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How to be a -10x Engineer

taylor.town

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Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#131

Post by articsputnik »

In that context, I love giving complete responsibility to a small, integrated team of designers and programmers. They define their tasks, adjust the scope, and work together to build vertical slices of the product one at a time. This completely differs from other methodologies, where managers chop up the work and programmers act like ticket-takers.

Instead of having 10x engineers, make the team 10x. Shape Up (https://basecamp.com/shapeup/0.3-chapter-01#making-teams-res...) by Basecamp is the best resource I've seen on that topic.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#132

Post by steveBK123 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #119
flippinburgers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a balance but yeah it isn't good if no record of "where we are" exists.

Yes but I think people overestimate how automatable this actually is. Where we are context depends on if the audience is - * The next developer to pick up the task where you left off * Your technical lead asking for update * Your manager needing an update for his manager * Product management wanting to know where we are on some feature * End users wanting to know when the bug fix / feature they asked for will be in t…

And remember, all of the above is a symptom of being in an organization where someone more important than you says "I don't have time to look at , tell me what the status of is".

Fixing this from the bottom up is better accomplished via updating ones resume & LinkedIn profile.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#133

Post by goodpoint »

surprisetalk wrote: post #34
d--b wrote: post #21

A lot of toxic negativity in that post. Sure bad engineers exist, but you know what is even worse than the -10x engineer: the contagious jerk. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/studies-being-a-jerk-is... Yep being an asshole spreads like a disease within organizations. Avoid these guys like the plague.

Author here. I don't want to empower jerks. Anything particular I should change? Or is the structure of the essay too cynical overall?

I'm surprised you don't stress more on the habit of always picking the popular google-scale tools even for in smaller companies. Or the language or framework of the month lol.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#134

Post by surprisetalk »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #99
BoneZone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. For me this outlines the caveats and pitfalls of software development and management. There is real truth to some of the authors points showing real paths that emerge naturally. If you're going to gaslight him by inferring anyone who is critical is an asshole, maybe you should ask yourself why you're taking the article so personally...

I agree with most of the author’s points, but the post is overly negative in my opinion. It’s blaming other people for the problems instead of digging into why these problems come up in the first place. Why do managers waste time with busywork? They need insight into the process. If you look to criticize without understanding you’ll always find plenty of material to blog about, but you’ll just create new problems and…

> The author probably thinks these issues are caused by bad people instead of bad processes

Author here.

This is an excellent way to phrase a subtle point that I couldn't figure out how to fit in the piece.

I think that -10x engineering is not someone you are, but something you do. And even more commonly, it's something that organizations do for periods of time.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#135

Post by francisofascii »

rc_mob wrote: post #127

From my experience the lowest productivity engineers are the ones that just never talk. I understand being an introvert but we all chat about things we have passion for. Anyways ive seen so many "programmers" that sit silently in meetings and also just do not produce good code. Usually they produce bad code that I have to revert.

That description sounds more like a 0x or -1x engineer. Consider yourself fortunate to having never worked with someone who is closer to -10x.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#136

Post by d23 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #34
d--b wrote: post #21

A lot of toxic negativity in that post. Sure bad engineers exist, but you know what is even worse than the -10x engineer: the contagious jerk. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/studies-being-a-jerk-is... Yep being an asshole spreads like a disease within organizations. Avoid these guys like the plague.

Author here. I don't want to empower jerks. Anything particular I should change? Or is the structure of the essay too cynical overall?

It's fine. It's clear the purpose is to list a bunch of traits and observations you've made over the years. It's concise. Trying to fluff it up would only make it less readable.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#138

Post by perceptronas »

mkl95 wrote: post #74

> Make undebuggable programs. Plaster layers of abstraction over everything. Write spaghetti code. Make everything sensitive to initial conditions. Avoid pure functions. Use dependencies liberally. Say “it works on my machine” whenever possible. A lot of legacy software is like this. I wonder how many billions it costs the economy per year.

Its extremely hard to argue for debuggability. I always try to prioritize how easy is it to test the said feature and understand it. However, during reviews of other engineers PR, I am always met with criticism that there is no need. "Instead of localhost, this can be tested on staging" and etc.

Re: How to be a -10x Engineer

#140

Post by d23 »

d--b wrote: post #123
surprisetalk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I don't want to empower jerks. Anything particular I should change? Or is the structure of the essay too cynical overall?

It's brutal. You want to sound like an Office Space character. But in Office Space, there is no mission, there is no good engineering to do. So all the douche-y people who get in the way of work are more pityful than enemies. But here, you believe in good engineering yourself, and the -10x engineer you encounter get under your skin. So you're venting online about why you hate their guts (in a funny way, for sure, but…

There's a lot of projection going on here, as far as I can tell. The author is about as neutral as possible in describing these traits / behaviors. None of these traits are mutually exclusive with being a jerk, and in my experience, more often than not the people that exhibit these traits tend to also be jerks to compensate for their inability to get high quality work done!
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