Exposing Your Ignorance

This week the pattern I decided to write about is from chapter 2. The pattern titled “Expose Your Ignorance” discusses something I’ve had to experience recently: letting those you’re working with fill the gaps in your knowledge. This section opens up with this quote by Jake Scruggs in “My Apprenticeship at Object Mentor”. The quote is “Tomorrow I need to look stupider and feel better about it. This staying quiet and trying to guess what’s going on isn’t working so well.” Opening this topic with that quote is impactful because I think a lot of people feel shame and would call themselves stupid for simple gaps in their knowledge when others have high expectations for them. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s okay to not know everything and be transparent about it instead of struggling alone while deadlines approach.

When I was working on a website with a group of other developers, we were all transparent with each other about our knowledge gaps for the tech stack we had to work with. This allowed us to play off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Some of us were more knowledgeable about the front end while others were more knowledgeable about what was required for the backend. I was more unfamiliar with what the front end required so I worked on the backend team. When we started working on the project, I was transparent about my lack of knowledge about JavaScript, routes, controllers, and HTTP requests. My team leader spent some time going over the material with me and provided some resources to research on my own. I then looked for more resources to learn. We also made an effort for everyone to learn a bit more about both the front end and the back end.

 In the text, it said, “Conceding to unspoken pressures and telling people what they want to hear is not a good way to build strong relationships.” I agree with this because our transparency made sure we were able to help each other grow and in turn strengthen our relationships with each other. Your reputation will be built off of your willingness to learn. There wasn’t any part that I could disagree with. When you’re honest about your ignorance you will end up picking up knowledge about a variety of technologies which will make it easier for you to adapt down the road.