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The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

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Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#31

Post by DougWebb »

parennoob wrote: post #29

This 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…

"How to incentivize people to become brilliant musicians"

"How to incentivize people to become world-renown artists"

"How to incentivize people to become best-selling authors"

"How to incentivize people to become Nobel laureates"

Yeah, none of those work. Why would program managers expect it to work for software developers?

On the other hand, there's probably a lot of money to be made in writing a series of books with those titles. They'd be utter garbage, but I'd bet they'd sell well.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#32

Post by gress »

tbrownaw wrote: post #30
gress wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah - that is the usual reasoning, but acting as if does not make it so.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#33

Post by hfsktr »

Domenic_S wrote: post #9
jerf wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

I think you could also say you manage instead of own and it would still make sense.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#34

Post by marcosdumay »

DougWebb wrote: post #31
parennoob wrote: post #29

This 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…

"How to incentivize people to become brilliant musicians" "How to incentivize people to become world-renown artists" "How to incentivize people to become best-selling authors" "How to incentivize people to become Nobel laureates" Yeah, none of those work. Why would program managers expect it to work for software developers? On the other hand, there's probably a lot of money to be made in writing a series of books wit…

Very few people manage musicians, artists, authors, and scientits.

Lots and lots of people manage programmers.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#35

Post by munchbunny »

gress wrote: post #17
jerf wrote: post #5

Earlier 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?'

In my experience, people who are emotionally invested in their work tend to do much better work, and are worth proportionally more because of it. So whether this is correlation or causation, you are indirectly being paid to care as much as you do.

If you're not being paid enough to care that much, or you don't want to care that much, then it is what it is. From the hiring perspective, we should have negotiated a price that works for me and is enough for you to feel that you are fairly compensated for your ownership of the feature. It's a two-sided relationship where you have the ability to just back out of the deal if it isn't working for you.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#36

Post by whatthefox »

parennoob wrote: post #29

This 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…

I agree with you 100%. Sure, there are 10x programmers just like there are 10x lawyers, politicians, analysts, doctors, nurses, teachers, administrators etc. They are good because A. they like what they do (10K hours rule and all that ...) and B. their personality/intelligence is in-line with their profession of choice. You cannot teach or mentor someone to become 10x in their field. Fortunately, not everyone needs such ground breaking abilities. Just a few are good enough. The rest of us will do just fine by showing up, doing good work, collecting our pay-check and go live a good life (defined by the individual).

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#37

Post by logfromblammo »

Domenic_S wrote: post #9
jerf wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

The word is "stewardship".

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#38

Post by wwweston »

Domenic_S wrote: post #9
jerf wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

"Stewardship" might be the word we're looking for: it has some connotations of personally invested care, but it's also clear that it's done on behalf of someone else and there's no ownership.

Of course, it also has a history of association with servants of landed gentry, which might make people uncomfortable (for good reasons, to the extent the analogy holds up).

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#39

Post by jrochkind1 »

> practices and processes that shift responsibility onto a team of replaceable cogs.

This.

So much of 'agile' in the business world, I see having become an effort to make developers into replaceable cogs or 'commodity' employees. It's not good for job satisfaction and pride, but I don't think it's good for the product either.

It's ironic, because I think most of the originators of the 'agile development' idea had almost an opposite intend, 'software craftsmanship' and all.

Re: The 10x Engineer and Delegated Responsibility

#40

Post by tbrownaw »

Sivart13 wrote: post #16

Right, so you gave "cowboy coding" a different name, then. "Not surprisingly, others understand their code. It integrates well with the code base." Actually, that IS surprising. You are literally saying that if sic some engineer on a problem and tell them to think really hard before they commit anything, they'll get it right. Maybe you got lucky and that's working out with the hires you have so far, or maybe your sca…

I'd think "you broke it, you fix it" (same developer is responsible for the code all the way thru QA and deployment) with mostly-competent devs would actually lead to very good code. I would also think that trying to limit people's agency (most forms of "process") would reduce quality via lowered morale.

And if your devs aren't mostly competent, the best you'd get from any process would be mediocre code.

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