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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)

#91

Post by sakisv »

gyulai wrote: post #77

> Let’s not build that feature. > Let’s not add this functionality. > Let’s not build that product yet. > Let’s not build/deploy that development tool. > Let’s not adopt this new technology. > Let’s not keep maintaining this feature. > Let’s not automate this. Working alongside (or even worse: under) an individual who sees it as his job to just say "no" to everything sounds like hell. It also reminds me a bit of the…

For me only the last one is a big red flag.

Apart from this, I'm of the opinion that one crucial job of a team lead/manager is protecting their team and, their product.

One way to do this is saying "no" to feature requests, being mindful of which hype to follow and balancing the value and the cost of doing so, etc.

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

#92

Post by abyssin »

nicbou wrote: post #85
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #61

My dream was always to be hired into obscure government bureaucracy and automate the data entry job away, while hiding it. After that, you basically exist in a free incubator. Imagine the software you can write, if freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work. Not to be rich, just to be technical excellent, productive and at peace. I wonder why this has not yet happened with open source. If a suffi…

That's roughly my current situation. My humble business does well enough to let me focus on what feels right. I haven't thought about the income-generating bits for a while now. It's nice to do good work and not pollute it with the usual growth strategies, to tell advertisers to sod off, and to obsess over details of your choosing. This completely changed how I work. If it's sunny outside, I'll forget about work and…

Did you write anywhere about the journey that got you where you are today? I’d love to know more.

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

#93

Post by trashtester »

zarzavat wrote: post #38
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…

That’s not what 10x means to me. It means 10x the median productivity, i.e. 10x a competent programmer. I don’t think anybody can dispute that 10x programmers exist , Bellard, DJB and Carmack being uncontroversial examples. What’s controversial is the distribution. Are 10x programmers bound to become famous through their outsized contributions, such that their number is very few? Or are there a large enough number of…

> That’s not what 10x means to me. It means 10x the median productivity, i.e. 10x a competent programmer.

There are quite a few engineers/devs out there that produces negative net value, when taking into account management overhead and other resources consumed (even when ignoring their salary). Some of these are just in the wrong place, they don't have the talent, skills or motivation to work well with their team, and but might be "competent" in another team.

Even at the median level, output may often lack creativity and inspiration, and add relative little value. The functions they do may be easy to oursource, replace by standardized software or could be built by better developers much more quickly and with higher quality.

I think in most companies who do software development, at least half of net value is generated by the top 5-10% or so developers. (Making them 10x engineers compared to the median). These are the ones that drive new ideas and approaches successfully (instead of chasing cargo cults for no benefit), they are the one that write the code that other developers imitate and build on top of, and they are the ones that contribute to team engagement and cooperation. (Or at least 2/3 above.)

As for the number being 10x the average developer, that's much lower, since the top 10% pulls the average up quite far from the median. I would guess 0.1%-1% is 10x the average, depending on company.

These would be the ones that are able to identify and solve problems others are not even aware exist (or have given up on), the ones that understand the business they're in better than most product managers, and actively drive development of killer apps/features that others didn't even consider. Often they're entrepeneurs or leaders as much as developers.

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

#94

Post by trashtester »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #45
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…

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 pro…

Infinite value is not possible, so infinite x is only possible when comparing such engineers to someone who produces And compared to those, every engineers that produce >0 value is an infinite-x, making this quite trivial.

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

#95

Post by what-the-grump »

Aleksdev wrote: post #82
namaria wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein was a patent office clerk. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Sergei Brin had a scholarship. The myth that struggle breeds success is just a narrative intended to keep working class folks grinding.

You do realize Einstein was always studying? Sergei Brin worked like a maniac. Struggle breeds success. Not everyone successfully picks the right thing to struggle on.

Africa should be delivering ground breaking work all the time right?

This idea that x person worked a little harder than the rest and therefore he is successful is laughable. There is a range, say 5% or 15% or even 50% ‘worked more than the rest’, ok so what? Do you think you are within 5% or 50% of working x hours more per day before you become the next tech billionaire? You are not. It’s not that easy.

Oh and then there are the struggling artists of the renaissance which all came from the illiterate peasantry struggling to feed themselves.

