Do you prefer working alone or with others?

[Totally]

I've gone back and forth on this.

Working alone:

faster
fewer distractions

Working with others:

ideas
accountability

Right now I lean toward working alone.
I'm slightly on the spectrum so that probably is why
What about you?

[codeberg]

couldnt agree more. i get more done when im not activated or distracted

[VB]

i waste so much time talking. but its good for morale and passing knowledge to newer work colleagues. thats what happened in covid

[QuantumDay]

I much prefer groups. more human-like. we are not solo species

[Quanta]

I very depending on the time of day

[WhatUQuant]

That matches what the more reliable sources are saying. I find the best analysis usually comes a week or two after the initial coverage settles down.

That is my read on it anyway

[ArVeeDee]

I found the same thing. I have automated as much of this as possible so it happens without me thinking about it.

Might save you more than you think

[One-One-Five]

I very depending on the time of day

Good shout. Appreciate it

[WhatUQuant]

Seems like it from what I have seen. I will update this thread if anything significant changes

[codeberg]

That is pretty much what I found too. I keep a list of what I do to every fresh install so I can repeat it without thinking.

That is how I would approach it anyway

[WhatUQuant]

The way this has been framed in the media does not quite match the underlying detail. I find the financial angle of any big story is usually the most underreported part.

I will keep following it

[FrostBear]

I have heard that but I am not sure it holds up. Yeah I get that.

Legend.

[GreenEcho]

Not sure I fully follow that part. Cheers for the explanation

[Midnight Georgia]

Completely agree, and it is frustrating that this is not more widely known. Most people skip the diagnostic step and go straight to reinstalling things unnecessarily.

Worked for me at least

[NinaVrina]

That is the practical answer rather than the theoretical one. I keep a list of what I do to every fresh install so I can repeat it without thinking.

Let us know how it goes

[MrRicardo]

I would be cautious about taking the early reports at face value on this one. Worth watching closely

[BretHart]

That resonates with me. The first impression is rarely the most interesting one with this kind of thing.

There is a lot more to say about this

[FairDos72]

Ended up in the same place, yeah. The cheap fix usually costs more in the end when it fails.

Let us know how it turns out

[QubitZero]

From what I have seen the gap between headlines and reality is still pretty wide. I will keep following it

[Hollow]

Good shout. That makes sense actually.

Thanks for that.

[Red Builder]

I used to think I was strictly a solo worker, but over time I realised I actually just prefer control rather than isolation. Working alone gives me that, but good collaboration can give you better results than you'd ever get solo.

The trick is finding people who don't turn every task into a meeting that could have been an email

[Hannah56]

I enjoy working with others more than I used to. I think I just got tired of my own ideas bouncing around in my head with no external feedback.

Even a small bit of collaboration can expose blind spots you didn't know you had

[Beth3.0]

Working alone is my default, but I don't think it's necessarily better. It's just faster for me personally because I don't have to wait on anyone else.

Still, I do miss the energy of a good team brainstorming session sometimes

[Sparrow]

I think remote work changed my perspective on this. I used to assume I needed physical presence for teamwork to work well.

Now I realise structured communication matters more than shared space

[HeartbreakKidOscar97]

There's also a personality thing here that gets overlooked. Some people get energy from interaction, others get drained by it, and neither is wrong.

The best setups I've seen accommodate both rather than forcing one style

[QuietNomad]

I actually get more motivated when others are involved. Even just knowing someone will see my progress pushes me to stay consistent.

But I also need chunks of solo time or I burn out fast

[NovaPrime68]

I think the ideal is switching modes rather than choosing one forever. Solo for deep focus, collaboration for validation and expansion.

The real skill is knowing when to switch instead of sticking rigidly to one preference

[BlackMamba]

Group work can be great, but only when everyone is pulling in the same direction. Otherwise it turns into one person doing the work and everyone else commenting on it.

I've had both extremes, and honestly the difference is night and day

[Sentinel96]

Office environments taught me that "working with others" sometimes just means sitting near people while everyone works alone anyway.

When collaboration actually happens intentionally, it's great. But it's rarer than people admit

[WaveFunction]

Hot take: most people think they prefer working alone because they've had too many bad group experiences, not because they're actually solo oriented.

A good team environment changes that preference pretty quickly

[Cheeky Shaun]

Hot take: the people who say they always prefer working alone have usually just been burned by a bad team and haven't fully processed it yet. I've been that person. Had a dreadful eighteen months working with people who had wildly different standards, communication styles, and commitment levels, and came out the other side utterly convinced I was a solo operator by nature. Took me about two years of solo freelance work to realise I was just protecting myself from a specific kind of frustration rather than expressing a genuine preference.

