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Individuals Matter

danluu.com

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Re: Individuals Matter

#181

Post by rStar »

mbot5324 wrote: post #125
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.

I'd like to think I'm capable, but whatever I am, it's certainly bursty with periods of dormancy. To the other comment, it's probably on the bipoloar spectrum. Some of it is self-inflicted. Most of it isn't. Before covid, I'd had 2 managers who knew something of what I was dealing with and gave me the space to deal with it and encouragement that my work was good enough often enough not to worry. With some 5+ other ma…

congratulations on finding a comfortable way to work that works for you, allows you to be productive, as well as more socially fulfilled. as someone currently attempting to find a nice niche for myself as well, much respect.

Re: Individuals Matter

#182

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Individuals Matter

#183

Post by watwut »

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…

> One of the primary jobs of managers at all levels is to plan and then execute in accordance with the plan.

Yep, just as I thought. This is why those teams hated plans - because once there is plan they will be beaten and abused to make it, despite the plan being unrealistic from the start.

> Every team I have ever worked with hates planning; every team hates their methodology and thinks it’s stupid and inaccurate and why are those pinhead business people insisting on a date; it’ll be done when it’s done.

In that case, teams in which you worked had stupid methodology about planning. It sounds like your plans did not accounted for uncertainty at all. They did not accounted for what if we are not making it, which features will be cut.

> Some managers are good at it, many aren’t- the world is populated with people nearer the center than the ends of the bell curve.

And many of them are abusive or exploitative about it and there is nothing in business organization to prevent or at least acknowledge that.

Re: Individuals Matter

#184

Post by sneak »

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.

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

Re: Individuals Matter

#185

Post by sneak »

iratewizard wrote: post #104
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

I remember a day when one of my engineer's full days of work was one line of code. Not all lines of code are made equal

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

Re: Individuals Matter

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Individuals Matter

#187

Post by mostertoaster »

fitzn wrote: post #119
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates

And I bet an in progress airplane that weighs a 1000lbs is further along than an airplane that weighs 1.

Re: Individuals Matter

#188

Post by 3grdlurker »

Jensson wrote: post #151
3grdlurker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, if all you’re saying is that “better programmers deserve better pay”, then you’re not exactly saying anything groundbreaking and the concept of “10xer” is not going to be necessary to make that point. It should also be noted that the salary that you get isn’t just a product of your talent but also of how well you sell yourself. Amongst many other factors, of course.

Re: Individuals Matter

#189

Post by polskibus »

Jensson wrote: post #174
polskibus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that the 10x guy is 10x only in the domain he’s been working on, and many chores has been taken away from him by his manager and given to someone else. It is fairly easy to make a 10x someone closer to a 1x just by changing his tasks and giving more chores like CR, bug fixes, more mundane features or GUI etc. Sure it will often be better quality but in areas where it matters less.

Ensuring people work on what they are comparatively best at is a feature. 1x engineers would also get a lot less done if they had to clean the toilets and sweep the floor and many of the other low end tasks others do, instead they assign people who cost less to those tasks.

That’s argumentum ad absurdum though. There may well be people that are useless in a given profession, my point was not about that. My point was that 10x occurrence should be analysed within specific project, work division within the team, etc. For most 10x programmers in a project it does not guarantee repetition of 10x on a different type of project or problems. Matching problem with a team member and ensuring he has a chance to become 10x at it is something that good managers do.

Re: Individuals Matter

#190

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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