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10x Engineer

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Re: 10x Engineer

#181

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

rhizome wrote: post #180
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a highly irrational conclusion I would admit to it being illogical, in that I didn't use logic to arrive at that statement. But it's an entirely rational statement: I arrived there via pattern matching, though, and not logic. Is it irrational when I look at a face and recognize it? If not, then why so with other patterns I recognize? And it's not a conclusion at all; it's just an observation. People who are…

Generalizing through an extreme example is the problem. Risk analysis is about probability, and the probability of a face you recognize being that person is high; the probability of personality conflicts resulting in an office rampage are inconsequentially low. Should we extrapolate your support for illogical interpretations to a likelihood of psychotic behavior? After all, history tells us that they are correlated.

>Generalizing through an extreme example is the problem.

Why? It made my point that he was dangerous, though to an unlikely extreme conclusion, which I admitted was unlikely before I even said it. I would hope everyone reading comments here would be perceptive enough to recognize hyperbole when they read it, especially since I called it out as an exaggeration. Given that no one is likely to take it literally, what is the problem? What is the real danger you're warning against?

Not sure what your goal with these comments is, honestly. Seems like I hit a sore spot, given the temperature of your replies. Apologies if I somehow hit close to home.

Re: 10x Engineer

#182

Post by chii »

georgemcbay wrote: post #178
chii wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the criteria to which you ascribe to is one of education and training. A GP is certainly not a neurosurgeon, and therefore cannot possibly do the same job. Ditto with embedded programming vs a "front-end" developer. But, if you consider only embedded programmers, would there be a 100x programmer out there?

"A GP is certainly not a neurosurgeon, and therefore cannot possibly do the same job. Ditto with embedded programming vs a "front-end" developer." Cannot possibly do the same job? Really? I've done embedded programming, front-end web programming, back-end web programming, desktop app programming for Win32, Qt/Linux, game programming, OS system level programming and currently do mobile app programming, among other typ…

i didn't say a person can't be both a front-end and an embedded developer. I merely said that a front-end developer (who is not trained in embedded programming) cannot do it. That you (or that there exists people) who are both doesn't have any relevance.

Re: 10x Engineer

#183

Post by kabouseng »

silverbax88 wrote: post #70
rumcajz wrote: post #37

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…

There's another programmers joke:

With months of coding we can save ourselves a couple days of planning.

Re: 10x Engineer

#185

Post by jtheory »

bjourne wrote: post #166
waps wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Man! It's like you were the manager at my previous job. I'll confess, most days I did spend my time reading hn, stackoverflow and working on more interesting projects than my assigned bug list. I usually came to work late and also took long lunches. But you know what, at the weekly group meetings, my team leader could clearly see that my bug list always was empty while my team "mates" lists were overflowing. I told t…

This sounds like not quite the same situation.

Much of the description (yours and the GP) is POV, though. I don't know you; maybe your suggestions for improvements were interesting engineering problems but horrible business decisions (and you didn't realize it); maybe your "several" requests for more tasks were actually 3 in 5 years, and were mostly actually scornful complaints about the low quality of your colleagues, though that's not quite how you remember them. POV.

There are more concrete checks, though -- can you list some of the things you did specifically to annoy/frustrate your colleagues or bosses, or even partly with that in mind?

E.g., did you ever implement a complicated algorithm with all variable names being girls' names? Did you ever intentionally fix this at the last possible second just because you enjoyed how uncomfortable it made the others? Etc..

Edit: My hope is that you won't come up with anything that silly, of course. I'm not actually trying to paint you in a bad light, just show how it's possible the situations could be quite different or quite similar.

Side note, though -- some situations really are untenable, some cultures simply don't reasonably allow improvement, but honestly most of the time I see one dev who's much more capable than their colleagues who is seriously resented that's because they are failing as a mentor... often because they simply don't think it's worthwhile ("I'm great, those people suck, and that can never change"). It takes some effort put into skillful social interaction, but most people want to improve their skills if given the chance in the right way. There will be some who just want to do exactly what they're doing -- and let you handle the hard problems -- and if you handle that relationship correctly they will appreciate you as well... but most resentment comes from people who want to keep advancing at a reasonable pace, and get some credit for doing good/interesting work, but instead they have the asshole super-dev who either says "oh, that's too hard for you, I'll do it" or "you think can do it, really?! well, go ahead, but don't come crying to me if you screw it up".

Re: 10x Engineer

#186

Post by rhizome »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #181
rhizome wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generalizing through an extreme example is the problem. Risk analysis is about probability, and the probability of a face you recognize being that person is high; the probability of personality conflicts resulting in an office rampage are inconsequentially low. Should we extrapolate your support for illogical interpretations to a likelihood of psychotic behavior? After all, history tells us that they are correlated.

>Generalizing through an extreme example is the problem. Why? It made my point that he was dangerous, though to an unlikely extreme conclusion, which I admitted was unlikely before I even said it . I would hope everyone reading comments here would be perceptive enough to recognize hyperbole when they read it, especially since I called it out as an exaggeration. Given that no one is likely to take it literally, what i…

So, a hyperbole not to be taken literally. So why post it, boredom?
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