For many small teams, putting all development responsibilities on one person feels like the simplest way to move fast — after all, one person can handle the frontend, backend, database, deployment, and even some devops tasks.

Beneath the surface, this model introduces systemic vulnerabilities that threaten both product quality and employee wellness.

First there is the risk of burnout — this individual must master frontend frameworks, backend architectures, databases, and infrastructure tools simultaneously.

Keeping up with evolving frameworks, tools, and best practices across the entire stack is a relentless demand.

The cumulative stress often results in exhaustion, anxiety, or even medical leave.

With no redundancy, any personal crisis becomes a business-critical incident.

Second, нужна команда разработчиков there is the danger of a single point of failure.

Any unplanned absence can paralyze progress for weeks or months.

No formal onboarding, wikis, or handoff procedures exist, turning systems into mysterious black boxes.

Hiring a successor often means restarting development from scratch.

Technical debt accumulates rapidly under this model.

A developer juggling too many responsibilities is forced to make compromises.

Responsive layouts suffer, queries lack indexing, and vulnerabilities go unpatched.

These corners cut in the short term lead to technical debt that accumulates silently, making future changes harder, slower, and more expensive to implement.

Strategic growth is sacrificed for daily firefighting.

The sole developer has no mental space to evaluate new tools, optimize architecture, or enhance UX.

Incremental updates replace meaningful evolution.

Other team members feel sidelined and undervalued.

They’re treated as spectators rather than collaborators.

Disengagement spreads when no one feels they can grow or make an impact.

While hiring a single full stack developer might save money in the short term, the long term consequences—burnout, risk, degraded quality, stagnation, and team fractures—often outweigh those initial savings.

Establishing balanced roles and cross-training is essential for scalable success