Why ROCKSTAR Engineer Might Be Hurting Your Team

Or: What engineers can learn from ancient hunters

In some tribal societies, the most successful hunter didn’t go on every hunt. In fact, after making a few kills, they would stay back.
Not because they were tired. Not because they were lazy. But because they understood something fundamental about group survival: if only one person is doing the hard stuff, no one else gets the chance to improve.
Engineering teams work the same way.
Imagine you have a standout engineer on your team. The one who always figures out the problem first. Who gets handed the most challenging tasks. Who, when deadlines get tight or the project gets messy, is always the go-to person.
Sounds like am excellent engineer to have in your team, no?
But that could be a problem.
The Rockstar Engineer Trap
When one engineer becomes the “hero,” several subtle but significant problems can arise:

• Other engineers stop growing.
  If the best tasks, the real head-scratchers, are always funnelled to the same person, the rest of the team doesn't get the experience they need to improve. They plateau.
• Team morale declines.
  Eventually, the others stop stepping forward. Why try when the outcome is already decided? Engineers thrive on challenges and solving problems. With that gone, you risk disengagement and quiet quitting.
• The team becomes fragile.
  What happens when the rockstar engineer is sick, on leave, or leaves the company? If no one else has been allowed to develop their skills, the company will suffer.

And in global or multicultural teams, this dynamic can be even more pronounced.
Imagine a multinational company with engineers from five countries.
One engineer — perhaps from the same background as the manager, or who shares a language with a key client — naturally starts getting more responsibility. Maybe they simply "fit" better with the current project context.
Before long, they’re doing all the cross-cultural liaison work. They’re solving the most complex problems. Not because they’re the only one who could… but because they were the most convenient person to start with.
The result?

• The rest of the team never gets to practice working across cultures.
• The team’s global competency stagnates.
• And perhaps worst of all, team members from other regions may start to feel second-rate — even when they have the potential to contribute more.

As I note in my book, Engineering Is a Team Sport
We all want high-performing engineers. But building a high-performing team requires something more nuanced.
Sometimes, your best engineer needs to step back — not because they’re not needed, but because others are.
Distributing challenges, rotating leadership on difficult tasks, or simply having the awareness to say, “Let someone else take this one” — that’s not a loss. That’s how you build depth, resilience, and motivation across your team.
Just like the hunter who stayed behind, the global engineer knows: sometimes, stepping back is what's best.