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I Want to Grow — Work with People You Can Learn From, and Be a Good Influence Yourself

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Introduction: Willpower Alone Is Not Enough

One common misconception about growth is that it is purely a matter of individual willpower — the belief that if you just resolve hard enough, study late enough, and read enough books, you will grow. I am not saying willpower doesn't matter. I am saying willpower alone is not enough.

Across two companies, I watched the same person (myself) grow at completely different speeds. In one place, a year was stagnation; in another, six months was a leap. What was different? My willpower was about the same. What differed were the people I worked with.

The central claim of this essay is simple: environment makes growth. And the biggest part of environment is people. Work with people you can learn from and you get pulled upward even when you stand still. But this essay doesn't stop there. It goes one step further: becoming that kind of person for someone else — that is, being a giver rather than only a taker — turns out to be the best path for your own growth, too.

Environment Makes Growth: The Gravity of People

We come to resemble the average of the people around us. This is not a self-help cliché but a phenomenon social psychology has confirmed again and again. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler's social-network research shows that behaviors, habits, and even emotions spread along social ties.

Translated to developers, it looks like this:

  • On a team that takes code review seriously, your code becomes serious too.
  • Next to a colleague who digs into "why?" to the bottom, you stop settling at the surface.
  • In a culture where people ask without shame, you learn faster too.

The reverse holds as well. In a place where cutting corners is routine, no amount of willpower can easily fight that gravity.

Comparison: A Growth Environment vs. a Stagnant One

DimensionGrowth environmentStagnant environment
FeedbackSpecific and frequentAlmost none, or once a year
MistakesTreated as learning opportunitiesTreated as grounds for blame
KnowledgeActively sharedHoarded by individuals
QuestionsWelcomedSeen as a sign of incompetence
ChallengeEncouraged and supported"Too risky, don't"

If you are currently in an environment closer to the right column, your biggest growth lever may not be working harder but changing the environment. More on that later.

How to Find Mentors and Colleagues

"Work with people you can learn from" sounds great, but how exactly do you find such people and build relationships? Let me get concrete.

A Mentor Need Not Be One Person

If you imagine a mentor as "a single master who will guide me entirely," they are hard to find. Instead, I recommend the concept of a personal board of advisors — learning a little from several people, each with different strengths.

  • Learn design from A, who is great at code design.
  • Learn collaboration from B, who excels at communication.
  • Ask C, who sees the career landscape far ahead, about direction.

When you stop expecting everything from one person, your odds of finding mentors rise dramatically.

Concrete Ways to Approach a Mentor

Many people dread the grand request, "Will you be my mentor?" You don't need that. Start small.

Dialogue example:

"The comment you left in yesterday's review really stuck with me. I'd like to understand that part better — could you spare 15 minutes? How about lunch or coffee?"

The keys to such a request: (1) it is specific, (2) it asks for little of the other person's time, and (3) it carries sincere recognition of them. One good 15 minutes naturally leads to the next conversation.

Signs of a Good Colleague

Beyond mentors, peers are important growth partners too. Signs of a good colleague you'd want to work with:

  • Honestly says "I don't know" when they don't.
  • Looks at others' code with curiosity, not blame.
  • Naturally shares what they learn.
  • Keeps their commitments (even small ones).

If you find such a person, that relationship is well worth investing in.

The Skill of Actively Learning from Colleagues

Being in the same space as good people doesn't mean you learn automatically. Learning, too, is an active skill.

  • Over-the-shoulder observation: Watch how an excellent colleague approaches a problem. The process matters more than the answer. Observe "what does this person do first when stuck?"
  • Preparing good questions: "How do I do this?" draws less than "I weighed A and B — by what criteria do you choose?" The quality of the question determines the quality of the learning.
  • Receiving reviews as gifts: Don't defend against comments in code review; receive them with curiosity. Every critique is free tutoring.
  • Teaching it back: Explaining what you learned to someone else reveals whether you truly understood. This flows naturally into the next section's "giver."

Becoming a Giver: Don't Only Take

Here we reach the most important pivot of this essay. Conversations about growth usually stop at "how do I receive (learn)?" But Adam Grant's research in "Give and Take" reveals a counterintuitive fact: over the long run, the people who succeed most are not takers but givers.

Of course, Grant's research paints a balanced picture. The "doormat giver" who drains themselves giving indiscriminately actually sits at the very bottom. The most successful are the wise givers — those who contribute generously while protecting their own boundaries.

