Busting the 10x software engineer myth • Hacker News Board

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#271

Post by solveit » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #258

deltree7 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Shannon, Dennis Ritchie, Vitalik Buterin, Jeff Dean are all 10x programmers. Let's not pretend they dont exist

Perhaps. But is it meaningful to talk about these incredible outlier cases when considering how you structure an engineering organization? I think there are two kinds of companies that make tech: 1. Companies where all of the technical problems they need to solve can be solved by typical engineers. 2. Companies where some of the technical problems they need to solve are too difficult to be solved by typical engineers…

3. Companies that have technical problems that can easily be solved by typical engineers but not noticed and articulated by typical engineers.

Which is most of them. The main value of "special" engineers come from them pointing you to the right problems. Notice how all of Ritchie, Shannon, Dean and Buterin certainly fall into this category. They were all technically proficient enough, but that's not the point. A seasoned veteran would have coded circles around Buterin at age 20, which is when he invented Ethereum. The point is that the seasoned veteran didn't invent Ethereum. Similarly, Shannon's most influential work (that paper that basically invented information theory) is fairly elementary, and basically any geezer with a relevant PhD had had the technical chops for the paper. But they never would have written that paper in a million years.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#272

Post by poulsbohemian » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

I just wish employers would stop focusing on hiring 10x engineers, and instead focus on how to create an environment in which the overall standard can improve. What I mean is - you can take a superior engineer and put them in a crappy environment, and they will fail. Likewise, you can take an average engineer and surround them with support and they will produce a multiple of their raw talent. Focus on the things that make it possible to produce at a high level. For that matter, it strikes me that often those people that companies believe are producing at a high level, aren't. I saw this a lot in consulting - companies think Jimmy is just the bees knees, but in fact the reason he looks like a hero is that his junk is broken and he's constantly having to firefight to fix it. Often too, the loudest engineer in the room shouts down everyone else and "looks" like a leader when they are really the villain.

I saw for myself - there were places in my career where I was super productive, and places where I hardly produced anything. It had everything to do with the environment: politics, communication style, teammates, technology, and problem domain.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#273

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #45

j7ake wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give a concrete example: no amount of software engineers can be hired to produce comparable work of an expert cartoonist except by dumb luck. Throwing 1000 engineers won’t solve the problem. I imagine within the tech world there are tasks that are ill defined and a small subset of engineers can solve, but a typical engineer may not have the background to solve it.

>no amount of software engineers can be hired to produce comparable work of an expert cartoonist except by dumb luck. You actually hit this nail quite on the head with the example. The "10x engineers" get a lot of their "10x"-ness from creativity - most I've met are cartoonists, painters, musicians, writers, cooks - artists in general that love software as a way of expressing themselves and earning good money. The be…

I generally consider myself a 5x coder... I usually spend about 1/3 the day reading/learning and another 1/3 experimenting... only about 1/3 of a typical day will I be on-task, and usually still outpace my peers. This last 2-week cycle, I literally did all the assigned work, and refactored a few things that annoyed me in one caffeine fueled night.

I used to do design/graphix/ux work... that always interested me. Programming pays better, and I have a talent for it. I have spent time learning patterns, etc, but not through a formal education. I tend to just see a good way forward... creating discoverable code along the way. I find a lot of the time, the formal patterns tend to just make things more complicated than they need to be.

Just my own take on things. I'm kind of lazy in a good way. I have spurts where I will do a crazy amount in a short time, and those where I'm closer to coasting. Like many/most creative types, it varies.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#274

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #264

eloisant wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct - and if you compare world record marathon runners with average (but seasoned) marathon runners, the difference is even smaller.

Time wise, absolutely true, but as someone who is a reasonably seasoned runner I can say my 3:30 marathon feels lightyears away from 2:00. It doesn't sound 10x harder, it sounds impossibly harder.

so in the context of TFA, what really needs to be asked is not "are some people massively better coders than others?", but rather "how difficult is it to progress from the equivalent of a 3:30 marathoner to a 2:00, as a coder?"

I don't know the answer, TBH. I've been a programmer for nearly 35 years now, and at times along that journey I've been the 10x coder. But I'm not anymore (just like I can't go sub-3h for a marathon at this point), despite knowing a lot more and being better by some metrics than I was during my 10x periods.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#275

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

tinco wrote: post #236

tcgv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hiring enough people will replace 10x engineers The math is not that simple. The output of a Junior engineer is much different from that of a Senior engineer. You can hire any number of Junior engineers you want, and they won't have the vision and seasoned experience of a Senior engineer for producing higher quality code with less technical debt. Even among Senior engineers there are different grades of experience/…

I've had junior engineers outperforming senior engineers, even counting the hours I had to spend correcting and guiding. Some engineers are just slow. I don't think it's much correlated with experience. If your goal was never to be a super productive programmer, I don't think you'll ever become one. This might also be why there is this spectre of agism in the industry. Everyone knows there's greybeards out there that…

I think it depends... where I am now (third from last day), I'm one of the younger devs at 46yo. which is wild to me... about 2/4 of those here older than me have little interest in taking on new approaches or techniques. The other 1/4 absolutely work to stay current. Some are coasting to retirement, others of us don't ever plan to stop.

