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Leave them alone? I've always worked in "teams" where 1-3 workhorses made everything happen; the rest was talking, spinning intrigues and inventing new workflow

Leave them alone? I've always worked in "teams" where 1-3 workhorses made everything happen; the rest was talking, spinning intrigues and inventing new workflow procedures (which slowed down and annoyed the workhorses).

jknoepfler 10y ago
Not a sustainable model, or a formula for growth. If you genuinely think this fire your time wasters and raise your hiring bar. If you don't invest a piece of your work week mentoring juniors, you're a lot less productive than you could be.
- candiodari 10y ago
  Have you ever seen a product manager or "the meeting guy" train juniors ? That doesn't even make sense, as you haven't hired those juniors to do either product management or "stakeholder management" or ... whatever the next fashionable term will be, so they simply can't provide the training that is needed. At least where I work, the "workhorses" are the ones training the new guys.
  - aries1980 10y ago
    I did and I was one of the mentee as an engineering lead. All I needed is to attend on meeting and listen or support the PM, but it was invaluable to see how to reason, convince stakeholders, gather requirements and objective feedback, and how not to give a fig to the emotions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- aries1980 10y ago
  Not every problem has to be solved in team fashion and not every member of an organisation has to fit in a hiring pattern. Also there are “brilliant jerks” or people with out-of-fashion worldview. These people could have their place in an organisation. Clearly this is a leadership challenge, but hey, leaders should learn hard and be great as much as their engineers.
jasonpeacock 10y ago
Those "workhorses" negatively contribute to your bus factor[1], they're a risk that needs to be eliminated. That doesn't mean you have to eliminate the workhorses, but you need to convert them from being 10x engineers to being 10x multipliers. This is the valuable and essential element of personal growth that I'm espousing - teach yourself how to multiply the team's output. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- nvarsj 10y ago
  > That doesn't mean you have to eliminate the workhorses, but you need to convert them from being 10x engineers to being 10x multipliers By stopping them from producing things of value? How does this make any sense. It's the peter principle all over again.
  - jasonpeacock 10y ago
    Let's assume you have 3 engineers, one 10x and two 1x, their total output is: 10x + 1x + 1x = 12x Now you convert that 10x engineer into a 10x multiplier, and let's assume he doesn't actually do real work anymore because he's helping everyone else be more productive: 0x + 10x + 10x = 20x He may no longer be doing any work, but the rest of his team is more productive and significantly outstrips his own individual output. That's some very impressive made-up math! Obviously the real world is not so simple, but the effect is the same. There's the engineer that cranks out a crazy amount of code and nobody can keep up, and then there's the engineer that helps everyone else crank out more code - now everyone is learning and increasing their output. Which would you rather have on your team?
    - loop22 10y ago
      Make a 10x engineer help everyone else be more productive all day? Sounds like an effective way to lose that engineer.

jknoepfler 10y ago

Not a sustainable model, or a formula for growth. If you genuinely think this fire your time wasters and raise your hiring bar. If you don't invest a piece of your work week mentoring juniors, you're a lot less productive than you could be.

candiodari 10y ago
Have you ever seen a product manager or "the meeting guy" train juniors ? That doesn't even make sense, as you haven't hired those juniors to do either product management or "stakeholder management" or ... whatever the next fashionable term will be, so they simply can't provide the training that is needed. At least where I work, the "workhorses" are the ones training the new guys.
- aries1980 10y ago
  I did and I was one of the mentee as an engineering lead. All I needed is to attend on meeting and listen or support the PM, but it was invaluable to see how to reason, convince stakeholders, gather requirements and objective feedback, and how not to give a fig to the emotions.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aries1980 10y ago
Not every problem has to be solved in team fashion and not every member of an organisation has to fit in a hiring pattern. Also there are “brilliant jerks” or people with out-of-fashion worldview. These people could have their place in an organisation. Clearly this is a leadership challenge, but hey, leaders should learn hard and be great as much as their engineers.

jasonpeacock 10y ago

Those "workhorses" negatively contribute to your bus factor[1], they're a risk that needs to be eliminated. That doesn't mean you have to eliminate the workhorses, but you need to convert them from being 10x engineers to being 10x multipliers. This is the valuable and essential element of personal growth that I'm espousing - teach yourself how to multiply the team's output. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nvarsj 10y ago
> That doesn't mean you have to eliminate the workhorses, but you need to convert them from being 10x engineers to being 10x multipliers By stopping them from producing things of value? How does this make any sense. It's the peter principle all over again.
- jasonpeacock 10y ago
  Let's assume you have 3 engineers, one 10x and two 1x, their total output is: 10x + 1x + 1x = 12x Now you convert that 10x engineer into a 10x multiplier, and let's assume he doesn't actually do real work anymore because he's helping everyone else be more productive: 0x + 10x + 10x = 20x He may no longer be doing any work, but the rest of his team is more productive and significantly outstrips his own individual output. That's some very impressive made-up math! Obviously the real world is not so simple, but the effect is the same. There's the engineer that cranks out a crazy amount of code and nobody can keep up, and then there's the engineer that helps everyone else crank out more code - now everyone is learning and increasing their output. Which would you rather have on your team?
  - loop22 10y ago
    Make a 10x engineer help everyone else be more productive all day? Sounds like an effective way to lose that engineer.