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Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

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Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#231

Post by atoav »

ble wrote: post #65
hayst4ck wrote: post #40

This is jaded and angry, but I think there is another archetype called "the politician." They play the game extremely well, providing poorly thought out solutions quickly to problems they haven't dug into the complexity of. They lay operational traps everywhere in their quest to get things done fast (like directly embedding config data in code to avoid fixing the config format). Once they've picked the low hanging fr…

I usually think of an at-work "politician" as somehow taking advantage of relationships or social forces. What you describe sounds more to me like the ""10X engineer"" (with extra scare quotes for good measure). Many people have been skeptical of the idea of the 10X engineer. One take is that if your normal engineers are less than 1/10th as productive as another engineer and all of them are merely human beings, there…

I know that the idea of the 10x engineer is somewhat eyebrow raising, yet in most fields I ever have been in there where those people who would get shit done n times as fast/efficient or throughly as others, all while yielding better results — be it Camera or Light people on the film set, programmers, designers and architects, writers.

The differenciator rarely was the pure skill at the profession, but an ability to mentally plan ahead and maybe even see the final "thing" in their head. So instead of going try and error or just using what worked last time those people tended to be able to see the clear outlines of the whole thing in their head before they do it, which has the benefit of not having to do things you know will not satisfy. Couple that with a willingness to not waste your time and then you get someone who looks magically efficient to people who "just do their job".

In my eyes those people are not inhumanly good, it is just that most other people are quite average both in their skill and in their motivations.

And even if you are average and just do your job you can easily compare against those people by investing persistence and time.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#232

Post by badpun »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #109
bioemerl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the workforce - the real answer is that the 1x engineers really really aren't operating at full capacity. You assume all parties give it their all. They rarely do. Get through college Do what you have to in other to get the job. Do what you have to in order to keep the job. 10x people do some very basic things. They care. They read about code. They have side projects. They improve their skills because doing so is…

"Hiring well" or hiring "the best" isn't a panacea. People change. Before I had kids, I was working hard, working late nights, and some of my work was all-consuming. After, I've definitely had periods where my main focus was on showing up to meetings and making sure I got at least pretty okay on my performance reviews, while actually focusing on, y'know, not work. If the company doesn't punish people for becoming hal…

> the next year will focus on Sarbanes Oxley compliance, guys!

How is it more boring than any other kind of project you'd do in a large finance institution?

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#233

Post by heavenlyblue »

hintymad wrote: post #153
boppo1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were each of these really achievements by a single engineer, or a team? One guy wrote CUDA?

Ian Buck wrote the initial version, right? I'm sure multiple teams polished the aforementioned software. It's just that it was this one or two engineers came up with the idea, built the the first working version that the other fellow engineers thought impossible or too expensive or unworthy to build, and the rest was the history.

> that the other fellow engineers thought impossible or too expensive or unworthy to build

This is not an exhaustive list and you have just picked the points that support your weak argument.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#234

Post by ki_ »

The "pattern coder", applies design patterns the all parts of his code without really understanding why. His trust in authorities such as people that give tech talks are the only reason needed to why his coding style is good. This person often ends up with very slow code that no one can modify or debug because his hello world function uses 200 sub-functions spread over 400 files. A common speech pattern of this archetype is "This is how you write stable/mantainable code".

Edit: Just noticed it's only about "staff"-engineers. I wondered why there were only 4. However, i think the "solver" isnt part of the staff either.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#235

Post by qznc »

davewritescode wrote: post #143
jacobr1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the "positive" version of the politician. They have enough technical credibility, social skills, relationships with senior management, to remove organizational log-jams. Other companies might hire a consultant to come and tell them what they already know they need to do (but can't organizationally agree to do) - but with this archetype, you can call them in and they will cut out the bullshit, somehow wi…

I have found myself in this archetype before. Management wanted a feature, went to the architects and got some INSANE estimate that couldn’t be justified by the revenue that would be coming in. Management felt like they were being told to fuck off with crazy estimates and they weren’t completely wrong. I was asked to review the proposal by a VP, came up with some simplifications, presented it back to the same archite…

Most people have a very cynical view of politics and I can emphasize. However, I try to stay more positive about it. Politics, for me, is about making decisions in groups too large to just talk with everyone. In such circumstances “bridge people”, like davewritescode, who can communicate with multiple factions are very valuable for progress.

