I recently heard somebody stating:" With this tough
economy, you’d better not share what you know to keep your job." This
statement definitely shocked me because so much opposed to everything I have
been doing and believing in. I think
everybody should do the exact opposite: if you want to keep your job, share as
much as you can!
In 1988 I joined Sun Microsystems. The 800 hundred pound gorillas were named DEC, IBM, HP. Sun from the beginning, and later HP and IBM, committed to Unix, a new and open Operating System (20 years ago!). There were differences between the few flavors of Unix, but the core was the same making software portable from one computer to the other across suppliers. No more proprietary applications binding your customers to your product line for ever. DEC had a proprietary Operating System, VMS, and most likely way better than Unix.
Who won? Unix! DEC is dead. Staying closed and not sharing with the community was a strategic and fatal mistake. Today Unix is challenged by the next step of the same trend, Linux, totally open source, so that any developer can contribute to directly evolving and improving the code. In our connected and mobile world, open wins, close loses.
What is true for Operating Systems is true for you and me as a person and a professional. Open wins, close loses. If you don't share, you socially die.
There are 3 reasons to share your knowledge instead of protecting it.
- Whoever you are, you would not be where you are today without people helping you on our way up. From your teachers to the university faculty, from maybe your first boss to some off your colleagues, a lot of people actually gave you a hand to become who you are today. Everything you have learned has been shared by somebody or at least has been learned thanks to somebody. The minimum you can do it to give back.
- Keeping what you know for yourself is the best way to do what you are currently doing… forever! To go to the next level, somebody has to take your job! My personal preoccupation (since 1992 when I really got it) has been to find, hire and develop people who could replace me, and literally take my job. It is challenging, pushing you up, but it gives you the opportunity and the freedom to move to the next job or the next company without seeing everything you have built falling apart.
- The third reason is a little more philosophical. You are not here forever, that is a fact. So the question is: what are you going to leave behind you. Not that I believe that any of my contributions will make history. Let’s stay humble; they were drops in the ocean. But they might have been perceived and received as a bottle of fresh water by people who were really thirsty of learning. Giving to the others will push them to give too. Millions of anonymous contributions altogether make the human kind better and smarter, one step after the other, and day in and day out. It is not to make history; it is to be part of the history, a link in the human chain, anonymously.
Social Media is a great way to share, and we will talk about it in a future post. What did you share recently from what you know? What did you give from what you have? Think about it for a little while and post a comment to share your sharing experiences.
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