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Total clickbait; Article equates being a 10x developer with being a better "10x" teammate and then lists ways to be a better teammate. Not that becoming a bette

Total clickbait; Article equates being a 10x developer with being a better "10x" teammate and then lists ways to be a better teammate. Not that becoming a better teammate isn't important but it is definitely not synonymous with becoming a 10x developer.

sulam 8y ago
Did you read closely enough? She’s saying that you can improve the team by 10X by helping your teammates. I’ll take a 10X team over a 10X developer any day, by the way. And last I checked no one has a recipe to be a 10X developer and that’s not even a thing.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  I did read that. Independent of what you would prefer, they are still not synonymous and one would expect an article that says ways o become a 10x developer to address that specifically- not something else entirely.
  - fiveoak 8y ago
    The article says "A 10x engineer isn’t someone who is 10x better than those around them, but someone who makes those around them 10x better." I'm guessing you disagree with the author's definition of a "10x developer". I don't really think there is a clear accepted definition for it.. so how would you define the term?
    - dyarosla 8y ago
      There is a commonly accepted definition (described in a sibling comment) and the article explicitly says ‘I will redefine the term as ...’ what it goes into.
      - fiveoak 8y ago
        For the sibling comment, are you referring to this comment? "10x developer is absolutely a thing, in the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. The "other developers" are earning good wages and doing good work; the 10x developer is usually found making 2x or 3x the norm. That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team." I don't agree that some developers are "10x more productive" than others. I agree that some developers are more/less productive than others but I agree with the article's premise that teamwork is a much more important metric than individual talent. I understand the spirit of "10x developer" in that some individuals are more productive than others.. but the quantification of 10x seems very unrealistic, and IMO is overshadowed by potential productivity gains by having a well-functioning team. Again just my opinion here so feel free to disagree with me on this. The relevant paragraph in the article is this: "Software engineering today is a team sport; like water polo, you can’t build incredible software systems alone. So when I first heard the concept of the 10x engineer, I was confused. How could someone be so talented that it overshadows the power of teamwork? In my experience, individual excellence is necessary, but not sufficient, for greatness. Focusing purely on individual achievement misses the larger picture that teams are required to build great software. So I decided to change the definition of a 10x engineer to this: " It doesn't give a very clear definition of what a "10x engineer" is. Again I agree with them here that the "10x" number and lack of a clear objective "individual productivity" metric makes the term hard to clearly define. Since most work is not done on an individual basis, but rather in teams.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - core-questions 8y ago
      Ten times more productive than the baseline minimum-productivity-to-maintain-a-career-without-hassle developer. Simple as that. "Ten times" is really just a placeholder for your intuitive observation of their performance. C'mon, we know who it's referring to. That developer who just powers through things, understands huge parts of the stack in depth, and usually sacrifices more of their time than they should to getting things done. I don't know if you can become that person. I think maybe you have to be born that way, or drag yourself into that position from a young age.
      - fiveoak 8y ago
        Yeah, I know the spirit of the term. I'm really not trying to play dumb here or anything. I agree that other people can be more productive than others on an individual basis. I just disagree with using a "10x" quantification without a clear way to measure individual productivity when you're working in a team. It's not like we can just point to something like.. hey, Person A has 10x as many line changes as Person B, therefore Person A is 10x as productive. And unless we have two individuals working on features completely alone, we can't say Person A shipped 10x as many widget features as Person B either. I dunno. I honestly don't have a good answer for how to measure individual productivity on a clear, quantifiable basis, again not trying to play dumb here I'm admittedly not sure on it and was hoping to get some feedback from others about it.
  - menacingly 8y ago
    The contrast between what you expected and what you got is, if we're being cynical, clickbait. If we're assuming good faith, it's meant to make you question your assumptions and goals and whether or not we all ought to take a moment and smile at one another because a smile is worth 100 lines of code and can actually ship products if you do it hard enough.
    - dyarosla 8y ago
      I tried to lean on good faith but using common terminology as is and then redefining it in the body of the article is clickbait: alternatives that aren’t baity would include ‘how to really become a 10x developer’ or ‘rethinking what it means to be a 10x developer’.
