Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#401

Post by WizzleKake » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #369

quadcore wrote: post #96

The 10x programmer is a silly myth. The idea that someone can produce in 1 day what another competent, hard working, similarly experienced programmer can produce in 2 weeks is silly. You know, 10x is an optimistic number here. Some programmers will do in 1 day what you wont achieve in a life time. And not understanding that makes you a bad programmer by my book simply because this is the foundation of the job. So let…

> Some programmers will do in 1 day what you wont achieve in a life time. And not understanding that makes you a bad programmer by my book simply because this is the foundation of the job. Most projects out there will not benefit from such a person. If you don't understand this, then in my book it makes you a poor employee. I mean, it's great if this 10x guy can solve some challenging problems that most people cannot…

A 10x programmer doesn't cost 10 times as much as a regular programmer. 10x programmers are real and drive real business value. The people who insist 10x programmers are a myth simply have not worked with one. Do not conflate brilliant-but-an-asshole or prodigious-output-but-creates-a-mess programmers with 10x programmers.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#402

Post by ljm » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #352

> The 10x programmer is a silly myth. The idea that someone can produce in 1 day what another competent, hard working, similarly experienced programmer can produce in 2 weeks is silly. N × programmers for N >1 are mostly not N × cowboy solo code slingers, lots of gains are in enabling other members of the team. The idea that programmer contributions to output are all in solo code slinging is a close cousin of the myt…

At some point, you start to become effective not by churning out code faster than anyone else can do it, but by anticipating upcoming blockers and clearing them out before they become a problem for the team. You're able to use a holistic insight of the project to your advantage in order to keep the team's efficacy to a high level.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#403

Post by ipaddr » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

"Nothing worries me more than a senior engineer that has no opinion of their tools"

Nothing worries me more than the opinioned. Open your mind. You shouldn't have deep opinions on your tools because they change, your need and understanding of them changes.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#404

Post by chrsig » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #392

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

I think time off is very important, but you don't need to ask it during the interviews. Just wait until they give an offer and then ask for what you want.

so spend how much of my time and theirs going through the entire interview process to find out the answer to a trivial question that could make or break any final decision?

....Or...and hear me out here...fuck that noise.

if people are making snap judgement about candidates from asking a basic company culture/hr question during the interview question, then the candidate winds up having dodged a bullet one way or the other.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#405

Post by mswtk » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

quadcore wrote: post #96

The 10x programmer is a silly myth. The idea that someone can produce in 1 day what another competent, hard working, similarly experienced programmer can produce in 2 weeks is silly. You know, 10x is an optimistic number here. Some programmers will do in 1 day what you wont achieve in a life time. And not understanding that makes you a bad programmer by my book simply because this is the foundation of the job. So let…

> You think John Carmack was the only one trying to make 3d games when Doom came out? Thousands of programmers where trying to. Does that make him a 10x programmer in your opinion? Or more like a 1000x?

I think the idea of 10x programmers gets so much pushback because it's often bundled with this kind of toxic hero worship. There's a difference between acknowledging the impressive ability of outliers, and idolizing heroic one-man efforts as the pinnacle of what we should all aspire to as software developers.

Incidentally, Carmack was not the only programmer on early id Software games, and Doom was far from the first 3d first-person game made. Arguably, it wasn't even that ambitious compared to, say, Ultima Underworld, but the programmers working on that get much less immediate recognition.

As a matter of fact, these discussions often remind me of that famous IGN quote of Warren Spector. Except we really should know better on HN.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#406

Post by brightball » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

It’s rare that I see a post where I agree with it enough that I probably could have written it, but here we are.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#407

Post by heartbreak » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #313

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

This is especially true if the company uses "unlimited"/not-tracked/etc. time. Otherwise, unless you know someone at the place (and even then it can vary by group), you're left with making assumptions about norms that may not be accurate. Personally, I've never not used all my PTO in a given year and would consider being unable to do so a show stopper.

The author's company avoids that "unlimited PTO" pitfall in their job listings by describing the benefit as:

> generous time off

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#408

Post by spion » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

> they’ve formed opinions about the way things should be

I feel the opposite. I'd rather have no opinions rather than have strong opinions that prevent me form seeing new possibilities. Infact, I work hard on keeping my opinions under control.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#409

Post by heartbreak » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #377

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

The problem is not what's important to you when you do an interview. It's not a friendly club, it's the guys who will pay your rent for a while, just act like you pretend to understand this, and ask by side channel, out of sheer strategy. You CAN refuse once the contract arrives for signature, the interview is a lot also for the company to have argument to sell you to management as a worthy investment. I admit I neve…

> things can be tough and high pressure (investment bank)

> people not nice on purpose

Sounds like a miserable place to work.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#410

Post by xwolfi » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #51

pjc50 wrote: post #6

This is a very insightful list. But there is one thing I'd quibble with: while it's inherently a super-subjective metric, I would say that 10x programmers do exist. Both in the "can support a company by themselves" sense and the "mad lone genius" sense. Not all the 10x programmers are good at working with other people or on other people's ideas. 0.1x programmers are often lost or afraid, although they may just be uni…

I once worked on a team that in hindsight had two 10x developers in a team of only 12. They were vastly different, and the difference to me is extremely interesting. The first one was not a bad person by any means, but had no social skills, no ability to communicate and often just forged ahead building great stuff on his own. Entire areas of the software were entirely conceived and created by him, and it was difficul…

Yeah the first one is a risk. I've met one whom I had to take over the code of when he left and psh, I wished he was a dumbass instead. He could produce shitloads (but would never test, interestingly), do stuff I honestly can't do, but do you really need to bitshift instead of doing a modulo to save 1 CPU instruction ?

The amount of obscure waste of programming complexity made us actually just abandon the thing he spent years on to just not do it. And everything works fine and we still make money and we're just probably a little bit less clever about how we do it. We also have a lot more time to listen to users and solve their problems, rather than gloat on our genius and solve our own created problems :D

Your second example is inspiring and I hope to meet one to learn from too !