Busting the 10x software engineer myth • Hacker News Board

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#261

Post by jmchuster » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

m12k wrote: post #139

dijit wrote: post #3

I know "10x engineers" exist; some people are fakes and put forward things that look like they have high impact but are actually a bit shoddy. Some people like to be present and suck up. But some people really do just work hard, smart and have deep passion for what they're doing- and importantly: pride, which makes the quality of the content great too. Some of the best engineers I know "visit" bits of code or infrast…

On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as possible, even if it meant racking up massive technical debt. By doing this, they effectively did produce 10x as much in the eyes of management, and got promoted and rewarded in kind. The technical debt they racked up then got paid by everyone else that had to…

Though, the order of events might be backwards there sometimes. The director has a highly visible and strategic new feature they need executed, so they'll handpick the best engineers to work on the project. The engineers complete the project as fast as possible because that was the point of the project, to get the team that could produce a MVP fastest. And the technical debt and productionizing of the project is something that can be done by a less specialized pool of developers, who also are given way less tight time constraints.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#262

Post by hyperpallium2 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #97

This article is pure clickbait written to sell in this stupid Swarmia startup. :) 10x developers exist just like 10x musicians, 10x marathon runners, or 10x chess players exist. It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. Perhaps I'd never produce anything great so that musician would be infinitely better at it than me. Great chess players beat amateurs at…

I think the point of x10 devs is this doesn't occur in other fields. It's like a HR Moore's Law.

I've always understood it as: if you step back and see the easy way, it's easy to be x10.

But most jobs are dominated by actual unavoidable straightforward work. Another exception is mathematics. You can certainly have a x10 mathematician! But it's not a mainstream job.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#263

Post by MarkLowenstein » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #64

hsn915 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More broadly, the 10x engineer makes sure there are no such minefields. They make sure there are nearly zero hurdles to getting in the zone.

Ah, no, quite the contrary. The person who makes sure there are no such minefields makes a lot less great advances him/herself - they're busy working in a careful, orderly and considerate manner. And then the other engineers perform close to his/her level. That's not the 10x engineer. However, the person who lays the minefield may only be a 1x person talent-wise, but since he puts his colleagues on 0.1x, s/he is effe…

Almost by definition, the 10x engineer is the one who is in a position to reuse and work within his own code, almost exclusively, rather than navigate the minefields laid by others.

The 1x engineer is a normal one who builds upon the work of other 1x people.

The 0.1x engineer is the one who builds upon the 10x engineer's work.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#264

Post by sushisource » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #242

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marathon runners run 42 km in like two hours but it would take me days to finish the same distance... Not really. If you walk at an easy pace of 2 miles per hour, and start at 6am, you'll be done in time for an evening meal. At 3 mph, you might even make afternoon tea. The world record marathon times are, in fact, only about 4-6x what you can do as a walking human being.

Correct - and if you compare world record marathon runners with average (but seasoned) marathon runners, the difference is even smaller.

Time wise, absolutely true, but as someone who is a reasonably seasoned runner I can say my 3:30 marathon feels lightyears away from 2:00. It doesn't sound 10x harder, it sounds impossibly harder.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#265

Post by svaha1728 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #81

dijit wrote: post #3

I know "10x engineers" exist; some people are fakes and put forward things that look like they have high impact but are actually a bit shoddy. Some people like to be present and suck up. But some people really do just work hard, smart and have deep passion for what they're doing- and importantly: pride, which makes the quality of the content great too. Some of the best engineers I know "visit" bits of code or infrast…

Is it really that 10x performers exist, or that 0.4x performers are abundant so 2x performers look like 10x performers? I guess what I'm asking is if there is any actual data on this so we can look at actual statistics or if it is all just a meaningless blogspam topic.

Having worked at really high quality startups, and low-quality companies, this is a real thing.

0.1x developer might be a 10x developer that has given up because the build or management is fundamentally broken. Working more will just lead to burnout.

a 0.1x developer might be someone who at some point was very talented but now has no clue, but enough savvy to stay on as a lead/architect/senior

a 0.1x developer might not be qualified, but was hired because the company paid well below market rate.

