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10x (engineer, context) pairs
11–20 of 132 posts
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#12I've talked to some of these people in depth and analyzed them.
The difference with these people is incredible lack of brain fog. Everything is utterly clear for them. If you're a 10xer then this post characterizes the difference between you and others. It's not that other people are stupider, but there's a sort of brain fog that prevents people from seeing a solution. We sort of have to wander through a fog and look things up to arrive at a solution.
What you will find is that this brain fog is independent of creativity. There are many 10xers who aren't that creative.
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#13Yeah, there are plenty of fake 10x engineers out there, or temporary 10x-ers who are only doing well because of their working environment. But I have worked with a few people who were clear 10x engineers. Everything they worked on they did better and faster and cleaner. They could often solve problems that other skilled people couldn't even get started on. Yes, they usually picked important and impactful things to wo…
Do they also get paid 10x?
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#14They must exist. If IQ can range from 80 to 200 and IQ correlates with programming ability then of course there are engineers out there at the far end of the spectrum.
this is a pretty weak statement. even given such a correlation, what is the scale? how sensitive does programming skill need to be related to IQ to make a 10x engineer sufficiently probable given the population.
the real problem though is that IQ and 'programming ability' aren't really well defined.
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#15A 2nd edition of Peopleware summarises it; the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it's comparing the best to the worst; NOT best to median. It's also not about programming specifically; it's simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance.
The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on the best outperforming the median by a factor of 2.5. This of course indicates that a median developer, middle of the pack, is a 4x developer. Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you've got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we're all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.
Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources. [ "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#16I hate that term "10x", because it assumes there is a known quantifiable metric to find these people. (A skepticism appreciated in this article, though I don't know that it really comes to a clear conclusion either on the "reality".)
There are definitely people of a certain caliber who can solve problems others cannot, or way faster, from soup to nuts.
But when it comes to a large preexisting code base, solving prohlems in code can be done in different valid ways, which reflects our thinking patterns. Each of these ways then has corollaries about how the next set of problems is better solved in it. When one developer who has been with the company longer, given more clout for some reason, lucked out to be the green fields guy, or maybe really was somewhat better than the others gets to have his thinking pattern become the first principles of the major feature set, he may seem like he's 10x, but I'm not so sure with a different set of initial conditions that it would be so. And I think a lot of the measurements are taken on code bases in this gray area: not solving code interview problems.
Then there's the question of speed to full execution vs. maintainability, quality of the solution to deal with the next set of business demands, etc... I'm just not so sure it's that easily measurable.
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#17They must exist. If IQ can range from 80 to 200 and IQ correlates with programming ability then of course there are engineers out there at the far end of the spectrum.
this is a pretty weak statement. even given such a correlation, what is the scale? how sensitive does programming skill need to be related to IQ to make a 10x engineer sufficiently probable given the population. the real problem though is that IQ and 'programming ability' aren't really well defined.
Also the IQ is a pretty narrow measurement for a persons abilities. It might map to 'logical thinking ability' which probably would be related to programming skills. But what if that person has no social skills whatsoever?
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#18There are 10x just because there are -10
Worked with one and couldnt help him
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#19There are talented engineers all over the place.
But, the thing that makes "10x" engineers is rarely their own work, its mostly luck of being in the right place at the right time. The big problem is that most people cannot reliably differentiate a "10x" engineer from a gobshite.
The reason why the "myth" is so tedious is that people mistake volume(of code/self aggrandising/speaking in meetings) for being _good_. Just because someone ported code from one language to another, doesn't mean it was useful to the business, or humanity.
Re: 10x (engineer, context) pairs
#20Why does this 10x meme exist about software engineers and no other profession? It's because the CEOs and VCs who spread this are preying on tech bro macho-ness so they can squeeze as much labor and "productivity" out of us as possible.
Let's stop with this juvenile dick measuring contest. We are not machines that have a speed that can be so easily measured like a new CPU in the bosses computer.