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1x Programming

tim.mcnamara.nz

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Re: 1x Programming

#131

Post by persane »

weinzierl wrote: post #119
angarg12 wrote: post #25

I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…

I fully agree with you, that it is important to keep your day job separate from the rest of your life and be able to detach yourself from work. However, I believe strongly that you can only have a happy life if you love what you do in your day job too. 9-to-5 are too many hours to be miserable and wait for end of your work day[*]. Also you spend a lot of time with your colleagues. Life is short, don't waste that time…

"Feier" ist not a fire, I think you mixed that up with "Feuer". Though "Feuerabend" could have a really interesting meaning if it existed.

Re: 1x Programming

#132

Post by sgadimbayli »

I really don't mind 1x programmer/programming, hell, probably am myself.

Most companies don't as well. Issue lies with people who create work for others on every task they are assinged to work on. Hence, -1, negative net developers, and there are plenty of them everywhere.

Re: 1x Programming

#133

Post by Trasmatta »

ratww wrote: post #73
unwind wrote: post #11

Has anyone published some kind of quantified, "hard" comparison/survey about the relative productivity of programmers? It would be very interesting with a clean "we asked n programmers to solve this"-type problem, and then being able to compare the solutions. Uh, did I just sound like I wanted to work in recruiting? #fail

At several companies I worked for, by using Scrum Points, it was always visible that the most experienced devs were able to regularly deliver a multiple (definitely around 10x) more points than interns and about 2x more than the average dev. Not a perfect metric by any means, of course, but definitely quantifiable and observable. Metrics for LOC and commits/PRs made also followed a similar pattern. Again, not perfect…

Are you certain the devs getting 2x more points than the average dev weren't just consistently picking the easier stories? Or estimating story points vastly differently than other members of the team?

In my experience, story points can be worse than no estimation. They give the illusion of insight, but in reality there's so much noise and inconsistency in point estimation, that they're almost never accurate measures.

Re: 1x Programming

#134

Post by raz32dust »

ratww wrote: post #94
raz32dust wrote: post #85

If by 10x, you mean engineers that add 10x more value compared to an average engineer in the team, then from working 10+ years in the industry, it is abundantly clear to me that 10x programmers exist, and a good team is likely to have 5-10% of those. However, these engineers are rare, and when you do find them, they are not perfect. They might have flaws in other areas - communication and teamwork is a common one. Mo…

I find these stereotypes very reductive, and having a bit of prejudice. Being unproductive is not a guarantee of having good communication skills, and likewise being being highly-productive is not a guarantee of being bad at communication. If communication is part of the job, in the case of seniors mentoring juniors, for example, then lack of communication skills would definitely prevent someone from being a "10x".

Didn't mean to discount communication issues. They are definitely a blocker for growth and impact. The best engineers I worked with had these issues, but worked on them and improved over time to increase their impact.

Re: 1x Programming

#135

Post by Floegipoky »

davidatbu wrote: post #21

> Synthesis is essence of software engineering, whereas abstraction is the essence of computer science. Your job as a software developer will be to synthesise something new from composable pieces. What you create should be simple to understand and extend. Loved this.

It's a nice quote, but I really disagree with this section. Yes, software development is more concrete than computer science, but abstraction is so, so important. The author acknowledges the value of simplicity, but simple code is only produced by choosing the right abstractions. Getting even 1 key abstraction wrong can create enough "friction" to eventually kill a product if the tech debt isn't managed well.

99.5% of a car mechanic's job is assembling/disassembling pre-made components, but they still need to understand how a car works.

Re: 1x Programming

#136

Post by enneff »

angarg12 wrote: post #25

I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…

I’m Australian and I agree with your general perspective. However I disagree with this:

> Strives to do a "good enough" job rather than absolute excellence.

For me, one of my biggest sources of personal satisfaction is striving for excellence. Of course I have realistic expectations, there are many pressures that may ultimately prevent me from achieving excellence, but having the goal of being the best at my craft is one of the main things that gives meaning to my work.

Re: 1x Programming

#137

Post by Sodman »

ratww wrote: post #94
raz32dust wrote: post #85

If by 10x, you mean engineers that add 10x more value compared to an average engineer in the team, then from working 10+ years in the industry, it is abundantly clear to me that 10x programmers exist, and a good team is likely to have 5-10% of those. However, these engineers are rare, and when you do find them, they are not perfect. They might have flaws in other areas - communication and teamwork is a common one. Mo…

I find these stereotypes very reductive, and having a bit of prejudice. Being unproductive is not a guarantee of having good communication skills, and likewise being being highly-productive is not a guarantee of being bad at communication. If communication is part of the job, in the case of seniors mentoring juniors, for example, then lack of communication skills would definitely prevent someone from being a "10x".