I will say, my recent stint of interviews over the past 6 weeks or so has been pretty painful. Everyone seems to be going through 6+ interview stages. The reality, even then, I'm not sure they're getting a great signal:noise outcome. Some of the tests are for things that will never be used for those jobs on any given day.

I do miss my 20's when an interview was maybe an hour and a half on an afternoon, and an offer shortly after.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#276

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

Ari-Pekka makes various plausible-sounding declarations, but he doesn't even try to make a case.

I know that I've had many colleagues that were next to useless - even, possibly, exhibiting negative utility. Let's just give that kind a zero. Then there are novices - smart people with little experience. They can get stuff done, but they need watching. Suppose we give those a 1. And suppose we give an "average" dev, fairly smart, with a lot of experience, a 2. Such a person doesn't need watching, and gets stuff done.

I'd say a zero needs to find more suitable work.

A 1 is worth investing in.

A 2 is most good professional devs.

So what's this x10 fellow? Well, I rate myself as a 2. I'm a journeyman, and I'll never be a master. But the people I've met that I'd rate as "masters" were no more than twice as productive as I was.

I can't imagine a dev that was 10x as productive as a journeyman. I've certainly never met one. Software development is a process of discovering and remedying bugs - from the requirements, through the design, to the implementation. These things take roughly the same amount of time, whether you are a journeyman or a "master". And once you have identified the problem, the solution is usually fairly obvious.

If this notion of a 10x dev is a real thing, then I suspect it arises in people who regard technology as some kind of woo. If you're recruiting a magician, then he'd better be better than any other magician, because you don't know magic.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#277

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

rualca wrote: post #65

emrah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a myth they exist, but you shouldn't depend on them. It's hard to tell if it's arrogance or reluctance to admit some people are more valuable than others and just allow them to get to a point they prefer to leave than stay. Domain knowledge, institutional knowledge, whatever you wanna call it, takes time to acquire and these kinds of companies are equally reluctant/arrogant to spend enough to hire properly…

> It's hard to tell if it's arrogance or reluctance to admit some people are more valuable than others and just allow them to get to a point they prefer to leave than stay. Stating that a developer is worth 10 times what other developers are worth goes way beyond saying that some people are more valuable than others. We're not talking about junior/medior/senior distinctions. We're talking about 10x. The myths. The lo…

A really good developer can and will absolutely outpace a couple small teams of developers. The shortcomings is the domain knowledge is locked in one head. You gain and lose a lot depending on how many people are involved and how much you have to communicate.

Not having a backup solution is probably the single biggest shortcoming of the lone gunman in practice. The second is that the code is often not laid out or structured so that a team can work on it.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#278

Post by jahewson » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #276

Ari-Pekka makes various plausible-sounding declarations, but he doesn't even try to make a case. I know that I've had many colleagues that were next to useless - even, possibly, exhibiting negative utility. Let's just give that kind a zero. Then there are novices - smart people with little experience. They can get stuff done, but they need watching. Suppose we give those a 1. And suppose we give an "average" dev, fai…

The 10x is in comparison to the least productive engineer. In your model they get a zero so you actually have infinity x.

Score your zero up slightly to 0.2 and a 10x is now a 2.

It’s not so drastic a claim really. The common misinterpretation is that it’s 10x the average.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#279

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #276

Ari-Pekka makes various plausible-sounding declarations, but he doesn't even try to make a case. I know that I've had many colleagues that were next to useless - even, possibly, exhibiting negative utility. Let's just give that kind a zero. Then there are novices - smart people with little experience. They can get stuff done, but they need watching. Suppose we give those a 1. And suppose we give an "average" dev, fai…

The best developers don't add utility just by their own direct productivity, they add utility by increasing the productivity of the team (pointing people in directions that avoid dead ends, helping quickly bust impediments, etc., contributing in design discussions in a way which reduces the amount of unnecessary code that ever gets written, etc.) This is a much bigger effect (IME) than the delta in personal direct coding output.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#280

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

deltree7 wrote: post #218

AlwaysRock wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this all depends on your definition of 10x. It sounds like you are saying 10x the average person rather than 10x the average person who works in that field. I'm a 10x developer if we count non developers. I am not if we could people who work as developers. Likewise there are expert marathon runners who are 10X, or more, than the average human. But there are not marathon runners who run 10x faster than other p…

Claude Shannon, Dennis Ritchie, Vitalik Buterin, Jeff Dean are all 10x programmers. Let's not pretend they dont exist

10x what?

As far as I'm aware, Shannon wasn't even a programmer.

I'm sure Ritchie was pretty good at coding in the language he invented; AIUI, that language is pretty similar to the assembly language of the machine he designed it for.

I don't know anything about Buterin and Dean.

I'm sure these people all had brilliant ideas and insights, that I couldn't begin to match. But given an arbitrary dev task, I doubt they'd come close to 10x the performance of a reasonably competent dev.