John Calhoun joined Apple in the 1990s. He approached his work by making quick prototypes, whereas his coworkers would often carefully plan and design their software, whiteboarding it out before writing even one line of code. He writes:

From my approach of diving in rather than planning I began to regard myself at Apple as a “blue-collar” programmer working among “white-collar” professionals (imposter syndrome maybe?). But to give myself some credit, after having written code for seven years or so at this point, my instinct as to which direction to dive in with a task was at least an informed one.

Sometimes, John’s approach would send him to a dead end, and he would restart the prototyping process. It might take him three prototypes to get something done—by then, his coworkers would’ve finished it around then as well. So he wasn’t necessarily faster—but he did get to work his way:

So was the whole exercise of my guerilla programming technique a wash? Maybe. But it always served me well (or was perhaps the only way I knew to program effectively).

It’s important to find a way to work that not only enables you to do what you want to do, but also to do it your way—the way that serves you the best. It leans into your inclinations and instincts, and it energizes you.

More companies in the future will be flexible with their employees, too—because the best people will want to do things their way, on their schedule, with their favorite software, etc. Inflexible teams will inevitably lose talent to the flexible ones.