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Individuals Matter

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Re: Individuals Matter

#391

Post by kragen »

varjag wrote: post #306
Dudeman112 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are statistical outliers in every single thing that has a big enough amount of samples and that it is possible for there to be statistical outliers. Maybe you attract those like flies are attracted to honey, but pointing out that an Einstein existed isn't really helpful for approximately all teams of physicists out there, minus one or two teams I'm not even saying there isn't a huge quality variance in the regu…

The proverbial '10x developer' is by definition an outlier tho yet people never stop arguing they don't exist.

No, in the studies in Sackman, Erikson, and Grant's 01968 paper (10.1145/362851.362858), which is the origin of the 10x-developer idea, there were only 12 and 9 programmers, respectively. In both studies the standard deviations were comparable to the means. That means 10x developers were a substantial part of the population, and the rest of the population also has very high variance; it isn't just a question of a few outliers.

Jeff Dean is probably legitimately an outlier, though.

Re: Individuals Matter

#392

Post by kragen »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #265
kragen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Dean was 10x when he wrote EPI INFO, he was 10x when he worked on profilers at DEC WRL, he was 10x when he and Sanjay Ghemawat wrote MapReduce, and he was 10x when they rewrote Google's search indexer. Maybe 1000x or 10000x, really. It's true that part of that was that he worked on things that mattered instead of things that didn't, and he could have found himself in a situation where he didn't have that opportu…

There are statistical outliers in every single thing that has a big enough amount of samples and that it is possible for there to be statistical outliers. Maybe you attract those like flies are attracted to honey, but pointing out that an Einstein existed isn't really helpful for approximately all teams of physicists out there, minus one or two teams I'm not even saying there isn't a huge quality variance in the regu…

The average person is about 2 meters tall, weighs about 100 kg, can run about 10 kilometers per hour, lives about 70 years, and can shovel about 60 tons of coal in a day (without power tools). If you took a sample of a few million people, it should very definitely come as a surprise to find that it included "10x" people: people who were 20 meters tall, people who weighed 1000 kg, people who could run 100 kilometers per hour, people who lived 700 years, or people who could shovel 600 tons of coal a day.

It should come as even more of a surprise to find "Jeff Dean" people who were 2 kilometers tall, or who weighed 100 tonnes, or who could run 10,000 km per hour, or who lived 70,000 years, or who could shovel 60,000 tonnes of coal in a day.

Your comments about how physicists do physics are equally wrongheaded. Physics isn't any more a matter of shoveling coal than programming is, probably less so.

Re: Individuals Matter

#393

Post by nimithryn »

nimish wrote: post #378
nimithryn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why you never, ever take anyone seriously who thinks of society like a model. I’ve never understood these critiques. If you want to study society, what’s the alternative? No matter what, you have to make a model of some kind. Yeah, some models are simplistic, but maybe they can capture the high order bits of the phenomenon they are modeling, and at least you are committing to an idea you can codify, find fa…

"All models are wrong, but some are useful" A lot of so-called experts don't quite grasp the former and don't care about the latter. They cannot be relied upon for actual decision making, since the low level details are what's hard!

Then what do you rely on for decision making? Gut instinct? That’s a model too, albeit unformalized.

Re: Individuals Matter

#394

Post by BatteryMountain »

mrandish wrote: post #26
kasey_junk wrote: post #12

One thing that I always think is undervalued is how variable a single persons output is. A bad day, illness, life changes, etc all dramatically impact a person’s efficiency. Treating even the same persons output as abstract is fraught with issues. One month a rockstar the next a schlub.

Some of the most capable people I've ever worked with have been "bursty" in that they would go through intense periods of high value output and then need to almost go dormant for a while to reset. As long as the "high value" phase was uniquely and significantly valuable it wasn't a problem so long as management understood and planned their assignments appropriately.

I'm like this. Not just in a commercial context, but also at home with pet projects. I go through phases of being extremely creative with things I come up with, for about 2 or 3 days, then I go back to normal for about 30 to 60 days before I get to that state again. Luckily I've been able to notice this behavioural quirk so I try to code/write as much as possible down to use as building block to use on my "boring" days, but sometimes it feels like I cannot remember doing it or it was a different person doing it, kinda baffling to be honest.

During the bursty periods, it affects both my creativity and the amount of work I output. I haven't found a way to trigger/force myself into this state yet. I've tried different sleeping patterns, food, sex, drugs & caffeine, different kinds of music etc, to no effect. Music has come the closest to getting me to that feeling/state.

Anyone else have more things to try?

Re: Individuals Matter

#395

Post by BatteryMountain »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #394
mrandish wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the most capable people I've ever worked with have been "bursty" in that they would go through intense periods of high value output and then need to almost go dormant for a while to reset. As long as the "high value" phase was uniquely and significantly valuable it wasn't a problem so long as management understood and planned their assignments appropriately.

