the clouds. I'd rather just get on with things than trying to convince people of my way of working.

No toxic intentions involved here.

If he's got that attitude for this what else does it extend to?

This is the core of the issue: we don't get time allocated for innovation/creativity and other internal improvements. At town halls we get told we need to be innovative but then.. no time is allocated for it. I suspect a handful of other devs also has their own tooling as mine to make their lives easier, but keeping it for themselves, as telling/showing other can often invite unintended consequences.

He/she is blocking a head count for a person who would improve the success of our team and our company.

I prefer people who genuinely like to improve our whole environment than not.

Sharing and caring!

Compensate people appropriately for their contribution, and they will contribute.

I prefer managers who pay me, rather than thank me.

No Bucks, No Buck Rodgers.

And? You think you will not be seen as a very good developer companies want to keep?

You can mention your optimization in every salary discussion etc.

A lot of places would see someone not following development guidelines, doing something unsanctioned, or otherwise not fitting in to the expected culture.

That can be far more toxic pushback to any attempted improvement.

I am not interested in your BS pull system. I do not beg for dollars. Very few people do what I do, and my skills are in high demand. Continuously and proactively compensate me, or I leave, and take my productivity and inventiveness to your competition. Fuck your annual salary review.

I do but the company doesn't care about stuff like this at all. In other ways the company is great but in some other ways not so great.

I do have the urge to share it with others but on the other end I force myself not to do it. I care a great deal. I have shown things in the past, during screen sharing meetings, then I hear people taking screenshots of my work... no thanks.

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