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Rise of the 10x Class (2020)
- whall6 6y agoThis has many parallels to the points that Nassim Taleb makes in his book Black Swan
- mycologos 6y agoCan you elaborate on these parallels?
- nick_kline 6y agoThe 10x class here are not 10x programmers - they have 10x or more the reach because they can be a celebrity/leader on a platform that reaches vastly more people. But the other side of that is the very few people will be able to command much attention, 1 in 100k or something. They will suck up tons of money and the network affect of being able to reach thousands of people at once will suck ever more money to them. As people lose their jobs from increasing automation, the somehow lacking in clear conclusion article says more income will go to these kind of incredible-reach people.
- Ancapistani 6y agoFurther down in the article, the author applies the concept specifically to software engineers.
- hinkley 6y agoIf I only have 10 coworkers, how much does it matter if someone is capable of reaching 10 times as many people as I can? That might be 8 vs 10, instead of 8 versus 80.
- segmondy 6y agoJust the same way a celebrity can reach millions. A programmer can reach millions via software.
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y agoI don't know how true the articles specific points are but the overall idea that you need to be able to sell yourself is absolutely true. I make literally 4x what all my friends make, and more than anyone at my company (besides for VPs) because I have the ability to sell myself and make myself exceptionally visible. It is _definitely_ a skill, and a skill that should be rewarded... as should negotiation. It is really unfortunate that many companies are forcing equal outcomes by getting rid of negotiation and pushing away people like me. The end result is one or two companies will not, and they will prosper. I wish luck to the companies left with a bunch of mediocre people.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIs “Baumol’s cost disease” just a fancy term for the effects of supply and demand in the labor market? I do not see how it is anything more than a trivial result of supply and demand and why it merits a special name.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoMany important, ground-breaking concepts seem obvious in retrospect. I doubt that if you surveyed a random selection of economists from the 1950s, they would have been able to describe the phenomenon.
- tuatoru 6y agoIt's intended to capture the idea that wages rise in an industry despite per-employee output not rising, which is against the "marginal wage equals marginal production" basis of classical Marshallian economics. Ironically, given the examples in the article, Baumol's example of cost disease was musicians.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> against the "marginal wage equals marginal production" basis of classical Marshallian economics. I am not aware of Marshallian economics, but I was under the impression that prices (wages) moved along supply and demand curves, and do not have anything to do with production.
- notacoward 6y ago> do not have anything to do with production So concepts like efficiency and elasticity don't matter? The supply and demand curves for different goods and services varyfor specific reasons. Those reasons are worth studying, and sometimes naming.
- thedufer 6y agoThere are different ways of figuring out what a wage will end up being, and looking at how they interact (which is what Baumol's Cost Disease does) can be tricky but enlightening. Supply/demand is one such way. Another is related to elasticity. If a given job can produce $1.00 of value but the next person qualified for that job only expects $.90, someone should be expected to create that job and capture the surplus. And this should continue until the value produced by the next such job is right at the value produced by that job. So you often expect that the wage of a job should be the value produced by that job, at least at the margin. Baumol's Cost Disease shows how when one job's value increases, the wage in jobs that require similar skills can see a growth in wages beyond the degree to which it's value increases - that is, the first job following the model described above causes another job to stop following that model and instead be lifted into a supply/demand model.
- motohagiography 6y agoThe consulting work I do delivers things in a day that would usually take clients' staff 10-20 days to do, and there are many things I do in a minute that would take most people in my field an hour. I can do this because security skills are a very long tailed distribution. Does that make me 10x to 60x?
- brundolf 6y agoA friend of mine recently said: > The 10x programmer is a myth, it's just that corporate collaborative software development practices routinely produce teams of >10 that get less done than a single competent developer working independently My theory is this is one of the main benefits of hiring a consultant. They can cut through bureaucracy.
