6 ms·

"If you were launching a technology or developing a product, would you rather have five great engineers rather than 1,000 average engineers?" The 5, in a heart

by jwecker 15y ago

"If you were launching a technology or developing a product, would you rather have five great engineers rather than 1,000 average engineers?" The 5, in a heart-beat. If you were painting a mural on the ceiling of a large structure that you want to be admired for generations to come- do you hire 5 brilliant painters or 1000 average painters? Even happily ignoring the exponential communication overhead that diminishes returns significantly as he does in the original article, there are leaps of imagination that a small brilliant team are more likely to make than any-sized average team. Edit: Also, his case examples are not coding related. Obviously a non-software-technologist not knowing or understanding the unique background behind the comments in the context of software development and, particularly, software startups. 100x productivity is of course a generalization and has received valid criticism, but examples from sports and trading are irrelevant.

alabut 15y ago
"Also, his case examples are not coding related. " Nor are they even correct. In fact they can easily be made to prove the opposite of what he claims. Only someone completely ignorant of soccer/football would claim that this year's FC Barcelona lineup is one of the greatest ever because of their team-based approach - their best player is Lionel Messi, who at 23 is already being considered as one of the greatest players to ever play the game, right up there with Pele, Maradona, etc. He's so much better than not just the average, but even the closest competitor in the Spanish league. Cristiano Ronaldo leads in statistical categories like most goals scored but it's from beating up on weaker teams and he routinely chokes in big games, whereas Messi plays even better, like when he dribbled past half of the Real Madrid team in the Champions League semifinal to score the winning goal. You could've benched Ronaldo and it wouldn't have mattered - benching Messi would've dragged the match back down to more equal terms.
- paganel 15y ago
  I don't want to transform HN into a sports-related forum, but since The Economist has also written on the subject, I guess I can give it my 2cents... > Lionel Messi, who at 23 is already being considered as one of the greatest players to ever play the game, right up there with Pele, Maradona, etc He can dribble, all right, but I'm not the only one who isn't regarding him as "an all time best", simply because he hasn't help his country winning a World Cup final (or even helping it to get there). At 17 Pele was winning the World Cup in Sweden, while Maradona almost single-handedly won the Mexico '86 World Cup for Argentina and helped them reach the final again, 4 years later (not to mention winning the scudetto with Napoli, against possibly the best club-team of all times, Van Basten's AC Milan). And remember that Barcelona's lineup also includes Andres Iniesta, the man who scored the only goal against the Netherlands in last year's World Cup final, Xavi, Spain's bets man when they won the Euro 2008 Final Tournament, Pedro, David Villa, Alves (one of the best players on his position) ans so on and so on.
  - alabut 15y ago
    I agree that we shouldn't turn this into a sports flame thread, so let's just compromise and say that it's a team-based sport and that individual talent matters, not one or the other (unlike the OP). After all, the same argument about supporting players could be made for Pele and Maradona as well.
- ImprovedSilence 15y ago
  I couldn't agree more that his sports analogy is WAY off base. These athletes are all at the top of the top of the top of the top of the world in their sport. And they are getting paid millions. That model runs COMPLETELY against everything he is trying to prove. However, to what order of magnitude you want to take the discussion can be looked at, 1,000 youth hockey players vs. 5 pros on the ice would be kinda hard to sort though.... As for his investment firm example, I think the who you know, and your firms institutional knowledge play a larger part in that game. So much so that it's not a valid analogy.
timr 15y ago
I disagree. I don't think there's a technology company in the world that can identify talent reliably enough to make the argument that they can find a team of 5 who will outperform 1,000. Even if the 1,000 people are average. Painting is largely a solo occupation, and you can reliably judge the talent of a painter by looking at their past work. But it's basically impossible to judge the talent of a software engineer by looking at their past code -- there's too much context required. I think the sports analogy is better in this respect, because it's much harder to separate the the record of a sports superstar from the team that they're on. So it is with non-trivial software. And also: five "brilliant" painters might be so socially dysfunctional as a team that you'd rather take the 1,000 average guys who can take direction well. You wouldn't automatically get a great work of art if you told Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Munch and Seurat to collaborate on a mural -- but you see all sorts of great murals that were painted by teams of less-talented artists.
- nupark2 15y ago
  > But it's basically impossible to judge the talent of a software engineer by looking at their past code -- there's too much context required. I'm not really sure how this is true. I find that I can judge a software engineer very accurately based on his previous work, and intuit from the code a great deal of the context. In fact, if I can't determine an engineer's talent without having more context, they are likely an average to below average engineer. > I think the sports analogy is better in this respect, because it's much harder to separate the the record of a sports superstar from the team that they're on. So it is with non-trivial software. I think what you're actually doing here is elucidating the difference between a 'superstar' and a 'team of average'. A senior high-quality engineer will have a considerable amount of new code that they've architected and implemented, whereas a team of average will have a considerable amount of code they have maintained. Like most software organizations, our projects are divvied up into components and subcomponents, and individual engineers own components/subcomponents individually, with conformance to a broader set of development standards. The more junior an engineer, the more likely that they'll be assigned maintenance or improvement work rather than writing a component from scratch. It would be very easy to evaluate the senior engineers by evaluating their components, whereas the junior and/or average engineers can only really be evaluated in context by the senior ones.
ignifero 15y ago
Agree with you, but he has a point about the "talent acquisition" hires. They do tend to underperform when acquired (perhaps they feel 'accomplished' + there 's no pressure since they no longer work on a startup). Can someone name a few developers who did better after they were 'acqhired'?
niels_olson 15y ago
I would take the 1,000 and come up with 199 other projects, five of which would be oversight of the other 194, and two of them would be to come up with crazy new ideas. Monitor the progress and I guarantee I can find another 5 brilliant programmers in there. Meanwhile, I'll iterate over 1000 projects and blow your socks off with 5.
- geon 15y ago
  What you are saying is you want booth the brilliant 5 and the average 1000.
  - niels_olson 15y ago
    No, what I'm saying is I have a bit more faith in humanity. How extraordinarily pessimistic to think people couldn't be more productive in other circumstances. It does tend to fly in the face of anyone who ever moved to California.
jamesli 15y ago
5 great vs 1,000 average, it depends on the technology and the application they are working on, and the stage of the product. First, the logic in the original article is not valid. Sports and software engineering are basically incomparable. What they share as team activities don't justify the reasoning in the article. A simple counter example. In professional soccer games (like in the top leagues in Italy, Spain, Egnland, etc.), a second-tier team of ll players could quite possibly beat a top-tier team of only 9 players (the other two players are kicked out for whatever reasons). In software engineering, it is quite safe to say that 5 great engineers can outperform 30 average engineers. Back to my original point, it depends on the technology and the application they are working on. If the technology and the application require high creativity and innovation, 1000 average engineers cann't lead it long. Most probably, it will lead to a mess that has to be cleaned up and rewritten later. On the other hand, if the application is already well designed and well-established, and the primary jobs are to add new features within the architecture, 1000 average engineers may deliver more than 5 great ones. In reality, a good combination of both types might be the best scenario.
william42 15y ago
If I were launching a technology or developing a project, there's a good chance I'd rather have five average engineers than 1000 average engineers.

