Work is not a solo game

Work is not something you can do alone. An obvious thing to say, I know — but I paid an expensive tuition to truly understand it: my company nearly went under. And if you work in the Philippines or Indonesia, those words are not decoration. Let me tell you that story today.

I'll keep the details to myself, but the cause was my own ignorance. It was nobody else's fault. I was the one who made the wrong call, and the responsibility was entirely mine. It is an embarrassing thing for a business owner to admit, but for a time KAZENA was pushed to the very edge of whether it could survive at all. When I wrote about 'a certain trouble' in an earlier post — this was it.

I remember lying awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if I had to fold the company. But some people had not given up. Not me — them. My Indonesian teammate who has been with me since the founding, and the Filipina colleague I met in Manila (as usual, I'm keeping both names to myself). While I was busy being crushed, they quietly kept moving, doing what could be done, one thing at a time. Watching their backs, I decided to stand up again.

And then they went further: they brought me a new teammate. A local woman who knows Indonesian legal and regulatory matters well (her name stays private too). There was no way I could pass up that knowledge, so she has now joined as a tester for KAZENA Books, hammering on the product from a legal point of view — no mercy asked, none given.

I have long believed that what matters even more than engineering skill is having people who understand how customers feel and can turn that into management decisions and specifications. Code can always be rewritten. But 'understanding the person who uses it' is not something you can easily acquire. My teammates work with her every day on fixes and improvement proposals for KAZENA Books. Honestly, they may be more serious about it than I am.

There is a Japanese manga I have loved since I was a boy, one that still gives me courage: SLAM DUNK. The legendary Coach Anzai has a famous line: 'If you give up, that's when the game is over.' That line describes our situation right now, word for word. And yet the only thing that comes out of my mouth is: this is fun!

'I'm glad I use KAZENA Books. It made things easier.' I write code every day dreaming of hearing those words. Work is not a solo game — and that is exactly what makes it worth playing.