Working alone or in a team ?
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
In my experience, it depends on the size of project and the ability and experience of the people involved. I've worked alone, as well as part of teams ranging up to 50 people in size. I feel the success (or otherwise) of solo working depends on how happy you are to direct your own work and how responsibility you're happy to take.
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depends on the size of the project. Virtually all of the projects I have worked on over the past 30 years have been solo - usually from 10K to 50K lines of code per project. The few team projects I've worked on have been segmented - each person worked on an independant segment (like customized embedded OS + internal user interface application + external interface application) - each segment had a detailed software design document (SDD) and interface control document (ICD)
Steve
Steve Mayfield wrote:
depends on the size of the project.
Yes. But all the projects taken by this company are pretty big which will have a duration of 1 year minimum. So remembering the whole project by a single person seems to be impossible.
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
As in all things there are benefits and pitfalls to each. I have done both and generally prefer working alone but with other people around working as a loosely coupled team so as to share code, ideas, etc. On the other hand I did try pair programming once but as we came to blows it didn't work out so well. I've never been anywhere where I saw that really working well over any period of time. Mostly it depends on the size and scope of the project. For RAD or tactical development single is fine, for a longer term or strategic project it makes sense to have more than one person to spread the load and have a range of skills available. There is no hard and fast rule and whilst your manager sounds a bit stuck in his ways (I have over 20+ years experience but am happy to change and adapt to new situations and demands) he may be correct for his given situation.
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In my experience, it depends on the size of project and the ability and experience of the people involved. I've worked alone, as well as part of teams ranging up to 50 people in size. I feel the success (or otherwise) of solo working depends on how happy you are to direct your own work and how responsibility you're happy to take.
Stuart Dootson wrote:
I feel the success (or otherwise) of solo working depends on how happy you are to direct your own work and how responsibility you're happy to take.
I am happy with the work, but when project becomes big, it's hard to remember whole modules. One advantage I felt with solo model is, we are free to take decisions.
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
Working SOLO not beneficial for both company and developer. With the Company Perspective : 1) Only one guy is aware about project. It that involved guy left the company project may be in risk. 2) Company cannot meet the deadline at time. 3) There is different pahse of SDLC. Which cannot be followed by only one guy. 4) Company expectation will be higher than output. 5) Project will loss the standard. It will not be 100% bug free, User friendly and performance centric. 6) Project maintainance cost would be increased. With the Developer Perspective : 1) Working alone become boring job. Nobody will be discuss about project. And you cannot share your problem with anyone.(Like me) 2) You cannot fullfill company expectation on time. It will down your image in company. 3) You will be depend on internet for finding your solution. 4) You will be moody about project. Because project is only in your hand. And you have to decide its "to do list". So you will prepare this list according to your convenience. 5) You will choose very easy way to find the solution. Because you dont want to take risk. 6) Updating yourself will be tough because no comptetion with you. Its all happened with me. I left that company and now i am in team as Team leader in my new company. :)
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
In my experience it's not a problem of "yes or not", but a problem of "about what". You cannot write a 20-lines function in team, and you cannot spend, to specify to somebody else what he has to code, more than the time you'll need to code it yourself. Hence, for relatively small projects or project modules you should be alone. On the other side, you cannot spend ten years to write one million lines for a project that should be given in one year. In general the "programming in the large" should be defined by a relatively small team (architectural decision cannt be designed by a "parliament"), and the modules be given to teams whose sizes must be large enough to sustain the timing an small enough to avoid dispersions and recoding risks. And, of course, for very well focused and defined modules, such size can be successfully reduced in to one. Now, if you 20-y experienced boss always worked on those kind of projects and you're inside one of them he is probably true, otherwise you both risk to be the deaf telling the blind "if you see something wrong call me". Two good reason for a certain fail. (But you two can be successful, if you swap :-) )
2 bugs found. > recompile ... 65534 bugs found. :doh:
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
We work alone in a team ;P We have one huge product that is split into various components. A developer will generally work on a single change by themself; but crutially with support and/or imput from senior team members (that's me). I think this provides the best of both worlds. There is enough experience around to guide the newer members along the acceptable path when doing something for the first time. Also, most people get to work on different projects as each change is normally designed to be less then two weeks work. As an example we have one change on at the moment which has taken up four plus developers time for the last two months. However it has been split into smaller parts so that each of them can work mostly alone. These sub-jobs are each around a weeks (hee hee) work.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
I feel the success (or otherwise) of solo working depends on how happy you are to direct your own work and how responsibility you're happy to take.
