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Individuals Matter

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Re: Individuals Matter

#151

Post by Jensson »

3grdlurker wrote: post #150
Jensson wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can replace an entire team of 10 engineers paid to work on something with a single engineer then that engineer is a 10x engineer, as long as the "10x engineer" didn't originally write the things they work with. That is my definition. > By the end of the day 10x is subjective because teams have different needs. Replacing 10 salaries with 1 salary isn't subjective at all.

Of course it is subjective. This is literally what you said: > That is my definition. You obviously care about optimizing for salary expenses. Most companies have room to hire more people who can do a few things well, so their definition of 10x would be different because they’ll have different expectations of their employees. And really, if your definition of a 10xer is some poor fool who’s willing to take the job of…

> And really, if your definition of a 10xer is some poor fool who’s willing to take the job of 10 people for a single person’s salary, good luck finding someone who wants to spend their lives living that way.

Right, they are paid more. The going rate for good people is around 1.5x up to 10x for exceptional cases.

Edit: And I am not talking about minimizing cost of salaries, I am talking about how much a good software engineer should demand. If he can replace 10 salaries with one then he has a lot of leverage he should use to get a higher salary, if the company isn't paying him then he should leave for a company that appreciates his skills. Plenty of companies pays premium money for premium talent.

Re: Individuals Matter

#152

Post by abbeyj »

andrewflnr wrote: post #42

This is cathartic to read, but I also despair at getting the people who need to hear it to take it seriously. > But many people want the world to be simple This is the source of so much insanity in the world, not just with regard to allocating labor. Details matter, but people who plan "timelines" desperately don't want to hear it. They can go through whole careers without being forced out of the cozy illusion that t…

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong" - H. L. Mencken

Re: Individuals Matter

#153

Post by aidenn0 »

efitz wrote: post #116

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. If all you can do is complain and point out unicorn 500x engineers (yeah try hiring for that characteristic, good luck), then I don’t want to hear it. But if you have a practical idea on how to “solve” planning, then you have my full attention.

TFA doesn't suggest hiring 500x engineers, it suggests taking steps to retain highly effective engineers (and highly effective teams) by not ignoring the evidence that they are not fungible.

Re: Individuals Matter

#154

Post by rramadass »

kasey_junk wrote: post #12

One thing that I always think is undervalued is how variable a single persons output is. A bad day, illness, life changes, etc all dramatically impact a person’s efficiency. Treating even the same persons output as abstract is fraught with issues. One month a rockstar the next a schlub.

This right here is what everybody needs to factor into their planning. For some reason management doesn't seem to understand this. IMO this is one of the main reasons for failure.

As an example; i was once complimented (backhanded?) as "you are brilliant but moody" :-) It really made me realize the variation in my productivity which others had picked up on.

Another example; in one project there was a real smart and knowledgeable programmer who had taken up a lot on his own shoulders. I was skeptical on whether he would be able to deliver on it and had tried to raise it diplomatically with management. Of course they didn't understand the human ramifications; result? A week before the deliverable, the guy cracked under the pressure and did not show up to work for the next two weeks. IMO, Management was squarely to blame for this since they did not understand the psyche of the people involved.

Re: Individuals Matter

#155

Post by 908B64B197 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #149
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A senior at FAANG is worth sometimes well north of 500K/yr. There are plenty of folks strewn about small software companies that do similar work to a senior or even staff/principal at a faang at wildly huge discounts. Those discounts are why it's easier to poach the employees. If a company has 10 engineers earning $200K/year, why would you buy the company for $667K per person and then pay the employees on top of th…

Oh, I misinterpreted GP. Yes, agreed: for small software shops, the key senior ICs are probably worth more than the company itself.

And when acquiring an existing company, the buyer is typically interested in keeping a lot of the engineering staff. I've only seen a few acquisitions where there was no interest in keeping the engineering staff (North comes to mind; this one was strictly for Google to get its hands on the patent the company had acquired from Intel).

