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Comment by dbacar | Hacker News Reader

> Wolves don’t care if they are seen or not. Wolves are entirely focused on the self-selected essential project in front of them

The wolves analogy is simply wrong. Wolves work in packs.

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lone wolf. maybe he missed the significance of lone in that phase when he heard it first and thought it could be dropped. That is my working assumption, it happens.

Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a fictional archetype.

It is a particularly common theme in Japanese fiction, where the deviation from the social hierarchy requires a stong force of individual will. Interesting it is also common in Japanese technology breakthrough documentaries.

Ogami Itto - Lone wolf and cub is the first thing that comes to mind when the author says wolf.

I read those stereotypes as people phantasizing about being wild and free and a fierce (coding) biest, without actually knowing the wild. But it does have the effect on me to not being able to take it serious. If they don't even know basic facts about the animal they want to use as their metaphor, I expect way more to be wrong.

Not all wolves work in packs.

Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf". It's a self radicalized/motivated individual acting independently and alone.

Lone wolves are not happy animals, though. They are less successful in hunts, they can’t take down large prey at all. They don’t generally produce offspring. They’re an unfortunate effect of the social structure of wolves, where young males who cannot find a place in the pack are expelled.

There are plenty of lone wolf developers, but you won’t find them in large teams. Or if you do, they’re dysfunctional. On their own, a lone wolf engineer is not generally able to complete large, important pieces of work. Some do! But they are exceptions.

Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a well formed fictional archetype.

You assume "lone wolf" types are "one trick ponies" who can't learn. You also assume the only interesting problem space for these people is technical/code.

The lone wolf has a big limitations in transitioning to scale: 1. managers do what the article suggested, and stay out their way. The lone wolf never gets the experience of being managed, so it is difficult to transition to manage others. 2. they don't get why others don't "get it". e,g the solution is clear , the code can be done in a day, the comprehensive system model in their head should be shared by everyone.... it takes time to understand that the average engineer works slow and steady on a small scale understanding.

I will suggest there is a lone wolf type manager too. This is not a productivity skill, but an adaptivity and mobility skill.

A ”lone wolf” with a manager is a contradiction in terms.

you need to think in a different plane of isolation. i would say the pure machiavellian manager is a lone wolf in that the relationships hold no weight as interpersonal relationships, only as functional relationships - no different to how you would manage and integrate code.

It’s clear that the discussion has stretched the metaphor of wolves far beyond its breaking point.

The point was that developers (or indeed people in general) do not work the way wolves do, and I’m not reading great arguments to the contrary.

> Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf"

I'm pretty sure the author doesn't think managers should create a culture that attracts and promotes terror attackers.

I think we can simply replace "wolf" with "alpha" and the analogy makes much more sense.

I mean that in the worst possible way.

Especially since the whole "alpha" thing has been debunked, mostly.

Interestingly, it came out from putting random individuals in anhigh-stress prison environment.

"Alpha" in the wild is really dad and mom...

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