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The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

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Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#71

Post by adamtj »

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…

I think the core of the argument is that most software problems are becoming easier, which means the talents of the very best just aren't applicable or especially useful.

If something is easy enough, anybody can do it, and do it nearly as well and as fast as the best. For example, nobody can flip burgers 10x faster than average. Maybe 2x, but not 10x.

If something is difficult, then many people won't be able to do it at all. Most of the rest may only be able to do it very slowly and with great difficulty. The very best will make it look easy, even though it's not.

When something becomes 10 times easier, that doesn't mean the best become 10 times better or faster at it. They may become a little faster, but the real gains are at the low end: The average and worst performers become significantly better. Further, many people who just can't do the thing become able to accomplish it.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#72

Post by the_af »

eldavido wrote: post #18

This has always been the case. Software people in the 70s and 80s already had the distinction between "systems" and "application" programmers -- the former understood to be concerned with making the pipes and plumbing, vs. the applications guys concerned with the end users. Applications have always been like legos. I work as a systems developer but often do consulting projects as an application developer, and it's a…

I see the overall point you're making, but it's not true programming applications is always (or even often) like building with Lego pieces. It's just that many of us have to write mindless web apps which mostly consist of CRUDs. Those definitely are like working with Lego.

CS, algorithms, pointers, recursion, numerical stability, etc, etc, are all alive and well in the world of applications programming. Just not in the world of run-of-the-mill CRUDs.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#73

Post by morgante »

coldtea wrote: post #65
morgante wrote: post #27

This article is wildly off base, particularly when you look at the examples the article cites. WhatsApp was able to scale to so many users while keeping the engineering team small precisely because they hired great engineers who wrote an extremely efficient system in Erlang. (Does he think commodity coders know Erlang? Really!?) They heavily tuned their architecture and built efficient paradigms which kept developer…

> WhatsApp was able to scale to so many users while keeping the engineering team small precisely because they hired great engineers who wrote an extremely efficient system in Erlang. They heavily tuned their architecture and build efficient paradigms which kept developer productivity & performance from degrading as their user base grew. [1] Commodity engineers don't write that sort of code. The problem is they did it…

> The problem is they did it with only a few (16?) "great engineers". That's the premise of the article -- our world today might need 100,000 great engineers to solve great problems. Tomorrow 1000 might be enough.

The premise of the article seems to be that we no longer need great engineers at all. Or that they only need to work at infrastructure companies (not application companies like WhatsApp). The very example he chose shows that's empirically untrue.

The fact that a small team of amazing engineers can accomplish huge things (given some ops support) is not new. The original Macintosh team was also tiny.

There's no evidence that we will ever stop needing great engineers, particularly as more and more applications require huge scale while maintaining agility.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#74

Post by eldavido »

the_af wrote: post #72
eldavido wrote: post #18

This has always been the case. Software people in the 70s and 80s already had the distinction between "systems" and "application" programmers -- the former understood to be concerned with making the pipes and plumbing, vs. the applications guys concerned with the end users. Applications have always been like legos. I work as a systems developer but often do consulting projects as an application developer, and it's a…

I see the overall point you're making, but it's not true programming applications is always (or even often) like building with Lego pieces. It's just that many of us have to write mindless web apps which mostly consist of CRUDs. Those definitely are like working with Lego. CS, algorithms, pointers, recursion, numerical stability, etc, etc, are all alive and well in the world of applications programming. Just not in t…

Sure. And to be clear, I in no way think applications is easier. In fact, applications, as they're closer to end-users, have to deal with all kinds of socially-imposed whimsy like people with four names, tax rules, interest rate calculations, and 100 other things that make my head hurt to consider.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#75

Post by menzoic »

eldavido wrote: post #50
jgable wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Specific skills (e.g. working with a certain framework) will go in and out of style, but problem solving will always be in demand. Also, maybe I'm naive, but I just don't see the software-as-legos future as feasible. There will always be the need for customization and ever-more-advanced functionality.

I don't agree. If you spend a few years at university (I have two degrees), you learn things like sorts, automata, proofs, and calculus. On the other hand, most of the junk I deal with day-to-day as a working software developer turns more on my knowledge of tools like Chef/IntelliJ, software libraries (the stdlib of various languages, the Java/.NET BCLs), build systems, git/github, and how to do a proper code review.…

You compare two people who have different skills. Presumably either one could learn the skills of the other. Why choose the one with the easiest skills to learn?

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#76

Post by incision »

Part me wants to agree the picture painted here, but bits like the one below make the whole thing out to be an veiled appeal for more naive investment targets without the myriad complications of engineers.

Basically, they'd like a lazy Susan of people who've done a bunch of leg work on a 'lego' app or website and are ready to accept $50K for 60%, Shark Tank style.

>'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.'

Not exactly.

In keeping with the analogies to traditional infrastructure and trades.

This sort of commoditization of labor allows a certain class of problems to be solved - repeatable, fairly well-understood ones for which there are ready instructions and appropriate 'legos' available.

Providers of these services race to the bottom and have to be kept in check with codes and consumer paid inspections to ensure that their snap-together builds meet barest minimums of safety and sensible design.

In this race to the bottom, implementers don't care and won't pay for better components, just cheaper ones that meet the minimum spec.

There's good reason people loathe calling a plumber or HVAC repairman as much as they love certain tech companies known for their design and engineering.

This is probably fine for money men, but neutral to bad for nearly everybody else.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#77

Post by nilkn »

nickpinkston wrote: post #44

I love how all the top comments here are all devs in denial about this, but it's an inevitability that programming "becomes legos". Don't become the old men guys! As said in the article and below, many products will still require very high-level engineers building without "legos", but the basic webapp kind of stuff probably will be full commodity able to be built by anyone with the motivation to see it through.

At the same time, you've got folks in finance doing Excel spreadsheets all day making six figures.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#78

Post by arach »

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.

I cannot believe that this post by Sam Gerstanzang, a partner, speaks for a16z. I certainly hope it doesn't get much traction internally and there have been a few internal notes explaining to him the number of ways he is wrong.

What I don't understand is how someone who is so obviously wrong about the software craft and isn't even coherent within a short blog post can be a partner at one of the best VC firms. I sincerely hope he's there because of nepotism.

Re: The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer

#80

Post by menzoic »

nickpinkston wrote: post #64
harpastum wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being in denial. It's that this argument has been brought up with every advance in the last 40 years. In the early '70s it was "Programming in C will allow anyone to program and commoditize the industry!". In the later '70s it was "Object-oriented programming allows modules to be created that snap together like legos, commoditizing the industry!". In the '80s-90s it was "Scripting languages like ruby a…

Yea...and it has gotten easier. I'd bet the average level of software dev (writ large) today is lower than 20 years ago because it's getting easier. (Though I'd bet there's probably more great devs today ever because the pool of devs itself is growing and becoming more accessible) Sure, having MS Word doesn't make you a novelist, but Wordpress + plug-ins can let you make your own pretty high-quality news site with ve…

Most Wordpress themes are highly inefficient in regards to load time and bandwidth. There are some great plugins but most are sub par quality in terms of performance and security. All large scale Wordpress deployments are tuned either by in-house engineering staff or http://vip.wordpress.com/
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