Our longest running project just turned 10. Ever the sucker for nostalgia, Devin Silberfein looks back on how we make sure we're providing value for the long haul.
Wow. I just realized we’ve been working on the same project for 10 years. How does that even happen? The short version of the story is that, in 2013, a former client at Toyota approached us to take over design and maintenance for their second largest website, BuyAToyota.com. We kicked off, dug in, did a great job (I think, I hope), and we’re still here today. But there’s more to it than that, there always is. Prior to starting Five & Done, the longest I had worked at a job was 3 years and at the time, that felt like long enough to learn and grow -- to see things through. I realize now that was the shortsighted hubris of a 30 year old. Ten years feels like a good time to reflect on what we did to get us here. TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE IS INFINITE AND IT IS EVERYTHING.? You never stop learning the nooks and crannies of the world you’re working in (the industry, technology, personalities, politics, etc..). The deeper that knowledge goes, the better your work will be, the more efficiently you’ll be able to pull it off, and the more appreciated you’ll be to your clients. Knowing what you’re talking about is in shorter supply than you realize. FIGHT THE URGE TO BE A JUDGMENTAL JERK When you see first hand, for years, all the challenges that go along with creating, building, and launching something for a major brand, it’s easy to become a fatalist know-it-all. You might find yourself in a meeting where a relatively new team member is pitching an exciting blue-sky concept and you can’t help using that valuable tribal knowledge to point out all the ways it won’t work. FIGHT that urge. Don’t be a jerk. Force yourself to use that knowledge to help refine an idea into something bulletproof rather than admonish it for being too ambitious. TAKE A STEP BACK EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE There have been a QUARTER OF A BILLION visits to BuyAToyota.com in the last 10 years on our watch. That’s insane! As we sit with a few coworkers in a conference room, or hash things out on Slack, it’s easy to forget the impact and scale of our work. Sure, it may just feel like pixels and code, but there are (a lot of) people driving their new Toyotas right now because of our work. Enjoy that. We’ve delivered and learned so much in 10 years, I couldn’t possibly put it all in one post. But to simplify it: when you work on one thing for so long, you realize you never stop learning. Even when things aren’t new and different, that doesn’t mean you know it all.
