Very good article. This hinges on being able to screen for both technical ability (easy) and the intangible combination of initiative and drive (hard). It also requires that developers keep in synch with each other. I think it works well up to a certain size organization.
The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
21–30 of 45 posts
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not. It's two different meanings of the word. You aren't "responsible" for the running of the business because you've "taken ownership" of the autocomplete widget on the search page. You're getting paid for your ownership of the autocomplete widget, you're not getting paid for your ownership of the corporate direction. If you're getting paid, you do need to be getting paid because of some responsibility you're…
I agree with both of you, and I wish there was a better word than "ownership". That term has implications that are inappropriate for a single feature. You don't own the autocomplete widget -- you're responsible for it but you don't own it, the company owns it.
You both own(1) the widget and do not own(2) the widget.
This is English. Multiple definitions for a word are common. Cases where only some definitions apply and not others are common. They happen in almost every sentence. Try to avoid letting that pollute your thought. (It is a challenge. No sarcasm.)
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#23In other words, he doesn't micromanage engineers. Not that big a deal... most managers know not to do this.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not. It's two different meanings of the word. You aren't "responsible" for the running of the business because you've "taken ownership" of the autocomplete widget on the search page. You're getting paid for your ownership of the autocomplete widget, you're not getting paid for your ownership of the corporate direction. If you're getting paid, you do need to be getting paid because of some responsibility you're…
I agree with both of you, and I wish there was a better word than "ownership". That term has implications that are inappropriate for a single feature. You don't own the autocomplete widget -- you're responsible for it but you don't own it, the company owns it.
Amazon.com's second leadership principle:
Ownership Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job."
Unfortunately, we no longer live in a society where the employer-employee relationship is one of trust. The definition Amazon.com seems to be using is that owners do shit work and so should you, but maybe I'm misreading.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#25It's a question of granularity. Can your developers deal with high level requirements and fill in the details, do they require every detail to be spec'd out? It's also a question of does the management trust the developers to fill in the detail without an agreed on spec or will management freak out if the developer decided to get creative? Ideally both developers and management are mature enough to trust developers to interpret needs and create solutions rather than grinding away at one small task at time.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#26i've been more and more inclined to write about engineering management myself. if you think about this post, it's is essentially how big open source software projects work. some open source projects have the responsibility to read commit logs once you gain commit access. that way the more you get involved into the project the more your responsibility to review your peers grows. other projects like linux have people t…
You are forgetting that open source projects don't have deadlines, pissed customers that might go elsewhere, people that get fired by not fulfilling the quarter targets, ...
They most certainly have pissed customers that might go elsewhere, and they often do have deadlines.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#27i've been more and more inclined to write about engineering management myself. if you think about this post, it's is essentially how big open source software projects work. some open source projects have the responsibility to read commit logs once you gain commit access. that way the more you get involved into the project the more your responsibility to review your peers grows. other projects like linux have people t…
You are forgetting that open source projects don't have deadlines, pissed customers that might go elsewhere, people that get fired by not fulfilling the quarter targets, ...
That's pretty much not true of any widely-used open source project. They have deadlines and pissed off companies that take their money elsewhere.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#28We're following a similar approach with a distributed team @ NakedApartments.com. So far, it's worked really well for us, especially with keeping moral high. Glad to hear we're not alone.
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#29This 10x rhetoric sincerely needs to stop, now. Recently, I have seen it creep into instruction manuals for program managers who have never written a line of code in their lives. "How to incentivize people to become 10x Developers" and suchlike.
Promote this meme much further, and essentially you will all be expected to do 10 times the amount of work you do because some mythical construct apparently does.
[Note: this does not mean that there aren't some people who contribute substantially more than others -- they definitely do exist. Just a prediction that putting the number 10 on it is going to lead the beancounters into massive numerical fallacies about the productivity advantages of such people.]
Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that was a knee-jerk reaction to the word "ownership". That is not the sense used here. There is no contradiction in being given ownership of some task while having no ownership stake in the company; it's two quite different senses of the term.
Sort of. The sense that's being used here is a corporatism that means 'act with the level of commitment implied by owning something even though you have none of the rights benefits or responsibilities' - i.e. It is a form of doublethink required by the corporate hierarchy. It is quite reasonable to ask 'why should I act as if I own think, when actually I do not?'
why should I act as if I own think, when actually I do not?
Because you get paid to?