- asow92 8y ago
  seconded!
- bdamm 8y ago
  10x developer is absolutely a thing, in the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. The "other developers" are earning good wages and doing good work; the 10x developer is usually found making 2x or 3x the norm. That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team.
  - davidsong 8y ago
    It's nice to believe and even nicer to talk about, and that's what's important when it comes to writing fuzzy, warm feeling fluff.
  - freedomben 8y ago
    I didn't used to believe in the 10x developer, until I worked with one. This guy was amazing. Not only was he wildly productive and wickedly smart, but he also cared about the people around him and would give talks about how he solved some crazy hard problem in 1/10th the time that was estimated. Had I been smart enough to follow him where he want, I totally would have. > 10x developer is absolutely a thing Agreed, it is. I've seen it.
  - qwer 8y ago
    > the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. How are you measuring? LOC? Semi-colons per hour? story points? If you're measuring in "dollars earned", how do you think their managers are measuring? And can they tell the difference between a 10x programmer and an 11x programmer?
    - xiphias 8y ago
      Jeff Dean is a great example of 10x (or more) developer. To really appreciate what he has done, just read what infrastructure abstractions he created that helps everybody who's working with big data.
    - 8y ago
ubernostrum 8y ago
When I was a teenager, shortly after it first came out, a friend taught me to play Magic: The Gathering. I thought it was a lot of fun, got into it as a competitive tournament player for a while, etc. Later on, I got certified as a tournament judge, and worked my way up the ranks, eventually becoming a level 3 (the current highest level; previously, levels 4 and 5 existed but were kind of special roles for level 3 anyway, so they got collapsed back into it a few years ago). Part of my role was to train and teach other people who wanted to do this. A Magic tournament judge, in the eyes of most players, is just someone you call over when there's a rules question or a dispute in your match. And that is the most visible part of what they do. And level 3 does require expert-level knowledge of the game's rules and tournament policies, and you get tested on that (a long written exam at promotion, and 3-4 refresher/update exams throughout each year). But being level 3 is about a whole lot more than that; L3s aren't more useful to a tournament because they can answer 10x as many rules questions in the same amount of time (they can't). L3s are useful because they act as multipliers for the other people around them. They've put in the time to learn how to coordinate a team of other officials, keep track of all the logistical things that need to be done to keep a tournament running, delegate as necessary and appropriate, etc. This is something that I saw over and over at large tournaments; L2s were permitted to lead teams on occasion as a kind of supervised training exercise (under the watchful eye of an L3), and watching them always brought home just how much stuff I'd had to learn to do in order to make that look easy, and to know how to keep a team running smoothly and getting things done throughout the tournament. But most Magic players don't get that; they still persist in thinking of the higher levels as just "the people who can answer really hard rules questions", when that's a tiny fraction of what's actually going on. Someone who could only answer hard rules questions quickly, without all the other multiplier skills, might be useful as an L2, but never as an L3 (I started out as one of those people, for what it's worth). And when I needed to explain the level structure in a short way, I'd always say it was about broadening your focus. At level 1, your focus is answering questions and being the go-to person in your local game store. At level 2, your focus broadens to include your entire local community, larger competitive events, and helping to train and give feedback on your colleagues. And at level 3, your focus broadens further: now you're concerned with tournaments of all types (including the professional level), you're at least a regional leader, you're working on helping turn existing L1s into L2s and L2s into L3s, etc. At a tournament, when things were going well, it sometimes looked like I was doing very little, unless you paid close attention. I'd wander around the floor of a tournament, having conversations with other judges, pausing every so often to pull out my notebook and write something down or cross something off a checklist, and occasionally consult on resolving some situation that had come up. But an air of nonchalance can cover for a lot of things actually going on; those conversations would be me checking in on members of my team, following up on things they'd asked about earlier, making sure they had things to keep them engaged if the tournament was running slow, redistributing people around the tournament floor if there were areas without good coverage, making sure they got their assigned breaks, delegating or re-scheduling things as needed, working down my various checklists. And by contrast, the times when I looked the busiest were the times when things were badly going wrong.

