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The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

a16z.com

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Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#31

Post by ardit33 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #13

> As software becomes a high-impact, low-skill trade, we decouple the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people. It's one thing to know that capital secretly delights over the commoditization of labor. It's quite another to watch a16z gush so openly about a future where we can be tossed aside.

Great programmers move up the chain as well. If your skills are not being valued by your company as it is setup in a way that it needs only average engineers, you can move on and create your own company now.

If you are a great engineer, then you are a walking capital by yourself.

If somebody with an idea, and no skills, hires you, then it probably needs at least 300-500k (even for a smallish prototype) to make it happen. If you are a full stack engineer, and pair up with a buddy, you can make it happen, with a lot less. If you are a great engineer, you are the capital!

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#32

Post by nsxwolf »

samg wrote: post #10
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?

Because enterprises are infinitely complex and diverse and there will never be a single piece of software that can run all the businesses in the world with a couple configuration setting tweaks.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#34

Post by coldtea »

jjoonathan wrote: post #13

> As software becomes a high-impact, low-skill trade, we decouple the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people. It's one thing to know that capital secretly delights over the commoditization of labor. It's quite another to watch a16z gush so openly about a future where we can be tossed aside.

That.

Of course there's an underlying BS premise that "in that wonderful future humanity would be freed from the burden of non-essential programming work, and would move on to higher level problem solving" -- but in real life they could not care less if humanity actually moves forward or just rich companies have to pay less while millions suffer and fall from middle class.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#35

Post by jjoonathan »

nsxwolf wrote: post #20
jjoonathan wrote: post #13

> As software becomes a high-impact, low-skill trade, we decouple the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people. It's one thing to know that capital secretly delights over the commoditization of labor. It's quite another to watch a16z gush so openly about a future where we can be tossed aside.

It seems this claim has been made forever. COBOL was supposed to make programmers unnecessary. So were rules engines. And code generators and an endless list of other technologies.

I agree that Gerstenzang is premature. But it'll happen eventually. If it doesn't happen by making programming easy it will happen by flooding the industry with enough competent programmers to have the same effect (depressed wages, high unemployment, etc). See: non-software engineering occupations (excepting doctors, who have managed to turn the risks inherent in their profession into a legally mandated union).

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

harpastum wrote: post #15

I'm failing to follow the logic here. The initial point is that "The potential impact of the lone software engineer is soaring". However, the author then takes that to mean that engineers will be less valuable in the future? This analogy seems apt to me, and I think it makes the logical leap more obvious: Fifty years ago, if you wanted to design a new model of car, you had to get plywood and clay, and work hundreds o…

> A company will come out with a new car model simply by snapping design-legos together.

They'll use a combination of A/B testing and genetic algorithms to reach an equilibrium between what customers want and what physics will allow.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#37

Post by goronbjorn »

The implications of this are pretty interesting. People will only use software that solves actual problems they have. Software development is now more accessible to more people because of all these frameworks and tools. It only follows that the people most familiar with actual problems will be able to create the most used software, and those people aren't necessarily going to be software engineers by trade. The question "How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a one-engineer startup?" is crazy, but likely not too far in the future, but even more interestingly, "How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a zero-engineer startup?" might not be that far off either.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#38

Post by kabdib »

jjoonathan wrote: post #35
nsxwolf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems this claim has been made forever. COBOL was supposed to make programmers unnecessary. So were rules engines. And code generators and an endless list of other technologies.

I agree that Gerstenzang is premature. But it'll happen eventually. If it doesn't happen by making programming easy it will happen by flooding the industry with enough competent programmers to have the same effect (depressed wages, high unemployment, etc). See: non-software engineering occupations (excepting doctors, who have managed to turn the risks inherent in their profession into a legally mandated union).

Human-equivalent AI has always been 30 years out . . . 20 years if you don't know the field. :-)

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#39

Post by spamizbad »

The author makes some good observations but I feel he is undervaluing post-foundation engineering skills.

Sometimes the reason why certain companies end up with so many engineers due to the lack of those so-called "10x engineers" -- specifically, those who know how to build robust, scalable systems while coordinating with the needs of product development.

I know some of the engineers who have worked for those lean, highly scaled shops and I know for a fact that they know their shit extremely well - and they've poured hundreds of hours into carefully scaling their infrastructure. They could not be replaced by your average full-stack engineer off the street as they'd immediately be in over their head and would have to spend the next few years learning all the hard-won knowledge of the more experienced engineer.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#40

Post by jamespitts »

Gerstenzang is watching the latest complexification of small shops into huge industries and projecting it onto the entire field. This is very silly reasoning and it ignores history.

Transported back in time, he could say the same thing watching the small, passionate computer shops of the 1970s becoming huge organizations as customer money and investment capital flow in, as more engineers are hired, as efficiencies and industry-wide standardization set in. He could say that the emergence of low-skill labor in the mature industry was the end of engineering, that there was nothing more to do.

But there will always be a new layer to this game. Once the previous layer has walked its arc from hobbyist to small shops to huge industries and maturity, there emerges a ragtag group that takes advantage of the new environment.

Gerstenzang does identify and appreciate this crucial factor, he just seems to view it as an endpoint and not a beginning.

Of course, an AI that can do real, human-level engineering might throw my own entire line of reasoning out of the window.

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