5 ms·

I am not saying you are wrong, but could it also be: 1. the person had been there the longest, and had the most context on the code base. 2. There was very li

by mugsie 7y ago

I am not saying you are wrong, but could it also be: 1. the person had been there the longest, and had the most context on the code base. 2. There was very little docs on the code base, so new people had to go to them. 3. This person would just do the feature instead of helping the other person implement the feature, and ensure their position as "top feature churner" If these are true, they may be 10x of the others on the team, but they are holding the team back by not dropping themselves to 4x and lifting up the other team members to 2x.

laichzeit0 7y ago
It's so weird to see so many people argue so hard that the Usain Bolt's of the programming world simply cannot / should not exist.
- mugsie 7y ago
  Sprinting - individual sport. Development - team sport. You could put Messi on my company's 5 a side lunch time team, and we still wouldn't win the champions league, and the skill of the others on the team would atrophy, and they would become over reliant on a single person. Not a great thing for a team. A true "10x" engineer raises up the team by 10x by doing the things a lot of devs hate doing - docs, mentoring, guidance (without taking over someone's feature), and knowledge sharing. Not shipping :all-the-things: on their own.
  - randomsearch 7y ago
    Oh, a thousand times this. Absolutely. I would love to work with that developer.
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > Messi One of my assertions is that Messi hasn't proven himself to be a GOAT until he's been great somewhere else. It's easy* to perform at a high level when the entire team is built around you as at Barcelona. In non-Messi-specific environments (ie Argentina national team), he just doesn't perform as well. Whereas Ronaldo, on the other hand, has done it in several distinct environments and elevated the teams he's been in (which I guess makes him a "true" 10x player?)
    - mugsie 7y ago
      honestly, I just googled "best football player 2019" and it was the first result :)
    - kumoflow 7y ago
      But still is the same thing. If Ronaldo, the best player in the world, would be considered a 10x player, it would mean that him and just a goal keeper would be able to compete with other professional teams, which we all know is bullocks. The original 10x term was about productivity (and namely, lines of code that is pretty much bunk). For me is always about what is a 1x developer. If we consider them a professional developer that does their tasks (somewhat) on time, documented, and with minimal bugs, which I would consider the baseline for what I would call a professional developer, I have a strong opinion you won't find 10x developers compared to this. On the other hand, if a 1x developer is a person that can't create a simple algorithm(fizzbuzz), copy pasts code from every possible source, including his own code from file A to file B, etc etc, then sure, 10x developers are there, but this is because we set the bar too low.
  - username90 7y ago
    > A true "10x" engineer raises up the team by 10x by doing the things a lot of devs hate doing - docs, mentoring, guidance (without taking over someone's feature), and knowledge sharing. Not shipping :all-the-things: on their own. That is gate-keeping, a person who could replace a team is 10x no matter if he is super helpful to slower developers or not. Of course you'd prefer to work with the guy who makes you look better instead of the guy who makes you look bad, but both are still 10x. However a person who just wants some development work done would prefer to work with a single 10x over trying to organize a whole team, a single guy will be more agile and much easier to communicate with while trying to get 10 persons to pull in the same direction is a monumental task. In that environment it doesn't matter if the dev can help slower devs or not, all that matters is that he can communicate with stake holders and users about requirements. Development is a team sport, yes, but it is a team sport where some people can act as a whole team on their own.
    - mugsie 7y ago
