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Busting the 10x software engineer myth

swarmia.com

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Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#131

Post by sumtechguy »

BMFXX wrote: post #56
goldcd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a few developers who are great - people who get bored of waiting so just build it themselves one evening whilst everybody's arguing over funding/recruiting the team we thought was needed. Within a team, I think 'greatness' comes in all manner of different forms, all of which are needed. The person who holds the whole software model in their head, and can rattle off the precise changes required to imp…

Oof, sadly this sounds like me... It's hard to delegate, and even harder to trust that it's done correctly. I know this will be my undoing someday, it also drives me insane because it puts extra pressure on myself... Any suggestions? (Short of let people do it).

Realize that others are at other points in their lives. That just because the code does not look the exact way you would write it does not mean it is not bad/wrong. There is always one more refactor to do. There is always more bug. Worry about what you can do. Help others when they need it (not when you want to, this is tricky to not become the knowitall guy).

Delegating is knowing that you need to let go and ingest the fact that they are there to help. Mistakes happen and will happen. But that is part of learning for you and them. If they are not learning that is a different issue. Do not worry about it. You will learn what you can put them on better. But once they learn something they can turn around and help you learn. They can take care of it and you do not have to worry. Delegation is trust. Learning to trust is learning to 'let go' and being open to being 'hurt'. But also being willing to forgive and forget.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#132

Post by namdnay »

z3t4 wrote: post #99
bjourne wrote: post #97

This article is pure clickbait written to sell in this stupid Swarmia startup. :) 10x developers exist just like 10x musicians, 10x marathon runners, or 10x chess players exist. It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. Perhaps I'd never produce anything great so that musician would be infinitely better at it than me. Great chess players beat amateurs at…

The problem is that you can't measure a developer. So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better. If you add a bench-mark like how many LOC is written per day, most will exceed at that benchmark, but the overall quality will go down.

You can't "measure" a session musician either. And yet some of them take hundreds of dollars an hour to be there for a recording, so clearly there is a way to know

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#133

Post by y4mi »

mgkimsal wrote: post #125
z3t4 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can't measure a developer. So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better. If you add a bench-mark like how many LOC is written per day, most will exceed at that benchmark, but the overall quality will go down.

> So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better You can absolutely measure something . I have a colleague going through this right now - he's got... 24 years of experience in software - mostly web - across multiple problem domains/industries. He's now on a web team with someone who's done windows desktop software for 15 years, someone else who graduated from high school 2 years ago and has never worked anywhere be…

That sounds like a senior engineer vs junior engineer experience level.

The term 10x engineer is generally used differently.

Though I guess the reason for terms like that might just be related to how many inexperienced people get senior level jobs.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#134

Post by angelzen »

rualca wrote: post #65
emrah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a myth they exist, but you shouldn't depend on them. It's hard to tell if it's arrogance or reluctance to admit some people are more valuable than others and just allow them to get to a point they prefer to leave than stay. Domain knowledge, institutional knowledge, whatever you wanna call it, takes time to acquire and these kinds of companies are equally reluctant/arrogant to spend enough to hire properly…

> It's hard to tell if it's arrogance or reluctance to admit some people are more valuable than others and just allow them to get to a point they prefer to leave than stay. Stating that a developer is worth 10 times what other developers are worth goes way beyond saying that some people are more valuable than others. We're not talking about junior/medior/senior distinctions. We're talking about 10x. The myths. The lo…

MapReduce. Leveraging lower level abstractions incipient in the early Google datacenter (distributed FS, distributed process executor) and providing a simple but expressive programming model for distributed large scale batch computations. A significant amount of effort went into documenting and exemplifying the usage of the programming model for a large number of use-cases. Chosen to serve thousands of use-cases all across a fast growing company. Developed by 2 people. A fantastic example of '10[00]x engineering', and yet I can't imagine something more antithetic to the 'lone gunman' strawman.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#135

Post by latch »

bjourne wrote: post #97

This article is pure clickbait written to sell in this stupid Swarmia startup. :) 10x developers exist just like 10x musicians, 10x marathon runners, or 10x chess players exist. It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. Perhaps I'd never produce anything great so that musician would be infinitely better at it than me. Great chess players beat amateurs at…

I totally agree, but I think you can use examples closer to home.

