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On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as

by m12k 5y ago

On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as possible, even if it meant racking up massive technical debt. By doing this, they effectively did produce 10x as much in the eyes of management, and got promoted and rewarded in kind. The technical debt they racked up then got paid by everyone else that had to go in and make their prototype maintainable while they were already off to the next high-profile project. Not only did they not have to stay and cover the cheques they wrote, they also managed to lower the effectiveness of everyone else, lowering the baseline they got compared against, so they could be 10x instead of just 5x.

dijit 5y ago
> On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as possible, even if it meant racking up massive technical debt. I start my comment with an intent to indicate that these people are not what is meant when people say 10x. (maybe it's what some people think of when lambasting "10x" developers). If you think you're a 10x engineer: you're not, you wouldn't see yourself as better, you'd see yourself as passionate.
- deleted 5y ago
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mmargerum 5y ago
I have the opposite issue here. I have an engineer still writing VB6 code and we have 20 man years of his technical debt we have to live with. He never learned anything new and he has a hammer and everything is a nail. As a >5x engineer I generally build out the initial design/development of a project and then hand it off to a team member to maintain. I get involved only when there is a new significant feature that needs to be added.
tartoran 5y ago
That’s right, the mythical 10x-er who does greenfield work, uses the latest tech, who not only never maintains their masterpieces but moves on to other pastures causing other devs loss of productivity and captive to their mazes..
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
On the plus side, the company shipped something. In a startup time to market is important. Especially in a startup.
jmchuster 5y ago
Though, the order of events might be backwards there sometimes. The director has a highly visible and strategic new feature they need executed, so they'll handpick the best engineers to work on the project. The engineers complete the project as fast as possible because that was the point of the project, to get the team that could produce a MVP fastest. And the technical debt and productionizing of the project is something that can be done by a less specialized pool of developers, who also are given way less tight time constraints.
908B64B197 5y ago
Their value is in shipping fast. If competitors are working on the same feature and manage to roll it out of the door first, that spells trouble. First version of Twitter was an almost complete re-write because of performance issues. But since their concept was dead simple, they had to get market shares fast else someone else was going to be there first.

by m12k 5y ago

dijit 5y ago

> On the flipside, I've met "10x engineers" who always prioritized working on highly visible and strategic new features, and excelled at shipping them as fast as possible, even if it meant racking up massive technical debt. I start my comment with an intent to indicate that these people are not what is meant when people say 10x. (maybe it's what some people think of when lambasting "10x" developers). If you think you're a 10x engineer: you're not, you wouldn't see yourself as better, you'd see yourself as passionate.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mmargerum 5y ago

I have the opposite issue here. I have an engineer still writing VB6 code and we have 20 man years of his technical debt we have to live with. He never learned anything new and he has a hammer and everything is a nail. As a >5x engineer I generally build out the initial design/development of a project and then hand it off to a team member to maintain. I get involved only when there is a new significant feature that needs to be added.

tartoran 5y ago

That’s right, the mythical 10x-er who does greenfield work, uses the latest tech, who not only never maintains their masterpieces but moves on to other pastures causing other devs loss of productivity and captive to their mazes..

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

On the plus side, the company shipped something. In a startup time to market is important. Especially in a startup.

jmchuster 5y ago

Though, the order of events might be backwards there sometimes. The director has a highly visible and strategic new feature they need executed, so they'll handpick the best engineers to work on the project. The engineers complete the project as fast as possible because that was the point of the project, to get the team that could produce a MVP fastest. And the technical debt and productionizing of the project is something that can be done by a less specialized pool of developers, who also are given way less tight time constraints.

908B64B197 5y ago

Their value is in shipping fast. If competitors are working on the same feature and manage to roll it out of the door first, that spells trouble. First version of Twitter was an almost complete re-write because of performance issues. But since their concept was dead simple, they had to get market shares fast else someone else was going to be there first.