Jake

many people, including this person, carry the attitudes and habits they pick up at their first job around for quite a long time

I think a lot of different things can work and what's really important is that you find a style that's suitable to you and the context you operate in. Copying what's worked for someone else is unlikely to work for you

A major difference between my friend's team and most teams is that my friend's team was composed of people who had a track record of being highly effective across a variety of contexts. In an earlier job, my friend started a job at a large-ish ($5B/yr revenue) government-run utility company and was immediately assigned a problem that, unbeknownst t... See more

So the lesson there is... look for any sort of excuse, however silly or arbitrary, to make anything at all. Because everything we do tends to leave some traces of everything that we are.