      > That is gate-keeping Lol wut? The entire 10x meme is gatekeeping, this is about including more people than Rockstar DevOps SRE Ninjas. > a person who could replace a team Doesn't exist. > However a person who just wants some development work done would prefer to work with a single 10x over trying to organize a whole team, a single guy will be more agile and much easier to communicate with... A person "who just wants development work done" may well prefer a single developer, but it is not sustainable in the long run. That one 10x dev needs vacation, family/friends, sick leave, and career progression at some point. > Development is a team sport, yes, but it is a team sport where some people can act as a whole team on their own. Nope, not for any product that will last longer than a year, is anyway complex, or has more than one timezones worth of usage.
      - username90 7y ago
        I see you are focusing too much on your own problem space where you need people ready to fix fires any time in the day and you need to ensure that you have people who can fix fires for years to come. In that environment you need replaceable cogs, then I agree that 10x engineers can't fill that role since you can't get a steady supply of them. However in an environment where you are writing solid libraries which are not meant to break or change much and therefore wont need much maintenance the requirements are very different. Then it is better to have an extremely good team build a good solution once and then ship it and then mostly leave it alone. Writing solid libraries is useful everywhere, since it can make work easier for the rest of the organization and such. Forcing people to only hire replaceable cogs and ignoring that some developers can be vastly more productive is therefore counter productive, even in organizations which mostly need replaceable cogs.
  - Klonoar 7y ago
    This is a Senior Engineer, not a 10x. A 10x engineer is just a workhorse who happens to know enough of everything to be truly useful wherever. I like to call them "glue engineers" instead because it's a little more friendly to the team setting. They do exist, though.
    - mugsie 7y ago
      OK, this is a different (and better) description than the meme that is going around (see the twitter thread that kicked off this latest round of bikesheding about "10x" engineers). If someone is a Usain Bolt of software development though, they probably are someone who should be guided into, or are in, a senior engineering role. Glue Engineers / Smokejumpers / problem solvers are different, and useful, but when companies become over reliant on them it is an issue. And no matter how productive they are, they should be held to the same standards as other engineers.
  - cema 7y ago
    Yes. I think this "raising up the team" is called servant leadership. Not many people know how to do it, and it seems not many want to, because it does not help then look like heroes.
- omegabravo 7y ago
  likewise, it's weird to see people compare Usain Bolt who's only concern is to run for 100m in a straight line, with the complex diverse field of software engineering. Winning in a 100m sprint is a simple contest to measure. You win or you don't. The parent raised perfectly relevant qualifiers that were summarily dismissed because the hypothetical 10X programmers exist. It's hard to argue against excellent programmers, statistically they must exist. All this work identifying them and the qualities is a bit silly when it's hard to even define the term.
  - Nyandalized 7y ago
    I think it's a perfectly valid analogy; A runner is doing everything you'd be doing running, but more, and can achieve far greater speeds that you ever can.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  No one argued that, just that "Usain Bolt's" shouldn't be that common.
- khazhoux 7y ago
  The pride of others offends our tastes only when it offends our own pride.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Usain Bolt isn't 10x faster than the average human much less the average professional sprinter.
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    If quickly-googled numbers are any indication, Usain Bolt isn't 10x faster than my walking speed.
- pizza234 7y ago
  It's the product of a culture where success is the core of identity. I agree that it's weird, and to me it's also a delusion. As a delusion, though, it also has a function. Most of the people will never meet outliers in their field, and this will protect their self-esteem with the thought that the outliers don't exist, can't exist or that those skills can be reached with enough effort. If the connection success was disconnected from identity, then there would be no need for this delusion, since admitting that somebody could be immensely better in a certain field wouldn't hurt self-esteem.
n_ary 7y ago
I agree to this. As I commented elsewhere, this is what most 10x I have come in contact with can be described as(sort of).