Why Giving Is Good for Growth

There are several reasons giving serves your own growth better than only taking.

  1. You learn by teaching: This is the so-called "protégé effect." To explain something to someone, you have to understand it more deeply yourself. Answering a colleague's question exposes the gaps in your own knowledge.
  2. Trust and reputation accumulate: People gather around those who help. And those people bring opportunities later.
  3. A web of reciprocity forms: When you give first, you build a net of people who will help when you need it.

Concrete Behaviors That Are a Good Influence

Let me translate the abstract "be a good influence" into concrete behaviors.

Area          Concrete behavior
----------    -----------------------------------------
Knowledge     Share what you learn in a short note or internal talk
Code review   Propose with "what if we did it this way?" instead of blame
Onboarding    Reach out first to new hires and ask where they're stuck
Recognition   Praise a colleague's good work publicly
Connecting    Link a person with a question to someone who knows the answer
Listening     Hear people out fully before judging

What these behaviors share is that they require no great sacrifice. Most take a few minutes or a few words. But repeated, they change the very atmosphere of a team.

Growing Together Through Knowledge Sharing

Among acts of giving, knowledge sharing is special. Knowledge doesn't shrink when shared — your own understanding actually deepens the more you share it.

Starting Knowledge Sharing Without Pressure

You don't need to picture a grand conference talk. Start small.

  • TIL (Today I Learned): Leave one line of what you learned today in a team channel.
  • Problem-solving notes: When you fix a tricky bug, write a short account of the cause and process. It's a gift to whoever hits the same problem next.
  • Lunch learning sessions: A light gathering where people take turns sharing a 15-minute topic.
  • Pair programming: The densest form of knowledge transfer.

Dialogue Example: A Natural Moment to Share Knowledge

Colleague: "I can't figure out why this behaves like this. I've been stuck for an hour."

Taker's response: "Hmm, I'm not sure either." (Conversation ends.)

Giver's response: "Ah, I struggled with this once too. Want to look at it together? I have notes I made back then — let me share them."

The latter response helps the colleague while also being a chance to revisit and reinforce your own past learning. Giving and learning happen within the same act.

Balance: Don't Shoulder Everything

I must emphasize balance here. Wise givers don't fail to do their own work because they answer every question instantly. Examples of healthy boundaries:

  • "I'm in focused work right now — can we look at this together at 3 p.m.?"
  • "This is documented here. Read it first, and if you're still stuck, let's talk again."

Giving without draining yourself — this is the picture of a sustainable giver.

The Craft of Feedback That Is a Good Influence

Among behaviors that are a good influence, feedback is especially hard and important. Given poorly, it wrecks relationships; given well, it grows a colleague. Takers avoid feedback; givers treat it as a gift.

Two Kinds of Feedback

  • Praise (positive feedback): Surprisingly, this is what people give least. They see good work and just walk past. Specific praise is the cheapest yet most powerful gift.
  • Improvement feedback: Harder, but more valuable. Only people who genuinely care will endure the discomfort to give honest feedback.

The Structure of Good Feedback: SBI

If you're at a loss when giving feedback, the SBI model is useful.

Element           Content                   Example
--------------    --------------------    -------------------
Situation         When and where it was     "In yesterday's design review"
Behavior          The specific observed act "When you compared two options"
Impact            The effect it had         "The decision came much faster"

The key is to focus on the behavior, not the person. "You're good at your job" (a vague character judgment) helps far less than "your comparison yesterday made the decision faster" (a specific behavior).

Dialogue Example: Giving Improvement Feedback

Clumsy way: "This code is too complex. Rewrite it."

Good way: "This function's logic is really thorough. There's one thing I'd like to think through together — when someone else reads this part later, the flow might be a little hard to follow. What if we split it into smaller functions?"

The latter (1) sincerely acknowledges first, (2) takes a stance of thinking together rather than blaming, and (3) carries a concrete suggestion. Around people who give feedback like this, people grow safely.

Criteria for Choosing a Team and Company

If environment matters this much for growth, what should you look at when choosing a team and company? There are things to examine more deeply than salary or company size.

Questions to Ask in Interviews

An interview is where the company evaluates you, but it is also where you evaluate the environment. These questions reveal an environment.

