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Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

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Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#431

Post by timwaagh »

I can't empathize. Im only good when my edit compile run cyclus works normally and that's unfortunately never the case.

But I have a tip. What I think is really important for senior developers is to be team players and not try to hover over your colleagues work. Like right now there's this guy who is more experienced with some things than me. But now he's often checking out my branches, testing them and fixing things on them, often in the evening when I'm off the clock. I would like to be able to finish some of my work myself, ideally. With him on the team its just not going to be possible for me to be of much value, because it always will look like I need help. Even though I could possibly fix these things myself. Could be that this applies to you or maybe it doesn't, but it's important regardless.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#432

Post by exdsq »

scintill76 wrote: post #386
adesanmi wrote: post #383

My personal experience is that people who describe their abilities like you do are actually not very good at their job but think they are. But, assuming, you're right, you should have switched jobs yesterday to somewhere where you can be challenged. How can you be sure? You can't. But making sure to utilise the interview process is a good starting point. If you walk out of an interview just as unsure that the place w…

I’m curious what sort of key words you see that make you think the person is not actually very good.

The entire thing reads like copypasta - the lack of humility from a fairly junior developer (9 years? I have 8 years experience in tech and still feel like a beginner) is just crazy. It's either satire or written by someone with the EQ of a pigeon.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#433

Post by naugtur »

100011_100001 wrote: post #40
ctvo wrote: post #16

I think you're an above average developer working at a below average company. This could be the root of all your problems. Nothing is more frustrating than working with peers you know aren't carrying their weight. Do you want to be an engineering leader? This is what you are, regardless of your official title at your company. Engineering leaders are judged by how much better they make everyone else. You may hear the…

The pivot I have been debating is to become a Lead Development Manager with the express purpose of enabling everyone else, removing obstacles, creating better processes etc. My problem is that I love code much more than talking to people all day. I have been mentoring Jr Devs for a while now in an official capacity which helps. I like the idea of "make systemic changes to help your peers become more effective". So th…

I moved from a role similar to what you're describing (spent 7 years there) into a role where I'm the least senior person on the project. And I'm having a great time.

It's always possible to find people who are so much ahead of you that you'll need to put effort into just following the conversation with them. And when you do, they're your peers and you're proud to be a 0.9x developer alongside them.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#434

Post by mellavora »

adesanmi wrote: post #383

My personal experience is that people who describe their abilities like you do are actually not very good at their job but think they are. But, assuming, you're right, you should have switched jobs yesterday to somewhere where you can be challenged. How can you be sure? You can't. But making sure to utilise the interview process is a good starting point. If you walk out of an interview just as unsure that the place w…

> My personal experience is that people who describe their abilities like you do are actually not very good at their job but think they are.

I respectfully have a complementary but somewhat different view (again, with full respect-- your personal experience is not mine)

The author describes themself (humbly) as a 10x developer. And they seem to think "10x developer" means a person who fills the pareto principle (the one person who does 80% of the work). The author also has stats to back this up, and again, I stress that they are humble about it.

As another poster mentioned, a "10x" is not the person who does 10x more than anyone else, but rather the person who allows many many other people to do 10% more than they could otherwise.

As I see it, the author has grown to the limits of what their company offers, and should indeed interview for other jobs. Not necessarily take a different job, but to get a different benchmark for their abilities.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#436

Post by comprev »

scintill76 wrote: post #386
adesanmi wrote: post #383

My personal experience is that people who describe their abilities like you do are actually not very good at their job but think they are. But, assuming, you're right, you should have switched jobs yesterday to somewhere where you can be challenged. How can you be sure? You can't. But making sure to utilise the interview process is a good starting point. If you walk out of an interview just as unsure that the place w…

I’m curious what sort of key words you see that make you think the person is not actually very good.

If you make the statement that you're a "10x developer" then there's a high chance you're not really.

It smacks of arrogance and lack of humility, as a "10x developer" is really a fantastic communicator and "people person" who can accelerate the entire team's productivity through improving business relationships. The type of person who could quickly unblock the team through one phone call or message.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#437

Post by flakyfilibuster »

rexpop wrote: post #235
100011_100001 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this. I actually do not think I'm the smartest person in the room, hell two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me. I think I have really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code. On the loneliness front, I meant in the scope of working. I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. However, I do agree that aside from work and one of…

> I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. This is inadequate. Adults need "love" and companionship from adults in our lives. The love of children is inadequate; we must also have strong ties with buddies, pals, compatriots, and colleagues for mental health. Children can never fully deplete adult loneliness.

