7 ms·

The corporate culture serves a very specific purpose of lowering the self-esteem of the 10x folks, keeping them at their place doing 10x work at 1x salary until

The corporate culture serves a very specific purpose of lowering the self-esteem of the 10x folks, keeping them at their place doing 10x work at 1x salary until they burn out. This is scalable, predictable, and serves management's interests well. It's just if you happen to be a 10x guy, for the sake of your own sanity, learn how to run a business and get out of the corporate swamp. Nothing else will bring you happiness, believe me.

blindmute 5y ago
The trick is to be a 10x dev and work 0.2x of the time, remotely of course. Everyone thinks you're decent and you get a full salary working 3hrs per day.
unobatbayar 5y ago
Isn't it insane that there are many 10x engineers who have created enormous amount value (creating patents, leading and executing projects, innovating etc.); Yet, the world will only know about the company or the CEO and never the engineers behind it.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  How do you expect the world to know about the others? The CEO is public facing by definition of their duties and the charter. Any other public presense from the organization technically falls under marketing of some sort, even teaching useful generic skills for free (say a publisher promoting literacy in third world nations) is in service of this. It requires looking into arcane details to know about the engineers behind it. I mean software, especially media productions often include outright credits but few would remember any but leads usually. Precise attribution would get downright absurd in a pure data sense to give coverage that few care about. Say for just a simple who tightened the screw on this part of the cloth mill during its production run, who made the screw, who farmed the cotton, made the irrigation means.... Replicability and productivity atr what leads to technical obscurity ironically - because the automation and scale means fewer people are even in the position to know what to even ask about the details relative to the numbers served. Thus the knowledge remains arcane. Not many people would even know say, that DRAM tries to minimize capacitance and inductance but it needs some of both to function. Let alone who was involved with what subsection of the chip design and design testing process.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  There are other ways to be known. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2021/04/27/allen-man-who-police-believe-killed-his-mother-sister-was-having-an-episode-affidavit-says/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2021/04/27/allen-man-w...
polskibus 5y ago
People often forget that the 10x guy is 10x only in the domain he’s been working on, and many chores has been taken away from him by his manager and given to someone else. It is fairly easy to make a 10x someone closer to a 1x just by changing his tasks and giving more chores like CR, bug fixes, more mundane features or GUI etc. Sure it will often be better quality but in areas where it matters less.
- kortilla 5y ago
  This is just a redressing of the same “everyone is just as good” bullshit. Some people get a fuckload more work done because they go down the right design paths to start with, know how to work effectively, know what pieces to skip, etc. The same is true in nearly every field. Programming is not special.
  - polskibus 5y ago
    I deliberately used “closer to 1x”, but let me respond with an anecdote. I know several people, each working in a different org, who explicitly manage their managers by demanding to work on issues that have good visibility, are not too short >2 weeks but not too long <2-3 months so they are ready before the next review period. This way they are seen from the outside as very good performers while someone else is doing the less appreciated (but still essential) work.
    - silexia 5y ago
      I built and own a company with 200x employees building a wide variety of websites for people. The 10x programmer is real. The 5x salesperson is real. The 20x manager is real.
      - polskibus 5y ago
        Sure they are, I'm arguing that their force multiplier has to be taken with the context they are in, and that the change of the context can reduce the multiplier.

blindmute 5y ago

The trick is to be a 10x dev and work 0.2x of the time, remotely of course. Everyone thinks you're decent and you get a full salary working 3hrs per day.

unobatbayar 5y ago

Isn't it insane that there are many 10x engineers who have created enormous amount value (creating patents, leading and executing projects, innovating etc.); Yet, the world will only know about the company or the CEO and never the engineers behind it.

Nasrudith 5y ago
How do you expect the world to know about the others? The CEO is public facing by definition of their duties and the charter. Any other public presense from the organization technically falls under marketing of some sort, even teaching useful generic skills for free (say a publisher promoting literacy in third world nations) is in service of this. It requires looking into arcane details to know about the engineers behind it. I mean software, especially media productions often include outright credits but few would remember any but leads usually. Precise attribution would get downright absurd in a pure data sense to give coverage that few care about. Say for just a simple who tightened the screw on this part of the cloth mill during its production run, who made the screw, who farmed the cotton, made the irrigation means.... Replicability and productivity atr what leads to technical obscurity ironically - because the automation and scale means fewer people are even in the position to know what to even ask about the details relative to the numbers served. Thus the knowledge remains arcane. Not many people would even know say, that DRAM tries to minimize capacitance and inductance but it needs some of both to function. Let alone who was involved with what subsection of the chip design and design testing process.
RNCTX 5y ago
There are other ways to be known. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2021/04/27/allen-man-who-police-believe-killed-his-mother-sister-was-having-an-episode-affidavit-says/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2021/04/27/allen-man-w...

polskibus 5y ago

People often forget that the 10x guy is 10x only in the domain he’s been working on, and many chores has been taken away from him by his manager and given to someone else. It is fairly easy to make a 10x someone closer to a 1x just by changing his tasks and giving more chores like CR, bug fixes, more mundane features or GUI etc. Sure it will often be better quality but in areas where it matters less.

kortilla 5y ago
This is just a redressing of the same “everyone is just as good” bullshit. Some people get a fuckload more work done because they go down the right design paths to start with, know how to work effectively, know what pieces to skip, etc. The same is true in nearly every field. Programming is not special.
- polskibus 5y ago
  I deliberately used “closer to 1x”, but let me respond with an anecdote. I know several people, each working in a different org, who explicitly manage their managers by demanding to work on issues that have good visibility, are not too short >2 weeks but not too long <2-3 months so they are ready before the next review period. This way they are seen from the outside as very good performers while someone else is doing the less appreciated (but still essential) work.
  - silexia 5y ago
    I built and own a company with 200x employees building a wide variety of websites for people. The 10x programmer is real. The 5x salesperson is real. The 20x manager is real.
    - polskibus 5y ago
      Sure they are, I'm arguing that their force multiplier has to be taken with the context they are in, and that the change of the context can reduce the multiplier.