4 ms·

That's no leverage in running. There's a lot of leverage in software engineering. That's what allows such a wide diversity of productivity.

by eloff 4y ago

xeromal 4y ago
What is leverage? VIM?
- zarzavat 4y ago
  Compare a programmer with good autocomplete to a programmer who has to keep stopping to look up documentation online. That’s a double digit % improvement just by installing the right plugins.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Leverage is just another word for debt. ;-)
- trashtester 4y ago
  A good editor (and the ability to use it efficiently) is a relatively small factor, comparable to the ability to type quickly. Much greater leverage can be found in the ability to innovate, to have the undestanding needed to quickly select a good approach to solve some problem and the social skills needed to lead a team or company in a direction where they can (to re-use the term) leverage such new innovations in ways that generate maximum value. For instance, if you have a team that uses RESTful java microservices on k8s for EVERYTHING, many compute heavy or IO heavy tasks may require massive clusters to run a data processing pipeline. If you're the engineers that identifies this as inefficient, finds way to build the pipeline using a more suitable tech stack, and introduce this stack to your company, you could the infrastructure cost of a company by millions per year. That's kind of comparing the use of cargo ships to mules for transporting goods. And if the tech you introduce also enable 10 other devs to develop 3x faster, this alone would make your effort as valuable as having at least 20 more such engineers. (20x).
- eloff 4y ago
  In this context, the ability to have an outsized impact in relation to your input. Think of a physical lever.
  - mattkrause 4y ago
    The reason I don't like "10x engineer" as a term is that it's often presented as an attribute of the person, but I think it's really often an attribute of the situation. People obviously differ in abilities, but those differences are massively exaggerated by the environment. The best engineer at Twitter probably isn't getting much done this month. Conversely, a few people who were solidly average at their last job are probably rocking it because they've landed in a place where the work is a good match for their skills, the path forward is obvious and feels secure, and they're getting the needed support from their colleagues.

That's no leverage in running. There's a lot of leverage in software engineering. That's what allows such a wide diversity of productivity.

by eloff 4y ago

That's no leverage in running. There's a lot of leverage in software engineering. That's what allows such a wide diversity of productivity.

xeromal 4y ago

What is leverage? VIM?

zarzavat 4y ago
Compare a programmer with good autocomplete to a programmer who has to keep stopping to look up documentation online. That’s a double digit % improvement just by installing the right plugins.
whatshisface 4y ago
Leverage is just another word for debt. ;-)
trashtester 4y ago
A good editor (and the ability to use it efficiently) is a relatively small factor, comparable to the ability to type quickly. Much greater leverage can be found in the ability to innovate, to have the undestanding needed to quickly select a good approach to solve some problem and the social skills needed to lead a team or company in a direction where they can (to re-use the term) leverage such new innovations in ways that generate maximum value. For instance, if you have a team that uses RESTful java microservices on k8s for EVERYTHING, many compute heavy or IO heavy tasks may require massive clusters to run a data processing pipeline. If you're the engineers that identifies this as inefficient, finds way to build the pipeline using a more suitable tech stack, and introduce this stack to your company, you could the infrastructure cost of a company by millions per year. That's kind of comparing the use of cargo ships to mules for transporting goods. And if the tech you introduce also enable 10 other devs to develop 3x faster, this alone would make your effort as valuable as having at least 20 more such engineers. (20x).
eloff 4y ago
In this context, the ability to have an outsized impact in relation to your input. Think of a physical lever.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  The reason I don't like "10x engineer" as a term is that it's often presented as an attribute of the person, but I think it's really often an attribute of the situation. People obviously differ in abilities, but those differences are massively exaggerated by the environment. The best engineer at Twitter probably isn't getting much done this month. Conversely, a few people who were solidly average at their last job are probably rocking it because they've landed in a place where the work is a good match for their skills, the path forward is obvious and feels secure, and they're getting the needed support from their colleagues.