Busting the 10x software engineer myth • Hacker News Board

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#51

Post by user568439 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

I don't even consider myself a very good developer but I work hard, I have discipline and commitment, and I focus on getting the work done. This made me 10x engineer in most of the teams I worked.

And for a few years I had it well measured because I was working with the same app and I was estimating all the tasks for me and the others with high precision to my own performance. The manager understood that other team members wouldn't follow my pace since they were less familiar with the app, and it was OK for him to estimate 2x or 3x the time when planning. But at the end it showed that I was average 8x faster (and with better quality) which was not justified since they were also senior even they knew the app a bit less.

The worst part is that I was earning much less than them due to location... but at least I could justify a request for a 15% raise which was given with no hesitation.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#52

Post by hsn915 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

There are two things here:

- What is a 10x programmer (what do they do better?)

- What is the impact of their presence (or absence) on a company

A 10x programmer is not someone who completes a narrowly defined task at 10x the speed of another engineer.

> In a controlled environment, the variation between most software engineers is much more modest.

Of course!

If you ask people to implement a small component as part of a large architecture that was already decided .. you won't find much of a difference in performance (unless you have people who are truly and utterly incompetent).

The excellent engineers would come up with a different design to begin with, but you can't measure that in a controlled study.

Now, knowing that 10x engineers exist, how can you use that to your advantage if you're a manager of a company?

If you yourself are not an excellent programmer, you can't just hire excellent programmers and hope they improve your business.

You will be fighting with them over control.

The key is to have excellent programmers in powerful position where they can call the shots about how to hire and manage and reward people.

If you are willing to give them that kind of power, then you have no business reading articles like this on the internet.

If you are not yourself an excellent engineer and are not willing to share power with excellent engineers, then no amount of reading of such articles on the internet will help you make the right decisions.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#53

Post by karmakaze » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

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 there are 10x'ers and they instinctively go Noooooo!

Sus are those who write to debunk it.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#54

Post by woliveirajr » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #33

tempodox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Adding people to a late project makes it later”. Equally, replacing high performers with multiple people wouldn't work most of the time.

Yea funnily enough I just added a comment along these lines about restaurants in a different story. Just because an engineer is 10x better in some sense that another one, it doesn't meant that 10 of the lower quality engineers will make up for it, just as eating 10 times at McDonald's isn't going to be as much fun as eating once at a great restaurant (for most people)

But, I think, you should consider that it's 10x at McDonald's vs 1x at a good restaurant and 9 days eating nothing at all.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#55

Post by hsn915 » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:55 AM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #50

There may be 10x engineers. But what I know for sure is, that there are engineers (or engineering teams) which make you perform at 1/10x of what you might have, by mis-carefully laying a minefield of: * Build difficulties. * Hidden dependencies. * Multiple and conflicting sources of configuration information. * Lack of documentation * Incorrect/outdated/stone-cold lyin' documentation * Mis-named executables, configur…

More broadly, the 10x engineer makes sure there are no such minefields.

They make sure there are nearly zero hurdles to getting in the zone.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#56

Post by BMFXX » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

goldcd wrote: post #46

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…

I've worked with a few developers who are great - people who get bored of waiting so just build it themselves one evening whilst everybody's arguing over funding/recruiting the team we thought was needed. Within a team, I think 'greatness' comes in all manner of different forms, all of which are needed. The person who holds the whole software model in their head, and can rattle off the precise changes required to imp…

Oof, sadly this sounds like me... It's hard to delegate, and even harder to trust that it's done correctly. I know this will be my undoing someday, it also drives me insane because it puts extra pressure on myself...

Any suggestions? (Short of let people do it).

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#57

Post by CipherThrowaway » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

If you have a team of decent developers then I think the article has a point. But imagine you're in a situation where 90% of the developers on your team are outsource contractors with below junior level of aptitude who have been up-marketed by talent agencies as "senior architects" and "technical leads." Now 10x makes a bit more sense.

Organizations with poor technical leadership fail to quality control hires and accumulate imposters. In this setting the lucky hire of a merely average developer creates the appearance of a 10x (or 100x) unicorn.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#58

Post by eska » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

Software engineers that create negative value exist, so it shouldn’t be controversial that there are developers that go the other direction.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#59

Post by BlargMcLarg » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

BMFXX wrote: post #56

goldcd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a few developers who are great - people who get bored of waiting so just build it themselves one evening whilst everybody's arguing over funding/recruiting the team we thought was needed. Within a team, I think 'greatness' comes in all manner of different forms, all of which are needed. The person who holds the whole software model in their head, and can rattle off the precise changes required to imp…

Oof, sadly this sounds like me... It's hard to delegate, and even harder to trust that it's done correctly. I know this will be my undoing someday, it also drives me insane because it puts extra pressure on myself... Any suggestions? (Short of let people do it).

Start small and practice. Evaluate how people react to the task size and experiment from there. E.g. don't make someone annoyed by tasks way under their stature grow at the same rate as someone who struggles to deliver.

This goes for clarity, difficulty and size of the task. Don't make someone bad at filling the details do an unclear task. Don't make someone unskilled do a clear yet difficult task. Don't make someone with no track record work on a task for too many days without supervision. Etc.

Unfortunately, people not meeting standards you would will always be a thing unless you're leading people more skilled in the area of expertise. Which brings it's own set of issues.

Re: Busting the 10x software engineer myth

#60

Post by renox » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #2

I can cite many examples of a 10x engineer having an insight that greatly shortened the development time. It's not that they write code faster. It's that they select a path to the solution that is a lot shorter.

Unfortunately in big companies, pointing in the right direction isn't good enough: then you have to fight inertia, inter-team, inter-site disputes to finally do the right things :-(