Do you prefer working with a team or alone? (employee, job interviews, owner)
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Depends on the situation and problem. I'm a physicist working in a lab management role. There are times when working alone is the most productive and there are times when a team is needed. However when I define a team, that is a relatively small group doing the planning and management of the project. There may be a larger group of workers with specific jobs, but not as part of the decision making team. Those kinds of "teams" don't work very well because there is no direction.
So bottom line is either alone on some tasks or in a small, tight group when needed to manage larger tasks.
Agreed. Small teams that already have a knowledge of the problem/task/project at hand work best as a cohesive force.
What sometimes spoils this is middle-management constantly asking for updates, or changing things at the last minute, or objecting to our proposals on some minor reasoning that have more of a bearing on his/her role than on the success of the job in hand
Well working in fast food most my life, I was forced to be a "team player". Don't get me wrong, I like it at times. I like to talk and joke and play and have fun. But I'm kinda an introvert and all that contact becomes mentally, and physically, draining after a while. For every two weeks of constant contact like that I spend a week alone everyday at home to recover and usually spend my off days just by myself. It's tiresome.
Because of that, I like being alone with human contact being spotty or moments where I can be by myself, alone, to recover after the constant amount of contact. My current job has that. I'm near a lot of people, mostly kids, all day but have time and moments where I'm (mostly) alone and left to myself. The perfect time to get my thoughts straightened out and ready for the next batch! My old job had that as well, but opposite. I worked backroom in Target and was mostly alone for hours on end, simply pulling items and stocking. Once for three hours straight, not a soul was seen. I liked it because I was able to listen to music, do my job, and there was little to no interaction. When there as it was short and done right.
i'd rather work alone. i currently work in an environment with a huge team, and everything gets really political. if you don't kiss ass to management or be up in people's noses about post-work activities/hanging out, then you don't get much respect, no matter how much of an expert or experience you have on the job. the more politically correct/conscientious you are, the more you get burned. two of our previous team leaders who were very stringent on rules being enforced have since moved on to jobs that don't require teamwork (working with patients one one one in their homes). both got burned by members who are management favorites but tended to slack on the job. both called such members on their behavior, and instead of management supporting them on such, the former teamleads instead got themselves wrote up for being too harsh on correcting those misbehaving favorites.
of course, when you're a newbie to your profession, it does help to work with a team to get mentorship. otherwise, when you're that experienced, you can get away with working largely by yourself.
and when you have micromanaging bosses who are so out of touch of how things are going in the trenches, then being in team just gets really draining a lot of times when you're not a management/crowd favorite
I like a team when I'm working as the boss, simply because I (go away and) do the high level engineering and then parcel out the components to my staff.
When I'm the one doing a technical project, I prefer to be left alone as much as possible.
It really depends on the task and the dynamics of the work place. In general, I prefer jobs where I work independently, but have a team to look to for support if needed (e.g., consultation, support). Sometimes I like working as a team, but only as a small (2-3 people) team for a defined project (i.e., a set amount of time with the goal to complete a project).
Most jobs don't need teams or 2-3 managers overseeing it (Especially ones you have today with no damn clue whats going on) . As long as you have someone competent to get the operations/jobs finished and with efficiency, thats all thats needed.
Companies tend to throw more goofball managers and workers at jobs to try an JUSTIFY those positions and that just generally ruins everything and makes it more difficult than it should be.
The more people involved, the more issues there are and nothing gets done and done well . 9 times out of 10.
An aspect of the operations at my position just had me, one other guy and the general manager overseeing everything. We ran well for 4-5 years until the GM retired. Now we got 2-3 managers offsite, the aspects of the job centralized offsite, and a GAZILLION problems that follow with constant bickering, and emails going back and forth. They screwed up the operations across the company adding more people into the mix, You got people offsite giving you opinions on what should be done at YOUR workplace.
Teams are necessarily detrimental per se but 9 times out of 10 they are because teams are compromised of people, and people are flawed, they have big time EGOs (especially managers) and everyone has an opinion. The operation ultimately fails the more managers and people get involved. It muddys the waters, and detracts from business and the operation.
You need a team. As the lone dude for a four-office IT set-up your job will be to be ignored until they start yelling at you for their phones not working with the printer and then blamed. You need at least one other go-to person in each office to run interference and dilute the blame. It can be grim. Doctor's are some of the hardest to work with most entitled species, they want X and they want it NOW. I have been there and done this, in IT. Hopefully the environment is stable and you are not rolling anything out in the next 12 mo and they get a chance to like you and view you as coopertive and helpful before the inevitable rug gets pulled out from under you when some midnight untested autoupdate from an errant box checked on an admin's computer takes it all down.
Your only defense against this is to audit the heck out of their whole set up the minute you walk in the door.
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