9 ms·

High performance individuals and teams (2020)

• z3t4 4y ago
  It can be existential to a startup to get a good engineer that can get an MVP up in two months, versus a big team that takes 3 years to create the same MVP. The next two hires also need to be good. Then the 4th hire can be a specialist, they do not need to be better at anything - they are just there so that your champion(s) can keep produce 3 golden eggs per day instead of 1 golden egg plus 2 clay eggs, because you do need those clay eggs. Great engineer = 1 golden egg per day, or 3 clay eggs per day. Average engineer = 1 clay egg per day, or 10 days for a golden egg. To maximize productivity you hire average engineers to produce the clay eggs.
• dang 4y ago
  Discussed at the time: High Performance Individuals and Teams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25118762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25118762 - Nov 2020 (73 comments)
• hlplan 4y ago
  10x engineers do exist, yes, and they do write clean code. If others don't understand it, it is because they have no domain knowledge or interest. Even in web pages, compare the slickness of lichess.org to chess.com. The former is elegant, individualistic and non-corporate, the latter has the hallmark of too many meetings and divided "team" work. We get that sometimes management labels a code slinger a 10x engineer, especially if he is also good at conference presentations. This, however, is not the definition on HN. I've certainly seen more group efforts turn into Rube Goldberg machines than efforts of single persons. The group may understand the Rube Goldberg machine, tell management that the code is perfect, but it is still horrible for outsiders (sometimes deliberately).
  • titanomachy 4y ago
    I haven't been on lichess in a while, but I do remember being very impressed by the software.
  • lmarcos 4y ago
    I think it's not a good comparison. Lichess is a non profit, accepts donations and has a benevolent dictator. So it's evident that its design, structure, and ux/ui has been on charge of a single individual. Whereas chess.com made 2 million USD in revenue last April. Obviously, with that revenue, you have dozens of individuals pulling in different directions wanting to prove themselves and trying to make the platform "better". So the former is a bazaar. The latter a cathedral. Non comparable.
    • sib301 4y ago
      Also, it’s subjective. I have hundreds of games on both platforms, and I prefer chess.com.
      • jakespencer 4y ago
        If you are interested, I would love to hear your thoughts about this. A couple of years ago (Queen's Gambit time frame) I downloaded the app for lichess and have hundreds of games on it. I chose lichess more or less because it was non-commercial. I have a few acquaintances that prefer chess.com, but I have honestly never given it a fair shake. Chess.com looks very commercialized to me, and I feel like I am being upsold whenever I visit the site or open the app. But most of the chess streamers seem to be active on chess.com and not lichess, and some people seem to greatly prefer chess.com. What do you prefer about chess.com vs lichess?
        • kzrdude 4y ago
          Streamers are paid to use chess.com, though.
    • cmeacham98 4y ago
      My understanding is that is the point they were trying to make. Thibault Duplessis ("ornicar") is the '10x engineer' behind lichess.
    • ajross 4y ago
      > So the former is a bazaar. The latter a cathedral. Non comparable. Isn't that exactly the comparison being made? A "10x" engineer can build a cathedral alone that does what you would otherwise have to hire a whole bazaar of engineers to replicate, at much higher cost. (Pedantry: You're actually confused on the metaphor here. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was about development methodology, not individual performance. In fact a centralized, corporate product like chess.com would almost certainly be labelled a "Cathedral" by ESR. A "bazaar" is a project built of high-value individual contributions regardless of origin. Whether lichess qualifies or not, I don't know.)
• analyst74 4y ago
  The more I work with high performance teams and individuals, the more I realize the value of creativity. It can be creativity in technical solutions; it can be creativity in managing complex constraints; it can be creativity in connecting the dots and identifying multiplier projects. When faced with difficult problems, there is a very large difference in effectiveness between engineers. And it's not a one-dimensional scale, a brilliant engineer in one area can be quite average when solving different types of problems due to lack of context/domain knowledge/experience.
  • benreesman 4y ago
    With the utmost respect: how do you concretely, even by anecdote, translate creativity or lateral thinking into winning against serious, well-resourced competitors? I tend to agree that lateral thinking can be a real advantage, but the vagueness of both OP and this post sort of grind my gears. Who won against unfavorable odds and how?
