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1. You need to look for a team/project with more developers. It's hell to be a solo developer when you don't also control the "promised" features and timelines.

1. You need to look for a team/project with more developers. It's hell to be a solo developer when you don't also control the "promised" features and timelines. I've worked 6 positions for 5 different companies over 12+ years. Two of those as a solo developer. Neither had upper management promising things I could deliver on deadlines. I was still fairly stressed out because I was always afraid I wouldn't be able to solve problems by myself. I can't imagine how torturous it would be to have someone with little understanding of code or my personal output making promises that I would have to keep! Look for an out, ASAP, in my opinion. 2. If you target very large organizations, you'll tend to have a lot more slack in delivery pace. Nearly everyone that works in the Fortune 50 or at a major US university works slower. I've worked for both, the feeling is just different. I think it's because everyone expects delays, paperwork, and process bureaucracy at every step. This gives you lots of breathing room to take a more pastoral approach to what's considered "productive". I think the work from home revolution has further enhanced that. I can say for sure in the 7 years of being a "senior full stack engineer" at a major org, I've worked after 5 pm less than 10 times. This isn't a bad thing, as typically you can trade time for less risk to the company. "I need an extra day to make sure this won't embarrass us / leak data / hurt customers / etc."

Viliam1234 5y ago
Yes, working solo is scary. There are so many things that are needed for development these days, that almost everyone has a blind spot somewhere; at the very least in the "unknown unknowns" category. (People who insist that they know everything... they usually don't, they just refuse to admit when they are wrong about something.) My experience with working in a team is that when a team gets too successful, the management will start removing team members, to put them on a different project. (At the extreme case, this is how one can become the solo developer.) Which drives me crazy! It's like -- if you see that our team has great synergy and no personality conflicts, so we are too productive and could get more work done, why don't you instead assign a second project to the same team, so that we could use the same synergy there, too. And if the other project is similar (projects done in the same company usually are), we could even re-use half of the existing code. -- But, nope.

Viliam1234 5y ago

Yes, working solo is scary. There are so many things that are needed for development these days, that almost everyone has a blind spot somewhere; at the very least in the "unknown unknowns" category. (People who insist that they know everything... they usually don't, they just refuse to admit when they are wrong about something.) My experience with working in a team is that when a team gets too successful, the management will start removing team members, to put them on a different project. (At the extreme case, this is how one can become the solo developer.) Which drives me crazy! It's like -- if you see that our team has great synergy and no personality conflicts, so we are too productive and could get more work done, why don't you instead assign a second project to the same team, so that we could use the same synergy there, too. And if the other project is similar (projects done in the same company usually are), we could even re-use half of the existing code. -- But, nope.