They say that it’s better to be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond. That way you’ll look around, see all the bigger fish and be inspired to better yourself so that you can become one of the big fish and then move your family to a house in an even bigger pond.

But what do you do if you’re a kangaroo in a pond?

You’re not a fish, so you can’t really swim. In fact, you might end up wondering why, as a kangaroo, you’ve decided to paddle out to the middle of a big old pond. You can’t compare yourself with or compete against the fish in the pond because, well, they’re fish and you’re a kangaroo. There are very few things that fish and kangaroos have in common that can be ranked against each other.

Yesterday most of my teammates decided autonomously to not use a version-controlled repository for editing HTML, JS and CSS files. Instead, we’re all now editing one single copy of everything stored in a central location. This means no branches, no centralized reviews for all changes related to one feature, no diffs or git-blames, nothing. I know that I’m supposed to be “always right” and “gain the trust of others” and what-not, but honestly, I’m not very enthused about teaching other engineers the importance of version control and branches in a tech company in the 21st century.

Why a kangaroo? Because kangaroos are awesome, that’s why.