4 ms·
Imo you can't be a 10x+ developer without extracurricular activities. That is: writing books, academic papers, OSS contributions, GitHub projects with 100+ star
by dvt 4y ago
Imo you can't be a 10x+ developer without extracurricular activities. That is: writing books, academic papers, OSS contributions, GitHub projects with 100+ stars, blogging, conference talks, being in the top ~5% of Stack Overflow, etc. Merely "being good at your job" is just the baseline (and often not even an important one; rockstar engineers get fired often; Max Howell was famously not hired by Google; etc.). Not trying to be a jerk, I just think you're seriously overvaluing your ability.
Sounds like you hate your job though, so I'd probably quit/take a break and re-evaluate what you want out of life.
- 100011_100001 4y agoActually, I really enjoy what I do and my team. I just dislike the weird sense of responsibility. Your perspective on extracurricular activities is interesting. I'm at the top 17% of Stack Overflow, does that count :)
- pg_bot 4y agoThis is a pretty weird standard that I don't think any other professional would be held to. You can be one of the best programmers in the world and be completely anonymous.
- dvt 4y agoI disagree. Like all disciplines, programming/software engineering at its apex is fundamentally a collaborative one. There are no "hermit" mathematicians or physicists. Ideas necessarily must be bounced around and refined.
- pg_bot 4y agoRamanujan, Perelman, Grothendieck, Gödel, Nakamoto, Heaviside...
- dvt 4y agoDon't confuse "formal training" with working in a vacuum (re: Ramanujan, Heaviside, etc.), all others are basically world-famous academics that went through typical doctoral programs and were in constant communication with their fellow academics; I mean, Godel's correspondence with von Neumann is extremely famous, and the same goes for Ramanujan's correspondence with Hardy. The age of the hermit polymath has been over for half a millennium.
- wvenable 4y agoAnyone with that many extracurricular activities almost definition can't be a 10x developer. Producing books, papers, open source contributions, conference talks, contributing massively to Stack Overflow is doing a lot of things that aren't software development. As they say, those that can't do teach -- and you're describing the latter.
- dvt 4y agoHard disagree, as we have plenty of counter-examples here: from John Skeet, to John Carmack, to Max Howell, to Vitalik Buterin.
- wvenable 4y agoJohn Carmack? He's got one answer on stack overflow, limited open source contributions, a few conference talks, no books, no papers. He's known for producing actual results and not for any of the things you ascribe as 10x required.
- dvt 4y ago> limited open source contributions Sure, if literally porting the entire X Windows System[1] to OSX is "limited." Or basically paving the way for Linux gaming/3D development because of his work on OpenGL. Let alone his entrepreneurial/seed efforts w.r.t. Oculus, etc. Also, he spoke at Facebook's 2021 Keynote. C'mon, man. [1] https://github.com/timon37/xwayland/blob/master/hw/xquartz/man/Xquartz.man#L142 https://github.com/timon37/xwayland/blob/master/hw/xquartz/m...
- wvenable 4y agoYou pick on the one thing that dilutes your point. Carmack is known and famous for developing software -- not for dicking around on Stack Overflow, etc. He was famous long before he ever gave a talk -- and initially he was terrible at talks -- but he was always a 10x developer. I've worked with some amazing developers who've created unbelievable products that have never written a book, a paper, given a talk, or done a conference. They are probably the silent majority of 10x developers.