4 ms·

I’ve been fortunate in my career thus far, since I was about 14 or so, to have always been in the company of at least one “10x”’er on each of my teams, as the c

I’ve been fortunate in my career thus far, since I was about 14 or so, to have always been in the company of at least one “10x”’er on each of my teams, as the cliche goes. They’re dispersed through various companies nowadays - Stripe, Twitch, Google, FB, Discord, etc etc. But it was interesting and beneficial for me to work alongside them if only because I had decent role models to follow. This article first puts up a straw man and then switches gears halfway into a different subject. See if you can spot it. There is no exaggeration. Some people are just far more in tune with the mental models required to do good software work at both a micro and macro level, that any time I see someone trying to play it down I have to ask if these individuals have worked with one of these precocious talented folks. I also sometimes struggle to understand why anyone would write an article like this. You obviously want to hire the best you can for the best price you can. Anything else is a silly coping mechanism that you can’t face with honesty. I want to read an article that’s straightforward about how much good work 10x’ers can do and how influential they can be for rest of the team. But this isn’t an article anyone would bother writing because they’re too busy making money to have dick measuring competitions on an online news board.

logicslave 6y ago
I feel the same way, anyone who does not believe in the 10x engineer has just never met one. Sometimes the software they produce is absolutely stunning.
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  Or, alternatively, the 0.1x engineer and the -10x engineer. (Or worse, the -10x PM.)
  - nullsense 6y ago
    Yeah. Engineers fall on a distribution. It's just that simple.
    - gwright 6y ago
      OK, now if it were only simple to figure out where on that distribution a particular engineer falls during the limited time of the hiring process.
  - totemandtoken 6y ago
    As the joke goes, "There does exist a 10x engineer, but unfortunately it's in binary"
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > I feel the same way, anyone who does not believe in the 10x engineer has just never met one. Food for thought: The interpretation of a 10x engineer is not consistent. Putting my manager hat on, I ask: Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". That's because a team does more than just technical stuff. There's documentation, dealing with customers, bureaucratic stuff, etc. If you don't do these well, much of your brilliant engineering gains will go to waste. A brilliant engineer may be harder to replace than the average, but he/she is not a 10x engineer. Perhaps a 2x.
  - JimDabell 6y ago
    > Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". That’s because the “10x” is an order of magnitude difference between the best and the worst, not the average. https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-software-developers-and-teams-the-origin-of-10x/ https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-...
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      Fair enough. In that case, I would expect a multiplier much larger than 10x. :-) Definitely encountered folks who fail on FizzBuzz and similar problems.
    - username90 6y ago
      Note that the worst doesn't even finish so the difference is infinite. 10x is the difference between the fastest and slowest of those who could complete the project.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Putting my manager hat on, I ask: Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". Well, yeah, people aren't interchangeable cogs. A person that is capable of delivering 10× value per unit of working time when properly employed probably isn't a drop in replacement for 10 1× developers. And managers thinking of people as interchangeable cogs where productivity multiples work by simple substitutions that way are great at getting ~sqrt(N)× (or less) output and quick burnout from N× (N > 1) developers. > That's because a team does more than just technical stuff. There's documentation, dealing with customers, bureaucratic stuff, etc. Yeah, and all of those things are things a developer can be better at than average, not just technical design and coding. Sure, there's some high productivity developed that are average or worse at some but much better at one area, there's also high productivity developers that are better than average across the board.
fctorial 6y ago
Can john carmack build 10 crud apps in a week?
- username90 6y ago
  Pretty sure he could if he got to practice writing crud apps for a month beforehand and the apps were no more complicated than what a mediocre engineer can write in a week.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    Also, one engineer making 10 crud apps would probably share a lot of code between the apps. Which would allow him to make the new ones even faster. And the result would be easier to maintain. If you instead hire 10 engineers to write 1 app each, you often end up with 10 apps using 8 different frameworks in 3 different languages. And then you will need 10 engineers to maintain them.

logicslave 6y ago

I feel the same way, anyone who does not believe in the 10x engineer has just never met one. Sometimes the software they produce is absolutely stunning.

naniwaduni 6y ago
Or, alternatively, the 0.1x engineer and the -10x engineer. (Or worse, the -10x PM.)
- nullsense 6y ago
  Yeah. Engineers fall on a distribution. It's just that simple.
  - gwright 6y ago
    OK, now if it were only simple to figure out where on that distribution a particular engineer falls during the limited time of the hiring process.
- totemandtoken 6y ago
  As the joke goes, "There does exist a 10x engineer, but unfortunately it's in binary"
BeetleB 6y ago
> I feel the same way, anyone who does not believe in the 10x engineer has just never met one. Food for thought: The interpretation of a 10x engineer is not consistent. Putting my manager hat on, I ask: Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". That's because a team does more than just technical stuff. There's documentation, dealing with customers, bureaucratic stuff, etc. If you don't do these well, much of your brilliant engineering gains will go to waste. A brilliant engineer may be harder to replace than the average, but he/she is not a 10x engineer. Perhaps a 2x.
- JimDabell 6y ago
  > Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". That’s because the “10x” is an order of magnitude difference between the best and the worst, not the average. https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-software-developers-and-teams-the-origin-of-10x/ https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-...
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Fair enough. In that case, I would expect a multiplier much larger than 10x. :-) Definitely encountered folks who fail on FizzBuzz and similar problems.
  - username90 6y ago
    Note that the worst doesn't even finish so the difference is infinite. 10x is the difference between the fastest and slowest of those who could complete the project.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Putting my manager hat on, I ask: Can I replace 10 of my average engineers with this one person? The answer is never "yes". Well, yeah, people aren't interchangeable cogs. A person that is capable of delivering 10× value per unit of working time when properly employed probably isn't a drop in replacement for 10 1× developers. And managers thinking of people as interchangeable cogs where productivity multiples work by simple substitutions that way are great at getting ~sqrt(N)× (or less) output and quick burnout from N× (N > 1) developers. > That's because a team does more than just technical stuff. There's documentation, dealing with customers, bureaucratic stuff, etc. Yeah, and all of those things are things a developer can be better at than average, not just technical design and coding. Sure, there's some high productivity developed that are average or worse at some but much better at one area, there's also high productivity developers that are better than average across the board.

fctorial 6y ago

Can john carmack build 10 crud apps in a week?

username90 6y ago
Pretty sure he could if he got to practice writing crud apps for a month beforehand and the apps were no more complicated than what a mediocre engineer can write in a week.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Also, one engineer making 10 crud apps would probably share a lot of code between the apps. Which would allow him to make the new ones even faster. And the result would be easier to maintain. If you instead hire 10 engineers to write 1 app each, you often end up with 10 apps using 8 different frameworks in 3 different languages. And then you will need 10 engineers to maintain them.