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Busting the 10x software engineer myth

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Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#311

Post by kthejoker2 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #274
sushisource wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

so in the context of TFA, what really needs to be asked is not "are some people massively better coders than others?", but rather "how difficult is it to progress from the equivalent of a 3:30 marathoner to a 2:00, as a coder?" I don't know the answer, TBH. I've been a programmer for nearly 35 years now, and at times along that journey I've been the 10x coder. But I'm not anymore (just like I can't go sub-3h for a ma…

Maybe what needs to be asked is

"If you're okay with the message getting there in 3 and a half hours instead of 2 hours, do we really need to fetishize 10x performance?"

YAGNI is a way stronger principle to base your success on than finding or training unicorns.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#312

Post by tinco »

tracker1 wrote: post #275
tinco wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had junior engineers outperforming senior engineers, even counting the hours I had to spend correcting and guiding. Some engineers are just slow. I don't think it's much correlated with experience. If your goal was never to be a super productive programmer, I don't think you'll ever become one. This might also be why there is this spectre of agism in the industry. Everyone knows there's greybeards out there that…

I think it depends... where I am now (third from last day), I'm one of the younger devs at 46yo. which is wild to me... about 2/4 of those here older than me have little interest in taking on new approaches or techniques. The other 1/4 absolutely work to stay current. Some are coasting to retirement, others of us don't ever plan to stop. I will say, my recent stint of interviews over the past 6 weeks or so has been p…

It's crazy, I wonder if it actually works and they actually get a higher percentage of good coders. I just do a face to face, then a take home assignment, then another face to face where we discuss the take home, and then I immediately make the decision. I skip the take home if they've got impressive GitHub accounts or other clear public displays of skill.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#313

Post by philwelch »

jahewson wrote: post #281
hyperpallium2 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> this doesn't occur in other fields It absolutely does, just look at surgeons.

I want to find the 10x surgeon who can complete a one-hour operation in six minutes.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#314

Post by skydhash »

philwelch wrote: post #313
jahewson wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this doesn't occur in other fields It absolutely does, just look at surgeons.

I want to find the 10x surgeon who can complete a one-hour operation in six minutes.

I don't think the metrics is always speed. I think it is efficiency (quality_of_work.hour).

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#315

Post by karmakaze »

strken wrote: post #100
karmakaze wrote: post #53

Anyone who doubts 10x devs exist either never met a real one or is merely protecting their ego. Software development is complex enough that I'd go so far as to say there's even 100x range even among those considered competent. We accept this range in sports and art, what's the hangup? It seems like someone who just learned deductive reasoning and feels like they could now understand the universe then someone says the…

I don't think anyone really doubts that some engineers will work an order of magnitude or more faster than others on a given task. They just think it's a misleading way to think about performance, which likely falls on a unimodal curve within your organisation, and likely differs by task. How do you know you're looking at a 10x developer instead of a 2x, a 9x, an 11x, a 500x, a 0.2x, or a 0.5x? The premise gives the…

You're looking at a very different kind of Nx engineer. The kind I'm talking about is where they approach a brand new problem that no one has an idea how to decompose using any tech that they have a clue how to operate, then a concise solution somehow appears using mostly what is already in service with careful splitting of tasks that appear clear and obvious only in retrospect. It's not about volume of output, precisely the opposite.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#316

Post by magicalhippo »

ygram wrote: post #309
magicalhippo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My coworker is a beast at churning out working code, but mine is often better abstracted and requires less refactoring to use in the future. There are features where I spent 5-10x the time he'd do, but my code could then be used to later implement several dozen feature requests in mere minutes rather than hours and days. Who's better? I'd say we've got different strengths, so depends on what you need to get done.

Your coworker is better, sounds like you spend a lot of time on premature generalisation.

Technically premature yes.

But I do have experience guiding me. It's not like I'm abstracting everything I do. So my efforts tend to pay off.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#317

Post by afpx »

jjav wrote: post #293
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…

> It may take a world-class musician a week to write a masterful symphony but it would take me way longer. But are you a world-class musician yourself? Yeah it would probably take me a week to run a marathon, but I've never run anything so it's not a meaningul comparison. In all your examples you're comparing amateurs or even non-participants vs. the top professionals. Of course there is a huge multiplier, up to some…

I've worked with hundreds of average (professional) developers over the years, and I've only met 1 person who was a 3x developer. I've met several 2x developers and lots of 1.5x developers. I assume a 5x developer exists, but I doubt a 10x does.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#318

Post by Olumde »

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 is often used to suggest that one only seeds a single 10x developer. This makes as much sense as the army being okay with squad made up of one 10x solider.

Yes there are 10x solders but their impact is measured by their impact on the unit. IMO this is the only sensible meaning of 10x in large scale software development.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#319

Post by kragen »

tracker1 wrote: post #277
rualca wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to tell if it's arrogance or reluctance to admit some people are more valuable than others and just allow them to get to a point they prefer to leave than stay. Stating that a developer is worth 10 times what other developers are worth goes way beyond saying that some people are more valuable than others. We're not talking about junior/medior/senior distinctions. We're talking about 10x. The myths. The lo…

A really good developer can and will absolutely outpace a couple small teams of developers. The shortcomings is the domain knowledge is locked in one head. You gain and lose a lot depending on how many people are involved and how much you have to communicate. Not having a backup solution is probably the single biggest shortcoming of the lone gunman in practice. The second is that the code is often not laid out or str…

As the MapReduce example shows, the domain knowledge is not necessarily locked in one head in cases like this. I haven't heard complaints from Googlers about how Jeff and Sanjay write unmaintainable code, either. My own non-Google experience is that extremely productive programmers tend to write code that's more readable, not less readable.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#320

Post by kragen »

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…

People don't always leave, although they do die. Peter Norvig has been at Google since 02000. Jeff Dean has been at Google since 01999. Ken Thompson was at Bell Labs from 01966 to 02000, when he "retired" (but, really, Bell Labs no longer existed). Mick Jagger has been in the Rolling Stones since 01962. Marvin Minsky was at the AI Lab from its founding as Project MAC in 01963 until his death in 02016.

What would the Rolling Stones look like if someone had said, "Our organization shouldn't be resting on the shoulders of Mick Jagger"? What would Google look like if someone had said "Our organization shouldn't be resting on the shoulders of Jeff and Sanjay"? What would CSAIL look like if someone had said "Our organization shouldn't be resting on the shoulders of Minsky"? They'd look like mediocre failures.

"How are you going to replace Jagger if he quits the Stones?" is not really the right question. You have to accept that the Stones without Jagger, or Bell Labs without Thompson, just would not be the same. To a very great extent the productivity of a creative organization depends on its ability to attract and retain high performers, because it's inevitable that it rests on their shoulders. Denial won't change that.

If you want your organization to succeed in a creative field, the right question to ask is, "How can we hire people like Ken Thompson, and how can we keep them from wanting to leave?"

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