Good collaboration is a completely different animal from the committee-by-default stuff most workplaces call teamwork. Real collaboration is when everyone in the room is genuinely adding something the others don't have, when there's enough trust to say "that idea isn't working" without it becoming political, and when the end product is something none of you could have made alone. That's actually exhilarating and I'd take it over solo work any day. The problem is it's rare. Most "collaboration" is just accountability structures and meetings dressed up as creative partnership.

That said, I do have a category of work I will defend to my last breath as being better done alone: anything requiring sustained deep concentration. Flow state is real, it takes time to get into, and it's extremely fragile. Open plan offices and constant pinging destroyed a generation of knowledge workers' ability to do genuinely hard cognitive work and we collectively agreed to call it "staying connected." I can collaborate on what to build and how to build it, but the actual building? Leave me alone for three hours and come back.

Funny how this question also reveals a lot about what kind of work someone does. Writers, programmers, researchers, designers tend to land more solo. Salespeople, project managers, teachers tend to land more collaborative. It might be less about personality and more about what your actual job rewards

[RoughDaemon]

I definitely lean toward working alone most of the time. There's something really satisfying about getting into a flow state without interruptions or having to explain every tiny decision.

That said, when I do collaborate with the right people, it can seriously elevate the final outcome

[Wendy5]

I prefer working alone for speed, but I prefer working with others for quality. It's a constant tradeoff depending on deadlines and stakes.

If something is important, I'll always want at least one other set of eyes on it

[Midnight Georgia]

What a surprisingly rich question this turned out to be because I sat down to write a quick reply and ended up thinking about it for longer than I expected. My honest answer is that I prefer working alone but I'm better at working with others, and those being different things has caused me no small amount of confusion over the years.

Preference and performance diverge in interesting ways. I find solo work more comfortable, more pleasurable, less draining. I can go at my own pace, follow tangents, backtrack without having to explain myself, and produce something I feel full ownership over. It suits my brain. But when I look back at the work I'm actually most proud of, the stuff that surprised even me, it almost always involved at least one other person at some key stage. A collaborator who reframed the whole problem. A critic who told me the thing I thought was finished actually wasn't. A partner who contributed something I genuinely couldn't have generated myself.

So I've tried to design my working life around getting the best of both rather than choosing. Do the generative and drafting work alone, bring people in for structured critique and iteration, then retreat to refine alone again. It's a rhythm rather than a binary. The times this breaks down are when circumstances force sustained collaboration without the alone-time recovery periods, and that's when I start to fray at the edges.

The introverted versus extroverted framing people usually reach for here is a bit too blunt as an explanation. It's really more about cognitive load and where you draw creative energy from. Some people generate better ideas by bouncing them off others in real time. I generate better ideas by sitting quietly and then having them tested by others afterwards. Neither is superior, they're just different engines that need different fuel.

I'll also say that age and experience have shifted me slightly toward valuing collaboration more than I used to. Younger me thought needing other people's input was a weakness. Current me recognises it as just... how good work gets made reliably rather than occasionally

[Coder22]

I like working alone for the initial messy thinking phase. It's where I can be wrong without judgement and try weird ideas.

Then I prefer bringing others in to refine and challenge it

[ScarletDaemon]

I think it depends heavily on the task. Creative stuff I prefer alone at first, then I like feedback later. Technical problem solving is similar for me.

Jumping straight into group work from zero often slows me down more than it helps

[Amy]

Pair working is my sweet spot. Not a full group, just one other person.

Any more than that and I start feeling like I'm in a committee instead of actually building something

[SerialScroller]

Going back and forth on it is honestly the most honest answer anyone can give, and I respect that more than people who have a firm opinion either way. The "I'm a total introvert, solo work only" crowd and the "I thrive in collaboration" crowd both sound like they're describing a personality trait on a dating profile rather than reflecting on something real. In practice most of us are situationally one or the other depending on the task, the people, the deadline, and frankly what mood we woke up in.

For me the split is pretty clear when I examine it. Generative work, the part where you're actually creating something from nothing, I need to be alone for that. The moment someone else is in the room, even someone I like, part of my brain is performing rather than thinking. I write worse, I design worse, I problem-solve worse. But evaluation, refinement, stress-testing an idea? That's where other people become invaluable. Having someone poke holes in a plan I've already formed is enormously useful. Having someone in the room while I'm trying to form it is just noise.

