5 ms·

I feel like this misses the point. And then a lot.

echelon 4y ago
The "there's no such thing as a 10x engineer" crowd forgets or dismisses that there's a distribution of engineering talent and capability. You can even find examples. Fabrice Bellard immediately comes to mind.
- throw10920 4y ago
  John Carmack. Donald Knuth. Casey Muratori? Linus Torvalds. "There's no such thing as a 10x engineer" people probably haven't seen a normal distribution before.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dudeman112 4y ago
    >people probably haven't seen a normal distribution before And yet there aren't 17 meters tall people (avg adult male height back home is 1.7m) Mind you, I consider the whole discussion stupid since it's an intellectual/creative job Every. Single. Instance. Of trying to measure such things has failed at producing consistent results or results with predictive capability. Talking about X times engineer makes no sense when you don't even know what a 1x engineer is.
  - rsanek 4y ago
    Knowledge work is much closer to a power law distribution than a normal one. That is, there are indeed a handful of 10x engineers, but it's not a ton of 1x and some 0.1x. It's overwhelmingly 0.1x. This paper does a good job of showing just how dominant the 10x are in areas with unambiguous and legible outcomes (tenure of politicians, number of Emmy wins, etc.) http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf
- headmelted 4y ago
  I'm convinced the 10x engineer doesn't exist. It's not that the 10x engineer is a myth - it's a fallacy. You'll find that people in the same profession (any profession) will have variance in their abilities and their return to a project, but it's a big leap to assume that someone that appears to perform much better than their peers is actually doing so in any objective sense. The 10x engineer is more likely than not the person most familiar with the project and the codebase, knows the real reason why Mark didn't just put everything on Kubernetes or why Tanya didn't want to switch from React to Vue before leaving the team. Or.. it's an engineer that has the ear and the faith of higher-ups in the organisation to deliver results because they're good at convincingly taking credit for them. Generally I find that 10x engineer on here means "knows more than most about [tech stack X]" and can work quickly. That's cool if all other things are equal, but I've had to clean up more than a couple of catastrophic messes left in the wake of people that worked quickly. Just to pre-empt someone telling me I must never have met a real 10x engineer or some other such dismissive response - I'm an average fish in an average pond. I've had people tell me how good I am in the past, both reports and managers, and have in both cases corrected them politely that I've just had more time with the problem/project/codebase than others have. Anytime I hear someone talk about 10X engineers, let alone describing themselves as that, all it makes me think is that there's a failure of humility. None of this belittles Fabrice Bellard. Or John Carmack. Or Chris Lattner. Or [known and respected programmer]. Their achievements speak for themselves. You could give names of people in the field all day. There's a lot of us around. How many of the self-described or colleague-described "10X engineers" floating around are Linus Torvalds?
  - glimshe 4y ago
    I've managed many "10x" engineers. They do exist. These engineers I'm thinking about not only are amazingly productive but solve problems average engineers can't solve no matter how much time you give them. Their solutions are elegant, performant and survive design changes. Their code is easier to maintain. Paying 2x the average to these people is a steal,as they are a LOT better than that. Not sure how much, but I'd rather have one of them on my team than 3 average engineers (probably more). I'm not saying average engineers aren't useful workers. They are, they get things done if they aren't incompetent. But they are nowhere near a 10x engineer. 10x engineers aren't perfect. But they are amazing nonetheless. If you have never worked with one, maybe it's because you had bad luck, haven't been around long enough or haven't worked in great teams. Whatever the reason,once you meet a 10x, you will know it.
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  >there's a distribution of engineering talent and capability I think the debate is over the properties of that distribution, and whether it needs to be plotted on a logarithmic scale
- tasn 4y ago
  What I never understood about this debate is that surely these people realize that LeBron is 10x better than some other NBA players. Why can't the same apply to engineers? Personal anecdote: I've worked with 10x, 1x, 0x, -1x and -10x engineers, and everything in between.

