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In those counties, hierarchical management tends to be the norm. Managers have much more power, and there isn’t the equivalent of these rockstar 10x engineers w

In those counties, hierarchical management tends to be the norm. Managers have much more power, and there isn’t the equivalent of these rockstar 10x engineers we see in the US. Respecting the hierarchy and the process of governing employees can be much more important than delivering a brilliant feature.

mc32 8y ago
I think there is (was?) one difference (at least for some) between Chinese and Indian developers: Indian developers sometimes aim to be managers as it confers more prestige when it comes to considering marriage, compared to a contributor. Perhaps it's changed.
- kamaal 8y ago
  >>Perhaps it's changed. Still the same. Thanks to ridiculous salary differences in salary levels and perks. For eg, if you are a manager you can apply for Green card in EB1 and get it in months. As a programmer, your wait time is an average of 14 years. That's just one thing. To be a manager in India, is to do 0 work, and reap 100x benefits that of a programmer.
- cvrjk 8y ago
  Not a lot though. I am still a junior dev, but a lot of senior devs have reminisced about how they wanted to continue dev work, but had to take up managerial positions for social reasons. Marriage is one side of it. Apparently, people look down on you here if you stay a dev for long because it appears as if "you weren't capable enough". And then there's also money. As someone else stated, rockstar engineers don't occur too often. Pay plateaus after certain years of dev work here in most places.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>Apparently, people look down on you here if you stay a dev for long because it appears as if "you weren't capable enough". >> Pay plateaus after certain years of dev work here in most places. One reason is what I mentioned in other places in this thread. India's socio-economic conditions in some way shoe horn a person's perspective to move towards bureaucratic work. But a big part of that is a lot of outsourcing firms grew 100% YoY, at some point in the 90's and early 2000's. They had to keep promoting people to ensure there was pyramid to run down a chain of command. That's when there was a complete emergence of layers and layers of career managers. Companies had to also sell it as a viable option or no one would take it. So they created huge perks, visa advantages, money and all that, to lure people towards management. It sort of got amplified, because management is a low ball job, with big returns. Now you have plenty of crowd, without skills, and hasn't done any engineering intensive work over decades. And they don't want to get run over, by engineering folks, so they keep that culture going, or everything ends for them. The other part of that is, of course, India has tons of young people coming out of colleges every year, so they can keep hiring freshers at throw away salaries, while experienced peoples' salaries reach a plateau.
afarrell 8y ago
> isn’t the equivalent of these rockstar 10x engineers Wait, is the “rockstar 10x engineer” a thing in real life? I get that people can be highly knowledgeable in a certain area or familiar with certain tools or highly effective at cutting to the core important details of a problem and making it clearer.
- infinity0 8y ago
  Why wouldn't it be a thing in real life?
- 40acres 8y ago
  "Rockstars" are real but I think the idea has been warped. Every field has an elite set of performers who outshine the others. I don't see why software development would be any different.
- abhinai 8y ago
  It is a thing in real life. You have to see it to believe it. To be fair, 10 people would write more code than a 10x engineer. But a 10x engineer can cut through complexity and deliver something simple that, by the virtue of its simplicity and brilliance in design, works (1) better, (2) faster, (3) has fewer bugs, (4) took 1/10th the time (5) requires less maintenance etc. etc.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  I think it helps to reformulate the question to "are there people at the tail ends of the distribution?"
- debatem1 8y ago
  Rockstars and 10x engineers are both real and not terribly uncommon, but often are not the same people. For the 10xer, it usually isn't that they do 10x more work, it's that they know how to make their org do 1/10th the work and get essentially the same results. They pay attention to business requirements and if you spot a senior engineer being listened to very closely by the people who make business requirements you've got reasonable odds of having found one. The other type is the person who has an esoteric skill that lets you advance your business objectives by 10x-- for example, the optimization engineer who figures out how to cut server costs by 90% or whatever. These folks are usually viewed as wizards by other engineers. If you find an engineer being consistently handed all the 'crunchy' problems you've got a good candidate for this type, and again they aren't that rare. Very, very rarely the two are the same person. If you ever work with one you'll probably know it pretty quickly, but odds are low.
abhinai 8y ago
You are absolutely correct. If you are a 10x engineer reporting to a mediocre manager in these countries, it really complicates things and in the end you learn wrong lessons in life.
- m_ransing 8y ago
  So, does that mean if one is 10x engineer under mediocre manager in other countries, things are better for that engineer compared to these countries?
  - kamaal 8y ago
    It depends on the cultural context. India is a society of scarcity, and with an over population problem. So people try to endlessly optimize for themselves, regardless of the consequences. And then hoard for themselves. In other countries, it could be different. For eg, in the Bay Area, I saw similar behaviour, but it was not as intense or at the same level as I see in India. Sure bad people, exist everywhere in the world. But the socio-economics context acts like a catalyst in the Indian system.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"10x engineers " I really hate this. Maybe there are a few real 10x engineers but mostly it depends on the environment. I think I have been a 10x engineer myself in one company where I could work with autonomy and get needed support. Now I work at a place where they prefer many 0.5x engineers under tight control that do what they are told. I think a lot of us could do much better if we were allowed to do so.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  >Now I work at a place where they prefer many 0.5x engineers under tight control that do what they are told. won't these engineers basically be replaced once someone figures out a way to automate menial dev tasks like wix for eg

mc32 8y ago

I think there is (was?) one difference (at least for some) between Chinese and Indian developers: Indian developers sometimes aim to be managers as it confers more prestige when it comes to considering marriage, compared to a contributor. Perhaps it's changed.

