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Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#41

Post by datanerd613 »

yogini wrote: post #15

I have been a part of training sessions in my previous organisations, but in my opinion, training will not create a 10x engineers. Why? Most of the training sessions I attended or used to happen in my organisation were on very general topics. All these topics can be easily learnt via any other medium like youtube. Instead, I have seen pair programming or code-reviews making better engineers. The organisation used to…

pair programming is definately the way to go. Even Software Legned Uncle Bob Martin is a strong advocate for it. Listen to what he said about it in this podcast - https://alphalist.com/podcast/58-uncle-bob-martin-the-clean-... (about 10-15 minutes in)

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#42

Post by jl2718 »

zkirill wrote: post #28

I always thought the term "10x engineer" was only used in job ads. Nobody I know refers to themselves (or even thinks of themselves) as a "?x engineer", unless it's for marketing purposes in which case you might as well put 100x for good measure. The "best" engineer in the world would probably tell you that "the only thing that they know is that they know nothing". They may also say that the most valuable thing that…

I am a 10x engineer. I have the awesome capability to show you that a project is going to cost 10x the time/budget, and why you don’t need it, and should probably focus on the obvious 1x idea.

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#43

Post by bovermyer »

"10x engineer," in my experience, is typified by "hyper-focused engineer who works 16 hour days 7 days a week and is the darling of upper management."

In my entire career (spanning 20 years by the year, 16 years of active time), I've only met one engineer who astonished me with his prodigious amount of _correct and clean_ output. But the downside was that engineering was his entire life; you couldn't hang out with him, because all he ever wanted to talk about was engineering.

There's a tradeoff for that kind of output.

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#44

Post by austin-cheney »

* Teaching me SQL

* Providing us the training and paying for a cloud vendor certification

* It’s a small company so team discusses all major tactical decisions

* Providing me the opportunity to implement and document a new but super fast approach to architecture that I have developed over the past three years in a personal project

* This is only the second time in my career that I am engaged all day (been in the corporate world nearly 20 years). In prior jobs I went to meetings and maybe did 1 hour of work a day. That was either because task assignment was in competent or because they were not training developers which me a 10x developer only because I do work on personal projects outside the office

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#45

Post by danwee »

I usually don't like the trainings companies provide to engineers to make them grow. The trainings are focused 100% on the tools the company is using (makes sense), but I may not want to learn the hype tools my company is using at the moment, but instead focus on more long-term useful knowledge. For instance:

- my company is using DataDog and they offer us training on that. Well I don't care much about DataDog; I care more about how metrics work and what's behind the curtains (e.g., time-series dbs). Chances are that DataDog will be gone soon or, most probably, it won't be used when I switch companies. So, I prefer to focus on non-hype stuff

- same for specific frameworks we use at work. In one of my past companies we were using Laravel. They offered us training on Laravel... but I just couldn't care less. I don't use Laravel anymore (not even PHP). I would have preferred trainings on more agnostic stuff like architecture/design/algorithms

And like this, tons of similar examples. So, the way I become a better engineer is by studying by myself mostly during working hours but also a bit during my own free time. I read "the classics" (i.e., books every software engineer should read), I keep myself updated with releveant technologies and work on personal projects to solidify my knowledge. It's a win-win for both myself and my current company (even if my company doesn't realize).

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#46

Post by bjornsing »

zkirill wrote: post #28

I always thought the term "10x engineer" was only used in job ads. Nobody I know refers to themselves (or even thinks of themselves) as a "?x engineer", unless it's for marketing purposes in which case you might as well put 100x for good measure. The "best" engineer in the world would probably tell you that "the only thing that they know is that they know nothing". They may also say that the most valuable thing that…

I don’t mind calling myself a 10x engineer, but it’s of course better when others do so. ;)

Honestly I’m quite tired of this false humility norm. Seems to me it’s mostly about redistributing the fruits of common labors from those that focus on the craft and try to improve their productivity, towards the socially focused “humility experts”. I much prefer working with cocky 10x engineers rather than these humility policing 1x ones…

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#47

Post by sweaty »

ramraj07 wrote: post #37
sweaty wrote: post #34

I've been called a 10xer before, and I'm the only one in my company currently at that level. We're a data company first and software second. Trainings don't work. What does work is pair programming but you have to do this effectively. Say you have 3 buckets, frontend, backend and infrastructure. Ideally, you want to pair someone who has very full infrastructure and backend buckets, with someone who has an overflowing…

You said a lot of things, many I agree and have experienced as well, but never answered OP. How do you create 10x engineers? Well you can’t. And you probably shouldn’t try. If you’re 10x somewhere it means you’re at a place with a significant (I.e. 10x) skills mismatch between people in the team. It’s not fun for anyone, the company and team become too dependent on you, and you skew any ability to project how long wo…

But that is the answer, in that there is no answer :) And agreed, it is always a mismatch. But I do think that with what I said, that'd be the foundation to create a 10x engineer. That's how I became one, because I was matched with people of that skill level and got to work directly together with them for years. And if I'm 10x by my company's standards, go figure how good those guys were ;)

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#48

Post by schwartzworld »

zkirill wrote: post #28

I always thought the term "10x engineer" was only used in job ads. Nobody I know refers to themselves (or even thinks of themselves) as a "?x engineer", unless it's for marketing purposes in which case you might as well put 100x for good measure. The "best" engineer in the world would probably tell you that "the only thing that they know is that they know nothing". They may also say that the most valuable thing that…

A smart 10x engineer would use his special power to do 1/10 the work everyone else does.

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#49

Post by bjornsing »

misja111 wrote: post #38

Becoming a 10x engineer is more about psychology than it is about IT skills. It is about doing the right thing in the right context, about communication and about planning. Put a 10x engineer in a new company where they use different languages and frameworks, and eventually he/she will become a 10x engineer again. So I don't see much benefit in training, what works much better is learning by example. Put junior engin…

Also, there needs to be an incentive to be 10x, or at least not a disincentive (like hordes of 1x:ers seeing “brilliant assholes” everywhere).

Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?

#50

Post by sweaty »

zkirill wrote: post #28

I always thought the term "10x engineer" was only used in job ads. Nobody I know refers to themselves (or even thinks of themselves) as a "?x engineer", unless it's for marketing purposes in which case you might as well put 100x for good measure. The "best" engineer in the world would probably tell you that "the only thing that they know is that they know nothing". They may also say that the most valuable thing that…

> The "best" engineer in the world would probably tell you that "the only thing that they know is that they know nothing"

This just tells me that the engineer in question is very good, but also has imposter syndrome.

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