What you want to know      Question to ask
----------------------    -----------------------------------------
Learning culture          "What's the biggest lesson the team learned recently?"
Attitude toward mistakes  "How did you respond to a recent incident?"
Feedback culture          "How is feedback usually given and received?"
Growth support            "Are there cases of juniors growing into seniors?"
Knowledge sharing         "How does knowledge sharing happen on the team?"

The content of the answers matters, but the manner of answering tells you more. When they talk about an incident, notice whether they blame a specific person or discuss the system. That reveals the team's psychological safety.

Signs of a Good Environment and Red Flags

  • Good signs: Seniors answer juniors' questions seriously, there's a culture of openly admitting mistakes, people of diverse backgrounds are mixed in, code review is constructive.
  • Red flags: "Everyone just figures it out here" (= no onboarding), all knowledge concentrated in one hero, questions are ignored, overtime is equated with dedication.

That said, look with balance. No environment is perfect. The key is: "Is this place likely to make me a better person?"

Networks: The Strength of Weak Ties

Growth and opportunity often come through people. Interestingly, new opportunities come more from people you loosely know (weak ties) than from close friends (strong ties). This is what sociologist Mark Granovetter's classic study "The Strength of Weak Ties" showed.

The reason is simple. Close friends live in the same information world as you, but loose acquaintances bring information from other worlds.

Authentic Networking

If the word "networking" conjures a transactional image of swapping business cards, it's worth reconsidering. Lasting networks are built on generosity, not transactions.

  • Give help first. Not "let me know if you need anything," but actually doing something useful.
  • Remember help you received and express gratitude.
  • Make connections. Introducing two people is one of the most valuable gifts.

The giver principle operates here too. A richer network forms around the person who approaches to give, not the one who approaches to take.

Anti-patterns: Signs and Traps of a Bad Environment

For a balanced view, we must also address common misconceptions and traps about growth environments.

Trap 1: Tolerating the "Toxic Genius"

There are colleagues who are technically brilliant but tear people down. People often endure the toxicity, reasoning "at least I can learn the tech from them." But research shows a toxic environment takes more than the learning it gives. Where psychological safety collapses, questions, mistakes, and challenges all shrink. Tech can be learned from books, but battered self-worth is harder to recover.

Trap 2: The Depletion of a Take-Only Relationship

If you only take from a mentor or colleague and never give back, the relationship slowly depletes. People don't give endlessly. If you received, give something back — gratitude, a small help, or passing that teaching on to someone else.

Trap 3: Growth Trapped by Comparison

Working with people you can learn from naturally invites comparison. Moderate comparison is motivating, but excessive comparison is poison. If "I can't do it as well as them" blocks your challenges, switch the object of comparison to yesterday's self.

Good Environment vs. Dangerous Environment, Summarized

Signal            Good environment        Dangerous environment
--------------    --------------------    -------------------
Questions          Welcomed               "You don't even know that?"
Asking for help    Natural                Seen as weakness
Mistakes           Learning opportunity   Blame hunt
Knowledge          Shared                 Monopolized by a hero
Success            Celebrated together    Zero-sum competition

The key is: "Does this environment make me a better person and a better colleague?" An environment where you gain skill but lose your humanity is not a good environment.

Cases: Two People Who Changed Their Environment

Case 1: From Taker to Giver

A junior developer was, at first, only someone who asked questions. They constantly asked seniors and learned a lot. But at some point they realized something: people newer than them had started joining.

They made a conscious shift. They documented the parts they had struggled with and volunteered to onboard new hires. At first they wondered, "Am I even qualified to teach?" But in the act of teaching, they felt their own understanding grow far firmer. A year later, they had become one of the most trusted people on the team. When the person who only took became a giver, paradoxically they grew the most.

Case 2: A Decision to Change the Environment

Another developer was on a stable but stagnant team. The pay wasn't bad, and it was comfortable. But after two years, they felt they were learning nothing. There was no one around to learn from.

They made a hard decision: to move to a more challenging team with many people to learn from. The first few months were tough — there was so much they didn't know. But that very "so much I don't know" was a signal of growth. Six months later, they felt they had grown more than in the previous two years.

The lessons of the two cases differ. The first is becoming a giver; the second is changing the environment. But both point at the same truth: growth comes through people.

The Enemy of Growing Together: The Temptation to Shine Alone

What most quickly destroys a give-to-each-other environment is, paradoxically, the desire to "stand out myself." When evaluation and promotion feel zero-sum, people hide knowledge and try to hog credit. This may look rational short-term, but long-term it harms you too.