And the media common folk of today, who come up because they struggle therefore they act, and everyone we see in TV was a nobody before their first big role and just worked really hard right?

Or the government families which somehow if you are the son of a governor your chance of being in government and a high ranking official far outweighs any other factor.

Or if your parents are rich chances of you being rich far outweigh anything else…

But no, alas I’ll let everyone know we gotta push just a little harder and we’ll all be rich.

Struggle breeds stress, which intern breeds health issues. If we didn’t struggle the world would not end, innovation would not stop, WALL-E is just a cartoon.

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

#96

Post by happymellon »

Aleksdev wrote: post #82
namaria wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein was a patent office clerk. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Sergei Brin had a scholarship. The myth that struggle breeds success is just a narrative intended to keep working class folks grinding.

You do realize Einstein was always studying? Sergei Brin worked like a maniac. Struggle breeds success. Not everyone successfully picks the right thing to struggle on.

None of those things were products of their work environment.

Einstein was able to always study and Sergei Brin was able to work like a maniac precisely because they were able to remove the restrictions of paid technical labour that drains your brain before you even get to the interesting stuff.

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

#97

Post by eloox »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #89
eloox wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I became a software developer. I was working for a big tech firm as a data entry "specialist". Everything (except some pricing calculations) was done manually. I was hired as the 7th member of the team. It started with copy/pasting some simple VBA scripts to automate small tasks. In a year I managed to automate most of the tasks. More notably: A monthly task that took 2 days(and quite prone to human errors…

You quit your series A? Why? You talked about your scripts?

What do you mean by "series A"? :)

I never hid the scripts. The automation was out in the open and everybody in the team was making use of them.

I quit because I didn't receive pay raise and wouldn't have in that position(EDIT: They wanted to promote me to team lead(people management), but it is something I'm not interested in). Plus with the skills I've gained I managed to get a better paying job.

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

#98

Post by zerr »

Aleksdev wrote: post #82
namaria wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein was a patent office clerk. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Sergei Brin had a scholarship. The myth that struggle breeds success is just a narrative intended to keep working class folks grinding.

You do realize Einstein was always studying? Sergei Brin worked like a maniac. Struggle breeds success. Not everyone successfully picks the right thing to struggle on.

They key difference is on what do you work - somebody else's dream or your dream?

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

#99

Post by Attrecomet »

sakisv wrote: post #91
gyulai wrote: post #77

> Let’s not build that feature. > Let’s not add this functionality. > Let’s not build that product yet. > Let’s not build/deploy that development tool. > Let’s not adopt this new technology. > Let’s not keep maintaining this feature. > Let’s not automate this. Working alongside (or even worse: under) an individual who sees it as his job to just say "no" to everything sounds like hell. It also reminds me a bit of the…

For me only the last one is a big red flag. Apart from this, I'm of the opinion that one crucial job of a team lead/manager is protecting their team and, their product. One way to do this is saying "no" to feature requests, being mindful of which hype to follow and balancing the value and the cost of doing so, etc.

"Before we automate it, we should think about if we can avoid doing the task altogether" is a red flag to you?

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

#100

Post by trashtester »

sublinear wrote: post #53
voxelghost wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's almost as if "productivity" is subjective. I've met plenty of devs who are better at relieving technical debt than fulfilling business requirements. Who is measuring the productivity?

> It's almost as if "productivity" is subjective.

"Productivity" could be defined as the value (typically monetary value) that the value of the company is generating (before salaries) based on the contribution of that resource(engineer in this case), per unit time. Future income should be calculated using a present-day-value approach.

The productivity of a single engineer could be defined as the reduction in company value generation from removing that person from the company (assuming the company is large enough to have multiple people available in each role). Rank order this, and you can define the 10x as those whose removal would cost the company (before salaries) >10x more than the removal of the median contributor.

Note that this definition is based on productivity within a given company. A single person could be a 10x engineer in one company, and a 1x engineer in another. Some companies require engineers with very deep understanding of compter science, maths, statistics or physics. Others benefit from engineers that are domain experts within their business domain, and yet again other companies may primarily need engineers who understand and can work with people of all backgrounds.

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