One advantage of working alone is that you will inevitably be closer to the business, its product, and its users. To me that has been worth more than working with a high performing development team. I am not in a US tech center, my road to decent compensation is not being a brilliant technician in high paying companies.
I do notice in technical arguments on the internet I often seem to come out of leftfield. It took me a while to realise it was because people in larger teams have an entirely different perspective when it comes to tools and technology. I need a Toyota and they need an Airbus.
The interesting thing about our industry is that give it 10 years and your Toyota will get you and 150 of your friends from LA to NYC in 5 hours.
If you stuck with Rails and Postgres for the past 10 years, your “solution power” has probably expanded nearly 10x due to improvements in the hardware and software ecosystems. That’s just one example - pick your stack and the statement probably applies.
I do notice in technical arguments on the internet I often seem to come out of leftfield. It took me a while to realise it was because people in larger teams have an entirely different perspective when it comes to tools and technology. I need a Toyota and they need an Airbus.