Backbone: What Software Teams Don’t Understand About Teamwork

I came from a world where backbone wasn’t optional.

Law enforcement. Boot camp. Fire drills where people’s lives depended on you not screwing up. Team meant something. It meant sacrifice. It meant discipline. It meant doing your job, not for your ego, but for the person next to you.

In those worlds, if you failed, someone else paid the price. Sometimes with blood. Sometimes with their life. That reality forges a bond. It forges backbone.

Then I entered corporate America. Software teams. Agile ceremonies. Standups. Sprints. Retros.
They talk about “teamwork.”
But let me tell you the truth: most of them don’t know what teamwork is.

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What Teamwork Really Means

In the field, teamwork means this:

• You put the mission above yourself.

• You cover your team’s weaknesses.

• You sacrifice comfort, safety, sometimes your own well-being.

• You build trust that is unbreakable.

That’s backbone. That’s real teamwork.

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What Passes for Teamwork in Software

Here’s what I see in software:

• People protecting their turf.

• Knowledge hoarded, not shared.

• Teams where “accountability” means blaming someone else when things break.

• Leaders avoiding hard conversations.

• Individuals optimizing for promotions, not outcomes.

That’s not teamwork. That’s theater.

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Why Backbone Matters

The stakes are different. Sure, no one is going to die if your deployment fails. But the consequences are real:

• Customers lose trust.

• Businesses lose money.

• Teams burn out.

• Cultures rot from the inside out.

When pressure hits, weak teams collapse. Strong teams adapt. And strength comes from backbone.

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What Tech Can Learn

You don’t need to turn software teams into boot camps. But you do need to learn backbone. Here’s how:

• Own it. Stop blaming. Start taking responsibility for outcomes.

• Train under pressure. Run fire drills. Break your own systems on purpose. Build resilience.

• Sacrifice for the team. Stay late to help a teammate. Share knowledge freely. Put the mission above your ego.

• Lead with discipline. Leaders, stop avoiding the hard calls. Tell the truth. Set the standard.

That’s how you build real teams.

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The Hard Truth

I’ve lived both sides. I’ve seen what backbone looks like when lives depend on it. And I’ve seen what happens when “teamwork” gets reduced to a buzzword.

Corporate America, especially software, has the talent. It has the brains. What it lacks is backbone.

Until that changes, most “teams” won’t be teams at all. They’ll just be co-workers.

And co-workers don’t win. Teams do.