Pride. Not invented here. I want to do it myself. I want to learn it anyway. I don’t trust it. I don’t know what it does. It doesn’t work the way I want it to. It’s not optimized for my needs.
Those are all great attempts at excuses for not utilizing something that was built by someone else. If you believe those, then you will waste a lot of time building your own infrastructure. As I mentioned in a previous post, you can’t afford to do that. The key to being productive and generating value is to spend your time on valuable things, things at the top of the value chain instead of the middle or the bottom, things that are unique that others can’t do as well as you. But to do things at the top of the stack requires things below you, call it enablement or infrastructure. So the point is to stand on the shoulders of others by using the infrastructure that they have created. If you don’t, then you have to build that infrastructure yourself, and that will suck the resources out of your project and dramatically limit your ability to progress and succeed. The same wheels have been invented so many times that it is truly wasteful. Reinventing wheels isn’t going to help anyone.
Without standing on the shoulders of others, you won’t progress at a reasonable rate. You can’t do it all yourself.
Within an organization, to beg, borrow or steal is ok, as long as credit is given. One of the greatest compliments someone can give me is to use my code. I would like credit (in the form of management recognition, financial sharing, etc), but yes, stand on my shoulders, and let others stand on your shoulders. By supporting each other we can create a stronger ecosystem that is good for everyone. We are measured on contributions utilized, not effort expended.