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10x Engineer

medium.com

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Re: 10x Engineer

#91

Post by svachalek »

craigyk wrote: post #19
strommen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10x "mythology" doesn't mean 10x productive as an above-average engineer. It means 10x productive as the least-productive. So think of somebody who would consider you a 3x. Now the engineer who is 3x relative to you is just about 10x to them. Now consider the developers with net-zero or net-negative productivity. The 10x rule wildly understates how much more valuable a good engineer is relative to them.

Then the mythology is worthless. The focus should then be on eliminating bad engineers, not to go chasing after unicorns. Or even more importantly, figure out why some "10X" become "0X", or vice versa.

Yes. Remember this whole thing started over 40 years ago, when management still had the mindset of large teams of factory workers and/or office paper pushers. Some were clearly better than others but for the most part, employees were supposed to be pin-compatible fully interchangeable parts, so the idea that some people could be lagging so far behind the others without management's notice was a new and novel concept. Today, not so much.

Re: 10x Engineer

#92

Post by sbilstein »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #24

While the article correctly highlights the lack of rigorous scientific studies on 10x engineers, it also generalizes a bit too much from anecdote to make the argument that they are mythical creatures. A more reasonable argument is that the hypothetical existence of 10x engineers explains little about the productivity of most organizations. Personally, in the couple decades I have been in this business working in coun…

Uh, I've known several engineers (ages 22-30) with very questionable drug/alcohol habits who work incredibly hard (65-90hr weeks being the norm). I don't know if it's addiction per se as much as the desire to 'go hard' at all times.

Re: 10x Engineer

#93

Post by ColinDabritz »

blah32497 wrote: post #90
ColinDabritz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also related is the myth that "an engineer" is a fungible resource. They are not. It's not one problem space. You can't swap engineers around like that, you have to match skill sets and experience to the problems you're having, or build new skills.

There is a trade off. If you don't swap your people around then they become very one dimensional. Sometimes it better to put someone less experienced in an area on a project so that he gains perspective (ie. see all junior staff)

A good point. A better phrasing would be "you can't move engineers around like that and expect them to be instantly productive". The problem is that engineers are viewed as being one dimensional as in "amount of engineering". Swapping for cross training, skill building, or just plain variety is quite healthy.

Re: 10x Engineer

#94

Post by JoeAltmaier »

taybin wrote: post #4
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

tl;dr: denial of the 10X productivity we all observe in practice in any large group. Implies its not true until an 'official study' says its true, regardless of vast empirical evidence that supports this obvious fact.

That's a misleading summary. No one is saying that all engineers are equal.

Huh? The article repeatedly calls the 10x assertion 'mythology'. It disingenuously tries to 'debunk' the history of this assertion while blithely ignoring testimony from throughout the industry.

Re: 10x Engineer

#95

Post by freyr »

I don't know anything about 10x engineers.

I know about 1x engineers, maybe 1.5x engineers.

And I know about 0.1x and 0.5x engineers. They're the engineers who scraped by in college, whose heart isn't in it, who clock in and out each day and just try to stay under the radar. They're good at looking busy and getting nothing done. They make the 1.5x engineers look really good.

Re: 10x Engineer

#96

Post by myg204 »

philbo wrote: post #25

Even if the 10x engineer were to exist, assuming a normal distribution, they would be extremely rare and highly sought after. To optimise your business around hiring such a precious unicorn would seem like a very foolhardy strategy. For one, simple probability suggests that you probably won't find one. And if you were to find one, could you be certain that it were a real unicorn rather than a horse with a plastic con…

May not be normally distributed, but follow a power law (fatter tail)

Re: 10x Engineer

#97

Post by [deleted] »

chris_mahan wrote: post #83
com2kid wrote: post #60

I have known developers who, given a moderately complex programming task, will complete it within a reasonable amount of time. The code will be correct with no more than the expected bugs, and the design will be OK as a stand alone piece of code. The design will not be ingenious. It will not take other parts of the system into account. It will not have simple tweaks done in preparation of future design change request…

YAGNI is a virtue. Make to code loosely coupled so the system can be modified in-place when the time come rather than building features that may not be needed in the future.

[deleted]

Re: 10x Engineer

#98

Post by chris_mahan »

fatman wrote: post #3

If I'm being generous, I'm a slightly above average engineer. Spot me 10X and I'll outperform any engineer on the planet. Do I believe in the 2X engineer? Definitely. 3X? Sure. 5X? Possibly, if their name is Ritchie or Torvalds or the like. But 10X? What I do in a week, they'd only get 4 hours. What I do in a year, they'd get 5 weeks. Doesn't exist.

Brendan Eich wrote javascript in about a week. Could you write javascript in 10 weeks?

Fabrice Bellard wrote (among many things) a linux emulator in javascript. (http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

I don't know how long it took him to write, but knowing he's also doing other things (http://bellard.org/) including FFMPEG, I don't think he spent his entire career on it.

Re: 10x Engineer

#99

Post by thethirdwheel »

Any article that takes a body of peer reviewed scientific research, points out some procedural problems, and then--without any supporting evidence--claims that their competing perspective is correct is bullshit. Scientific claims demand scientific refutals, not the agglomerated opinions of the twitter-sphere. This is exactly the same tactic used by climate deniers.

Re: 10x Engineer

#100

Post by Silhouette »

freyr wrote: post #95

I don't know anything about 10x engineers. I know about 1x engineers, maybe 1.5x engineers. And I know about 0.1x and 0.5x engineers. They're the engineers who scraped by in college, whose heart isn't in it, who clock in and out each day and just try to stay under the radar. They're good at looking busy and getting nothing done. They make the 1.5x engineers look really good.

Exactly. If you're going to talk about 10x engineers, the first question has to be ten times what.
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