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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?

#51

Post by randomdata »

> I’m interested in how companies create 10x engineers.

How do professional sports clubs create 10x athletes? I expect the answer is that they don't. They seek out 10x athletes who were most likely born with certain qualities that allow them to stand out above the typical player. It would be a lot simpler for them if they could simply choose any person at random, put them through a training program, and output a star athlete but the world does not appear to work that way.

I imagine engineering isn't a whole lot different.

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

#52

Post by bitwize »

Dropping me in the middle of a confusing, convoluted code base and tasking me with finding my own way. lol

Seriously, though, even if the code itself has lots of room for improvement, the product is great and the team is competent and laid back; they trust me to take my time and do the right thing, and aren't breathing down my neck to get features out by end of sprint.

So give me the spaghetti code base with a non-toxic work environment where everybody is dedicated to incrementally fixing and improving it, any day.

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

#53

Post by Maxburn »

This is currently my top concerns with my career/job.

Biggest obstacle; time/energy. 40 hours with 10 hours a day invested in the job leave me with zero motivation to further do training. Risking burnout here, I need to get away.

My employer current and past has no problem teaching me what I need to know to do my present job but zero involved in progression, that's 100% on me. Obviously that's their prerogative. They all do generally pay for things I take electively, I just need to figure out what I want to do and figure out when to do it.

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

#54

Post by HPsquared »

hu3 wrote: post #39
ramblerman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term doesn't come from people calling themselves 10x engineers. It was from a study that showed vast differences in performance across software engineers, up to 10x. The study has been criticized somewhat since then but I think the critics miss the point. Regardless if it is 2x or 10x, or somewhere in between, these differences do exist.

I've seen -1x engineers too (and probably have been one).

I think the -10x engineer is more common, and therefore this type has has more overall impact, than the +10x type.

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

#56

Post by blowski »

ramblerman wrote: post #36
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 term doesn't come from people calling themselves 10x engineers. It was from a study that showed vast differences in performance across software engineers, up to 10x. The study has been criticized somewhat since then but I think the critics miss the point. Regardless if it is 2x or 10x, or somewhere in between, these differences do exist.

The suits seem to think it's about how quick they type or how focused they are, but this is of course nonsense. Some engineers have such deep knowledge of their tech stack they avoid making costly mistakes, or use features in their stack that would otherwise get re-implemented in the codebase. This can make them more like 100x developers.

For example, we had slow query performance in Postgres. I (a 1x engineer) couldn't optimise the query, so I suggested building out a caching layer, with an estimate of 2-3 weeks. My colleague (a 10x engineer) used a window function that took about an hour.

Perhaps from their perspective, I'm a -10x engineer.

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

#57

Post by randomdata »

schwartzworld wrote: post #48
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.

As a dumb 10x engineer, I once tried being on the job 1/10th the hours of my colleagues and I still ended up outproducing them by an order of magnitude. I failed to account for the fact that they waste a lot of time doing unrelated tasks, like meetings, leaving only a fraction of their day to get anything done.

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

#58

Post by OJFord »

danwee wrote: post #45

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 car…

I agree; I think we can use others but we're 'recommended' to use Udemy, which seems to me like a cross between the worst of Youtube scream faces et al. and some kind of visa/language/entrance exam cram school. And yes, it's all really specific Here's how to point and click in the AWS (or whatever) console sort of stuff.

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

#59

Post by paulcole »

ramblerman wrote: post #36
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 term doesn't come from people calling themselves 10x engineers. It was from a study that showed vast differences in performance across software engineers, up to 10x. The study has been criticized somewhat since then but I think the critics miss the point. Regardless if it is 2x or 10x, or somewhere in between, these differences do exist.

> It was from a study

In case anybody is curious, here’s the study from 1968:

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/481/readings/productivit...

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

#60

Post by arvindamirtaa »

By having no pure managers.

Everyone who is a manager actively makes independent contributions for a not-insignificant portion of their work-week.

So, when we have 1-on-1s with them, we can actually discuss improvement avenues from the same vantage point. Not some spreadsheet pushing manager who has no clue how to measure engineer-productivity or performance.

When they do code reviews, their comments serve as an important learning opportunity, pointing out good practices/conventions, etc.

And finally, when you disagree, it's backed by the validity of your points as 2 engineers, rather than their authority as a manager vs you, their direct report.

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