Sadly, especially in large “safe” enterprises people don’t want to learn this. Developers blame managers for “not understanding software” and managers blame developers for “lack of business understanding”.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#236

Post by mirekrusin »

ble wrote: post #65
hayst4ck wrote: post #40

This is jaded and angry, but I think there is another archetype called "the politician." They play the game extremely well, providing poorly thought out solutions quickly to problems they haven't dug into the complexity of. They lay operational traps everywhere in their quest to get things done fast (like directly embedding config data in code to avoid fixing the config format). Once they've picked the low hanging fr…

I usually think of an at-work "politician" as somehow taking advantage of relationships or social forces. What you describe sounds more to me like the ""10X engineer"" (with extra scare quotes for good measure). Many people have been skeptical of the idea of the 10X engineer. One take is that if your normal engineers are less than 1/10th as productive as another engineer and all of them are merely human beings, there…

It's easy to get 10x engineer - just hire 9x shitty ones and you're done.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#237

Post by mirekrusin »

Olreich wrote: post #155
29athrowaway wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often than not, it's people that care about how to create abstractions that amplify their productivity. That is only possible if they can spend some time building abstract stuff that cannot be explained to non-technical stakeholders, which is not possible with sweatshop engineering methodologies like Scrum, or when you promote the smiling bozos that completed their 5 person-minutes Agile crash course to manageme…

Abstraction is not a panacea. It's often the root cause of significant technical debt. Abstracting as late as possible is often the best course of action, as it give you more information about how to abstract from the initial implementation.

I disagree. You should work on bottom up abstractions, base yourself on first principles. Amending abstractions built like this are cheap and straight forward. This is opposed to top-down, gluing already made monstrosities.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#238

Post by menaerus »

29athrowaway wrote: post #145
zmj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of an old essay: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-n... The thesis is that the "10x engineers" don't output a linear multiple of the same kind of work their peers do. Instead, they implement solutions that their peers wouldn't or couldn't over any length of time. This matches my experience.

The 10x engineer identifies common subproblems across different problems, and then creates a layer of reusable code which becomes a library. Then uses this library to write code 10x faster. The 10x engineer tries to standardize problems and solve them en-masse. The 1x engineer sees every problem as a different problem that requires a different solution. The 10x engineer talks about abstractions, the 1x engineer talks…

I check all of the 10x engineer boxes from above, or at least I think I do, and that speaks as if I am a 10x engineer but I genuinely don't think I am. I think 10x engineer is something different. 10x engineer usually doesn't care about the things from above.

I think it is more about the ability to grasp vast amounts of complexity in relatively short amount of time and be able to sustain it. Business and market wise this is what is going to make a difference. Some engineers aren't even able to tackle such complexity because of so much layers of it which is why at some moment it just becomes ... too much. Others that can do it, it would take them considerably larger amount of time to do it.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#239

Post by mirekrusin »

scarface74 wrote: post #181
29athrowaway wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10x engineer identifies common subproblems across different problems, and then creates a layer of reusable code which becomes a library. Then uses this library to write code 10x faster. The 10x engineer tries to standardize problems and solve them en-masse. The 1x engineer sees every problem as a different problem that requires a different solution. The 10x engineer talks about abstractions, the 1x engineer talks…

> The 1x engineer talks about their car and weekend, the 10x engineer talks about technology. Call me a proud member of the 1x engineer club. When I close my laptop at the end of the day or even when I’m having lunch with my coworkers, few people would know that I’m an “engineer” at all. The list of things that I care about more than technology in my non work life is a mile long. Technology is a means to an end - to…

Maybe 10x are just people whose hobby overlaps with work?

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#240

Post by ki_ »

posharma wrote: post #173
posharma wrote: post #29

Archetypes sharkitypes whatever…who cares! Identify a need in your organization and step up to meet/exceed that need. Done. Don’t need fancy titles, archetypes.

Wow! Why the downvotes?

HN can be weird on up/down-votes. Certainly when u put out a different opinion. Anyway. I would say, archetypes exist and they dont exist by choice. They are a natural occurrence. People do certain things in a certain way. And patterns can be found across these people. These patterns we call archetypes. People dont act to be like a certain archetype, the archetype is the label we give them based on how they act.
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