This is one of the grossest series of discussions on work and life that I've ever seen. OP, please stop shilling for corporations. 10x isn't real and training for any end is completely subjective person to person when it comes to technical skills. Do a good job on whatever you do and focus on improving things while accomplishing your goals both in work and personal life.
Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
131–140 of 152 posts
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#132If you want to create 10x engineers, be sure to start with 10x management, a 10x culture, 10x hardware and software resources, and a 10x physical environment. Otherwise, you may not be able to recognize the 10x engineers you have because they won't be able to do 10x work.
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#133We hired some Agile consultants and we’re heavily invested in whatever fad the C Suite read in a management book or HBR this week. I’m expecting awesome results any time now
We also hired some Agile consultants, but a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, it took our C-suite only 3 months to abandon the path of the samurai, erhm, I meant: the path to Agility.
1. The experience
The experience with the consultants was really eye-opening. I will try to describe it below.
Since day one, without having much understanding of how and why we are organized, the consultants started seeing problems, and, oh what coincidence, they had the solutions for every-single-thing that they noticed. They tried to convince us, in no particular order, that our problems were:
- Not following Scrum well enough. That continued until we asked for specifics what part of Scrum we are not following well enough. Surprisingly, they didn't have a ready answer for that and then dropped it.
- Not following SAFE. Scaled Agile For the Enterprise sounded good to our C Suite, but the consultants played themselves by saying they can help us implement it. Our management, just like a gazelle seeing an encroaching predator, avoided the trap.
- Not having Agile coaches on a fulltime payroll. Guess who is an agile coach that can work fulltime for us? That was easy to see through, our C Suite will turn their nose at anything that implies spending more money, so they were naturally immune to that approach.
- Some Miyagi-Do level stuff about communicating better which was a bit fuzzy to me. I guess the Agile coaches have to...communicate better? One can think of that experience as a lesson, and that by communicating badly, surely on purpose, the agile coaches showed us the value of good communication! That is some black-belt level stuff!
2. Cracks begin to show
Things started souring in the 3-rd month, when our management started getting impatient seeing any results in performance. Occupying all your engineering teams for days each week surprisingly had the opposite effect on performance that our C-level hoped for. Then management also got wind of the agile coaches' vision of a "perfect Agile company". According to them, to be Agile (capitalization intentional), each of our teams needed to have:
- A Product Owner
- A Scrum Master (a dedicated person who ONLY does Scrum Master-ing)
- Agile Coach
- Team Lead (responsible for developers' growth)
- Tech Lead (responsible for tech decisions)
- Developers, if the budget allows
While we had only POs and Developers, with rotating Scrum Master role, with one developer being the Tech/Team lead. The prospect of having to hire more people to fill all these Agile roles spooked our C suite to such extent so they completely abandoned the whole Agile idea and let go of the coaches. And just like that, Agility was not spoken about since.
3. The results
Three months later, thousands of $$$ and people spending their time in meetings, the results can speak for themselves:
- we have spent thousands of $$$
- people spent their time in meetings
Based on what you wrote, I think you will see similar exciting results! Onward to Agility!
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 poli…
The problem in my experience is that cocky attitudes have a tendency to spread and it creates a really difficult work environment. You also have to take the Dunning-Kruger effect into account, where most developers aren't able to evaluate themselves correctly. In our work we have a tendency to view thing as "right" and "wrong". I often find people with a few years of experience to be the worst. They have enough exper…
Thanks for this. These are all real problems. But why is the solution that I change my behaviour?
This is exactly what I'm tired of: Because other people are assholes with big frail egos who do not understand their place in the world... I have to change? No, they have to change.
Putting this on me just glosses over and prolongs the real problem: That a lot of people with frail big egos need to realize they are not all that and come down to earth.
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#135I 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.
If you can quickly cope with reality and accept some of the surprising stuff out there, I believe then you can be a 10x. Although this makes the scope 2x and you are just 5x then
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 poli…
> Honestly I’m quite tired of this false humility norm. It is a matter of where you focus your humility. Your accomplishments and deliveries? Absolutely market how they are 10X impacts than the norm. No need to label them "10X" of course. Point out their impacts, and the impact craters on problem spaces label themselves. And thereby you get labeled. How much you rely upon everyone around you and they in turn rely upo…
> Humility is absolutely essential when offering to help others and organically receive help from others to mutually cover everyone's gaps across this functionally infinite canvas of knowledge when taking down objectives together.
I don't know... Humans have a very strong tendency to promote cultural norms that will make them successful. So the socially focused "humility experts" want to make the game about humility. One of their IMHO less ethical moves is to sabotage others who do not want to play their game.
I'm good at writing software and leading software teams. I want the game to be about that: the software. I have no problem what so ever with people being proud of their work. I'm not going to refuse to help someone because I don't think they are humble enough. It would never even cross my mind. It would defeat the purpose: creating great software.
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem in my experience is that cocky attitudes have a tendency to spread and it creates a really difficult work environment. You also have to take the Dunning-Kruger effect into account, where most developers aren't able to evaluate themselves correctly. In our work we have a tendency to view thing as "right" and "wrong". I often find people with a few years of experience to be the worst. They have enough exper…
Thanks for this. These are all real problems. But why is the solution that I change my behaviour? This is exactly what I'm tired of: Because other people are assholes with big frail egos who do not understand their place in the world... I have to change? No, they have to change. Putting this on me just glosses over and prolongs the real problem: That a lot of people with frail big egos need to realize they are not al…
honestly from reading how you write about yourself, I would immediately drop you into the "thinks more highly of themselves than they ought". Bucket. People who call themselves high performing rarely are in my experience. It's the humble people who learn and grow for the joy of it who truly shine.
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#138I 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.
I always go with 11x engineer. It’s even better than 10x
Re: Ask HN: How is your company training you to become a better developer/engineer?
#139Literally nothing. I've never received any kind of fornal training that wasn't my own pursuit outside of work, even if it stood to benefit my employer. I've received more training at Starbucks than any job doing programming. Except for 2 days of Agile training at a corporate gig, which was obviously worthless.