    • analyst74 4y ago
      In my humble opinion, the key is to focus on solving problems for your key customers. Most breakthrough progress I observe come from doing things that are conventionally considered impossible, low impact or just bad decisions. But the person/team had an insight to make it possible and wildly profitable. If you look around, it happens all the time. Google famously made search useful; TikTok found an edge in low quality short form videos, despite all existing major players concluding high quality long form videos is the way. Keep in mind that the contrarian vision and initial implementation is just the start, they needed continued investment and innovation to stay ahead of competitions, or get copied and leapfrogged.
    • azornathogron 4y ago
      WhatsApp (somewhat famously) had a very small engineering team, but was successful enough in the messaging space for Facebook to buy them. And it's not like instant messaging was a field with no other working solutions before WhatsApp arrived; it succeeded despite the incumbents. I don't know if this meets your criteria for winning against unfavorable odds or not, but it does seem like that team was punching far above their weight class.
• pineconewarrior 4y ago
  This reads a lot different for me now that work is more remote. I am running into a LOT more bad coworkers now. Likely people taking two remote jobs and scamming us.
  • lordnacho 4y ago
    Classic comment on HN is that guy claiming to make 1.5m a year doing 10 jobs.
    • kzrdude 4y ago
      That's an interesting way to be a 10x engineer then
  • bin_bash 4y ago
    Credit reports show start and end dates of employment at companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753 If people do this it will be obvious to future employers.
  • sibeliuss 4y ago
    I am too and its really upsetting me. At my current company I've noted three separate individuals who are clearly scamming the system. Never saw that before remote work took over.
• benreesman 4y ago
  It’s all relative: I’ve never worked on a team that beat RenTech in the market. I’ve worked on a team that in certain verticals kicked Google’s ass up between their ears on advertising. Is that a “high-performing” team? The thing with these fluffy observational posts is that it’s rarely if ever concrete: here’s the Goliath to our David, here’s the advantages we leveraged to get the drop on the better-resourced, ostensibly smarter competitor, here’s how we opened the door with the slender bit of the wedge, and this is how we maintained cohesion and momentum to ram it right up Goliath’s ass. Anything short of that is fucking whiffle-ball and is a waste of pixels on HN’s front page. Let’s hear the actual story about how your scrappy and creative and cohesive group left the big enemy with a broken jaw. Otherwise, yawn.
  • tomxor 4y ago
    > The thing with these fluffy observational posts is that it’s rarely if ever concrete In a word, it's subjective. As we move through life we humans enjoy extracting pithy and broad nuggets of wisdom from our experience as we introspect. Occasionally they are even generally true! But as I've grown a little less naive I've come to appreciate that most broad observations, as convincing as they may appear, are usually incredibly subjective - to the originator (among which I include myself) they make 100% sense, but devoid of the context from which they derived (as they are often presented) they are usually little more than noise. It's the horrible gnarly truth of the world that we must become comfortable with to stop making these oversimplifications. </ armchair philosopher>
    • benreesman 4y ago
      It’s only a little subjective. Getting a job at RenTech is easier than winning the Nobel or Turing, but harder than getting a job anywhere else. Getting a job at hardass backend FAANG is easier than getting a job at RenTech, maybe about as hard as getting into an Ivy with undistinguished parents. Hitting that top 1-3% performer at FAANG is harder than completing a PhD at Stanford or Cal, but easier than selling a YC startup for 500MM+. People want it to be subjective so that 0,0 can be in sight of wherever they are, but I know damned well that I’d flunk a RenTech interview, and even more so that I’ll never win the Turing.
• tuckerpo 4y ago
  A high performing engineer is someone who has above average technical capabilities and also above average social aptitude, IMO. If you can schmooze with stake-holders, explain esoteric subjects to non-technical people in a simple manner, and are pleasant to be around, _on top of_ being able to grok basically any code, you're "10x"
  • benreesman 4y ago
    Comp-structure would beg to differ. Being able to do technical work that few others can gets you 5-20x the median. Being able to navigate the Byzantine hallways of high-stakes executive politics, even more. Being able to do both without flashing a “neuro-atypical” badge in any public way? You’re making 10-50MM a year. Consensus around here tends to be that’s a lot more than 10x. So unless the market is utterly busted (which implies an exploitable arbitrage), the notion of a “10x” engineer is way low. What do you reckon Carmack makes when he chooses to work? I bet it’s a lot more than 10x the median.
