3 ms·

This does seem to be the mainstream view at the moment. Any thoughts on the best opportunities for tech-oriented people who don't want to fit themselves into t

by dasmoth 10y ago

This does seem to be the mainstream view at the moment. Any thoughts on the best opportunities for tech-oriented people who don't want to fit themselves into teamwork-focussed environments?

closeparen 10y ago
What are some software projects you admire that were created by one person without teamwork? I'd argue our field is past the point where writing any unqualifiedly impressive project is within reach of a single person, no matter how talented.
- aianus 10y ago
  > What are some software projects you admire that were created by one person without teamwork? Bitcoin, Minecraft, Bittorrent, Spark, american fuzzy lop, Tarsnap, PGP, and many more.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Bitcoin: nope [0]. Bittorrent: there's a huge ecosystems of clients written by different teams of people. Spark: do you mean Apache Spark? It has many contributors [1]. Tarsnap: is convenient plumbing wiring up S3 and the academic cryptography literature, neither of which are solo efforts. PGP: its most important manifestation is probably GnuPG, which also has several contributors [2]. Minecraft: Mojang has 47 employees [3]. I doubt Notch is the only person with code in Minecraft. You do have a point that solo brilliant engineers can start projects that go on to have massive impact (cough Linus Torvalds), but once those projects have reach, they tend to have teams. [0] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors [1] http://spark.apache.org/committers.html http://spark.apache.org/committers.html [2] https://www.gnupg.org/people/index.html https://www.gnupg.org/people/index.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang
    - tracker1 10y ago
      But initial implementations are a single person, and yes, once they have greater adoption do grow... that said, there's still a lot to be impressed by in initial release. The most recent one that comes to mind are redux + redux dev tools. Though definitely have grown since initial implementation, it was one of the more impressive things I've seen recently. Second in my mind is git itself.
    - aianus 10y ago
      They were all 'created' by one person without a team. They're now maintained and perhaps improved by teams but that's a different story.
paulcole 10y ago
1. Start your own 1-person business. 2. Work on resolving whatever issues led to the dislike of teamwork in the first place.
clay_to_n 10y ago
All of his points except the first two are even more valuable if you don't want to work on a team. When working solo, there's nobody to insulate you when your soft skills are lacking.
- tracker1 10y ago
  You can always try to work on projects, or portions of projects where your interactions can be minimized... You can be a contributor without having to have constant/heavy team interactions. There are aspects of all of the above I tend to appreciate greatly, it really just depends.

by dasmoth 10y ago

This does seem to be the mainstream view at the moment. Any thoughts on the best opportunities for tech-oriented people who don't want to fit themselves into teamwork-focussed environments?

closeparen 10y ago

What are some software projects you admire that were created by one person without teamwork? I'd argue our field is past the point where writing any unqualifiedly impressive project is within reach of a single person, no matter how talented.

aianus 10y ago
> What are some software projects you admire that were created by one person without teamwork? Bitcoin, Minecraft, Bittorrent, Spark, american fuzzy lop, Tarsnap, PGP, and many more.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Bitcoin: nope [0]. Bittorrent: there's a huge ecosystems of clients written by different teams of people. Spark: do you mean Apache Spark? It has many contributors [1]. Tarsnap: is convenient plumbing wiring up S3 and the academic cryptography literature, neither of which are solo efforts. PGP: its most important manifestation is probably GnuPG, which also has several contributors [2]. Minecraft: Mojang has 47 employees [3]. I doubt Notch is the only person with code in Minecraft. You do have a point that solo brilliant engineers can start projects that go on to have massive impact (cough Linus Torvalds), but once those projects have reach, they tend to have teams. [0] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors [1] http://spark.apache.org/committers.html http://spark.apache.org/committers.html [2] https://www.gnupg.org/people/index.html https://www.gnupg.org/people/index.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang
  - tracker1 10y ago
    But initial implementations are a single person, and yes, once they have greater adoption do grow... that said, there's still a lot to be impressed by in initial release. The most recent one that comes to mind are redux + redux dev tools. Though definitely have grown since initial implementation, it was one of the more impressive things I've seen recently. Second in my mind is git itself.
  - aianus 10y ago
    They were all 'created' by one person without a team. They're now maintained and perhaps improved by teams but that's a different story.

paulcole 10y ago

1. Start your own 1-person business. 2. Work on resolving whatever issues led to the dislike of teamwork in the first place.

clay_to_n 10y ago

All of his points except the first two are even more valuable if you don't want to work on a team. When working solo, there's nobody to insulate you when your soft skills are lacking.

tracker1 10y ago
You can always try to work on projects, or portions of projects where your interactions can be minimized... You can be a contributor without having to have constant/heavy team interactions. There are aspects of all of the above I tend to appreciate greatly, it really just depends.