What you don't know may not hurt you, but what you don't remember always does. - Gerald M. Weinberg

In the army — old-fashioned style — every foot-soldier was considered interchangeable with every other. The hierarchical organization, then, was conceived as the structure that could give the fastest and most direct coordination between these interchangeable parts. But a programming project is not a battle, regardless of appearances. There is no need for quite the speed of communication which is necessary under field conditions, nor are the things to be communicated so simple that they can be barked over a two-way radio with shells bursting in the background. What is needed in a programming project is slow, careful communication among teams of people doing very different, highly specialized tasks.

Rather than fight change, a more sensible approach is to learn to live with it. Or to make a living from it.

By making the time tradeoff explicit and by indicating a willingness to contribute time now, I make it clear that it is a problem of limited time, not a problem of limited respect for the other person.