I’m still not 100% sure about Clubhouse, but even if it’s just a hyped-up app, you can definitely catch fascinating conversations here and there.

Last week, I listened to a conversation with Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s head of Reality Labs, who, among other topics, talked about teams and engineering.

There was something he said that resonated with me.

Sometimes, we will have a co-worker come out and say - “This is how we used to do that in my previous company,” to which the reaction is almost always dismissive. We all believe that what we are doing is unique and that an outsider will never understand how we got to where we are.

I have to admit that I am guilty of that on more than one occasion.

And here is where it falls short - By reacting this way, we are missing out on why we hired that person in the first place.

We hire people for their experience, and that comes in all sorts of shapes and colors.

Even if 90% of it is irrelevant, you may still get new insights for solving a problem. It may even completely change how you do things.

We all spend time reading books and articles, but when someone tries to apply knowledge in a way that is immediately relevant to our problem and backs it with experience, we brush it off.

As a side effect, when we are dismissive, we are building up resentment. Maybe the next time that person will have a good idea, he will keep it to himself.

So why do we dismiss a potentially better way of doing things? Maybe it’s an ego or culture thing, but next time, keep an open mind and try to look at it as a learning experience, even if that co-worker has less experience than you.