- PeterisP 6y agoYep, some of the most added value I have seen in consulting was essentially taking recommendations that department A was unsuccessfully requesting for a long time already and getting department B to actually implement them, i.e. an organizational shortcut enabling something that simply wasn't possible given their current structure. Pretty much every large company has a lot of good things that they aren't doing because of their dysfunctional internal bureaucracy that causes them to disregard good proposals (and sometimes intentionally sabotage them for reasons of internal politics) until they are re-packaged by some expensive consultants for top management blessing.
- systemBuilder 6y agoAgreed; my dad interviewed to be a VP at Lockheed in the 1960s and eventually turned down the job saying, "All your problems are political! None are technical!"
- perl4ever 6y agoAt my previous job, I used to sit in meetings thinking all the problems were political/communication, and those are the only interesting ones. Over the years, I didn't come to the conclusion "I want to be insulated from non-technical problems" (which is an easy thing to achieve) but rather "I want to be involved in solutions that are technically trivial, but solve organizational issues". Because those are the ones where the most leverage and meaning exists.
- tuatoru 6y agoThe article contrasts "10X" performers with "mediocre" performers, but this is exaggerating the required differences. The difference between an Olympic medal and fourth place is often just hundreths of a second. Similarly small differences in luck can mean the difference between being classed as "10X" and being classed as "mediocre".
- Spooky23 6y agoPeople need a myth to justify insane salaries and compensation. Usually the difference between a high performer and a mediocre one is a combo of talent and leadership. You can’t have one without the other.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> The difference between an Olympic medal and fourth place is often just hundreths of a second. No Olympians are mediocre performers, even if they come in 4th place. Every Olympian would be at least a 10X performer relative to an average person in their sport.
- segmondy 6y agoThis is not the first time I'm hearing the difference between a an olympic medalist and a 4th place is just a hundredths of a second. The difference between a 10x and 1x is orders of magnitude. That will be the difference between an Olympic medalist and a college athlete. Here's a video that demonstrates such gap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i93vF0WOX6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i93vF0WOX6w
- Ancalagon 6y agoTechnically its just 1 order of magnitude :)
- petermcneeley 6y ago> If “imperfect substitution” is so high for software developers, why is their income distribution far less skewed than that of entertainers? Because of geography. > While music and TV stars can be broadcast from and to anywhere, software engineers can only work in one place. The author understands that SWEs relocate right? And that while remote work is "modern" many companies are completely internationally located.
- thaeli 6y agoThe analogy also doesn't work for TV stars. Living in LA helps a _lot_ with landing TV gigs.
- smnrchrds 6y ago> And that while remote work is "modern" many companies are completely internationally located. Yet the same company, e.g. Google, pays very different salaries in US, Canada, and Germany.
- GoldenMonkey 6y agoThere are careers that are winner take all. Like artists, movie stars, professional athletes. If you are in these kinds of careers you are either struggling or doing fantastically well. Then there are the professional white collar careers. That pay above average salaries and employee millions. accounting, engineers, law. Can software development really switch to winner take all? I have my doubts.
- throw149102 6y agoI don't agree with the conclusion of the article. This article borrows a lot from Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the High Notes" https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-notes/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-n... , and for a rebuttal I would look at https://ericsink.com/articles/Choir.html https://ericsink.com/articles/Choir.html IMHO building teams that work together well is far more indicative of success than individual high performers, and as a result the economic impacts will not happen to individual "10X" performers but rather teams, organizations, and companies that can harness the network effects (i.e. what we see right now, where companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. are more dominant than individual people).
- hyperpallium2 6y agoRemote work itself is not a perfect substitute.
- neoburkian 6y agoSkeptical. Remote work increases the supply of available technologists across the board. That means more competition at every level - 10x or otherwise. If your whole team is remote, what exactly is the difference between someone in California and Chile? Another thing not mentioned here is that employee productivity is a variable that is almost always invisible before the hire happens. Leonardo DiCaprio can command a premium because he is identified with the work he does. This is not the case for tech workers who's work is typically invisible. Suppose you are a 10x DevOps sorcerer. None of your potential employers will know that in advance, so they are all only willing to pay 1x salaries. FAANG companies pay higher across the board, not because they want to, but in the hope that by overpaying 90% of their employees (relative to market) they will be able to attract top 10% candidates whose skills are hidden until after the hire happens. If they could price discriminate in advance they would.