I am happy with the work, but when project becomes big, it's hard to remember whole modules. One advantage I felt with solo model is, we are free to take decisions.
ForumExpertOnLine wrote:
when project becomes big, it's hard to remember whole modules
That's why it helps to have some level of design for a project, documenting how you're going to allocate requirements and responsibilities to different (coherent, decoupled) modules/classes/however you partition your code. Doesn't need to be in too much detail, just something to remind you what parts of the application are implemented in different modules.
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In my experience it's not a problem of "yes or not", but a problem of "about what". You cannot write a 20-lines function in team, and you cannot spend, to specify to somebody else what he has to code, more than the time you'll need to code it yourself. Hence, for relatively small projects or project modules you should be alone. On the other side, you cannot spend ten years to write one million lines for a project that should be given in one year. In general the "programming in the large" should be defined by a relatively small team (architectural decision cannt be designed by a "parliament"), and the modules be given to teams whose sizes must be large enough to sustain the timing an small enough to avoid dispersions and recoding risks. And, of course, for very well focused and defined modules, such size can be successfully reduced in to one. Now, if you 20-y experienced boss always worked on those kind of projects and you're inside one of them he is probably true, otherwise you both risk to be the deaf telling the blind "if you see something wrong call me". Two good reason for a certain fail. (But you two can be successful, if you swap :-) )
2 bugs found. > recompile ... 65534 bugs found. :doh:
emilio_grv wrote:
bugs found. > recompile ... 65534 bugs found.
It's like the programmer's drinking song: 99 little bugs sitting in the code, 99 little bugs sitting in the code, Fix one bug and compile it up again, There's 100 little bugs sitting in the code. [repeat until bugs == 0] :laugh: :laugh:
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
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Working SOLO not beneficial for both company and developer. With the Company Perspective : 1) Only one guy is aware about project. It that involved guy left the company project may be in risk. 2) Company cannot meet the deadline at time. 3) There is different pahse of SDLC. Which cannot be followed by only one guy. 4) Company expectation will be higher than output. 5) Project will loss the standard. It will not be 100% bug free, User friendly and performance centric. 6) Project maintainance cost would be increased. With the Developer Perspective : 1) Working alone become boring job. Nobody will be discuss about project. And you cannot share your problem with anyone.(Like me) 2) You cannot fullfill company expectation on time. It will down your image in company. 3) You will be depend on internet for finding your solution. 4) You will be moody about project. Because project is only in your hand. And you have to decide its "to do list". So you will prepare this list according to your convenience. 5) You will choose very easy way to find the solution. Because you dont want to take risk. 6) Updating yourself will be tough because no comptetion with you. Its all happened with me. I left that company and now i am in team as Team leader in my new company. :)
Great. I am in the same situation. I given my resignation and waiting to get relieved.
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Great. I am in the same situation. I given my resignation and waiting to get relieved.
ForumExpertOnLine wrote:
Great. I am in the same situation. I given my resignation and waiting to get relieved.