by jwecker 15y ago

alabut 15y ago

"Also, his case examples are not coding related. " Nor are they even correct. In fact they can easily be made to prove the opposite of what he claims. Only someone completely ignorant of soccer/football would claim that this year's FC Barcelona lineup is one of the greatest ever because of their team-based approach - their best player is Lionel Messi, who at 23 is already being considered as one of the greatest players to ever play the game, right up there with Pele, Maradona, etc. He's so much better than not just the average, but even the closest competitor in the Spanish league. Cristiano Ronaldo leads in statistical categories like most goals scored but it's from beating up on weaker teams and he routinely chokes in big games, whereas Messi plays even better, like when he dribbled past half of the Real Madrid team in the Champions League semifinal to score the winning goal. You could've benched Ronaldo and it wouldn't have mattered - benching Messi would've dragged the match back down to more equal terms.

paganel 15y ago
I don't want to transform HN into a sports-related forum, but since The Economist has also written on the subject, I guess I can give it my 2cents... > Lionel Messi, who at 23 is already being considered as one of the greatest players to ever play the game, right up there with Pele, Maradona, etc He can dribble, all right, but I'm not the only one who isn't regarding him as "an all time best", simply because he hasn't help his country winning a World Cup final (or even helping it to get there). At 17 Pele was winning the World Cup in Sweden, while Maradona almost single-handedly won the Mexico '86 World Cup for Argentina and helped them reach the final again, 4 years later (not to mention winning the scudetto with Napoli, against possibly the best club-team of all times, Van Basten's AC Milan). And remember that Barcelona's lineup also includes Andres Iniesta, the man who scored the only goal against the Netherlands in last year's World Cup final, Xavi, Spain's bets man when they won the Euro 2008 Final Tournament, Pedro, David Villa, Alves (one of the best players on his position) ans so on and so on.
- alabut 15y ago
  I agree that we shouldn't turn this into a sports flame thread, so let's just compromise and say that it's a team-based sport and that individual talent matters, not one or the other (unlike the OP). After all, the same argument about supporting players could be made for Pele and Maradona as well.
ImprovedSilence 15y ago
I couldn't agree more that his sports analogy is WAY off base. These athletes are all at the top of the top of the top of the top of the world in their sport. And they are getting paid millions. That model runs COMPLETELY against everything he is trying to prove. However, to what order of magnitude you want to take the discussion can be looked at, 1,000 youth hockey players vs. 5 pros on the ice would be kinda hard to sort though.... As for his investment firm example, I think the who you know, and your firms institutional knowledge play a larger part in that game. So much so that it's not a valid analogy.

