Ask HN: Doing well solo, struggling in team-centric engineering roles

I will tell you that “being a good engineer” doesn’t just involve “I codez real gud”, that’s the mark of a mid level engineer at any company that I’m aware of that has real leveling guidelines including my first hand experience at one BigTech company and my second hand experience at another.

Managing organizational complexity and people skills is required.

On a technical level I have always tried to carve out an “epic” or a “workstream” with clear interface boundaries between other work before I became a more senior “architect”

This is Dropbox’s leveling guidelines for instance

https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/

One of my formative experiences was the summer between undergrad and grad school where I worked at the supermarket I worked at in high school. They weren't really hiring but they wanted to make a space for me so I answered directly to the store manager and did whatever random thing they needed when they needed it.

Paint a metal strip around the store? Yes.

Deep clean the whole floor? Yes.

Learn to work the meat slicer and fill in at the Deli? Yes.

Somebody from the bakery is out sick? I've got your back.

It's been a pet peeve for me working in startups that a lot of younger people haven't had that kind of experience so they are hung up on job titles and stuff and don't just think "it's a small team so I'm going to do what the team needs"

I've learned to see that the value of my work is the value it has to my organization delivered by the team I am working in so I adjust accordingly. I can't say there is one thing to do that works all the time but rather you improvise and see what works with the people you are working with. If there is somebody who reviews your PRs for instance it is going to go smooth if you meet their expectations as opposed to what you think their expectations ought to be. Decide what boundaries you want to enforce and what you can't compromise on but be flexible about everything you can be flexible about.

Understand the contradiction between "doing what people need" and "doing what people want" and not be afraid to rub people the wrong way if you really have to while not promoting any excess antagonism. (It isn't easy!)

One of the best managers I ever had integrated me into a team by tasking me with completing a late project on a nearly impossible schedule and giving us all the understanding that I was supposed to ask for and get all the support I needed. We pulled it off and it was better than any "team building" exercise I've been in. (e.g. there are great ideas in "team building" as much the execution is often cringe.)

I sometimes find myself in a very similar state but attribute that to poor management (lack of vision, badly set goals, messed up team structure, unclear priorities and responsibilities).

> I do fine when incentives, authorship, and responsibility are clear, but disengage when those are diffuse.

This suggests that in your case it might be about bad management too, rather than team vs solo work per se.

And let’s face it, good management and good managers is a much much rarer breed than good engineers.

I can relate. I started contracting, and the added sense of responsibility really helps me. I still work with teams within the organization and interface with them, but having some distance makes a difference. Wouldn’t it get lonely without a team?