Same here, not sure about resignation though ;P
xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support
IronScheme - 1.0 alpha 4a out now (29 May 2008) -
The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
Really depends on the project. In my jaded experience: If a project is small enough that it can be run by a single coder, he is usually much more efficient than in a team - especially if he's a very-good-but-not-great coder. One could blame it on communicaiton overhead, but there's probably more. Knowing every corner of the project helps a lot in deciding which shortcut is ok and which one is not. Of course, with a certain size he needs to take others on board. But two guys are more efficient as one usually only when they worked very well together on the same project. New guy = slowdown. Additionally, many developers start with no team experience that makes a huge difference. So, while his attitude is certainly raising an eyebrow, he might have a point there.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
I'v been working for my current company for about a year now, the first 6 months or so I worked in a 2-man team (if you can call that a team) and everything went to hell My boss fired the other guy after those 6 months (various reasons but not important here) and the project was passed off to me (and me alone). For the last 6 months I'v been programming on it alone (redoing the whole thing because of some bad choices made on the other guy's promisses, bad components and such) While doing that project (wich is about 100k - 200k lines code) I'v done several others (smaller ones) and creating a standerd for .NET (the company used to do only access dev.) and have to say I kinda like the solo working Yes it's hard to remember everything (if not impossible) but if you've worked with a completly incompetant person (who is supposed to have 20 years experiance more than me) it's a relieve to work solo (if you can handle the late nights / stress / deadlines / ...) But my experiance in these matters is limited so...
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
Are they planning on you not getting sick or taking vacation during the project? What if you leave, who knows what you've done? With 2 or more, work still gets done, and knowledge gets passed around. Here, I work solo, and I wish I could discuss problems with someone. :sigh:
"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
Experience doesn't mean right. I learn that every day, it seems (me being the "experienced" one, hahaha).
ForumExpertOnLine wrote:
Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
I would say your manager doesn't know how to really manage. Sounds like he's uncomfortable managing a team. Sounds like there's a lot of inefficiency, probably people writing the same or similar routines. Also, it sounds like maintenance would be difficult, because working solo, everyone has their own coding styles, etc. I suppose he doesn't support code reviews either? All in all, if you've got a group of programmers, they should be interacting and working on being efficient to save themselves time and the company $$$. Solo programming might be ok in this environment if your manager supports interaction, code reviews, a common code library, consistency in style, and so forth. Does he? Marc
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Are they planning on you not getting sick or taking vacation during the project? What if you leave, who knows what you've done? With 2 or more, work still gets done, and knowledge gets passed around. Here, I work solo, and I wish I could discuss problems with someone. :sigh:
"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."
Richard Jones wrote:
Are they planning on you not getting sick or taking vacation during the project?
I will get vacations, no problem for that. But project will be on hold at that time. Yes it's waste of time for the client.
Richard Jones wrote:
What if you leave, who knows what you've done?
This is a big issue. I have some documents which explains the program flow. I have created API documentation too which explains the meaning of each classes. I am a TDD fan, so used concepts like MVP, Dependency Injection etc in this project. Most of the guys work here are big zero in all these, so they will find difficulty to understand it when I leave the company. I could learn many things and implement it without waiting for someones permission, this is the only advantage I see with solo programming.
Richard Jones wrote:
Here, I work solo, and I wish I could discuss problems with someone
OMG, I am getting lot of unexpected answers. When I started the discussion, I thought I am the only one who works solo. But I was wrong, many guys replied to me are working as solo!
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Really depends on the project. In my jaded experience: If a project is small enough that it can be run by a single coder, he is usually much more efficient than in a team - especially if he's a very-good-but-not-great coder. One could blame it on communicaiton overhead, but there's probably more. Knowing every corner of the project helps a lot in deciding which shortcut is ok and which one is not. Of course, with a certain size he needs to take others on board. But two guys are more efficient as one usually only when they worked very well together on the same project. New guy = slowdown. Additionally, many developers start with no team experience that makes a huge difference. So, while his attitude is certainly raising an eyebrow, he might have a point there.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighistpeterchen wrote:
Knowing every corner of the project helps a lot in deciding which shortcut is ok and which one is not.