- sombremesa 6y agoFAANG companies don't treat their extant employees anywhere close to well enough for me to believe they're trying to attract top 10% candidates by overpaying 90% of their employees.
- nabben 6y agoDon’t necessarily agree with the article, but I’m a little curious about this. If you don’t have anything to show that you are a 10x DevOps sorcerer, are you actually one? The thought is that it would show through your past experience, no?
- neoburkian 6y agoJust because someone meets the "X years doing Y at Z" criteria doesn't mean that they are great hires. I've met PhDs in computer science that could barely write python. Resumes or similar self-marketing says a lot less than we would like. If there were good signals here, hiring would be a solved problem.
- didibus 6y agoI think people read too much into it, the reason some are paid more than others is simply their appeal, and that's measured subjectively. It's easy to see some tiktok account has more followers and is worth more. It's hard to see the worth of an SDE, that's why 10x itself is called a myth, 10x of what? 10x the lines of code? 10x the influence to upper management? 10x at cutting corners? 10x the mentoring of others? 10x your revenue stream? 10x your customer base? The linked study says some people were 10 times faster at solving a maze, is that who you want as your CTO?
- borishn 6y agoThe TikToker has more or less direct relationship with the viewers and customers (advertisers). Developer who does not own the customer relationship is interchangeable and will not be paid on a star level.
- supernova87a 6y agoI don't think it's such a mystery or revelation as the author seems to make it out to be. When a country/people are young and poor, like we were in the 1950s, everything is about physical goods to make our lives better. That's where everyone is spending their hard eared money, incurring their labor. Manual labor, to make goods and services -- and those services that don't transmit very far. Now, 60 years later, everyone has huge material wealth built up -- the legacy of decades of labor and productivity. So first of all there's just a lot more money sloshing around to be spent. Money is spent easier now -- do you remember how tightfisted your parents were about money? Because it was scarce! Now it's easy -- even they are more casual about it. And then, what is there to spend on? You don't need another dishwasher. So you spend on leisure activities, luxuries, intellectual/social goods. Things that don't require huge amounts of manual labor. Things that can be recorded and replayed, and everyone is willing to pay a couple dollars for. The people who produce things for that market are of course gonna be the ones who luck out. But the pendulum swings back and forth, and I'm sure it will again for us some time. Go to another country, and the pendulum is on the opposite side.
- dasil003 6y agoThe thesis here is based on equating the mythology of the 10x engineer with top athletes and entertainers without considering the demand models and performance measurement. In sports, billions of people compete from childhood on a physical competition with exactly the same rules where performance is completely objective and immediately visible. People only want to watch the very best, so as long as you have global distribution of live feeds, then of course all the money is going to very tiny set of top performers. With actors/musicians, it's not 100% objective, but it's still directly based on audience appeal, and you can pretty quickly determine who has popular appeal and draw a through line from various business models to what the superstar can economically be paid. However in the vast majority of businesses, it's a team effort there is no direct connection between individual contributors and customer choice. The closest role for this would be sales, but even in that case they're selling the product and the brand, not themselves. Furthermore, effective contribution usually requires a fair amount of ramp-up and domain knowledge. As a hiring manager it's incredibly difficult to know who will be a 10x-er before hiring—even if you have reliable inside information from other companies, you don't have a guarantee it will pan out in your environment. Certainly there are some superstar engineers with specific well-known expertise, and they do get outsize offers, but there are very few such roles that require "the top global expert in X niche" and while engineers can get 7 figure offers for these, there's not enough of a through-line to revenue for it to rise to the level of superstars in other disciplines which are more or less a direct function of the size of global attention and discretionary spending they command.