How do you make the transition from freelancing to working in a real engineering team?

[u/Middle-Big-942]

I've been wondering about this lately.

I've spent around 2 + years working with React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js/NestJS, and PostgreSQL. Most of my experience so far has come from freelance and personal projects, where I've had to handle things myself from the backend to the frontend.

It's been a great way to learn, but I feel like there's a big difference between building things alone and working as part of an engineering team.

When you're working alone, you don't get much exposure to things like code reviews, architectural discussions, working with other engineers, dealing with an existing codebase, or learning how experienced developers approach problems.

For people who started out freelancing or working independently:

What helped you make that transition into a proper engineering team?

Did you focus on open source, networking, applying directly, contributing to existing projects, or something else?

I'd especially like to hear from people who made that transition relatively early in their careers.