Cowboy Developers, and Intellectual Curiosity

“An inch wide and a mile deep” — this is a pretty good description of most of the #CowboyDevelopers out there, people who know a lot about one thing, but not a lot about anything else. What I find particularly fascinating about them however, is that their remarkable lack of intellectual curiosity around anything that isn’t their area of expertise. As far as I can tell, they only (maybe!) pick up new things when they’ve been bludgeoned with it repeatedly, with pretty much the entire universe showing them that it is relevant and important. And, even then, it’s probably going to get ignored by them.

A fairly common reason for this is insecurity, which tends to manifest itself in two ways

• • Need for Respect: Admitting that there is something else — and new! — out there is tantamount to admitting that there is something they don’t know. And if there is stuff they don’t know, people won’t respect them (after all, they don’t know things!). And then, they will no longer be the “authority figure”! 😕
  (Yes, this is ridiculous. But that’s kinda the point)
• • Fears for their Job: Note that this isn’t about hardscrabble upbringings, under-privileged backgrounds, etc., it’s more that they’ve usually been evicted from all their previous jobs as soon as they outstayed their welcome (yes. that’s the complicated way of saying “they’re assholes”). For these folks, being the “authority figure” also confers job security, and new stuff is an existential threat — to be fought on all fronts.

So, how do you work around this?
Well, I still maintain that if you have any #CowboyDevelopers around, get rid of them ASAP. The immediate benefits to having them around are significantlyoverwhelmed by the long-term damage they can cause to their team, co-workers, and heck, the organization. (•)
On the other hand, if you can’t get rid of them (e.g., they’re a Founder, or some such) then you have a much trickier row to hoe (••). Try the following

1. 1. Junior Dev as Lever: Use a junior dev, one that is completely non-threatening, and have them introduce the new topic to the #CowboyDeveloper. Ideally, have them bring it up in as non-confrontational way as possible, something along the lines of
    — “I don’t under this new thing, could you explain it to me?”
    — “Check out this prototype I built using a new thing, do you think we can use something like this?”
   and so on.
2. 2. Appeal to Knowledge: Present it to them as something they already know, because, clearly, they know everything in this field. The implicitassumption across you (and others!) should be that the #CowboyDevelopers are already past-masters of the new field. Common phrases to use are
    — “This is really basic stuff for you, but …”
    — “You’ve done all this in the past before, we haven’t…”
   Remember though, non-threatening is still the key….

Mind you, this all smacks of Dunning-Kruger, and that isn’t entirely wrong…

(•) If they’ve managed to “job security” themselves into a safe place, then start working on transitioning them out as soon as possible!
(••) If you can’t get rid of them, and they have any impact on your success, you probably want to transition out of there yourself!