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Comment by datavirtue | Hacker News Reader

Turn one dev loose, no distractions, and you can get amazing results.

Add another dev, and if they are aligned, they can knock it out of the park.

Add another dev? Better have a damn good reason.

I forgot how productive a single person can be until I joined my recent company. I'm the only dev working on a sizeable application. I have all the resources I need and zero distractions. I can't believe how smooth progress is and I whince at what would happen if we added other team members without having a clear role for each person and a pressing need for them. Stand-ups are devastating to productivity.

I just left a number of huge enterprises. I could barely get anything done at any of them. Sizeable teams that could barely push out a web app. Its no wonder they have to acquire companies that were built by three devs to innovate.

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> Turn one dev loose, no distractions, and you can get amazing results.

Yes... or, horrifying results. Or something in between.

Your model is overfitted to your personal experience. Your take is going to resonate with devs who have had bad agile-ish experiences, and for sure there are plenty of those. But the lone-developer mythos also resonates with devs who've been burned on stupid teams. You're mixing those two things together here, but agile and lone-coder are not opposites.

If you're sincerely wincing about adding more team members without clear roles, then I hope that someday you experience the joy of working on a high-performing, self-directed development team. They exist; many of them even follow agile processes. Some of them work in enterprise settings.

Sometimes you just have bad managers, or bad team members, and no buzzword methodology is going to dig you out of that hole.

> Sometimes you just have bad managers, or bad team members, and no buzzword methodology is going to dig you out of that hole.

Very true, but the common theme among bad managers at shit companies is that they always try and fix that problem by buying a new methodology with a buzzword attached to it, reward themselves for having done so, and never reflect on whether anyone's done anything effectively by the time they get a new one.

The lone-developer and the self-directed team mythos' share the common element that they've figured out how to tangle with any real logistical problems they actually have by analyzing them, reflecting on how to do better, and using communication, rather than imagining what problems they have, externalizing the solution with an off-the-shelf template, and identifying how much praise they'll get from anyone but those doing the work regardless of whether the non-plan works.

My model is overfitted to senior devs with domain knowledge.

I was going to hire a junior dev or two until I started talking with copilot all day. Greased lightening.

The hiring process alone would cost us more than their first year salary. Going to avoid it as much as I can.

> My model is overfitted to senior devs with domain knowledge.

As a former senior dev (with domain knowledge!), I politely disagree, this model doesn't fit my experience at all.

> I'm the only dev working on a sizeable application. I have all the resources I need and zero distractions.

This would be a dream come true for me. Any advice on how to find such a job? Did you purposely look for it or did the stars just align and you dropped into an awesome situation?

My manager and my bikeshedding coworkers are driving me insane.

I looked for it, planned for it, AND it fell in my lap. Chance of a lifetime.

Similar experience here and worked on large enterprise company.

I produced my best work when working with my Lead Architect and no Project Management Oversight. Did a complex POC and completed it ahead of expected timeliness and was working alone for most parts.

That POC was approved for incorporating in production and has to be done in agile manner with daily status meetings and biweekly sprint, demos , reviews and whatnot.

Killed my enthusiasm and let another developer take the lead while I moved away from the project

Multiple devs are fine. Its the “management” that kills things.

Sorry, but this is a lazy take. Sure: horrible managers can kill anything. Horrible team members can do it as well. So can horrible company cultures, horrible tool choices, etc. There are horrors for every occasion in the software industry.

Previous to this job I chanced into another opportunity where myself and two other devs were tasked with building a whole new company/product. The third dev completely ruined it. He was a complete asshole and couldn't help but rake our other colleague over the coals on a daily basis. Life is too short to deal with Adderall burn outs.

Unless your company cares at all about bus factor

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