The Collective Workplace
The web industry is amazing, we openly share our experience and come together to discover new ways to make the web, our collective workplace, better for everyone.
Take a moment to appreciate how unique that is, because in my experience other industries are not as supportive of each other as we are.
We have easy access to the most highly skilled people in our industry, they openly blog, tweet, and share their knowledge. These are people of calibre that other industries could only dream of meeting, let alone have an open dialogue with. Mentorship is really important in any career, and in web development it is given away so freely that we have come to expect it, so much so that many take it for granted. The reality is, we are extremely lucky.
Tools like Twitter, Slack and Facebook are an excellent way to stay up to date. But in my opinion you simply cannot beat face to face interaction. The buzz that is created when you are in a group of people passionately discussing their ideas is inspirational and exciting. This is something I’ve come to appreciate a lot in the web development community in Perth.
For us, at least in my experience, there isn’t a lot of rivalry between companies, we happily celebrate each other's success and we have no problem helping each other solve problems. When it is time for us to come together I don’t see competition, I just see friends and colleagues. This is hard for many outside our industry to understand, but I firmly believe this kind of support benefits the whole community. It encourages people to do better work, think outside the box and change the way they do things. It raises the bar for everyone and allows us to be the best that we can.
When you take away the petty rivalry and replace it with support and encouragement what you are left with is room to look at the bigger picture, in our case, the web as a whole.
It allows us to come together as a community, to share our thoughts and opinions and create a better world wide web. The web is not static, what we think about it, and how we develop for it is constantly in flux, it is only as a collective that we can direct the change into something worthwhile, and come to the best possible result.
Working together, discussing our thoughts and opinions is what sets us apart, and what makes our jobs less something we have to do, and more something we want to do. It helps breed passion and creativity, and it also allows us to adopt change quicker. Instead of trying to push our own ideals, and force our way of thinking we have learnt to accept others opinions, take on board suggestions or criticism and change the way we do things. Without the open dialogue and the willingness to listen and learn from those around us I’m certain we would experience less innovation and growth in our industry.
What I’m trying to say is thanks. Thank you to everyone that has ever helped me, all those people who post their ideas and everyone who is willing to give away their code for nothing in return! But also congratulations, if you work in the web industry you work in the best workplace there is.