Can software developing in a large team be interesting and fun?

Question

I've been in the business of developing hardware and software for 19 years now. In the earlier days the projects and teams I worked on were smaller, much more effective and more fun.

The effect of the input of one single developer to the final product and to its success was evident to everybody. We had direct contact to and feedback from the customers. This was rewarding for our work and a very effective way to improve the product.

With the years the complexity of hard and software increases and more and more people were needed to get things done on time. The downside of the trend to bigger teams for me is that the contribution of a single developer to the project success gets smaller and smaller. And we lose the contact to real world of the users and customers because of growing QA departments more and more.

I always enjoyed my work and kept in touch with latest technologies like OOP, UML, .NET, and whatever. I already worked a few years as a team leader but I didn't like it very much because I missed developing and coding.

I'm just frustrated about the fact that my piece of the whole "thing" we're working on gets smaller and smaller and I lose the overview about it and the contact to the ground. Please don't understand me wrong, I don't want to cry for the good old days but for me the work on more and more specialized sub modules of a giant system simply gets more and more boring.

I'm wondering if I'm alone feeling like that and maybe if you have some advice how to bring the fun back to my work. And sorry, no, I'm not interested in working on an open source project in my free time. Nine hours a day in front of a computer screen are enough, life is more than coding...

Answer 1

To answer the question as it's asked in the title: No!

I feel very similar and talked to many others who think the same. From my experience small teams are much more fun to work with and by that (and some other reasons) they're much more effective.

Answer 2

I also require interaction with and feedback from the customer. However, a customer can be many things. As long as I'm satisfying someone (end user, team leader, big boss, etc.) then that's enough for me. The interaction itself is the key factor.

As for the feeling of pride and ownership from having a large impact on the system, again it's a matter of focus. You are still creating something, even if it's a smaller piece of the whole.

I long ago realized that I'm a small fish in a big pond. Learning to feel happy about my place in that pond was the only solution.

IOW, it's all relative!

Answer 3

I guess it all depends, there is a degree of camaraderie that comes with smaller teams and a lesser chance of ego's colliding. I have experienced both and they both have their upsides and downsides. To be honest, while working on a larger team I learned so much from other programmers, you think you know a lot, but someone always knows more.

Answer 4

It all depends on the team and the egos of the individuals.

When working on a team with ego problems, it doesn't matter how cool the technology is or how much interaction you get with the customers. One bad apple can drain all of the fun out of working on an otherwise cool project.

On the other hand, if the team has gelled, it matters very little if the technology is out-of-date, or the business problem is boring. Working on an back-office accounting system using VI and 10-year-old beta C++ compilers can still be invigorating when you feel like your peers are in the same fight and have your back. When you learn from others and are listened to when you have some new approach to try. When the developers control the build/test/deploy process so that it's sane and improves the lives (and sleep patterns) of the support team. When your peers (and you them) are always willing to help with an obscure language issue or work through a maddening bug. That what makes programming fun and interesting regardless of everything else.

Answer 5

You may want to consider changing companies back to a smaller company where you had a broader set of responsiblities, for one idea. Also, what are changes in the process that would help with the points you don't like?

I do have the question of what you mean by large here? Would a team of 50 people in a project be large? Or is it more like 1,000 to be large? On one level I'm asking for scale as there are teams beyond large if one wants to look at all the developers that work on Microsoft's big products like Office and Windows while at the other end of the spectrum are the one person development teams that do it all.

I'd second Kelly's answer that it depends on the team and egos for another big factor in things. What do you consider fun? Is it finding more efficient ways to solve problems that have poor solutions? Is it conquering a Millenium puzzle? Or is seeing someone smile while using your software what makes it fun? Lots of different possible answers and while I can make suggestions, how good or bad they are is totally for you to interpret.

I don't think you're alone in disliking how as a company matures the process can change as new people in various roles are added with increased bureaucracy and losing agility as it may take more signatures to get a change to be allowed or developers lose that touch to the customer of their product. There is a spectrum of various ways to produce software and some places may have less process in place and be focusing on "just make it work" while other places may want the process to be much more formal and organized with 1,001 policies for every little thing. At which end do you want to be working?

Answer 6

Thank you all for your interesting and valuable answers (and for correcting grammar and spelling :-)

You gave me some big points to think about:

• The missing interaction with custumers (whatever "customer" means)
• The interaction and feedback inside the developer team
• What means fun for me. I think its more the smile in the face of the user than the use of cutting-edge technology.
• How to deal with the sometimes overwhelming processes.
• Last but not least to find my comfortable place in the big pond. It may be not the one where I'm staying at the moment...