The Brutal Truth About Working Alone vs. Building a Pack

And why it's not always what it seems

"I work better alone"

I've heard this phrase dozens of times. From colleagues, from people reporting to me, from people I needed results from.

• A designer says — I work better alone
• A CNC operator — I work better alone
• A site foreman — don't bother me, I'll figure it out myself

I never understood them. Or rather — I understood from the angle of fear. Fear of explaining your decisions, fear of depending on others, fear that someone will do it worse. That part I saw. But from a common sense angle — no. Because my common sense outweighed my fear.

Saying "I work alone" — sounds cool when you want to show off. But deep down you know it's not true. Showing off when you're twenty and hot-headed — that's one thing. When you're past thirty, or even forty — that's just embarrassing.

I design, code, handle typography myself — yes. But not because "I work better alone." Because there often wasn't anyone around worth collaborating with. When a producer brings in his wife for approval because "she graduated from art school, she knows design" — that's not collaboration. That's a circus.

And here's the thing: working alone works. Up to a point.

The math of going solo

No matter how good you are, you still have 24 hours in a day, one head, and two hands. You can optimize processes, automate the routine, you can work nights — and for a while it'll even work. But at some point you hit a ceiling, and no amount of night shifts will raise it.

Meanwhile, someone else — maybe not as skilled in your craft — teams up with people. And at some point their combined results start outpacing yours. Not because they're smarter or more talented, but because their capacity stopped being limited to one person.

I've seen this happen more than once, and I know how it works from the inside — because sometimes I got lucky and found the right people.

When it works

I worked with Marina at BK. I was Director of Training, she was the Opening Director. There was also a Territory Manager. I'll be kind — let's call him "a passenger." Marina and I carried everything.

And here's what's interesting: we didn't need to tell each other what to do. I handled training — I saw the tasks, took everything in my area and everything the TM wasn't doing. Marina did the same. Two people who think, see, take ownership — without instructions.

When that happens — the output of two becomes greater than the sum of what each would produce alone. Not arithmetic progression, but geometric. Two or three people on the same wavelength — that's the ideal. Five — a solid crew. Seven — the limit, beyond that chaos kicks in or you need different approaches.

This makes me think of Takeshi Kovacs from Altered Carbon. Why him — will become clear soon. Kovacs is the last of the Envoys, the emissaries. A combat machine trained to be completely autonomous. One Envoy is worth an army. But even Kovacs was strongest not alone, but with his pack — people who don't need explanations, who see what you see and step up without orders.

Quell — their leader, the one who created the Envoys — said: "The true strength of the wolf isn't fangs, speed, or skills. It's the pack. Whatever world you're thrown into — build a pack. Find a way to earn loyalty."

Find your pack — and you'll stop hitting the ceiling.

Sounds simple. But here's where it gets into territory people usually don't talk about — and why I brought up Kovacs specifically.

Why solo then

"I work alone" has reasons. And none of them is laziness.

Incompetence everywhere

The producer drags approval out for three weeks. The director can't see past his own nose. The manager consults his wife because she "graduated from art school, knows design."

Or here's one from another industry: we're willing to ruin aluminum blanks worth €300,000 — each — just to avoid raising salaries for skilled CNC operators who won't ruin them. Penny-wise savings that burn down the house.

In construction — same shit. Same everywhere.

Sometimes "I work better alone" isn't fear or pride. It's a justified response to the idiocy around you. You're not hiding from collaboration — you're hiding from incompetence masquerading as collaboration.

Pain

This one's harder to talk about.

Kovacs found his pack — the Envoys, Quell, people he was ready to die for. And he lost them all. Betrayal, a virus, a ship explosion — the entire pack gone in one day. Two hundred years on ice. When they thawed him out, he tried to live alone — a mercenary with no attachments, no pack. Because if there's no pack — there's no one to lose. And at a critical moment, when people he could trust appeared again, he tried to push them away. Not because he didn't want them. Because he knew how this ends. He wasn't just afraid for himself — he was afraid for them. That being near him would get them killed too.

This isn't just about war and sci-fi. It's about any job where you found your people — and they left. Not because of a falling out. The context just ended. You left the company. The project shut down. Life pulled you apart.

Nobody's going to die in our case, of course. But we make similar mistakes — push people away, close off, go solo — not because lives are at stake, but from fears that look stupid and baseless up close. But no less real for it.

I worked with Marina — then left BK. Worked with Katya at NotNowSchool — then NNS shut down. No fights, no disappointments. The context disappeared — and the connection disappeared with it.

And there you are, alone again. You already know how good it can be when the right people are beside you — and you know it'll end sooner or later. And some part of you starts whispering: maybe better not to start at all? Easier to protect yourself from the pain in advance, even if being alone will hurt constantly — at least it's familiar.

This isn't weakness. For many, this is the main factor. The one nobody mentions in articles about productivity and teamwork.

The right people are rare

"Bring people in" — sounds like advice from the "sad? don't be sad, no house? buy one, poor? get rich" school. Easy to say. But in practice — which people? Where?

The right people are few. The ones where there's synergy, not approval chains. The ones who don't need the obvious explained. The ones who take ownership not because they were asked, but because they see.

Two or three people like that in an entire career — that's not few. That's normal. They don't arrive on schedule and they're not found on LinkedIn.

I have a small circle. I'm trying to expand it the only way I have energy for — I write. The blog is a beacon. Not for audience, not for subscribers, not for monetization. So my people recognize me. So someone reads this and thinks: "This person thinks the way I do."

Maybe this isn't what needs to be done. But I don't have the energy for more right now. And that's an honest answer too.

What to do with this

I'm not going to say "learn to collaborate and everything will work out." That would be bullshit.

Kovacs didn't stop being a loner in the end. He stayed an Envoy — autonomous, dangerous, capable of acting alone. But he stopped rejecting the pack when it appeared. Stopped closing off preemptively. Not because it stopped hurting. Because being alone hurts more. And in our case — it's duller. Slower. Quieter. Life doesn't stop, but it doesn't really go anywhere either.

Here's what I know for sure:

"I work alone" — isn't a diagnosis or a sentence. Behind that phrase might be pride — or pain. Laziness — or hard-won experience. A guy who says "I'll handle it myself, back off" — or a woman who's been ignored in teams so many times she decided to build her own thing solo. Fear of looking weak — or fear of trusting again and getting burned. Or all of it at once.

Don't box yourself in immediately and unconditionally. But don't blame yourself for being alone either. There's something real behind it — and it's worth figuring out what.

Your pack is out there somewhere. Maybe right now someone's reading this and thinking the exact same thing.