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I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#41

Post by im3w1l »

mattkrause wrote: post #22
PedroBatista wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragic thing is: Most of this industry takes the concept of the 10x, 100x developer very seriously. Just talk to a manager and slide that into the conversation, I bet 9 out of 10 will recite the gospel unironically. I am guessing these numbers aren't that better for software developers. Because all this can easily be mixed with job performance and effectiveness which are obviously real things.

A fun comparison is that Usain Bolt, who literally wins gold medals, is not even a 10x runner: a tenth of his world-record speed 100m works out to a brisk walk.

A big part of being 10x is to use the right tool for the job. In this case a plane.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#42

Post by voxelghost »

nerdponx wrote: post #36
eloff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you guys work on the same industry as me? There's easily a 10x difference between the best guy on the team and the worst guy who's about to be on the performance plan. It's a real thing. A lot of programmers really suck. I interview them and wonder why they're in this industry to begin with. I'm easily 10x those guys, they struggle with for loops. Then there are some superstars like Evan Wallace who created esbuil…

So you're 1x, Evan Wallace is 10x, and the pour souls in question are 0.1x.

It's almost as if we were all on some sort of spectrum.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#43

Post by eurasiantiger »

heromal wrote: post #27
bitL wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some "old school" management styles measure LoC and make hiring/firing decisions based on that. Really.

I had a recruiter ask me a few days ago, on behalf of the HM, how many lines of code I've written in my career. I told him that's a very weird question, and said nothing else. Needless to say, they're passing on me.

It might have been an estimation task, akin to a Fermi problem.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#44

Post by strken »

eloff wrote: post #30
soganess wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software folk taking the 10x thing seriously is akin to PC gamers unironically calling themselves the "PC master race". I have a hard time taking that conversation seriously.

Do you guys work on the same industry as me? There's easily a 10x difference between the best guy on the team and the worst guy who's about to be on the performance plan. It's a real thing. A lot of programmers really suck. I interview them and wonder why they're in this industry to begin with. I'm easily 10x those guys, they struggle with for loops. Then there are some superstars like Evan Wallace who created esbuil…

The problem is that it's reductionist. A CTO's productivity on a side project could be enabled by good on-call engineers, a CEO and board who don't demand 80 hours a week of work, a home situation that's stable and supportive, or a lot of other things. Transfer Evan Wallace to a company that doesn't fit him, give him some really dumb KPIs, and his productivity would drop (briefly, until he quit). Fix the personal and professional environment of the employee who can't do for loops and their productivity might rise.

The idea of a 0.1x developer, 1x developer, and 10x developer sitting frozen in amber beside each other, ungrowing and unchanging, never responding to their work environment, always at fault or worthy of praise for any differences in personal productivity, is ridiculous.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#45

Post by throwawaylinux »

eloff wrote: post #30
soganess wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software folk taking the 10x thing seriously is akin to PC gamers unironically calling themselves the "PC master race". I have a hard time taking that conversation seriously.

Do you guys work on the same industry as me? There's easily a 10x difference between the best guy on the team and the worst guy who's about to be on the performance plan. It's a real thing. A lot of programmers really suck. I interview them and wonder why they're in this industry to begin with. I'm easily 10x those guys, they struggle with for loops. Then there are some superstars like Evan Wallace who created esbuil…

There are infinite-x programmers and engineers.

There are people who can attack new problems or develop completely novel solutions, and those who are capable of solving problems that that might not technically be new, but they require deep knowledge of several disciplines.

And there are people who are simply incapable of doing those things. They might be adequate programmers, able to work productively on existing projects and variations of solved problems, fine tune them, solve difficult bugs, make them work real nice. But it's not the same thing, and it's easy to see when you have worked with the former types.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#46

Post by idiocrat »

soganess wrote: post #20
satvikpendem wrote: post #14

Those here talking about what the author is saying is actually a 10x engineer are missing that he's criticizing the meme of a 10x engineer [0] over an actually 10x more productive engineer. In a way, it's more of a joke article responding to a joke meme that has some good points over actually being a fully serious article criticizing actual 10x more productive engineers. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/10x-enginee…

Software folk taking the 10x thing seriously is akin to PC gamers unironically calling themselves the "PC master race". I have a hard time taking that conversation seriously.

The non-serious counterpart is the "Real Programmer".

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#47

Post by kqr »

usrbinbash wrote: post #37
soganess wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software folk taking the 10x thing seriously is akin to PC gamers unironically calling themselves the "PC master race". I have a hard time taking that conversation seriously.

It's just another round in an endlessly repeating cycle. Remember "Unicorn Devs"? "Framework Evangelist"? "Superstar Developer?" In a few years "10x dev" will fall out of use, and we will have the next term du jour. My money is on "Astronaut Dev".

Oh we are no longer supposed to be rockstar ninjas? *Updating profile*

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#48

Post by kqr »

hoosieree wrote: post #8

I just pair programmed with a student to help them get their code working. The first thing I did was delete unused variables and non-critical code that was distracting from the core algorithm. After removing most of their print statements, it was obvious what the program was doing at run-time. It's much harder to delete your own code than someone else's, especially when you're unsure of what's important.

Deleting stuff, compiling often, and proper indentation -- things beginners don't think they should waste time on, but which actually would solve most of their problems.

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#49

Post by whatshisface »

xeromal wrote: post #34
eloff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no leverage in running. There's a lot of leverage in software engineering. That's what allows such a wide diversity of productivity.

What is leverage? VIM?

Leverage is just another word for debt. ;-)

Re: I strive to be a 0.1x Engineer (2016)

#50

Post by a9h74j »

jongjong wrote: post #11

To "strive to be a 0.1x engineer" means that whenever you are presented with an option, you intentionally choose the worst option; the one which requires the most work, solves the problem in an inefficient way, doesn't align with the direction of the project and which will require constant maintenance and will need to be rewritten within a year or 2. 10x developers tend to code really slowly, much more slowly than 1x…

Is there any Peter Principle for all this?

"Every programmer will be given more difficult assignments until they are a 0.4X programmer."

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