The thing I've noticed is that people who swear they work best in groups are often actually very good at a specific collaborative skill, brainstorming or facilitation or building on others' ideas, and they've mistaken being good at that for preferring it universally. And people who swear by solo work sometimes just haven't found the right collaborators yet. Bad collaboration is genuinely worse than working alone, so if that's your main data point your preference makes complete sense.

I've also come to think that the question changes depending on seniority or experience level. Earlier in a career, working with others is how you absorb tacit knowledge that nobody writes down. You pick up craft, professional norms, shortcuts, ways of framing problems just by being near people who are further along than you. At a certain point you've absorbed enough that collaboration becomes more about output quality than personal development, and solo work starts to win more often

[FreeKickKing73]

Depends heavily on what kind of work it is. Solo work is great for getting into a flow and actually finishing something without ten side conversations derailing it.

Group work shines earlier on though, when ideas are still messy and benefit from being challenged. After that, too many voices can slow things down more than they help

[Falcon]

Working alone feels productive until you hit a wall and realize you have been confidently going in the wrong direction for three hours.

Working with others fixes that, but replaces it with meetings that could have been messages. It is basically choosing your preferred flavor of inefficiency

[NovaBreaker10]

There is a sweet spot where collaboration happens, then everyone disappears to actually do the work. That balance is rare but glorious when it happens.

Too much solo time and you lose perspective, too much group time and nothing gets done. It is less about preference and more about timing

[UniversalAidan73]

Some people say they love teamwork, but what they really love is someone else taking responsibility when things go wrong.

On the flip side, working alone means every mistake has your name on it. Builds character or builds stress, depending on the day

[BetaMyles75]

Alone for execution, group for direction seems to be the pattern that works. Brainstorm together, then scatter before it turns into a debate club.

Otherwise you end up optimizing the plan forever and never actually doing the thing.

[Frost Gary]

Working with others is great until you get that one person who wants to "circle back" on everything.

Suddenly a simple task turns into a philosophical discussion about process. At that point, solitude starts looking very appealing

[Reacher Erin]

There is also the accountability factor. Much harder to drift off when other people are expecting progress.

Of course, that cuts both ways. Now you are also waiting on them, which can be its own kind of delay.

[NeutrinoX]

Solo work feels faster because it is linear. Group work feels slower but sometimes produces better results because it catches bad ideas early.

So it becomes a trade off between speed and correction. Neither is always right

[RainyDayFund76]

The real answer might be that preference changes based on mood. Some days collaboration is energizing, other days even a notification feels like an interruption.

Anyone claiming a fixed answer probably has not been stuck in a long meeting recently

[Ryan98]

That split makes sense. Working alone can be faster because there is no waiting around for someone else to catch up, explain themselves, or schedule a meeting just to discuss a meeting. The tradeoff is that it can turn into a tunnel pretty quickly if there is no outside check on the ideas.

Working with others is better when the problem is messy and needs different angles. The downside is that not every group conversation is a brainstorm; sometimes it is just six people agreeing slowly in different words

The sweet spot seems to be solo for the deep work, then a quick pass with other people to catch blind spots. That keeps the speed without losing the benefit of another brain looking at the thing.

Also, some tasks are just team tasks no matter how independent someone feels. Trying to do everything alone is a great way to become the bottleneck and then complain about being busy

[RogueDepot]

There is definitely a false idea that teamwork always means better work. Sometimes the best team is just one person who knows what they are doing and is left alone long enough to do it.

That said, working alone has its own trap: it can make every decision feel heavier because there is nobody else to sanity-check the plan. A second set of eyes can save a lot of time, even when the first instinct is to protect the solo workflow.

The real issue is whether the other people are actually useful. Good collaborators add clarity and momentum. Bad ones add noise and a calendar invite.

So the preference probably depends on the task, the people, and how much chaos is in the room. Some days teamwork is a boost, other days it is a polite form of sabotage

[DistantSequence]

Working alone is great when momentum matters. There is something satisfying about making a decision, moving on, and not waiting for consensus to appear from the ceiling.

But working with others can be energising when the group has good chemistry. The right people can catch mistakes early, make the work sharper, and stop a project from drifting into weird territory.

What usually ruins teamwork is bad role division. If nobody knows who owns what, the whole thing becomes a game of responsibility hot potato

Probably why a lot of people end up liking a hybrid setup. Solo time for focus, team time for pressure testing, and ideally not too much of either side getting silly about it.

[NightOwl]

There is a bit of a personality myth around this topic, like people have to be either lone-wolf geniuses or endlessly collaborative team players. Real life is usually less dramatic than that.

Some tasks really do reward quiet, concentrated work. Others improve massively once another person says "hang on, that does not make sense" in the most helpful possible way.

