The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#1

Post by mycodebreaks » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer
a16z.com

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#2

Post by dman » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

I would like to think there will always be a frontier, and there will always be people driven by their curiosity to seek the frontier out. Some of them will be called 10x engineers, some visionaries, some pioneers.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#3

Post by ojbyrne » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:36 PM UTC

This seems to be pretty specious reasoning which has at its heart the principle that acquisitions are the final goal, not a functioning enterprise. I think the acquiring companies would tend to disagree.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#4

Post by mdgrech23 » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

This article fails to mention that our expectations for software have increased. We expect more from apps than ever before. This has lead to new specialities such as Front End Engineers and UX staff. Surely we can build more with less with current technologies as compared to the past but we also expect more. If our expectations outpace technological improvements this could lead to spending more time/money on developing apps.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#5

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

This seems to be ignoring entire classes of software. I can't imagine the enterprise development world will be taken over with easy to snap together software packages any time soon.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#6

Post by rahimnathwani » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

The article suggests that, as super-human programmers build ever-better platforms/languages/tools, those building apps/whatever on top of those will be less differentiated in terms of programming ability, because it will be so easy to develop stuff anyway.

I'm not sure this is true. Are 10x programmers really 10x because they can grapple with technology stacks, or because they're really smart and experienced at problem solving? Programming will always be about problem solving, no matter how easy you make the final implementation of the design.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#7

Post by mikeryan » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

Its funny I've always thought that Twitter could really be run by 100 folks (heck I've said 40) and be hugely profitable and it a lot of ways more efficient. Instead they've got 2300 employees to allow folks stream 140 character tweets.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#8

Post by frozenport » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

mdgrech23 wrote: post #4

This article fails to mention that our expectations for software have increased. We expect more from apps than ever before. This has lead to new specialities such as Front End Engineers and UX staff. Surely we can build more with less with current technologies as compared to the past but we also expect more. If our expectations outpace technological improvements this could lead to spending more time/money on developi…

Consider Bootstrap and the uniformity it offers in GUIs with little effort.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#9

Post by chillacy » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

It's already happening. There's an incredible difference (in personality, tooling, skills) between your typical full-stack web developer and kernel programmer, as there is between the kernel programmer and chip designer. They're each difficult in their own way, but one definitely has a lower barrier of entry.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#10

Post by samg » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #5

This seems to be ignoring entire classes of software. I can't imagine the enterprise development world will be taken over with easy to snap together software packages any time soon.

Why do you think enterprise development is different?