> In school everyone always complains about group work sucking
I supervised software engineering projects at university. It works well when students in a group have similar motivation and abilities. This is the case when they are free to choose who they collaborate with. Otherwise, students are usually frustrated.
In a company, teams can be much more heterogeneous (cultural background, skills, age, social status, experience...), and the pressure is higher: goals can be loosely defined, evaluation is less fair, stakes are higher for everyone, managers can be less benevolent than teachers...
In my corporate software projects, a particular engineer owns the outcome. They have lines of communication with the managers of other assigned engineers, and considerable pull in their performance reviews and promotions.
The floor is that someone cares and the others will make what could be mistaken for a good-faith effort, which is lightyears better than a school project.
I supervised software engineering projects at university. It works well when students in a group have similar motivation and abilities. This is the case when they are free to choose who they collaborate with. Otherwise, students are usually frustrated.
In a company, teams can be much more heterogeneous (cultural background, skills, age, social status, experience...), and the pressure is higher: goals can be loosely defined, evaluation is less fair, stakes are higher for everyone, managers can be less benevolent than teachers...