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Do you think that's true?

by djmips 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
peter_d_sherman 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean >"Dean joined Google in mid-1999, and is currently the head of its Artificial Intelligence division. While at Google, he designed and implemented large portions of the company's advertising, crawling, indexing and query serving systems, along with various pieces of the distributed computing infrastructure that underlies most of Google's products.[3]" No Google Infrastructure = No Google Google Infrastructure Code Importance > Google Non-Infrastructure Code Importance Jeff Dean > 10x Software Engineer Also, on a related note, don't forget about the 5th Labor Of Hercules: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules#Fifth:_Augean_stables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules#Fifth:_Aug...) "The fifth labour was to clean the stables of King Augeas. This assignment was intended to be both humiliating and impossible, since these divine livestock were immortal, and had produced an enormous quantity of dung. The Augean (/ɔːˈdʒiːən/) stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there." The expectation being, was that Hercules would attempt the process manually, it would take too much time (since he only had a day to complete the task), and Hercules would fail... But Hercules didn't attempt to complete the task manually, instead he looked to engineer a natural system which could leverage to complete the task, in this case, re-routing a river such that the water performed the actual work, and he didn't have to. Hercules > 10x Engineer Now, compare this use of a system for automation with modern day computers. If you're going to build the infrastructure that runs Google, you must automate/engineer the infrastructure which controls the huge data flows (acts as the control plane) for the huge amounts of data that Google works with, daily. Computers are not (abstractly thinking) unlike the natural force, the river, and creating Google's infrastructure (the software which directs it) was not (again abstractly!) unlike engineering a river -- to perform actual work. A 10x (or greater) Engineer always thinks in terms of "how much work can I get for how much effort?", and "is there a better way to multiply the result from my effort?"
- djmips 4y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate it! When you put it that way, I really see it in a whole new light. Till now I'd seen this framed more like how much can a human code almost as a pure feat of strength b and endurance. But considering the whole, the end result then yes I can easily see a 10x engineer (or more) based on other metrics then purely lines of code. I wonder if this is where the disconnect is with a lot of these discussions. Anyway, your analogies were spot on!

Do you think that's true?

by djmips 4y ago

Do you think that's true?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

peter_d_sherman 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean >"Dean joined Google in mid-1999, and is currently the head of its Artificial Intelligence division. While at Google, he designed and implemented large portions of the company's advertising, crawling, indexing and query serving systems, along with various pieces of the distributed computing infrastructure that underlies most of Google's products.[3]" No Google Infrastructure = No Google Google Infrastructure Code Importance > Google Non-Infrastructure Code Importance Jeff Dean > 10x Software Engineer Also, on a related note, don't forget about the 5th Labor Of Hercules: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules#Fifth:_Augean_stables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules#Fifth:_Aug...) "The fifth labour was to clean the stables of King Augeas. This assignment was intended to be both humiliating and impossible, since these divine livestock were immortal, and had produced an enormous quantity of dung. The Augean (/ɔːˈdʒiːən/) stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there." The expectation being, was that Hercules would attempt the process manually, it would take too much time (since he only had a day to complete the task), and Hercules would fail... But Hercules didn't attempt to complete the task manually, instead he looked to engineer a natural system which could leverage to complete the task, in this case, re-routing a river such that the water performed the actual work, and he didn't have to. Hercules > 10x Engineer Now, compare this use of a system for automation with modern day computers. If you're going to build the infrastructure that runs Google, you must automate/engineer the infrastructure which controls the huge data flows (acts as the control plane) for the huge amounts of data that Google works with, daily. Computers are not (abstractly thinking) unlike the natural force, the river, and creating Google's infrastructure (the software which directs it) was not (again abstractly!) unlike engineering a river -- to perform actual work. A 10x (or greater) Engineer always thinks in terms of "how much work can I get for how much effort?", and "is there a better way to multiply the result from my effort?"

djmips 4y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate it! When you put it that way, I really see it in a whole new light. Till now I'd seen this framed more like how much can a human code almost as a pure feat of strength b and endurance. But considering the whole, the end result then yes I can easily see a 10x engineer (or more) based on other metrics then purely lines of code. I wonder if this is where the disconnect is with a lot of these discussions. Anyway, your analogies were spot on!