Ask HN: Do you prefer working as a solo developer or as part of a team? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you prefer working as a solo developer or as part of a team?

6 pointschistev31 comments

Obviously there's a limit to what a single person can build. But do you prefer working solo, perhaps as a freelancer, or as part of a team were tasks are delegated?

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In my life, I have worked only once in a competent team. It was great - people actually knew their stuff.

But that was a one a off. In literally every other team I have exclusively worked with incompetent people, who were only detrimental to the project and to my mental state also.

Due to this, I prefer to go solo whenever I can.

I've heard this sentiment from people on every team I've worked with, sometimes multiple people on the same team.

Everyone thinks they're an above average driver...

> In literally every other team I have exclusively worked with incompetent people

What made them incompetent?

Just to mention a few: Not knowing how to use their tools. Now knowing how to read the diagnostic/error messages they received. Not knowing how (and refusing to) to learn new things. Not understanding and/or not caring about the product they were working on, and thus adding bad changes to it.

Very frequently one person can bear multiple of these properties. If none of this is familiar to you, then just wait, and you will see how extremely lucky you are...

Solo is my default mode, so I don’t really see it as a preference. If there’s no one else, I’ll do it solo.

In my past I’ve had a very enjoyable experience in a complimentary duo team. In my actual career, I was always on reasonably big teams and never preferred it. I often felt like my past team (just me and some other person) could have done what many companies do with full teams.

Not to sound so arrogant, but a lot of features go through product/design/dev/qa and really me and another dude used to knock stuff like this out without even using project management software. Crazy how much we got done just going back and forth in chat.

That’s been my general feeling in the industry. I just never really got why there’s so many other people at software companies (shrugs).

I feel you.

Solo. It wasn't much of an option early on in my career but now as I went full Indy two years ago, I'm not going back. I think the recent advancement in Ai coding assistance really has changed the game what an individual can do. Just wrote about the topic recently.

https://neoexogenesis.com/posts/rust-windsurf-transformation...

Bookmarked to read later.

Observation: If your blog post starts with a clearly AI-generated abstract, why would I be motivated to read the rest of it? It's unfortunately indistinguishable from AI slop.

> delves

Dead giveaway :D

if that was the only one … :)

I like to be solo sometimes but most of the time i do prefer working in teams. Working in teams (regardless of the level of each individual) is the best way to grow up as an engineer/whatever, you can learn from more talented one as you can learn from junior by guiding them, also considering that confronting with other help you to watch at things in a different way.

I love love love working in teams, as long as it's not micromanaged and Agiled to death.

Being able to work with people of different skill levels, both learning from them and tutoring them, is amazing for professional growth. I also love hanging out with them outside of work.

But I'm probably more social and extraverted than most devs. I get lonely if left alone for more than a few days.

The teams I worked with in the past (even a Bay Area startup) never felt like a A-team. Over the last few years, I've developed a preference for Indie work and loving it.

Not a proper developer, but I prefer to do SRE work on my own where possible. Unfortunately, done well, it tends to share common ground with pretty much the entire organization. Some reprieve is found with the little development work this role offers

I appreciate well-run teams, endure the rest. Truly enjoy working alone. It's less about the people. After seeing how the sausage is made, I just want to get paid until I can retire. Disillusioned, to put it nicely.

Fully solo can be a lot of fun sometimes, but a good team that complements each other makes the days so much more enjoyable. I've worked on many projects where I could almost completely ignore our front end because we had great front end engineers that loved doing that part. A good team that fills the gaps you don't enjoy or know and vice versa is a wonderful time.

It depends entirely upon the team. When I was writing JavaScript for a living I preferred to go solo but in absolutely every other work experience I preferred to be part of a team.

There was too much insecurity in corporate JavaScript about writing original logic, so being a team player meant doing the same stupid color by numbers nonsense as other people on the team and keeping your mouth shut.

Both have their merits, but I've found team environments generally better for growth - you learn from others' expertise and code reviews. Solo work offers more autonomy, but you miss out on knowledge sharing and can develop blind spots in your technical practices. The ideal might be alternating between both throughout your career.

As an experienced one, I will definitely go for a solo, as you have more chances to explore and learn new things, I was working along a team just 12 weeks ago, and from than I have been a whole different developer.

In general I like to work with other fellow programmers. What I dislike are product managers and engineering managers (because all the Agile/Jira/Scrum/performance that comes with them)

100% solo, I get much more done, to a much higher quality, much faster

I learned a ton from my early days in teams, but I've grown to prefer working solo - feels more liberating without all the meetings and red tape.

Solo. And definitely not as freelancer that rather feels like having a part time boss.

What else can you do for money as a solo developer besides freelance? Selling solutions to people?

Everything is basically selling an solution to people. So yes!

solo all the way for me. Too many meetings just kills my flow

As a team. As long as the team is high functioning and pleasant.

Both but I like to be the one delegating and leading.

What about a team of independent devs? Where each have their area of ownership, so can operate autonomously, but they come together for big picture planning and coordination if they need help on a large effort?

I've worked that way in both SaaS and Enterprise environments, and it was the most enjoyable type of team setup across my entire career.

That’s basically ideal.

I hate when companies over staff and it becomes like a clusterfuck of developers of the same type that literally break up a task like vultures trying “share” a paltry piece of meat.

Ownership in these companies become “Joe owns the one line sql change, and Mary owns updating the config file”. It’s the most soulless shit ever.

really depends on who am i working with, but im fine with teams.

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