I think a big contributor to this "Brilliant asshole" trope is that if you ignore some things like teamwork/communication it's a lot easier to appear to be doing 10x the work. This can manifest in so many ways...

Not doing any code reviews? Leaving tests "for somebody else to write"? Refusing to work on legacy code-bases and only working on greenfield projects? Tuning out (or just not even joining) API design meetings so you can work on your own stuff? Bonus points if you have the authority to turn around in a few weeks and make folks re-write the API because you don't like the decisions you ignored - those pesky 1x engineers, eh?

There's a bunch of things that fit into this category that can make an engineer seem like they're doing 10x the work, but if you look closer it's frequently only because they're taking shortcuts or pushing more work onto their colleagues.

To be clear - I'm not saying 10x engineers don't exist, just that folks with "teamwork issues" who appear to output 10x as many features are frequently not as productive as they seem.

Re: 1x Programming

#138

Post by saila »

torginus wrote: post #109
duxup wrote: post #12

Way back when I first saw the 10x engineer proclamations I actually thought they were … a joke. Like a meme or something. They described a lot of anti social and strait up toxic behavior and seemed to glorify it. It was absurd. It seemed like the kind of behavior that would all but ensure someone thinks they’re so much more productive than everyone else, and would prevent them from ever seeing that they aren’t. I was…

Unfortunately (or fortunately) there certainly are 10x engineers, and if they happen to be your coworkers, that's the most amazing thing in life. It's the difference between handing a task over to someone, and finding next day that it's done in amazing quality and finding they haven't made any progress at all. And in my experience, these people usually are not braggarts or have huge egos, they are just really good at…

Another huge factor is that some people actually enjoy programming, which is not to say there's anything wrong with people who don't, but when you're having fun writing code it's going to be much easier to be productive than when you view every task as a slog, and it honestly seems like there's more of the latter than the former.

Again, I want to emphasize that there's nothing wrong with being a programmer who's not super into programming in most work environments, but along with aptitude, experience, and what not, actually enjoying the task can make a big difference.

Re: 1x Programming

#139

Post by munificent »

rtlfe wrote: post #129
weinzierl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with you, that it is important to keep your day job separate from the rest of your life and be able to detach yourself from work. However, I believe strongly that you can only have a happy life if you love what you do in your day job too. 9-to-5 are too many hours to be miserable and wait for end of your work day[*]. Also you spend a lot of time with your colleagues. Life is short, don't waste that time…

> I believe strongly that you can only have a happy life if you love what you do in your day job This is bad news for the huge amount of people with jobs like trash collector or grocery bagger.

I think you're making an assumption here that menial or dirty jobs are always unrewarding, but that's not my experience.

I've met many people doing the kind of jobs you describe who find it satisfying. They may love using their hands, making the world a little cleaner, helping others, or just like their coworkers. Some say they like the simplicity of a job where it's easy to tell when you did it well and you never need to take your work home with you. Some find it ennobling because of what they pay lets them do.

At the same time, I've met just as many people in theoretically "good" jobs like well-paying software engineering that are utterly miserable.

It's not the job, it's what the job means to you.

Re: 1x Programming

#140

Post by AA-BA-94-2A-56 »

enneff wrote: post #136
angarg12 wrote: post #25

I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…

I’m Australian and I agree with your general perspective. However I disagree with this: > Strives to do a "good enough" job rather than absolute excellence. For me, one of my biggest sources of personal satisfaction is striving for excellence. Of course I have realistic expectations, there are many pressures that may ultimately prevent me from achieving excellence, but having the goal of being the best at my craft is…

I'm also Australian and let me just say; careful, this is the path to burn out.

I spent much of the Easter weekend learning Go, and to me that was a solid investment of my time. I do not make a habit of coding extracurricularly though. If I want to hone my skills or work on a personal project, I'll do this in dead time during my fulltime work.

As an exercise, it is better to improve your ability to get things done within the 9-5 window than to allow that to balloon into your personal time.

You can still strive for excellence without running yourself fullsteam into burnoutland.

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