The danger with going fully solo is that it can become comfortable in a way that hides weak spots. The danger with going fully group-based is that it can become a social activity dressed up as progress. Both have their uses, both have their annoyances

Best version is probably choosing the setting based on the job instead of the ego. That is less romantic, but far more useful.

[Xavi]

That last point about people loving teamwork only when they can dodge blame is painfully accurate. Nothing tests a group faster than a deadline and a problem nobody wants to own.

Still, solo work is not automatically noble either. It can sometimes be a very efficient excuse to avoid challenge, feedback, and the occasional awkward question. Easy to stay in your lane when nobody is there to ask why the lane looks strange.

The real answer might be that independence is great for output, but collaboration is great for growth. One gets the work done, the other makes the work better.

So if the goal is speed, working alone often wins. If the goal is quality, the right people around the table can make a huge difference

[Octopus95]

A lot of people say they prefer one or the other, but the context matters more than the label. Writing, coding, designing, planning, troubleshooting, all of them have different teamwork needs.

For focused tasks, solo mode is hard to beat. For anything involving messy decisions or creative dead ends, another person can break the logjam pretty fast.

The best setups are usually the ones that protect focus without isolating the work. Quiet solo time, then a deliberate handoff or review, keeps the good parts of both worlds.

Also, working with others is much easier when everyone actually has a clear job. Without that, the meeting becomes a live demo of human confusion

[Jonathan94]

There is a reason a lot of people drift toward solo work when the task gets serious: fewer distractions, more control, less explaining. That rhythm can be very hard to give up once it clicks.

But collaboration has a big advantage that gets overlooked: it can make the work feel less heavy. Even a small amount of shared responsibility can keep a project moving when motivation starts doing laps around the room.

The trick is not to romanticise either option. Working alone can be efficient, but lonely. Working with others can be rewarding, but messy. The mature answer is usually to use both without pretending one is universally superior.

So yes, lean solo for deep work, lean collaborative for pressure tests and big-picture checks. That balance tends to age better than any hard rule

[LivMorgan]

Working alone sounds ideal until you hit a problem you have been staring at for two hours. A quick conversation with someone else can expose an assumption you didn't realise you were making. For technical work, even explaining the problem out loud can be enough to find the answer, so collaboration doesn't always mean sitting together all day.

[Bear24]

The ideal team is small enough that everyone can contribute and organised enough that people aren't constantly stepping on each other's toes. Three people with clear responsibilities can be incredibly productive; twelve people copied into every conversation is a different story. Sometimes the biggest productivity improvement is simply deciding who does not need to be in the meeting.

[AgentSmith]

For creative jobs, the best setup I've found is alternating between the two. Start alone and produce some rough ideas without worrying whether they are good, then get a couple of people together to challenge them. After that, go back to working alone and actually make something. Continuous group brainstorming can become exhausting surprisingly quickly.

[Finley_19]

The personality side matters more than people admit. Some people get energy from bouncing ideas around, while others need quiet to think properly. Neither approach automatically produces better work. Give an introvert a room full of constant interruptions and productivity disappears; give a social person eight hours of silence and they might spend half the day talking to the kettle instead

[AustinTheory]

A hybrid approach works best for me. Anything requiring concentration gets done alone first, then I bring it to other people for feedback. For example, writing a report is much quicker without five people debating every sentence, but a short review afterwards catches things I completely missed. It gives you the focus of solo work without losing the benefits of another perspective

[ForumGremlin]

There are definitely tasks where collaboration is faster, especially if everyone has a clearly defined job. A group can turn a big project into research, planning, writing and checking instead of one person trying to do everything. The problem starts when nobody owns a decision and every tiny detail needs a meeting. That is when "teamwork" somehow takes three times longer than doing it yourself

[CrimsonFury31]

There is a danger in assuming fewer distractions automatically means better work. Sometimes working alone just means you can spend four hours heading confidently in the wrong direction. A ten-minute check-in with someone who knows the subject can prevent that. Independence is useful, but a second pair of eyes is cheap insurance

[Elliot_30]

There is also a middle ground that gets overlooked: working alongside other people without actively collaborating. A shared office, library or online focus session can provide a bit of accountability while everyone works independently. Knowing other people are getting things done makes it easier to stay on task, but nobody needs to discuss every line of work. Best of both worlds in some situations

[Shazam]

Solo work wins for anything with a clear outcome and a short deadline. If I know exactly what needs doing, adding more people usually adds communication overhead rather than value. For planning, brainstorming or solving an unfamiliar problem, though, having a few people involved early can save loads of time later. The trick is knowing which stage you're actually in