by mugsie 7y ago

laichzeit0 7y ago

It's so weird to see so many people argue so hard that the Usain Bolt's of the programming world simply cannot / should not exist.

mugsie 7y ago
Sprinting - individual sport. Development - team sport. You could put Messi on my company's 5 a side lunch time team, and we still wouldn't win the champions league, and the skill of the others on the team would atrophy, and they would become over reliant on a single person. Not a great thing for a team. A true "10x" engineer raises up the team by 10x by doing the things a lot of devs hate doing - docs, mentoring, guidance (without taking over someone's feature), and knowledge sharing. Not shipping :all-the-things: on their own.
- randomsearch 7y ago
  Oh, a thousand times this. Absolutely. I would love to work with that developer.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > Messi One of my assertions is that Messi hasn't proven himself to be a GOAT until he's been great somewhere else. It's easy* to perform at a high level when the entire team is built around you as at Barcelona. In non-Messi-specific environments (ie Argentina national team), he just doesn't perform as well. Whereas Ronaldo, on the other hand, has done it in several distinct environments and elevated the teams he's been in (which I guess makes him a "true" 10x player?)
  - mugsie 7y ago
    honestly, I just googled "best football player 2019" and it was the first result :)
  - kumoflow 7y ago
    But still is the same thing. If Ronaldo, the best player in the world, would be considered a 10x player, it would mean that him and just a goal keeper would be able to compete with other professional teams, which we all know is bullocks. The original 10x term was about productivity (and namely, lines of code that is pretty much bunk). For me is always about what is a 1x developer. If we consider them a professional developer that does their tasks (somewhat) on time, documented, and with minimal bugs, which I would consider the baseline for what I would call a professional developer, I have a strong opinion you won't find 10x developers compared to this. On the other hand, if a 1x developer is a person that can't create a simple algorithm(fizzbuzz), copy pasts code from every possible source, including his own code from file A to file B, etc etc, then sure, 10x developers are there, but this is because we set the bar too low.
- username90 7y ago
  > A true "10x" engineer raises up the team by 10x by doing the things a lot of devs hate doing - docs, mentoring, guidance (without taking over someone's feature), and knowledge sharing. Not shipping :all-the-things: on their own. That is gate-keeping, a person who could replace a team is 10x no matter if he is super helpful to slower developers or not. Of course you'd prefer to work with the guy who makes you look better instead of the guy who makes you look bad, but both are still 10x. However a person who just wants some development work done would prefer to work with a single 10x over trying to organize a whole team, a single guy will be more agile and much easier to communicate with while trying to get 10 persons to pull in the same direction is a monumental task. In that environment it doesn't matter if the dev can help slower devs or not, all that matters is that he can communicate with stake holders and users about requirements. Development is a team sport, yes, but it is a team sport where some people can act as a whole team on their own.
  - mugsie 7y ago
    > That is gate-keeping Lol wut? The entire 10x meme is gatekeeping, this is about including more people than Rockstar DevOps SRE Ninjas. > a person who could replace a team Doesn't exist. > However a person who just wants some development work done would prefer to work with a single 10x over trying to organize a whole team, a single guy will be more agile and much easier to communicate with... A person "who just wants development work done" may well prefer a single developer, but it is not sustainable in the long run. That one 10x dev needs vacation, family/friends, sick leave, and career progression at some point. > Development is a team sport, yes, but it is a team sport where some people can act as a whole team on their own. Nope, not for any product that will last longer than a year, is anyway complex, or has more than one timezones worth of usage.
    - username90 7y ago
      I see you are focusing too much on your own problem space where you need people ready to fix fires any time in the day and you need to ensure that you have people who can fix fires for years to come. In that environment you need replaceable cogs, then I agree that 10x engineers can't fill that role since you can't get a steady supply of them. However in an environment where you are writing solid libraries which are not meant to break or change much and therefore wont need much maintenance the requirements are very different. Then it is better to have an extremely good team build a good solution once and then ship it and then mostly leave it alone. Writing solid libraries is useful everywhere, since it can make work easier for the rest of the organization and such. Forcing people to only hire replaceable cogs and ignoring that some developers can be vastly more productive is therefore counter productive, even in organizations which mostly need replaceable cogs.
- Klonoar 7y ago
  This is a Senior Engineer, not a 10x. A 10x engineer is just a workhorse who happens to know enough of everything to be truly useful wherever. I like to call them "glue engineers" instead because it's a little more friendly to the team setting. They do exist, though.
  - mugsie 7y ago
    OK, this is a different (and better) description than the meme that is going around (see the twitter thread that kicked off this latest round of bikesheding about "10x" engineers). If someone is a Usain Bolt of software development though, they probably are someone who should be guided into, or are in, a senior engineering role. Glue Engineers / Smokejumpers / problem solvers are different, and useful, but when companies become over reliant on them it is an issue. And no matter how productive they are, they should be held to the same standards as other engineers.
- cema 7y ago
  Yes. I think this "raising up the team" is called servant leadership. Not many people know how to do it, and it seems not many want to, because it does not help then look like heroes.
omegabravo 7y ago
likewise, it's weird to see people compare Usain Bolt who's only concern is to run for 100m in a straight line, with the complex diverse field of software engineering. Winning in a 100m sprint is a simple contest to measure. You win or you don't. The parent raised perfectly relevant qualifiers that were summarily dismissed because the hypothetical 10X programmers exist. It's hard to argue against excellent programmers, statistically they must exist. All this work identifying them and the qualities is a bit silly when it's hard to even define the term.
- Nyandalized 7y ago
  I think it's a perfectly valid analogy; A runner is doing everything you'd be doing running, but more, and can achieve far greater speeds that you ever can.
Chris2048 7y ago
No one argued that, just that "Usain Bolt's" shouldn't be that common.
khazhoux 7y ago
The pride of others offends our tastes only when it offends our own pride.
JamesBarney 7y ago
Usain Bolt isn't 10x faster than the average human much less the average professional sprinter.
- dllthomas 7y ago
  If quickly-googled numbers are any indication, Usain Bolt isn't 10x faster than my walking speed.
pizza234 7y ago
It's the product of a culture where success is the core of identity. I agree that it's weird, and to me it's also a delusion. As a delusion, though, it also has a function. Most of the people will never meet outliers in their field, and this will protect their self-esteem with the thought that the outliers don't exist, can't exist or that those skills can be reached with enough effort. If the connection success was disconnected from identity, then there would be no need for this delusion, since admitting that somebody could be immensely better in a certain field wouldn't hurt self-esteem.

n_ary 7y ago

I agree to this. As I commented elsewhere, this is what most 10x I have come in contact with can be described as(sort of).