kamaal 8y ago
>>Perhaps it's changed. Still the same. Thanks to ridiculous salary differences in salary levels and perks. For eg, if you are a manager you can apply for Green card in EB1 and get it in months. As a programmer, your wait time is an average of 14 years. That's just one thing. To be a manager in India, is to do 0 work, and reap 100x benefits that of a programmer.
cvrjk 8y ago
Not a lot though. I am still a junior dev, but a lot of senior devs have reminisced about how they wanted to continue dev work, but had to take up managerial positions for social reasons. Marriage is one side of it. Apparently, people look down on you here if you stay a dev for long because it appears as if "you weren't capable enough". And then there's also money. As someone else stated, rockstar engineers don't occur too often. Pay plateaus after certain years of dev work here in most places.
- kamaal 8y ago
  >>Apparently, people look down on you here if you stay a dev for long because it appears as if "you weren't capable enough". >> Pay plateaus after certain years of dev work here in most places. One reason is what I mentioned in other places in this thread. India's socio-economic conditions in some way shoe horn a person's perspective to move towards bureaucratic work. But a big part of that is a lot of outsourcing firms grew 100% YoY, at some point in the 90's and early 2000's. They had to keep promoting people to ensure there was pyramid to run down a chain of command. That's when there was a complete emergence of layers and layers of career managers. Companies had to also sell it as a viable option or no one would take it. So they created huge perks, visa advantages, money and all that, to lure people towards management. It sort of got amplified, because management is a low ball job, with big returns. Now you have plenty of crowd, without skills, and hasn't done any engineering intensive work over decades. And they don't want to get run over, by engineering folks, so they keep that culture going, or everything ends for them. The other part of that is, of course, India has tons of young people coming out of colleges every year, so they can keep hiring freshers at throw away salaries, while experienced peoples' salaries reach a plateau.

afarrell 8y ago

> isn’t the equivalent of these rockstar 10x engineers Wait, is the “rockstar 10x engineer” a thing in real life? I get that people can be highly knowledgeable in a certain area or familiar with certain tools or highly effective at cutting to the core important details of a problem and making it clearer.

infinity0 8y ago
Why wouldn't it be a thing in real life?
40acres 8y ago
"Rockstars" are real but I think the idea has been warped. Every field has an elite set of performers who outshine the others. I don't see why software development would be any different.
abhinai 8y ago
It is a thing in real life. You have to see it to believe it. To be fair, 10 people would write more code than a 10x engineer. But a 10x engineer can cut through complexity and deliver something simple that, by the virtue of its simplicity and brilliance in design, works (1) better, (2) faster, (3) has fewer bugs, (4) took 1/10th the time (5) requires less maintenance etc. etc.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
I think it helps to reformulate the question to "are there people at the tail ends of the distribution?"
debatem1 8y ago
Rockstars and 10x engineers are both real and not terribly uncommon, but often are not the same people. For the 10xer, it usually isn't that they do 10x more work, it's that they know how to make their org do 1/10th the work and get essentially the same results. They pay attention to business requirements and if you spot a senior engineer being listened to very closely by the people who make business requirements you've got reasonable odds of having found one. The other type is the person who has an esoteric skill that lets you advance your business objectives by 10x-- for example, the optimization engineer who figures out how to cut server costs by 90% or whatever. These folks are usually viewed as wizards by other engineers. If you find an engineer being consistently handed all the 'crunchy' problems you've got a good candidate for this type, and again they aren't that rare. Very, very rarely the two are the same person. If you ever work with one you'll probably know it pretty quickly, but odds are low.

abhinai 8y ago

You are absolutely correct. If you are a 10x engineer reporting to a mediocre manager in these countries, it really complicates things and in the end you learn wrong lessons in life.

m_ransing 8y ago
So, does that mean if one is 10x engineer under mediocre manager in other countries, things are better for that engineer compared to these countries?
- kamaal 8y ago
  It depends on the cultural context. India is a society of scarcity, and with an over population problem. So people try to endlessly optimize for themselves, regardless of the consequences. And then hoard for themselves. In other countries, it could be different. For eg, in the Bay Area, I saw similar behaviour, but it was not as intense or at the same level as I see in India. Sure bad people, exist everywhere in the world. But the socio-economics context acts like a catalyst in the Indian system.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"10x engineers " I really hate this. Maybe there are a few real 10x engineers but mostly it depends on the environment. I think I have been a 10x engineer myself in one company where I could work with autonomy and get needed support. Now I work at a place where they prefer many 0.5x engineers under tight control that do what they are told. I think a lot of us could do much better if we were allowed to do so.

kkarakk 8y ago
>Now I work at a place where they prefer many 0.5x engineers under tight control that do what they are told. won't these engineers basically be replaced once someone figures out a way to automate menial dev tasks like wix for eg