sulam 8y ago

Did you read closely enough? She’s saying that you can improve the team by 10X by helping your teammates. I’ll take a 10X team over a 10X developer any day, by the way. And last I checked no one has a recipe to be a 10X developer and that’s not even a thing.

dyarosla 8y ago
I did read that. Independent of what you would prefer, they are still not synonymous and one would expect an article that says ways o become a 10x developer to address that specifically- not something else entirely.
- fiveoak 8y ago
  The article says "A 10x engineer isn’t someone who is 10x better than those around them, but someone who makes those around them 10x better." I'm guessing you disagree with the author's definition of a "10x developer". I don't really think there is a clear accepted definition for it.. so how would you define the term?
  - dyarosla 8y ago
    There is a commonly accepted definition (described in a sibling comment) and the article explicitly says ‘I will redefine the term as ...’ what it goes into.
    - fiveoak 8y ago
      For the sibling comment, are you referring to this comment? "10x developer is absolutely a thing, in the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. The "other developers" are earning good wages and doing good work; the 10x developer is usually found making 2x or 3x the norm. That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team." I don't agree that some developers are "10x more productive" than others. I agree that some developers are more/less productive than others but I agree with the article's premise that teamwork is a much more important metric than individual talent. I understand the spirit of "10x developer" in that some individuals are more productive than others.. but the quantification of 10x seems very unrealistic, and IMO is overshadowed by potential productivity gains by having a well-functioning team. Again just my opinion here so feel free to disagree with me on this. The relevant paragraph in the article is this: "Software engineering today is a team sport; like water polo, you can’t build incredible software systems alone. So when I first heard the concept of the 10x engineer, I was confused. How could someone be so talented that it overshadows the power of teamwork? In my experience, individual excellence is necessary, but not sufficient, for greatness. Focusing purely on individual achievement misses the larger picture that teams are required to build great software. So I decided to change the definition of a 10x engineer to this: " It doesn't give a very clear definition of what a "10x engineer" is. Again I agree with them here that the "10x" number and lack of a clear objective "individual productivity" metric makes the term hard to clearly define. Since most work is not done on an individual basis, but rather in teams.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - core-questions 8y ago
    Ten times more productive than the baseline minimum-productivity-to-maintain-a-career-without-hassle developer. Simple as that. "Ten times" is really just a placeholder for your intuitive observation of their performance. C'mon, we know who it's referring to. That developer who just powers through things, understands huge parts of the stack in depth, and usually sacrifices more of their time than they should to getting things done. I don't know if you can become that person. I think maybe you have to be born that way, or drag yourself into that position from a young age.
    - fiveoak 8y ago
      Yeah, I know the spirit of the term. I'm really not trying to play dumb here or anything. I agree that other people can be more productive than others on an individual basis. I just disagree with using a "10x" quantification without a clear way to measure individual productivity when you're working in a team. It's not like we can just point to something like.. hey, Person A has 10x as many line changes as Person B, therefore Person A is 10x as productive. And unless we have two individuals working on features completely alone, we can't say Person A shipped 10x as many widget features as Person B either. I dunno. I honestly don't have a good answer for how to measure individual productivity on a clear, quantifiable basis, again not trying to play dumb here I'm admittedly not sure on it and was hoping to get some feedback from others about it.
- menacingly 8y ago
  The contrast between what you expected and what you got is, if we're being cynical, clickbait. If we're assuming good faith, it's meant to make you question your assumptions and goals and whether or not we all ought to take a moment and smile at one another because a smile is worth 100 lines of code and can actually ship products if you do it hard enough.
  - dyarosla 8y ago
    I tried to lean on good faith but using common terminology as is and then redefining it in the body of the article is clickbait: alternatives that aren’t baity would include ‘how to really become a 10x developer’ or ‘rethinking what it means to be a 10x developer’.
asow92 8y ago
seconded!
bdamm 8y ago
10x developer is absolutely a thing, in the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. The "other developers" are earning good wages and doing good work; the 10x developer is usually found making 2x or 3x the norm. That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team.
- davidsong 8y ago
  It's nice to believe and even nicer to talk about, and that's what's important when it comes to writing fuzzy, warm feeling fluff.
- freedomben 8y ago
  I didn't used to believe in the 10x developer, until I worked with one. This guy was amazing. Not only was he wildly productive and wickedly smart, but he also cared about the people around him and would give talks about how he solved some crazy hard problem in 1/10th the time that was estimated. Had I been smart enough to follow him where he want, I totally would have. > 10x developer is absolutely a thing Agreed, it is. I've seen it.
- qwer 8y ago
  > the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. How are you measuring? LOC? Semi-colons per hour? story points? If you're measuring in "dollars earned", how do you think their managers are measuring? And can they tell the difference between a 10x programmer and an 11x programmer?
  - xiphias 8y ago
    Jeff Dean is a great example of 10x (or more) developer. To really appreciate what he has done, just read what infrastructure abstractions he created that helps everybody who's working with big data.
  - 8y ago