The "there's no such thing as a 10x engineer" crowd forgets or dismisses that there's a distribution of engineering talent and capability. You can even find examples. Fabrice Bellard immediately comes to mind.

throw10920 4y ago
John Carmack. Donald Knuth. Casey Muratori? Linus Torvalds. "There's no such thing as a 10x engineer" people probably haven't seen a normal distribution before.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Dudeman112 4y ago
  >people probably haven't seen a normal distribution before And yet there aren't 17 meters tall people (avg adult male height back home is 1.7m) Mind you, I consider the whole discussion stupid since it's an intellectual/creative job Every. Single. Instance. Of trying to measure such things has failed at producing consistent results or results with predictive capability. Talking about X times engineer makes no sense when you don't even know what a 1x engineer is.
- rsanek 4y ago
  Knowledge work is much closer to a power law distribution than a normal one. That is, there are indeed a handful of 10x engineers, but it's not a ton of 1x and some 0.1x. It's overwhelmingly 0.1x. This paper does a good job of showing just how dominant the 10x are in areas with unambiguous and legible outcomes (tenure of politicians, number of Emmy wins, etc.) http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf
headmelted 4y ago
I'm convinced the 10x engineer doesn't exist. It's not that the 10x engineer is a myth - it's a fallacy. You'll find that people in the same profession (any profession) will have variance in their abilities and their return to a project, but it's a big leap to assume that someone that appears to perform much better than their peers is actually doing so in any objective sense. The 10x engineer is more likely than not the person most familiar with the project and the codebase, knows the real reason why Mark didn't just put everything on Kubernetes or why Tanya didn't want to switch from React to Vue before leaving the team. Or.. it's an engineer that has the ear and the faith of higher-ups in the organisation to deliver results because they're good at convincingly taking credit for them. Generally I find that 10x engineer on here means "knows more than most about [tech stack X]" and can work quickly. That's cool if all other things are equal, but I've had to clean up more than a couple of catastrophic messes left in the wake of people that worked quickly. Just to pre-empt someone telling me I must never have met a real 10x engineer or some other such dismissive response - I'm an average fish in an average pond. I've had people tell me how good I am in the past, both reports and managers, and have in both cases corrected them politely that I've just had more time with the problem/project/codebase than others have. Anytime I hear someone talk about 10X engineers, let alone describing themselves as that, all it makes me think is that there's a failure of humility. None of this belittles Fabrice Bellard. Or John Carmack. Or Chris Lattner. Or [known and respected programmer]. Their achievements speak for themselves. You could give names of people in the field all day. There's a lot of us around. How many of the self-described or colleague-described "10X engineers" floating around are Linus Torvalds?
- glimshe 4y ago
  I've managed many "10x" engineers. They do exist. These engineers I'm thinking about not only are amazingly productive but solve problems average engineers can't solve no matter how much time you give them. Their solutions are elegant, performant and survive design changes. Their code is easier to maintain. Paying 2x the average to these people is a steal,as they are a LOT better than that. Not sure how much, but I'd rather have one of them on my team than 3 average engineers (probably more). I'm not saying average engineers aren't useful workers. They are, they get things done if they aren't incompetent. But they are nowhere near a 10x engineer. 10x engineers aren't perfect. But they are amazing nonetheless. If you have never worked with one, maybe it's because you had bad luck, haven't been around long enough or haven't worked in great teams. Whatever the reason,once you meet a 10x, you will know it.
anonymous_sorry 4y ago
>there's a distribution of engineering talent and capability I think the debate is over the properties of that distribution, and whether it needs to be plotted on a logarithmic scale
tasn 4y ago
What I never understood about this debate is that surely these people realize that LeBron is 10x better than some other NBA players. Why can't the same apply to engineers? Personal anecdote: I've worked with 10x, 1x, 0x, -1x and -10x engineers, and everything in between.