The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
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The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#2The thesis is that everyone is a 10x engineer at certain moments. But that if that same person is put in a more challenging situation, they no longer will be 10x. Also, that's the situation they should consistently be in. Otherwise, a consistently 10x engineer indicates coasting.
It's a workable hypothesis, but where is the data?
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#3If a '10x' engineer is going ten times slower than a normal and is therefore not a '10x' engineer anymore, wouldn't a '1x' engineer on the same difficult problem also go ten times slower and be a '0.1x' engineer?
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#4Some people are just better at exploring problem spaces, avoiding dead ends and making insightful connections that lead to solutions. It doesn't always come with experience, some people could work forever and never solve even a moderately difficult problem. These people build websites. The 10x engineer has a mindset and an approach that yields results more consistently than his/her peers.
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#510x engineers wouldn't read this because they're busy doing something
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#6The thesis is that everyone is a 10x engineer at certain moments. But that if that same person is put in a more challenging situation, they no longer will be 10x. Also, that's the situation they should consistently be in. Otherwise, a consistently 10x engineer indicates coasting. It's a workable hypothesis, but where is the data?
The dirty secret of the blog-o-sphere.
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#7There's nothing dirty about shipping.
10x means shipping - and nothing else. It's just one trait - being able to attack small chunks of work and finish them before moving to the next one - and it doesn't say anything about the quality of one's work. Here's why: you can learn to ship.
Being a "10x" is half of Joel's "smart and get things done". Don't ever forget about the other half.
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#8The dirty secret of 10x engineers is that you have to learn to prevent the other crabs from dragging you back down into the bucket (whether deliberately or out of ignorance).
Crap workspace? Leave. Crap cohabitants (not just in need of assistance, but willfully negligent or so far behind that you can't get your job done)? Find better people to be around.
The hard part: If you're a nice person, it can take a while to really learn and internalize this, and it can remain difficult to execute.
It's not about being "better than". It's about circumstances that hinder your own performance and leave you counter-productively frustrated. No situation is perfect, but there are points past which they become destructively counter-productive.
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#9The dirty secret of 10x engineers is that you have to learn to prevent the other crabs from dragging you back down into the bucket (whether deliberately or out of ignorance). Crap workspace? Leave. Crap cohabitants (not just in need of assistance, but willfully negligent or so far behind that you can't get your job done)? Find better people to be around. The hard part: If you're a nice person, it can take a while to…
It takes just one bad apple to spoil the entire team.
I've been in this situation three times. Reporting that your teammate is dragging the entire project down is a horrible feeling - but it's the only responsible thing to do. If you don't, you buy one person's peace of mind at the cost of the whole team's well-being.
PS. Dr Glover was right: nice guys are not nice. They just try to cover their asses and stay quiet.
Re: The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers
#10Take as given that under condition X all people can exhibit Y behavior. It does not necessarily follow that a particular person can exhibit Y behavior only under condition X.