John Carmack was 10x.
10x Engineer
21–30 of 186 posts
Re: 10x Engineer
#22What's the point of being a 10X engineer somewhere, if you don't own the IP? It sounds like a way to make someone else rich off your hard work.
Consultants often make more than IP owners. Owning the IP and leveraging it is only one viable business model.
Re: 10x Engineer
#23What's the point of being a 10X engineer somewhere, if you don't own the IP? It sounds like a way to make someone else rich off your hard work.
What if the same mindset that leads to an engineer being a "10x" engineer also lead them to be generally less capable of handling all the non-programming tasks on their own?
Re: 10x Engineer
#24While the article correctly highlights the lack of rigorous scientific studies on 10x engineers, it also generalizes a bit too much from anecdote to make the argument that they are mythical creatures. A more reasonable argument is that the hypothetical existence of 10x engineers explains little about the productivity of most organizations.
Personally, in the couple decades I have been in this business working in countless companies in Silicon Valley, I have met a few individuals that I think could be accurately characterized as 10x engineers. An important point is that they are not productive at just one type of development but genuine computer science and software engineering polymaths. They are incredibly rare but they do exist for all practical purposes. People that are 10x engineers never seem to think of themselves that way, it is how the other engineers think of them. It advertises itself; if you have to tell people you are a 10x engineer, "ninja", "rockstar", etc then you probably are not.
I will add that none of the 10x engineers I worked with were burning the candle at both ends. They did not work particularly hard compared to everyone else, they were just extraordinarily effective and consistent at making excellent choices in an engineering context and always worked very well with most engineering teams they needed to work with. I've never seen any of these guys burn out, they've been doing it for decades.
I would also suggest that it takes quite a few years of diversified experience before you can be a legit 10x engineer. Consistently making excellent choices requires both breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that you simply can't develop in less than a decade.
Re: 10x Engineer
#25Even if the 10x engineer were to exist, assuming a normal distribution, they would be extremely rare and highly sought after. To optimise your business around hiring such a precious unicorn would seem like a very foolhardy strategy. For one, simple probability suggests that you probably won't find one. And if you were to find one, could you be certain that it were a real unicorn rather than a horse with a plastic cone stuck to its forehead? And even then, what happens to the business you've built around it when your prized unicorn is stolen or passes away?
There are probably no 10x engineers, but I'm quite sure there are 10x teams. Better to focus on growing one of those than chasing a fairy tale.
Re: 10x Engineer
#26John Carmack was 10x.
at building video game engines. Do you think he'd be 10X at building CRUD application after CRUD application?
Re: 10x Engineer
#27Even if the 10x engineer were to exist, assuming a normal distribution, they would be extremely rare and highly sought after. To optimise your business around hiring such a precious unicorn would seem like a very foolhardy strategy. For one, simple probability suggests that you probably won't find one. And if you were to find one, could you be certain that it were a real unicorn rather than a horse with a plastic con…
YES. What the 10X myth hurt most is probably hiring practices.
Re: 10x Engineer
#28One of the many problems with the 10x Engineer concept is that it imagines that skill is a single dimension, when in fact it depends massively on context, environment, and the specifics of individual experience and the problem at hand. I am definitely not a 10x anything, but my group once got handed a massive data-processing task that my supervisors--better coders than me, to be sure--believed was impossible to autom…
Also related is the myth that "an engineer" is a fungible resource. They are not. It's not one problem space. You can't swap engineers around like that, you have to match skill sets and experience to the problems you're having, or build new skills.
Re: 10x Engineer
#29John Carmack was 10x.
at building video game engines. Do you think he'd be 10X at building CRUD application after CRUD application?
Being 10X for a short duration is much easier than maintaining 10X over years. And also, are these people successful in terms of personal fitness and health? Is their home clean? Do they have good relationships with their family and friends? Do they spend time socializing, or do they spend all their time working? If being 10X is true, why haven't they figured out how to get rich yet?
Re: 10x Engineer
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
at building video game engines. Do you think he'd be 10X at building CRUD application after CRUD application?
Being 10X for a short duration is much easier than maintaining 10X over years. And also, are these people successful in terms of personal fitness and health? Is their home clean? Do they have good relationships with their family and friends? Do they spend time socializing, or do they spend all their time working? If being 10X is true, why haven't they figured out how to get rich yet?
If you're 10x, I don't think you're thinking about making money.