121–130 of 186 posts
I find it sad that this article leaves out the (admittedly unpublished) research on the 10x phenomena, which is described in Peopleware . They consistently found 10x differences between experienced programmers on the same task, with the same tools. I find that particular research important for three reasons. 1. The 10 fold difference was consistently demonstrated many times. 2. Their research was conducted with profe…
I always thought of 10x engineer not as one that writes 1000 LoC while others write 100 LoC. Rather, as one that says, at an early stage of development "let's do it this way" and the total amount of manyears spent on the project (including maintenance etc.) happens to be 100 rather than 1000, which would be the case if second best approach is pursued.
There's an old programmers joke about this, which I'm not going to try and re-hash in entirety, but basically it's a listing of C++ code that starts off small, then as the programmer gets experience and learns how to do it 'better', the code grows, and grows, and becomes a massive engine of code. Then of course, as the years pass and the engineer gets more experience, the code shrinks and shrinks until it's slightly…
And I digress. Every growing C programmer pass into a stage where he wants to push that Seasoned professional code into the least amount of lines possible. Even if nobody can read the lines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This resonated with me. If the programming tasks are somewhat mechanical/procedural, I am not sure that an exceptional engineer can create 10x as much value as a quite good one. I've never seen it. What I've seen several times are engineers that are able to tackle problems that require so much creativity or skill that giving them to a less qualified engineer would most likely be a waste of everyone's time. In instanc…
I've worked at a lot of places and I clearly see it. It isn't very hard being a "10x" engineer if you look at the average programmer profile : Arrive at 9:30, start out with 30 minutes at the coffee machine. They get mad if you discuss work at this point, or god forbid, talk about interesting algorithms or the like. They expect to be told exactly what to do, or they won't even sit down. If you don't give them an exac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This resonated with me. If the programming tasks are somewhat mechanical/procedural, I am not sure that an exceptional engineer can create 10x as much value as a quite good one. I've never seen it. What I've seen several times are engineers that are able to tackle problems that require so much creativity or skill that giving them to a less qualified engineer would most likely be a waste of everyone's time. In instanc…
I've worked at a lot of places and I clearly see it. It isn't very hard being a "10x" engineer if you look at the average programmer profile : Arrive at 9:30, start out with 30 minutes at the coffee machine. They get mad if you discuss work at this point, or god forbid, talk about interesting algorithms or the like. They expect to be told exactly what to do, or they won't even sit down. If you don't give them an exac…
I find it sad that this article leaves out the (admittedly unpublished) research on the 10x phenomena, which is described in Peopleware . They consistently found 10x differences between experienced programmers on the same task, with the same tools. I find that particular research important for three reasons. 1. The 10 fold difference was consistently demonstrated many times. 2. Their research was conducted with profe…
How, exactly, is one supposed to cite unpublished research?
While the article correctly highlights the lack of rigorous scientific studies on 10x engineers, it also generalizes a bit too much from anecdote to make the argument that they are mythical creatures. A more reasonable argument is that the hypothetical existence of 10x engineers explains little about the productivity of most organizations. Personally, in the couple decades I have been in this business working in coun…
I would argue that the 10x engineer isn't a myth - the myth is that these 10x more productive employees are unique to engineering whereas they can really be found across industries. My starting point is this study by biz school professors (unfortunately paywalled) about how power law distributions define employees in sales, scientific research, entertainment, and really much of skilled labor: http://onlinelibrary.wil…
The key point from that being that it isn't so much that there are A players, and B players, it is that you only get true stars when the role fits the person. (Stated that way because it is easier to fit work to people than vice versa.)
While the article correctly highlights the lack of rigorous scientific studies on 10x engineers, it also generalizes a bit too much from anecdote to make the argument that they are mythical creatures. A more reasonable argument is that the hypothetical existence of 10x engineers explains little about the productivity of most organizations. Personally, in the couple decades I have been in this business working in coun…
I would argue that the 10x engineer isn't a myth - the myth is that these 10x more productive employees are unique to engineering whereas they can really be found across industries. My starting point is this study by biz school professors (unfortunately paywalled) about how power law distributions define employees in sales, scientific research, entertainment, and really much of skilled labor: http://onlinelibrary.wil…
But there are a few things about star performers that I see. They tend to pick up the toughest problems and work on them. Importance to small yet important details. Extreme importance to quality, relevance and impact of the problem has on the real work and business scenarios.
In most ways, it has nothing to do with education, talent or skill. These are really good habits cultivated and sustained over time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This resonated with me. If the programming tasks are somewhat mechanical/procedural, I am not sure that an exceptional engineer can create 10x as much value as a quite good one. I've never seen it. What I've seen several times are engineers that are able to tackle problems that require so much creativity or skill that giving them to a less qualified engineer would most likely be a waste of everyone's time. In instanc…
I've worked at a lot of places and I clearly see it. It isn't very hard being a "10x" engineer if you look at the average programmer profile : Arrive at 9:30, start out with 30 minutes at the coffee machine. They get mad if you discuss work at this point, or god forbid, talk about interesting algorithms or the like. They expect to be told exactly what to do, or they won't even sit down. If you don't give them an exac…