Re: Individuals Matter

#156

Post by rramadass »

tux3 wrote: post #87
mrandish wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the most capable people I've ever worked with have been "bursty" in that they would go through intense periods of high value output and then need to almost go dormant for a while to reset. As long as the "high value" phase was uniquely and significantly valuable it wasn't a problem so long as management understood and planned their assignments appropriately.

Not to lean too much into my armchair, but the phenomenon you describe sounds like some mild form of bipolar. Periods of very high output, and then periods of slump. Not much of a long term stable in-between. I wouldn't be surprised if that's very effective for the right kind of project.

>some mild form of bipolar

Please no; we don't have to stigmatize normal waxing and waning of mental/physical energy.

There are a lot of "normal" factors involved in any Individual's productivity and pathology should be consulted only as the last resort.

Re: Individuals Matter

#157

Post by visarga »

MrPatan wrote: post #90
Swizec wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devs: there are no 10x engineers!! Orgs: okay you are indistinguishable cogs and we will treat you as cattle Devs: no wait not like that Truth is everyone knows that who or which teams takes a task matters immensely. We know that if Bob leads it’s gonna suck and if Alice does it’s gonna rock and finish on time. Managers know this also. But we’ve constructed a corporate culture where this is not allowed to be said. So…

What you cannot say is that there are 0.1x engineers.

Maybe a mix of x0.3 and x3 engineers.

Re: Individuals Matter

#158

Post by RNCTX »

vbezhenar wrote: post #135
efitz wrote: post #116

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…

Stop using methodologies actively preventing any kind of planning (mostly agile stuff). Return to waterfall, write lots of documentations, spend time planning architecture, resist urges to rewrite non-ideal solutions. Do not allow changes. It'll take more time and result will not be as clean. Basically learn from older engineering disciplines.

The two replies below yours at the moment capture what you're trying to say...

> 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.

> 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.

Which is another way to say... if there was a system to do their thing, they wouldn't have to pay smarter people a lot of money to do it. Reliance on a system (any system) tells you that the people don't value your expertise, but rather see you as a cost to be minimized.

Re: Individuals Matter

#159

Post by moralestapia »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #88
ncmncm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are there 10x engineers, I personally know an objectively measured 500x engineer. He is humble because he knows someone who produces 10x what he does (albeit spending twice as much time at it). The measurement happened as a result of a joint venture between Siemens AG and Ericsson called Ellemtel. Each company sent 250 [edit: not 500] engineers. It was a six month project, the classic death march: if it did…

> I personally know an objectively measured 500x engineer. He is humble because he knows someone who produces 10x what he does (albeit spending twice as much time at it). So your 500X engineer knows a 5000X engineer and he wrote as much code as 999 other engineers combined? (That would make him a 999X engineer, FWIW) A 500X engineer (per your measurements) would have to write 500 lines of code every day without fail,…

By measuring productivity on lines of code written you show just how inexperienced and naive are.

Are you HR, by chance? Have you ever coded something in your life?

Re: Individuals Matter

#160

Post by RNCTX »

Swizec wrote: post #29
paxys wrote: post #5

"Who is going to do it?" is always my first question whenever I am asked to estimate a piece of work. PMs/EMs are usually taken aback by the response, as if we are all supposed to pretend that all dev "resources" are equal. Yet reality doesn't fit into neat planning spreadsheets or burndown graphs, so often gets ignored.

Devs: there are no 10x engineers!! Orgs: okay you are indistinguishable cogs and we will treat you as cattle Devs: no wait not like that Truth is everyone knows that who or which teams takes a task matters immensely. We know that if Bob leads it’s gonna suck and if Alice does it’s gonna rock and finish on time. Managers know this also. But we’ve constructed a corporate culture where this is not allowed to be said. So…

> But we’ve constructed a corporate culture where this is not allowed to be said. So we bend over backwards to pretend everyone is equal and capable of the same things in all areas. Then we secretly make sure somehow by magic the truly critical projects are routed to the people and teams with more reliable outcomes.

Do you really think that was the motivation? That someone is going to bat for Bob at Alice's expense?

Or do you think it more likely that "equality" is another way of saying both Bob and Alice will never threaten someone in management enough to cost them even a minute of sleep on any given night, and that's all management really cares about at the end of the day.

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