“Collaboration” is bullshit

Scope of Critique: “Collaboration” vs Collaboration Theatre

• Many commenters read the essay as attacking “collaboration-as-ideology” and process theater, not genuine teamwork.
• Distinction drawn between collaboration as support for high-agency ownership vs collaboration as the primary “work” of an organization.
• Some think the author overgeneralizes from bad corporate experiences and comes across as deeply cynical or misanthropic.

Team Size, Communication Overhead, and Output Distribution

• Strong agreement that communication overhead grows fast with team size; “wolf pack” teams of ~4–10 are often seen as optimal.
• References to Pareto/Price’s law: a small fraction of people do a large fraction of valuable work; others note this doesn’t mean the rest are useless.
• Argument that big organizations often fail to properly decompose problems, so a small effective core ends up doing the real work.

Management Process, Meetings, and Tooling

• Common complaints: standups that don’t unblock, endless planning/retro rituals, and “visibility theater” for managers.
• Some argue good agile use should constrain recurring meetings and make all others explicitly tied to deliverables.
• Tools like Jira and heavy process are criticized for recombining divided work and exploding complexity and coordination costs.

Ownership, Responsibility, and Credit

• Many value clear ownership for getting things across the finish line.
• Others warn pure individual responsibility often degenerates into blame culture.
• Lack of credit for high contributors is described as “soul-killing,” though some say camaraderie and pay matter more than recognition.

Incentives, Performance, and Low Performers

• Collaboration/process is often seen as a way to cope with mediocre or unmotivated workers when hiring and firing are hard.
• Several stress incentive design: what gets rewarded (speed, impact, quality, teamwork) shapes behavior.
• Debate over whether incentives can really be aligned at scale; people are heterogeneous and systems often reward empire-building or politics.

Wartime Analogy and Evidence

• Multiple commenters challenge the WWII “only 15–20% fired their weapons” claim as methodologically weak or debunked.
• Others say, even if true, it’s a poor analogy for office work and misses factors like training, fear, and artillery’s role in combat.

Value of Good Collaboration

• Many personal anecdotes praise rare, high-trust, high-autonomy teams where collaboration makes “everyone smarter.”
• Others emphasize biological and systems analogies: combining complementary individuals can yield more value than lone geniuses, provided structure and incentives are well designed.