131–140 of 419 posts
It's really hard for me to take this author seriously after his "Willingness to look stupid" post that went viral here about a month ago. The entire post was ridden with a superiority complex about how he's willing to look stupid, but never willing to explain his actions that make him look stupid. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946490
Earlier quoted context omitted.
LoC is a terrible metric - did they count the lines other engineers removed? I was half of a very productive duo on a greenfield project subsystem - a project I joined midway: my partner wrote a lot of code, I estimate ~70% of final lines in the code base were his. What the LoC count won't tell you is all the refactoring, deletion, tests and error handling code I had to add, because his code only worked for the happy…
When the numbers are large enough, the details don't matter much. Maybe he is really only a 250x engineer? A 100x engineer? It doesn't change the fact that without him no product would have been delivered.
if you deliver the product only by taking shortcuts that impede other engineers you do not get credit for ‘delivering’ the product.
having been the next engineer to come along, this attitude drives me up a wall.
Realizing this is important for retention. It's damaging when upper management falsely thinks people are interchangeble, which is a common view among non-technical types and HR. This leads to 10x people feeling underappreciated and resentful, ultimately causing them to resign for higher compensation and more appreciation elsewhere. It can literally destroy small companies if an individual's unique contribution isn't…
Gelled teams are an actual thing though. A good team can be better at something than all it's seperate members.
I am a security engineer but have been a business leader from time to time. Business leaders often need to plan around dates- eg ”should we spend $50k announcing at conference Y in month Z, or should we wait until month A?” “Our competition just launched; will we be able to launch this quarter (the board wants to know, and we have to report material financial impact items quarterly or face SEC fines)?” Every team I h…
It'll take more time and result will not be as clean.
Basically learn from older engineering disciplines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s incredibly reductionist to think that productivity is inherent to an individual when the world is never that simple and there are always a lot of factors involved in any outcome. Even the people that you think are “10xers” will stumble under the right circumstances, and the converse is also true about the people you think are incompetent. It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be…
> It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be said—I’m sure you have the freedom to say that to people if you’re prepared for the consequences. When people say that "you aren't allowed to say" something, they don't mean the government uses magical mind control rays to prevent your mouth from physically producing the words. "Consequences" are the mechanism by which speech is prohibited i…
I am a security engineer but have been a business leader from time to time. Business leaders often need to plan around dates- eg ”should we spend $50k announcing at conference Y in month Z, or should we wait until month A?” “Our competition just launched; will we be able to launch this quarter (the board wants to know, and we have to report material financial impact items quarterly or face SEC fines)?” Every team I h…
> So show me a methodology that mere mortals can implement successfully. Commit to a deliverable or a deadline, but never both.
Oh and change restrictions start in six weeks, don’t forget that. BTW what’s your team’s vacation schedule looking like? We only get to roll over 7 days this year, hopefully they took some this summer haha!
Ok so anyway really would like some estimate that i can take back to product, you thinking January? Maybe get something up in test that they can kick around in what, a month?”
Etc etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be said—I’m sure you have the freedom to say that to people if you’re prepared for the consequences. When people say that "you aren't allowed to say" something, they don't mean the government uses magical mind control rays to prevent your mouth from physically producing the words. "Consequences" are the mechanism by which speech is prohibited i…
I mean, I get your point about the government but now you’re just complaining about how being insensitive to other people has the consequence of them fighting back.
I am a security engineer but have been a business leader from time to time. Business leaders often need to plan around dates- eg ”should we spend $50k announcing at conference Y in month Z, or should we wait until month A?” “Our competition just launched; will we be able to launch this quarter (the board wants to know, and we have to report material financial impact items quarterly or face SEC fines)?” Every team I h…
This mentality of thinking is exactly the problem, I think. You want a tool that can solve an entire class of problems. We are telling you that no such tool can exist to do what you want, the problem and the tools don't work that way. Each project should be planned as a snowflake. Each project is different. Each team is unique. Every individual performs differently, even one day to the next. Stop looking for this too…
Damn right!
>We are telling you that no such tool can exist to do what you want
This is exactly right and is the biggest problem with "Management" types. They want a "cookie cutter methodology" to solve all their problems so they can be spared thinking through each one. Hence the various "Management" fads and buzzwords.
The core of the solution lies with the Individual; understand their needs, wants, motivations, practice "Empathetic Management" and you will be successful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s incredibly reductionist to think that productivity is inherent to an individual when the world is never that simple and there are always a lot of factors involved in any outcome. Even the people that you think are “10xers” will stumble under the right circumstances, and the converse is also true about the people you think are incompetent. It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be…
> Even the people that you think are “10xers” will stumble under the right circumstances, and the converse is also true about the people you think are incompetent. Right, the 10x engineer isn't benching 10x more than you or running 10x faster than you, nobody thinks that 10x engineer means 10x at every possible task.