Being a Team member
Tags: career, work, netherlands
Published: 2018-03-14 14:16:41

---
title: Being a Team member
published: true
tags: career,work,netherlands
---


![Team](http://www.emadmokhtar.com/images/karen-maes-310484.jpg)

<a style="background-color:black;color:white;text-decoration:none;padding:4px 6px;font-family:-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &quot;San Francisco&quot;, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;line-height:1.2;display:inline-block;border-radius:3px;" href="https://unsplash.com/@karen1974?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=photographer-credit&amp;utm_content=creditBadge" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" title="Download free do whatever you want high-resolution photos from Karen Maes"><span style="display:inline-block;padding:2px 3px;"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" style="height:12px;width:auto;position:relative;vertical-align:middle;top:-1px;fill:white;" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><title>unsplash-logo</title><path d="M20.8 18.1c0 2.7-2.2 4.8-4.8 4.8s-4.8-2.1-4.8-4.8c0-2.7 2.2-4.8 4.8-4.8 2.7.1 4.8 2.2 4.8 4.8zm11.2-7.4v14.9c0 2.3-1.9 4.3-4.3 4.3h-23.4c-2.4 0-4.3-1.9-4.3-4.3v-15c0-2.3 1.9-4.3 4.3-4.3h3.7l.8-2.3c.4-1.1 1.7-2 2.9-2h8.6c1.2 0 2.5.9 2.9 2l.8 2.4h3.7c2.4 0 4.3 1.9 4.3 4.3zm-8.6 7.5c0-4.1-3.3-7.5-7.5-7.5-4.1 0-7.5 3.4-7.5 7.5s3.3 7.5 7.5 7.5c4.2-.1 7.5-3.4 7.5-7.5z"></path></svg></span><span style="display:inline-block;padding:2px 3px;">Karen Maes</span></a>

## The Start

In September 2017 I left my job and my life in [Kuwait](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait) and traveled to the [Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands) to join [Veneficus](https://veneficus.nl/en/) as Software developer, one of the reasons I moved to the Netherlands is to work in a team and I started to feel being a [solo developer]({filename}/Solo Developer.md) is bad for my career.

I joined a team of 7 developers mixed between full-time and part-time, and start to fell there are some missing skills I need to develop, and yes I was correct I worked alone for almost 7 years. What is it mean working alone? it means no need for communication, no need for development plans, no need for technical debates, no need to manage your time or other team member's time. In the beginning, I feel so bad and stressed with that change, to be honest, I made many mistakes, but with a growth mindset you need to learn from mistakes and grow and fix them, os what I did?

## Community Help!

First, I asked for community help, I went to [PythonistaCafe](https://www.pythonistacafe.com/) forum and posted my situation and the members gave me great answers regarding my situation, and one member point me to something very useful and first time to know it, which is the Egoless Developer and The 10 Commandments of Egoless Programming, they pointed me to links to posts to read.

Here are links:

* [Jeff Atwood post about egoless developer](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/)
* [EgolessPRogramming C2.com](http://wiki.c2.com/?EgolessProgramming)

## Team Help!

Second, I asked my team members, and my manager, yes I asked my team for help, and I found out they really helped and they understand my problem. I found out I'm not alone, we as developers have many in common issues, and it is addressed in books and community for many years.

## Final thought

Please don't hesitate to ask for help from the community or your teammates, yeah it is not an easy step to take, but it is not bad and hard as you think, it is easy and you'll get good benefits from it 😉. You find you are not lone and many developers in your community faced the same issues, so the community can help you.

**Last but not least, [Veneficus is hiring](https://veneficus.nl/en/working-at/)**