I'm like this. Not just in a commercial context, but also at home with pet projects. I go through phases of being extremely creative with things I come up with, for about 2 or 3 days, then I go back to normal for about 30 to 60 days before I get to that state again. Luckily I've been able to notice this behavioural quirk so I try to code/write as much as possible down to use as building block to use on my "boring" da…

I have to note that I've been diagnosed with Adult ADHD earlier this by a psychiatrist. No bipolar, depression, anxiety behaviours present.

Re: Individuals Matter

#396

Post by ncmncm »

mrisoli wrote: post #342
ncmncm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are there 10x engineers, I personally know an objectively measured 500x engineer. He is humble because he knows someone who produces 10x what he does (albeit spending twice as much time at it). The measurement happened as a result of a joint venture between Siemens AG and Ericsson called Ellemtel. Each company sent 250 [edit: not 500] engineers. It was a six month project, the classic death march: if it did…

Assuming you can objectively measure someone like this, either by LoC or delivery times, this is the wrong way to approach any project. Having a 10x engineer(or even worse, a 500x engineer in this alleged case) is a huge risk for the company, should the engineer want to leave or if they are incapacitated in a tragic event, the company is severely handicapped, ideally a so-called 500x engineer should spend less time w…

Yet, they in fact delivered and got paid, and (pay attention!) would not have delivered and not got paid, otherwise. Risk is speculation about the future. Here we have full benefit of hindsight, and the choice taken was manifestly correct, despite all counterfactual speculation.

Re: Individuals Matter

#397

Post by Andy_G11 »

Andy_G11 wrote: post #289

This is not a planning problem - this is a power problem. If competent and incompetent people alike are told to regard each other as peers in a meritocracy, a range of possible outcomes ensues. The only option for incompetent staff will be to game the system by ensuring that they pass a load off their shoulders to competent staff and cultivate cultural and organisational aspects that let them give the impression of p…

Relentless, critical implementation of individual performance testing (e.g. football teams) might help shift organisational sclerosis.

How can this be done for white collar roles?

Maybe like Amazon? - See this article : https://chrislaing.net/blog/the-memo/ (just a suggestion)

Re: Individuals Matter

#398

Post by ncmncm »

lostcolony wrote: post #106
ncmncm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are there 10x engineers, I personally know an objectively measured 500x engineer. He is humble because he knows someone who produces 10x what he does (albeit spending twice as much time at it). The measurement happened as a result of a joint venture between Siemens AG and Ericsson called Ellemtel. Each company sent 250 [edit: not 500] engineers. It was a six month project, the classic death march: if it did…

Maybe he was an amazing engineer 100s of times better than anyone else on the project...or maybe he was a bottleneck for everyone else. The latter I've seen. A lot. The former I have not.

Not having seen it does not mean it does not exist. I have seen it more than twice. I hope to see it more times.

I have also seen -10x engineers. Generally the best you can do is stay well clear.

Re: Individuals Matter

#399

Post by Dudeman112 »

kragen wrote: post #392
Dudeman112 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are statistical outliers in every single thing that has a big enough amount of samples and that it is possible for there to be statistical outliers. Maybe you attract those like flies are attracted to honey, but pointing out that an Einstein existed isn't really helpful for approximately all teams of physicists out there, minus one or two teams I'm not even saying there isn't a huge quality variance in the regu…

The average person is about 2 meters tall, weighs about 100 kg, can run about 10 kilometers per hour, lives about 70 years, and can shovel about 60 tons of coal in a day (without power tools). If you took a sample of a few million people, it should very definitely come as a surprise to find that it included "10x" people: people who were 20 meters tall, people who weighed 1000 kg, people who could run 100 kilometers p…

What made you think I think physics or programming is analogue to easily quantifiable manual labour?

>It should come as even more of a surprise to find "Jeff Dean"

To find them, yes. To point out that they exist and the likely that you'll work with them is statistically insignificant? No.

The thing with intellectual labour is that some insights have immeasurable value. Some statistical outliers have such humongous intellectual capabilities that it's ridiculous how often they'll have great insights.

Of course, that won't stop people from trying to attach some numbers to it, even if their numbers are epistemologically shit.

Re: Individuals Matter

#400

Post by dspillett »

denton-scratch wrote: post #358
dspillett wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with that is sometimes the estimates are done long before the work starts so when that item eventually gets to the top of the priority stack the person estimated for is working on something else instead. At this point things need to be re-estimated which can cause friction if the new estimate is longer (“but last time, you said…” or “when we asked Bob, he said…”). What I've done in the past is give an est…

> things need to be re-estimated which can cause friction But, but ... isn't every estimate supposed to be provisional? Aren't you supposed to be re-estimating regularly?

In an ideal world, yes, especially if requirements/scope/environments change. But the world is often not ideal. Often unless there is what they see as good reason (the definition of good may vary widely), managers & business planners don't like estimates going up in the short/medium term and pressure to try stick to the original estimate may happen.
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