Why the Shine-Alone Strategy Fails

  • Hoarding knowledge builds a ceiling: The person who clutches all the knowledge can't take vacation and can't take on bigger work, because they become the bottleneck.
  • Trust erodes: People don't stay around someone who grabs credit. And big opportunities always come through people.
  • You lose the mirror of growth: Working alone, there's no feedback. The honest feedback you trade while working together is the mirror of growth, and you'd be shutting it yourself.

Balance: The Difference from Healthy Self-Promotion

Let there be no misunderstanding. Fairly making your work known is necessary. Quietly toiling and then sinking unnoticed is also a problem. The difference lies in whether you're honest about the source of credit.

Bad way: "I did this whole project." (Erasing colleagues' contributions.) Good way: "On this project I led the design, Sam did the implementation, and Lee helped with testing."

The latter makes your own contribution clear while making colleagues shine too. Shining together goes further, in the end, than shining alone.

Growing Together in the Remote Era

In remote and hybrid environments where you aren't physically in the same space, growth-through-people doesn't happen on its own. The chance hallway conversation, the over-the-shoulder learning from the senior next to you — these disappear. So remote environments demand more deliberate effort.

Designing Learning When Remote

  • Asynchronous learning assets: Rather than depending on someone's instant answer, learn from well-written docs and recorded decisions (ADRs and the like). At the same time, write down what you learn to grow the asynchronous assets.
  • Deliberate 1:1s: With no chance conversations, proactively request a regular short video chat with someone you want to learn from.
  • Working in the open: Debug together via screen share or deliberately schedule pair programming. It's the densest learning method when remote.
  • Public channels first: Ask and answer in public channels rather than DMs. That way the answer becomes a learning asset for everyone.

Being a giver in a remote environment carries even greater value. The person who leaves their knowledge in writing and records influences the whole team across time and space.

A 30-Day Giver Practice Plan

To turn the resolution "let me become a good influence" into small actions, here's a 30-day plan. It's a gradual design that adds one habit each week.

Week      Giver habit to add
------    -----------------------------------------
Week 1    Praise one piece of a colleague's good work, specifically, daily
Week 2    Share what you learn twice a week as a TIL
Week 3    Connect someone asking for help to someone who knows the answer
Week 4    Document one part you struggled with and leave it behind

The key to this plan is accumulation. By week 4, you don't drop week 1's habit — you're naturally doing all four. And when these small habits add up, at some point people start thinking of you as "someone I want to work with."

Measurable Signals

Signals that confirm you're on the right track as a giver.

  • Do people ask you for help more and more often? (A signal of trust.)
  • Are the notes or docs you shared actually referenced? (A signal of influence.)
  • Do colleagues respond genuinely to your praise or recognition? (A signal of relationship.)

But remember balance. If you pursue these signals like a score, giving degrades into a transaction. The signals are merely a compass to check direction; the purpose is sincere contribution itself.

Conclusion: Growing Together

Growth is not a solo climb. More precisely, it doesn't have to be a solo climb. We can pull each other up.

Work with people you can learn from. Let yourself be drawn by their gravity.

And don't stop there. Pass on what you received. The moment you become "a person worth learning from" to someone else is the moment you are growing fastest.

A good environment is sometimes given by luck, but it is also made. And the surest way to make an environment is to become a good part of it yourself first. Not a gathering of takers, but a gathering of people who give to one another. That is the picture of a team growing together.

Finally: The Compounding of Small Consistency

It need not be grand mentorship or a dazzling talk. Noticing one good thing about a colleague each day, doing the review you promised on time, extending your hand first with "want to look at it together?" when someone is stuck. When such small consistency accumulates over one year, two years, good people naturally gather around you, and with them you will have grown to places you could never reach alone. Growth is about going far, and to go far you have to go together.

Practical Checklist

As a learner

  • Have you sketched your own personal board of advisors (people with various strengths)?
  • Have you made a small, concrete request of a mentor?
  • Are you actively learning from the colleagues you work with?

As a giver

  • Did you do something useful for someone this week?
  • Did you share what you learned in some form? (TIL, a note, a talk)
  • Did you publicly recognize a colleague's good work?
  • Are you giving while protecting your boundaries? (Beware the doormat giver.)

As someone reading the environment

  • Is your current environment making you a better person?
  • Have you prepared interview questions that reveal the environment?
  • Are you investing generously in weak ties (loose networks)?

References

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