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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)

#111

Post by throwawaylinux »

trashtester wrote: post #94
throwawaylinux wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems.

There are problems where the average or even majority of engineers would create exactly zero value over time.

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

#112

Post by kqr »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #62
kqr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Especially as compiling often and proper indentation are often taken care of by running a linter and an autoformatter. I'll add "learning how to use a debugger", though.

In my interactions with beginners, adding more tools has never helped them learn faster. That goes for linters, autoformatters, debuggers, and version control.

Manual formatting and printf debugging goes a long way, and takes only foundational understanding of the problem, not the manual for another tool.

(Don't get me wrong: I love those tools. For a person who already knows them, they're a productivity multiplier. But a complete beginner usually doesn't have that knowledge.)

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

#113

Post by namaria »

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.

>freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work

Struggle implies unsuccessful efforts. These men were not bound to busy work, crying for help. They had comfortable settings and could focus on what mattered to them. OP wants just that.

Arguing that "get out of comfort zone, grind, struggle" is the way to advance society is disingenuous at best.

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

#114

Post by namaria »

fartsucker69 wrote: post #108
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.

Einstein was working in a patent office because he had trouble finding any work related to what he liked doing after his applications for various professorships at research universities failed. A full time phycisist already tends to work a lot of overtime hours to get anything done, while already doing that as their main fulltime job activity, so with 100% certainty Einstein grinded like a madman in afterwork hours t…

This whole 'grind' narrative is construed as a distraction. "Stay busy. Don't raise your head. If you're not to exhausted to have an original thought you don't deserve to be fed and housed." This is some perverse manipulation.

You should not conflate focus and effort with physical busy work. Grind means literally to wear down physically. Theoretical physicists don't 'grind' by any stretch of the imagination.

People should absolutely be allowed to be comfortable, free of immediate concerns with acquiring resources to survive. As OP puts it, 'freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work'

Arguing against this right is drinking the elite's cool aid. If you don't profit from exploiting the working class, you shouldn't see a problem with setting them free.

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

#115

Post by comfypotato »

goodcanadian wrote: post #107
comfypotato wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you’ve been heavily influenced by the tone regarding academia here on HN. It’s one of the nuances of HN that people “hate academia” here. (Admittedly CS has a strange relationship with academia in that the pay discrepancy is so outrageous between industry.) Some people love academia. My PhD mentor is as happy as a pig in mud in his academic role. He only has to teach every other semester, and his cours…

It sounds like your PhD mentor is one of the lucky ones. My understanding is that academia used to be like that, but it is unusual to get away with such a light teaching load these days. Academics also tend to get loaded up with other bureaucratic "service" tasks that heavily take away from the available research time. Finally, getting the job in the first place is next to impossible (though that might start to chang…

Your point about bureaucratic service positions rings particularly true I think. It’s part of the job description and actually why I’ve decided the career path is not for me. The academics I’ve seen thrive all seem to enjoy that part of the job (my mentor, for example, goes out of his way to get involved in standards organizations and other international/academia-related groupings of bureaucratic process).

At my research university, even associate professors (not sure about the details of what’s tenure track) don’t have to teach that much. There are actually “teaching professors” here who’s sole responsibility is teaching without research pressure, and they still only teach two classes per semester (admittedly, those classes might have 300 students).

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

#116

Post by trashtester »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #111
trashtester wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems . There are problems where the average or even majority of engineers would create exactly zero value over time.

> Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems.

When I said infinite is impossible, I meant in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else.

n-x-engineer means that: productivity_of_n-x_engineer / productivity_of_reference_engineer >= n (assuming the reference isn't negative)

etc

So, I'm arguing that the numerator cannot be infinite, so if n is infinite, the denominator has to be 0. In that case _everyone_ with positive productivity would be infinite-x, making the term kind of trivial.

I'm not arguing that such a situation cannot occur for some role, it can certainly happen that a company fills 50% of more of engineering positions with completely unproductive people.

And if, as you seem to do, measure this per problem, not per employee, it is really common. There are a lot of technical problems that only a small percentage of engineers can solve. Even then, though, even less gifted engineers may find some other technical solution that addresses the same business problem well enough to provide more than zero productivity.

Sorry if this wasn't obvious....

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

trashtester wrote: post #93
zarzavat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by pedrosorio »

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…

> It means 10x the median productivity, i.e. 10x a competent programmer.

Echoing what others have written. The median programmer is a not a "competent programmer". The median programmer is pretty bad.

EDIT: Or to be precise, "competence" depends on how you measure it. The "median programmer" is certainly competent at many tasks.

But there are plenty of programming/engineering challenges that the median programmer is completely unqualified to perform.

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

#119

Post by Demonsult »

coding123 wrote: post #63

So here's a weird question. Are 0.1x developers getting paid the $400k, 500k salaries or is that just 10x'ers?

I've been doing this for more than 25 years and the income gains for being productive are miniscule. Strategizing your job hops carefully is what gets you the 1/2 million.

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

#120

Post by eloff »

strken wrote: post #44
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…

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…

You're building up a strawman and then knocking out down. Obviously people perform differently depending on what things they have to overcome, and people also have good and bad days. For the purposes of my argument, it didn't matter why differences exist, it just matters that there are differences.
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