• blagie 4y ago
  1) I've been a 10x engineer, a 1x engineer, and a 0.1x engineer. A lot of this is situational and about fit. 2) I've been at startups that need 10x engineers, and ones which don't. There are technically boring problems to be solved 10x engineers won't work on (and won't be 10x at). Many of those can be very lucrative. There are technically hard problems which will never be solved without a 10x'er. I hate this kind of generalization and generic advice. If you're writing a medical patient record management system, the right toolkit, organizational structure, recruiting, etc. is very different than if you're doing build an autonomous robotics startup, which is in turn different from writing a mobile operating system, which is different from a mobile, social video game.
  • more_corn 4y ago
    I’m only 10x for about a minute at a time. Really good places draw that out of me repeatedly. The rest of the time I just try to slog through the work and maybe take a moment here and there to be a 1.1x strategist. I try to get all my mentees to be brilliant for a minute a day and just show up and complete all the work the rest of the time.
  • routerl 4y ago
    Let's not forget that "fit" includes management. I've worked with people who were building something mundane but acted as if they were writing avionics software; there just can't be 10x engineers in that context, because there's a fundamental mismatch between vision and mission; people who would be good don't get recognized, and bullshiting self-promoters will always shine (until the house of cards collapses).
    • benreesman 4y ago
      Depends on how you define management. On the best teams I’ve worked on the gal with the title actually knew the details and managed them. I’ve worked on teams where there was a hood ornament manager and the real manager, usually carrying a Tech Lead semi-title. Interestingly enough I’ve seen both be effective, but it’s a hell of a lot easier in the former case.
    • 4y ago
• dieselgate 4y ago
  I read once in an article that a “10x engineer” is someone who empowers others around them to be better, thus creating a “greater than the sum of its parts” kind of dynamic. So that’s just another way to think of it in addition to the purely technical and other areas
  • kzrdude 4y ago
    I'm a firm believer in that any team that actually works together is greater than the sum of its parts. Teamwork is simply a quality multiplicator, we don't produce great work in a vacuum.
  • gtqz 4y ago
  • mstipetic 4y ago
    This is what mediocre engineers that go into management keep repeating
  • vitabenes 4y ago
    The Steve Jobs effect.
• akomtu 4y ago
  Imo, you have to choose between high perf 10x devs working in silos or a mediocre, but predictable team work that uses 10x as many devs to accomplish the same. The business wants to see a 10x dev as someone who "enables others to achieve more", but that's bs - 10x devs despise messy people problems and instead concentrate all their energy in one field. Nearly all geniuses were jerks on personal level.
• black_13 4y ago
• javajosh 4y ago
  I've always been surprised at how readily people accept that "leadership" or "team" are concepts that can be successfully abstracted from a specific project, mission or circumstance. I had a friend who was obsessed with reading about leadership - but when I asked him what he actually wanted to accomplish, he had no idea. I felt, and still feel, that he (and people like him) were putting the cart before the horse. Leadership comes with huge trade-offs, especially if you're a technically capable creative, which makes it something to put off as long as possible. You only assume a leadership role when you have to. You've got to want to accomplish something big, such that you need (many) other people's help, and so you must be willing and able to organize that help. Anything other motive strikes me as empty status chasing. Perhaps the closest thing I've seen to a "lab" that might begin to experiment intelligently with abstract leadership ideas is something like YC, which is in position to iterate on the expensive, difficult, messy game of tech business leadership, because they have a privileged position to see what works, what doesn't, and what the limits of those observations are. And I would bet that even after ~2k companies (or whatever it is) no-one in their right mind at YC would think they've seen it all. They have, at best, a set of good heuristics. Not great, just okay. From the IC perspective, high perf means the ability to modify the product quickly and surely, while making practical trade-offs using sound judgement about the larger context of the work, by manipulating the code and code meta data (e.g. bugs and features). These systems are highly complex especially analyzed across ~20 dimensions of performance, and success often means guessing which dimensions to care about and which to leave to their own devices. If there is a systematic error mode in an IC its when your prioritization scheme is wrong because it's ossified, or because you're unlucky.
  • thewarrior 4y ago
    “Empty Status Chasing” is a pretty important motivator for a lot more people than they’d admit in public. Status correlates with wealth, fame and opportunity.
    • ozim 4y ago
      I read that "empty status chasing" of parent poster like martial art fake black belts or stolen valor people. Buying kimono and black belt does not make one good at martial arts - reading about leadership will not make someone a leader. Which makes me think about Dwight Shrute type of people.