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Is something bugging you?

antithesis.com

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Re: Is something bugging you?

#191

Post by JimDabell »

SkyBelow wrote: post #177
JimDabell wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “10x engineer” comes from the observation that there is a 10x difference in productivity between the best and the worst engineers. By saying that you want to be a 1x engineer, you’re saying you want to be the least productive engineer possible. 1x is not the average, 1x is the worst.

Even if this was the origin of the term, it still doesn't make sense because the best engineers can solve problems the worst would never be able to do so. The difference between the best and worst is much more than 10x the worst. Maybe the worst who meets certain minimums at a company, but then the best would also be limited by those willing to work for what the company pays, and I hypothesis that the minimums of the…

It sounds like you disagree with the concept of a 10x engineer then. In which case you should avoid using the term, rather than making up a new definition.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#192

Post by dap »

nlavezzo wrote: post #165
benrutter wrote: post #98

This is a great pitch, and I don't want to come across as negative, but I feel like a statement like "we found all bugs" can only be true with a very narrow definition of bug. The most pernicious, hard-to-find bugs that I've come across have all been around the business logic of an application, rather than it hitting into an error state. I'm thinking of the category where you have something like "a database is curren…

I think the reference to "all the bugs" here is basically that our insanely brutal deterministic testing system was not finding any more bugs after 100's of thousands of runs. Can't prove a negative obviously, but the fact that we'd gotten to that "all green" status gave us a ton of confidence to push forward in feature development, believing we were building on something solid - which, time has shown we were.

Thanks -- that's very clarifying! But isn't this circular? The lack of bugs is used as evidence of the effectiveness of the testing approach, but the testing approach is validated by...not finding any more bugs in the software?

Re: Is something bugging you?

#193

Post by simmerup »

randomdata wrote: post #120
throwitaway222 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one reading this during the hours of 9-5 is a 10x.

Or is. If a 1x puts in an 8 hour day, a 10x only has to put in a 48 minute day. That leaves plenty of time to read this.

That’s a bad take because you’re assuming that developer is capable of replicating that * 10

Re: Is something bugging you?

#194

Post by randomdata »

JimDabell wrote: post #190
randomdata wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you haven't explained it at all. Sackman, Erickson, and Grant found that some developers were able to complete what was effectively a programming contest in a 10th of the time of the slowest participants. This is the origin of the 10x developer idea. You, on the other hand, are claiming that 10x engineers are 10 times more productive than the worst engineers. Completing a programming challenge in a 10th of the…

That was designed as a repeatable experiment, which seems entirely reasonable when you want to conduct a study. Why are you characterising that as “a programming contest”? That seems like an uncharitably distorted way of describing a study. That study also does not exist in isolation: https://www.construx.com/blog/the-origins-of-10x-how-valid-i...

> Why are you characterising that as “a programming contest”?

Because it was? Do you have a better way to repeatedly test performance? And yes, the study's intent was to look at performance, not productivity. It's even right in the title. Not sure where you dreamed up the latter.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#195

Post by adra »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #114
jimbokun wrote: post #35

> The biggest effect was that it gave our tiny engineering team the productivity of a team 50x its size. I feel like the idea of the legendary "10x" developer has been bastardized to just mean workers who work 15 hours a day 6.5 days a week to get something out the door until they burn out. But here's your real 10x (or 50x) productivity. People who implement something very few people even considered or understood to…

No one reading this during the hours of 9-5 is a 10x.

I know it's meant to be funny, but the number of tech people who spend zero time learning about "what's out there", are usually not the most effective developers. You won't find better solutions to existing or even new problems without an interest in industry. Maybe this particular article isn't "industry valuable fair enough", but having zero interest in refining and enhancing your craft beyond the work in front of you is almost guaranteed to end with worse outcomes.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#196

Post by margalabargala »

randomdata wrote: post #146
JimDabell wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “10x engineer” comes from the observation that there is a 10x difference in productivity between the best and the worst engineers. By saying that you want to be a 1x engineer, you’re saying you want to be the least productive engineer possible. 1x is not the average, 1x is the worst.

I'm not sure your math works. What we do know is that the worst engineers provide negative productivity. If 1x is the worst engineer, then let's for the sake of discussion denote x as -1 in order for the product to be negative. Except that means the 10x engineer provides -10 productivity, actually making them the worst engineer. Therein lies a conflict. What we also know is that best engineer has positive productivit…

You're not wrong, but I think you may be treating something as literal math, when it is in fact idiomatic labels used to express trends.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#197

Post by dap »

benrutter wrote: post #98

This is a great pitch, and I don't want to come across as negative, but I feel like a statement like "we found all bugs" can only be true with a very narrow definition of bug. The most pernicious, hard-to-find bugs that I've come across have all been around the business logic of an application, rather than it hitting into an error state. I'm thinking of the category where you have something like "a database is curren…

The best definition I've heard for "bug" is "software not working as documented". Of course, a lot of software is lacking documentation -- and those are doc bugs. But I like this definition because even when the docs are incomplete, the definition guides you to ask: would I really document that the software behaves like this or would I change the behavior [and document that]? It's harder (at least for me) to sweep goofy behavior under the rug.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#198

Post by t-3 »

lukan wrote: post #186
tranceylc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else feel like people follow these sort of industry pop-culture terms a bit too intensely? What I mean is that the existence of the term tends to bring out people trying to figure who that might be, as if it has to be 100% true. I personally think that some people can provide “10x” (arbitrary) the value on occasion, like the low hanging fruit you said. I also believe some people are slightly more skilled…

"Does anyone else feel like people follow these sort of industry pop-culture terms a bit too intensely? " Agreed, there is too much effort going into the "superstars" theme, but there are definitely people who get 10x done in the same time as others.

Yep. No matter what you're doing, some people are more productive than others. Often it's a matter of experience and practice, sometimes ability to focus, sometimes motivation, rarely it's a lack or surplus of inherent ability. Using people effectively in the context of a team all depends on the skill of the manager though.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#199

Post by mamidon »

I can see how determinism can be achieved (not easy, but possible), and I can see how describing a few important system invariants can match 100's or 1000's of hand rolled tests, but I'm having a hard time understanding how it's possible to intelligently explore the inputs to generate.

e.g. if I wrote a compiler, how would Antithesis generate mostly valid source code for it? Simply fuzzing utf8 inputs wouldn't get very far.

Re: Is something bugging you?

#200

Post by sebastianz »

randomdata wrote: post #120
throwitaway222 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one reading this during the hours of 9-5 is a 10x.

Or is. If a 1x puts in an 8 hour day, a 10x only has to put in a 48 minute day. That leaves plenty of time to read this.

His point is that smart and productive people are generally hard working, focused and diligent, which is how they get to be so experienced and productive.

Hence not wasting time on social networks.

> a 10x only has to put in a 48 minute day

Nobody would call this person "10x".

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