I agree 100%. But think about a big project in which I was working since 1 year! It will be tough to remember each and every corner of it. And I don't have anyone around here who knows this project. So to know what happens in one corner, I need to look at the code and test cases written by me. It's a time wastage, isn't it ?
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Experience doesn't mean right. I learn that every day, it seems (me being the "experienced" one, hahaha).
ForumExpertOnLine wrote:
Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
I would say your manager doesn't know how to really manage. Sounds like he's uncomfortable managing a team. Sounds like there's a lot of inefficiency, probably people writing the same or similar routines. Also, it sounds like maintenance would be difficult, because working solo, everyone has their own coding styles, etc. I suppose he doesn't support code reviews either? All in all, if you've got a group of programmers, they should be interacting and working on being efficient to save themselves time and the company $$$. Solo programming might be ok in this environment if your manager supports interaction, code reviews, a common code library, consistency in style, and so forth. Does he? Marc
Good thoughts marc.
Marc Clifton wrote:
Sounds like he's uncomfortable managing a team
I also believe so.
Marc Clifton wrote:
Also, it sounds like maintenance would be difficult, because working solo, everyone has their own coding styles, etc. I suppose he doesn't support code reviews either?
He does code reviews. But as I said earlier, I am a TDD enthusiast and I follow most of the patterns which fit the scenario. So a person who haven't even heard about such a method will get confused and won't understand anything. So usually he never looks into my code.
Marc Clifton wrote:
a common code library, consistency in style
No. There is nothing like this. Each programmer follow their own styles.
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
I get a lot more done solo, but knowing who I can talk to if I need help. I am very introverted and so every interruption breaks my train of thought and sets me back. But then again, my boss knows if there is a problem no one else can fix, I can do it over a weekend with no one else around.
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The company which I am working believes in solo programming and not in team works. Each programmer will be assigned to a project and he/she has to do it alone. This is something new to me as my last company works with teams and I believe team work has more advantage than going solo. I got irritated and presented my worries to the manager. He said "I have 20 years experience in IT industry and from my experience solo programming worked always better than a team". I am surprised ! I argued to my best to prove he is wrong, but I couldn't prove my point as I am not much experienced like him. I just want to get your opinions on this ? Do you believe solo programming is better than a team work ?
I have experienced 3 levels of Solo programming. The first was where I was 1 of 5 programmers for a company where each of us developed our own projects and consulted with each other only when there was an issue that we absolutely could not resolve on our own. The second was where I was the only programmer working for a company writing software that was very specific to their business model. The third (my current job) is where I am one of 4 programmers. Each project is assigned to the team and each team member takes a certain portion of the project to develop as their own. While this is much more of a team method it is still solo programming as opposed to paired or extreme programming. The advantages and disadvantegs to each: In the first case the advantage was that I could easily define my task list as I saw fit. That was about the only advantage. I eventaully left that company, one of the reasons being that i felt I was not growing as a programmer. There simply was NO interaction between developers. The software we were putting out was not evolving, it was cookie cutter. Individual development like this usually means no (or very slow) growth as a team. In the second case the advantage was that I was pretty much my own boss. I set deadlines, I determined priorities, I did it all. However, this was another case where my personal growth as a developer was limited to what I could find on the internet. This situation probably suits a self-taught type of developer well, but for me it lasted about 2 years then things began to get really stale. My productivity went down and my ideas were running out. The last situation, and my current position, is my preferred methods for development. I am able to grow as a developer due to the amount of interaction I have with the team. As a team we are able to designate task specific roles for each member. When there are questions about the database, well we have a DBA role that is filled by one of the team. She doesn't have to worry about Web 2.0 stuff because we have a UI guy that keeps on top of that. The only downside is the same thing that makes this such a powerful development model and that is interaction. In order for this to work you absolutely MUST have a solid team that can work well together. Without that you will run into many instances of team members complaining that other members are trying to tell them how to do their job, or trying to do their job for them. As for your boss who has 20 years of experience, if he is truly that ri