Carmack could build a video games which is 100x across a number of metrics (quality, cost, time to deliver) than I could. Still too far? Pick your field, there'll be experts.

You can get even closer to home. After 20 year, I really feel like I'm at least 10x developer across a number of metrics (e.g., value to my employer, amount of complexity I can manage) than I was when I started.

Also, some developers do more harm than good. An employer would literally be better paying them not to do work.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#136

Post by magicalhippo »

dkersten wrote: post #87
garybake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This here. I think the author is confusing what a 10x developer is. I took the 10x dev to mean somebody who may work efficiently but also improves all of the devs around them. Improving yourself by 2x is one thing but improving the team around you by 2x is where you get the 10x.

> the author is confusing what a 10x developer is. Its a subjective definition. You have a different one to the author. sneak has a different definition to you. That's a part of the problem: there's no clear definition and the label "10x developer" means different things to different things. Some of these definitions definitely are a myth. Some are not. But the conversations about it tend to not be that meaningful, b…

My coworker is a beast at churning out working code, but mine is often better abstracted and requires less refactoring to use in the future.

There are features where I spent 5-10x the time he'd do, but my code could then be used to later implement several dozen feature requests in mere minutes rather than hours and days.

Who's better? I'd say we've got different strengths, so depends on what you need to get done.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#137

Post by mgkimsal »

y4mi wrote: post #133
mgkimsal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better You can absolutely measure something . I have a colleague going through this right now - he's got... 24 years of experience in software - mostly web - across multiple problem domains/industries. He's now on a web team with someone who's done windows desktop software for 15 years, someone else who graduated from high school 2 years ago and has never worked anywhere be…

That sounds like a senior engineer vs junior engineer experience level. The term 10x engineer is generally used differently. Though I guess the reason for terms like that might just be related to how many inexperienced people get senior level jobs.

The comment I was replying to was "The problem is that you can't measure a developer."

You can measure. One way you measure is years of experience. Another can be time to deliver against a spec. Another can be number/size of defects. Another can be time to remedy defects.

Yes, it's "junior vs senior", but their management is explicitly stating "everyone's experience is relevant, and everyone has an equal voice" and so on. No, the person who has literally never contributed to a production codebase should not have an equal say in the technology stack choice. Their voice is not 'equal' to someone who has delivered consistently for 2 decades.

And... yes, it's largely bad management. He's looking to move. They had rocky mgt for... a year before, but it was tolerable. Leadership changed and my colleague stuck around the last few months to see if things would get better, but they're getting worse.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#138

Post by RHSman2 »

namdnay wrote: post #132
z3t4 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can't measure a developer. So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better. If you add a bench-mark like how many LOC is written per day, most will exceed at that benchmark, but the overall quality will go down.

You can't "measure" a session musician either. And yet some of them take hundreds of dollars an hour to be there for a recording, so clearly there is a way to know

If a session musician charges by the hour you know they aren’t good OR haven’t been recognized yet. Day rates.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#139

Post by m12k »

dijit wrote: post #3

I know "10x engineers" exist; some people are fakes and put forward things that look like they have high impact but are actually a bit shoddy. Some people like to be present and suck up. But some people really do just work hard, smart and have deep passion for what they're doing- and importantly: pride, which makes the quality of the content great too. Some of the best engineers I know "visit" bits of code or infrast…

On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as possible, even if it meant racking up massive technical debt. By doing this, they effectively did produce 10x as much in the eyes of management, and got promoted and rewarded in kind. The technical debt they racked up then got paid by everyone else that had to go in and make their prototype maintainable while they were already off to the next high-profile project. Not only did they not have to stay and cover the cheques they wrote, they also managed to lower the effectiveness of everyone else, lowering the baseline they got compared against, so they could be 10x instead of just 5x.
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