Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

muldoon.cloud

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 505 posts

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#371

Post by breischl »

klohto wrote: post #40
cellularmitosis wrote: post #23

"To replace out MediaWiki with a Java-based alternative (XWiki) ended up taking a total fo 24 dev-years over 4+ calendar years for the team, not counting the interruptions to pretty much every other team at Amazon as their pages were getting constantly migrated and un-migrated" I would love to hear more about this. I'm guessing that's a cost of at least $4M? How was this approved? How did they allow it to continue fo…

I don't understand why are corporations obsessed with decommissioning wikis. When I was at Red Hat, they tried to decommission local country wiki in favor of their company-wide wiki (Mojo, absolute shit by the way). They tried for about 2 years, then finally somebody said "what the fuck are we doing" and the migration was stopped. I believe the banner "Decommissioning soon" still hangs there.

Finding the right information is already difficult and a time-suck. Adding an extra place to look (and search interface, etc) for no extra value just makes it suck more. Plus there's all the TCO reasons - licensing costs, extra servers, extra maintenance, etc etc. You could also look at it as "Don't Repeat Yourself" writ large.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#372

Post by freewilly1040 »

Not sure I entirely agree on rule 18. My current team probably cares about estimation more than any previous one I've been on, and it's functioned more to keep engineers aware of prioritization and what is blocking. The team leads have definitely made it a point of emphasis to not put pressure on finishing sprint tickets, though.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#373

Post by twic »

sbarre wrote: post #216
twic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This week it's patio11's turn to tell us that big companies are big because they need to be big, not because they're inefficient: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1255371954443505665 It's always satisfying to read reports from the trenches demonstrating the exact opposite.

Keep in mind stories like the wiki one are anecdotal (meaning it's not representative of all projects), and in fact this is covered in both Patrick's tweet thread and Dan Luu's linked essay ( https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ ). So while they do their best to not have _every_ initiative go this way, large companies - even the mythical FAANGs - will inevitably have moments like this wiki debacle, and they need to be abl…

Dan and Patrick's accounts of bigness are precisely as anecdotal.

I would love to have empirical data about this whole business. I have no idea how you would collect it.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#375

Post by rikroots »

codesections wrote: post #56

I was very surprised to read > 90%, of what I learn at one job is completely useless for the next one. That has not been my experience at all (and I've had some pretty major job changes, including lawyer -> software developmer). If I had to put a number on it, I'd say more like 50% of what I've learned at each job is transferable. How about everyone else? Closer to 10% or 50%?

The skills I learned as a civil servant - policy development, communications, staff/resource management ... all the way down to document control and filing - have been super-useful and transferrable to both my professional and personal lives.

The skills I developed as I fought, on a daily basis, with the AWS console - the sooner I lose those skills the happier I shall forever be.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#376

Post by eastbayjake »

notokay wrote: post #214
noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

>Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped That scares the hell out of me. I started working in IT at 22 and now I'm 30. I'm SRE and I think of myself as a useless lamer compared to the real 10x guys around. It gets heavier every year. I got bagdes CCNP/OSCP/RHCE/CKA/AWS DevOps Pro/etc only to confirm that I know at least something. (I don't tell anyone about them so I don't become known as a paper tiger.) On my way t…

> I'm SRE and I think of myself as a useless lamer compared to the real 10x guys around

The difference is that SRE -- unlike much of AppDev -- gives you leveraged impact. The building blocks and guardrails that an SRE team gives to application development teams can create productivity impact for hundreds or thousands of engineers across dozens of teams. It may not feel like 10x from a banging-out-code perspective, but it sure is from an economic perspective - don't lose sight of that when you're talking about your value with your employer.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#379

Post by war1025 »

discreteevent wrote: post #369
war1025 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congratulations, you are now 3-10x developer. Congratulations. You are still getting paid the same. Boosts in productivity need to come with boosts in pay, otherwise the logical thing to do is to scale back your effort to a point where the amount you get done matches the amount you get paid for.

Programming is a marathon, not a sprint. That will catch up on you some day. Plus, personally, it just makes life hell. The day passes faster when you get into it and those things prevent me from getting into it (not true of everyone from what I've observed)

I agree completely with everything you said.

The point I was trying (perhaps poorly) to make is also along the lines of "marathon, not a sprint". Yes, do your job. But find the healthy balance where you aren't killing yourself for results that aren't appreciated.

Work at a pace that you can sustain for years on end. That goes both ways. Don't overwork yourself to the point of burnout. But also don't underwork yourself to the point that you are unemployable should circumstances change.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#380

Post by rikroots »

noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

I got my first coding job - junior level - when I was 49.

Then again, it did take 4 years of applying for jobs in the industry before I finally found a company willing to take the risk of employing me.

I don't know what my x-ranking is. I know I'm not a rockstar: my sister-in-law gets to tour the world playing bass in a band and my life is nothing like hers.

Post reply on HN