Many reasons... A 10x is motivated, intelligent, and in the right place at the right time.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#266

Post by trashtester » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #163

smoldesu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason DOOM was finished in 1997 was because John Carmack recognized himself as the 10x developer and started living in-office until the game was finished. Obviously it's important to not let silly titles distract you, but stepping up to the plate like this is how organizations get stuff done .

And while there’s nothing wrong with people choosing to do that, there’s absolutely everything wrong with organisations that expect it.

Most real 10x's work precisely when they decide to. If they are mistreated by their employer, other stand in line to hire them.

The crunch problem mostly applies to the average-and-below developers (possibly with the exception of some devs that give up leverage vs their employer somehow, by depending on them for a visa, only consider work in a given industry, etc)

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#267

Post by handrous » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #2

I can cite many examples of a 10x engineer having an insight that greatly shortened the development time. It's not that they write code faster. It's that they select a path to the solution that is a lot shorter.

I'm mid-career, I guess, and these days I kinda feel like I've fucked up if I'm writing any serious amount of code, under most circumstances. The best solution is often a small script in the right place, leveraging existing software (when the best solution isn't "FFS, just pay a SaaS to take care of this, it's not even worth the time we've spent talking about it"). When I'm writing an actual project, I've got this nagging feeling like I just didn't know enough to avoid writing it. Like maybe I need to go RTFMs of the many battle-hardened daemons and OS components I have available and could be using.

Any time I do achieve "10x" versus anyone else (and I think I sometimes do, though the broad "anyone else" makes that less impressive) it's usually because of what I didn't write.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#268

Post by trashtester » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #99

bjourne wrote: post #97

This article is pure clickbait written to sell in this stupid Swarmia startup. :) 10x developers exist just like 10x musicians, 10x marathon runners, or 10x chess players exist. It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. Perhaps I'd never produce anything great so that musician would be infinitely better at it than me. Great chess players beat amateurs at…

The problem is that you can't measure a developer. So you can't say someone is 10x faster or better. If you add a bench-mark like how many LOC is written per day, most will exceed at that benchmark, but the overall quality will go down.

Sometimes you can. At some point I worked as a consultant assisting a team that actually picked the next item from the backlog as their next task. All tasks were estimated before they were put in the backlog and assigned to someone. I would usually finish tasks in less than 30% of the esimated time, while some would use 3x+ the estimated time, and then only because they were receiving assistance a couple of hours per week.

The guy doing the estimages was evaluated based on his ability to estimate accurately, so he had to inflate the estimates beyond what would be reasonable.

This was in a country with really good job protection laws....

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#269

Post by foobiekr » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #97

This article is pure clickbait written to sell in this stupid Swarmia startup. :) 10x developers exist just like 10x musicians, 10x marathon runners, or 10x chess players exist. It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. Perhaps I'd never produce anything great so that musician would be infinitely better at it than me. Great chess players beat amateurs at…

10x (or more) engineers in both hardware and SW exist. I've personally known more than a few, they are humbling, and I was pretty good myself at the time.

SW is too time consuming, I think, for it to really show, and tools help even things out, but I think math shows that even 100x people exist - the von Neumanns of the world. Maybe they don't exist any more, but we had a bunch of them in the 1900s and it's inarguable that they were at least 1-2 orders of magnitude above the rest.

That said, there's a ton of people in the field who now focus on image management so heavily that the numbers of _apparent_ 10x are really skewed. If you're willing to engage in engineering fraud, overselling, etc. you can seem to be one of them pretty easily in most contexts even pushing the most outrageous crap/fraud as something it's not. I feel like ML particularly enables this. I am dealing with two of these guys now, and honestly, it's so tiring dealing with the low-cost-to-produce/high-cost-to-analyze asymmetric warfare that frauds in engineering create.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#270

Post by didip » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

Bah. Come on, OP. 10x engineers exist but much rarer than most think. Could you honestly see these people and NOT call them 10x engineer?

* Fabrice Bellard

* Linus Torvald

* Chris Sawyer of Transport Tycoon

* John Carmack

* Ken Thompson

* Jeff Dean