ubernostrum 8y ago

When I was a teenager, shortly after it first came out, a friend taught me to play Magic: The Gathering. I thought it was a lot of fun, got into it as a competitive tournament player for a while, etc. Later on, I got certified as a tournament judge, and worked my way up the ranks, eventually becoming a level 3 (the current highest level; previously, levels 4 and 5 existed but were kind of special roles for level 3 anyway, so they got collapsed back into it a few years ago). Part of my role was to train and teach other people who wanted to do this. A Magic tournament judge, in the eyes of most players, is just someone you call over when there's a rules question or a dispute in your match. And that is the most visible part of what they do. And level 3 does require expert-level knowledge of the game's rules and tournament policies, and you get tested on that (a long written exam at promotion, and 3-4 refresher/update exams throughout each year). But being level 3 is about a whole lot more than that; L3s aren't more useful to a tournament because they can answer 10x as many rules questions in the same amount of time (they can't). L3s are useful because they act as multipliers for the other people around them. They've put in the time to learn how to coordinate a team of other officials, keep track of all the logistical things that need to be done to keep a tournament running, delegate as necessary and appropriate, etc. This is something that I saw over and over at large tournaments; L2s were permitted to lead teams on occasion as a kind of supervised training exercise (under the watchful eye of an L3), and watching them always brought home just how much stuff I'd had to learn to do in order to make that look easy, and to know how to keep a team running smoothly and getting things done throughout the tournament. But most Magic players don't get that; they still persist in thinking of the higher levels as just "the people who can answer really hard rules questions", when that's a tiny fraction of what's actually going on. Someone who could only answer hard rules questions quickly, without all the other multiplier skills, might be useful as an L2, but never as an L3 (I started out as one of those people, for what it's worth). And when I needed to explain the level structure in a short way, I'd always say it was about broadening your focus. At level 1, your focus is answering questions and being the go-to person in your local game store. At level 2, your focus broadens to include your entire local community, larger competitive events, and helping to train and give feedback on your colleagues. And at level 3, your focus broadens further: now you're concerned with tournaments of all types (including the professional level), you're at least a regional leader, you're working on helping turn existing L1s into L2s and L2s into L3s, etc. At a tournament, when things were going well, it sometimes looked like I was doing very little, unless you paid close attention. I'd wander around the floor of a tournament, having conversations with other judges, pausing every so often to pull out my notebook and write something down or cross something off a checklist, and occasionally consult on resolving some situation that had come up. But an air of nonchalance can cover for a lot of things actually going on; those conversations would be me checking in on members of my team, following up on things they'd asked about earlier, making sure they had things to keep them engaged if the tournament was running slow, redistributing people around the tournament floor if there were areas without good coverage, making sure they got their assigned breaks, delegating or re-scheduling things as needed, working down my various checklists. And by contrast, the times when I looked the busiest were the times when things were badly going wrong.