timr 15y ago

I disagree. I don't think there's a technology company in the world that can identify talent reliably enough to make the argument that they can find a team of 5 who will outperform 1,000. Even if the 1,000 people are average. Painting is largely a solo occupation, and you can reliably judge the talent of a painter by looking at their past work. But it's basically impossible to judge the talent of a software engineer by looking at their past code -- there's too much context required. I think the sports analogy is better in this respect, because it's much harder to separate the the record of a sports superstar from the team that they're on. So it is with non-trivial software. And also: five "brilliant" painters might be so socially dysfunctional as a team that you'd rather take the 1,000 average guys who can take direction well. You wouldn't automatically get a great work of art if you told Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Munch and Seurat to collaborate on a mural -- but you see all sorts of great murals that were painted by teams of less-talented artists.

nupark2 15y ago
> But it's basically impossible to judge the talent of a software engineer by looking at their past code -- there's too much context required. I'm not really sure how this is true. I find that I can judge a software engineer very accurately based on his previous work, and intuit from the code a great deal of the context. In fact, if I can't determine an engineer's talent without having more context, they are likely an average to below average engineer. > I think the sports analogy is better in this respect, because it's much harder to separate the the record of a sports superstar from the team that they're on. So it is with non-trivial software. I think what you're actually doing here is elucidating the difference between a 'superstar' and a 'team of average'. A senior high-quality engineer will have a considerable amount of new code that they've architected and implemented, whereas a team of average will have a considerable amount of code they have maintained. Like most software organizations, our projects are divvied up into components and subcomponents, and individual engineers own components/subcomponents individually, with conformance to a broader set of development standards. The more junior an engineer, the more likely that they'll be assigned maintenance or improvement work rather than writing a component from scratch. It would be very easy to evaluate the senior engineers by evaluating their components, whereas the junior and/or average engineers can only really be evaluated in context by the senior ones.

ignifero 15y ago

Agree with you, but he has a point about the "talent acquisition" hires. They do tend to underperform when acquired (perhaps they feel 'accomplished' + there 's no pressure since they no longer work on a startup). Can someone name a few developers who did better after they were 'acqhired'?

niels_olson 15y ago

I would take the 1,000 and come up with 199 other projects, five of which would be oversight of the other 194, and two of them would be to come up with crazy new ideas. Monitor the progress and I guarantee I can find another 5 brilliant programmers in there. Meanwhile, I'll iterate over 1000 projects and blow your socks off with 5.

geon 15y ago
What you are saying is you want booth the brilliant 5 and the average 1000.
- niels_olson 15y ago
  No, what I'm saying is I have a bit more faith in humanity. How extraordinarily pessimistic to think people couldn't be more productive in other circumstances. It does tend to fly in the face of anyone who ever moved to California.

jamesli 15y ago

5 great vs 1,000 average, it depends on the technology and the application they are working on, and the stage of the product. First, the logic in the original article is not valid. Sports and software engineering are basically incomparable. What they share as team activities don't justify the reasoning in the article. A simple counter example. In professional soccer games (like in the top leagues in Italy, Spain, Egnland, etc.), a second-tier team of ll players could quite possibly beat a top-tier team of only 9 players (the other two players are kicked out for whatever reasons). In software engineering, it is quite safe to say that 5 great engineers can outperform 30 average engineers. Back to my original point, it depends on the technology and the application they are working on. If the technology and the application require high creativity and innovation, 1000 average engineers cann't lead it long. Most probably, it will lead to a mess that has to be cleaned up and rewritten later. On the other hand, if the application is already well designed and well-established, and the primary jobs are to add new features within the architecture, 1000 average engineers may deliver more than 5 great ones. In reality, a good combination of both types might be the best scenario.

william42 15y ago

If I were launching a technology or developing a project, there's a good chance I'd rather have five average engineers than 1000 average engineers.