In addition to this - having people "around" you - does not negate the fact, that you still can be lonely

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#438

Post by mellavora »

exdsq wrote: post #432
scintill76 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what sort of key words you see that make you think the person is not actually very good.

The entire thing reads like copypasta - the lack of humility from a fairly junior developer (9 years? I have 8 years experience in tech and still feel like a beginner) is just crazy. It's either satire or written by someone with the EQ of a pigeon.

20-30 years in tech (depending how you count), and still a "beginner" at a large number of things. That feeling shouldn't go away.

8-14 years is not junior, it is mid-level.

The author has established a strong reputation in their current company. Again, mid-level, looking at jumping to senior level.

Post struck me as self-reflective and referring to observable metrics, also phrased as benchmarking their interpretation of those benchmarks vs the HN community. Humility is hard.

Pigeons are flocking animals and would have a high EQ.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#439

Post by abetusk »

I think other responses to this thread are insightful, offer valuable ways forward and get at the heart of the matter but I wanted to add one idea that I don't think gets enough traction which is that being a "10x" developer is highly context dependent and is not a fundamental attribute of a person.

Deep familiarity within a code base provides the knowledge to recognize, diagnose and fix problems at a rate that's orders of magnitude faster than someone who isn't. Familiarity with tools, corporate structure, programming idioms, toolchains or other technical factors also provide potential orders of magnitude speedup.

Take a "10x" developer in one context, put them in another, and they can easily become a "1/10x" developer. One company I worked for hired an intern that had created a well used FOSS package with 10k+ GitHub stars. Though a bit of a stretch to my argument, there are other anecdotes about corporations mishandling productive programmers [0]. My point is not to lash companies too harshly but to point out that the incentives are misaligned for the skillset these programmers have versus what skillset companies need and/or are willing to pay for.

My bet is that there's probably a small army of programmers that basically do mundane "1x" programming but create FOSS packages that generate millions in worth (that is, they are "10x" outside of the confines a corporate environment).

As an aside, I'll mention a talk about "The Ideal Language to Write Open Source Software" [1]. On the face of it, it sounds absurd but the argument is essentially that corporate environments select for programming languages that don't need deep proficiency whereas open source software projects select for programmers with deep comprehension of their tools. In other words, corporate environments select for programmer fungability whereas open source software projects, since they often only have a single developer, select for languages that offer high productivity gains from expertise.

[0] https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210306150046/https://ftp.osuos...

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#440

Post by lew89 »

It seems similar to my situation. Probably I'm not as praised as you are and people do discuss with me, however everybody else seem slow and I feel I don't belong, because my thinking is totaly different and I can't do much about it, because verbal arguments seem not to work well (performance does, but it probably lead to problem you've described, that people stop to argue and take your words for granted). I practically never spend full time on working, I have a lot of time to learn which is awesome, but nevertheless it doesn't feel right.

I think that it's partialy right what @ctvo said "above average developer working at below average company" — that's why I'm looking for a new job more carefully. On the other hand, I think that it's not all in my case. I just happen to work as a programmer, it's just tiny part of my interests, so that most of the people seem very narrow minded (I don't judge them, it probably works for them, but not for me).

Maybe in more sophisticated company I would find better matches. On the other hand, as I don't care too much, my current situation has its advantages, because I can decouple self-development from work. This is good because I have some values I would like to implement and it seems they can't be achieved inside this system (because it's too specialized and my approach is too holistic), I need `f*k you money` so that I can act freely. For now, alienation at work is ok, as I'm quite introverted so I prefer to spend time alone in nature (that's why I work in countryside) and just from time to time I go to the city to party with my friends or play some games with my neighbour.

So along with "look for a new job", there is an "adapt" option. Just relax and think out of the box how to use this situation. You can reduce significance of your work and do stuff you please. It's ok to do this, because you are 10x dev so you need only 1/10 of your time to match your company. The only question is if you have what to do with remaining 9/10. :)

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