3 ms·

There are infinite-x programmers and engineers. There are people who can attack new problems or develop completely novel solutions, and those who are capable o

There are infinite-x programmers and engineers. There are people who can attack new problems or develop completely novel solutions, and those who are capable of solving problems that that might not technically be new, but they require deep knowledge of several disciplines. And there are people who are simply incapable of doing those things. They might be adequate programmers, able to work productively on existing projects and variations of solved problems, fine tune them, solve difficult bugs, make them work real nice. But it's not the same thing, and it's easy to see when you have worked with the former types.

trashtester 4y ago
Infinite value is not possible, so infinite x is only possible when comparing such engineers to someone who produces <=0 value. And compared to those, every engineers that produce >0 value is an infinite-x, making this quite trivial.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems. There are problems where the average or even majority of engineers would create exactly zero value over time.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems. When I said infinite is impossible, I meant in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. n-x-engineer means that: productivity_of_n-x_engineer / productivity_of_reference_engineer >= n (assuming the reference isn't negative) etc So, I'm arguing that the numerator cannot be infinite, so if n is infinite, the denominator has to be 0. In that case _everyone_ with positive productivity would be infinite-x, making the term kind of trivial. I'm not arguing that such a situation cannot occur for some role, it can certainly happen that a company fills 50% of more of engineering positions with completely unproductive people. And if, as you seem to do, measure this per problem, not per employee, it is really common. There are a lot of technical problems that only a small percentage of engineers can solve. Even then, though, even less gifted engineers may find some other technical solution that addresses the same business problem well enough to provide more than zero productivity. Sorry if this wasn't obvious....
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      > When I said infinite is impossible, I meant in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. The whole thread is about relative terms, including when I said infinite-x. And the context is clearly about certain worthwhile problems, nobody talks about a 10x engineer as someone able to make a trivial phone apps or web pages 10x faster than than average.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        > The whole thread is about relative terms, including when I said infinite-x. Relative means numerator/denominator. My first reply was simply breaking that down into parts, aruing that the numerator could not be infinite, and that the denominator being zero is not a very interesting case. > nobody talks about a 10x engineer as someone able to make a trivial phone apps or web pages 10x faster than than average. Actually, that's precisely what I think a lot of people who hear the term interpret it as. Especially from those who reject that the 10x engineer exists. And there are quite a lot of engineers out there that believe that all any software engineer is doing, is to follow detailed instructions/specifications for some product, whether that is to make trivial web page or improve how gcc optimized code on a new cpu architecture. While in fact, the most productive engineers out there do NOT follow such specifications from others, but rather develop something revolutionary based on their own ideas. You're not likely to find 10000-x or better software developers that don't do it like that (I would argue that people like Linus Torvalds or Elon Musk would rate at around the million-x level, but not infinite-x )
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        I didn't say the numerator could be infinite, because again, the whole thread was talking about the relative change. Pretty obvious from the name, 10x Pretty big hint there, it's clearly a ratio. And what I was talking about are very complex or new problems, and here are absolutely infinite-x people. Things where the average engineer will create exactly zero value on over time. I don't know about Musk, but Linus is of course one of them. Task someone to write a scalable distributed version control system before 2005, and the average engineer will be incapable of doing that. If you wanted to talk about something else entirely like working on simpler things, fine.

trashtester 4y ago

Infinite value is not possible, so infinite x is only possible when comparing such engineers to someone who produces <=0 value. And compared to those, every engineers that produce >0 value is an infinite-x, making this quite trivial.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems. There are problems where the average or even majority of engineers would create exactly zero value over time.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > Yes it is absolutely possible, for particular problems. When I said infinite is impossible, I meant in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. n-x-engineer means that: productivity_of_n-x_engineer / productivity_of_reference_engineer >= n (assuming the reference isn't negative) etc So, I'm arguing that the numerator cannot be infinite, so if n is infinite, the denominator has to be 0. In that case _everyone_ with positive productivity would be infinite-x, making the term kind of trivial. I'm not arguing that such a situation cannot occur for some role, it can certainly happen that a company fills 50% of more of engineering positions with completely unproductive people. And if, as you seem to do, measure this per problem, not per employee, it is really common. There are a lot of technical problems that only a small percentage of engineers can solve. Even then, though, even less gifted engineers may find some other technical solution that addresses the same business problem well enough to provide more than zero productivity. Sorry if this wasn't obvious....
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    > When I said infinite is impossible, I meant in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. The whole thread is about relative terms, including when I said infinite-x. And the context is clearly about certain worthwhile problems, nobody talks about a 10x engineer as someone able to make a trivial phone apps or web pages 10x faster than than average.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      > The whole thread is about relative terms, including when I said infinite-x. Relative means numerator/denominator. My first reply was simply breaking that down into parts, aruing that the numerator could not be infinite, and that the denominator being zero is not a very interesting case. > nobody talks about a 10x engineer as someone able to make a trivial phone apps or web pages 10x faster than than average. Actually, that's precisely what I think a lot of people who hear the term interpret it as. Especially from those who reject that the 10x engineer exists. And there are quite a lot of engineers out there that believe that all any software engineer is doing, is to follow detailed instructions/specifications for some product, whether that is to make trivial web page or improve how gcc optimized code on a new cpu architecture. While in fact, the most productive engineers out there do NOT follow such specifications from others, but rather develop something revolutionary based on their own ideas. You're not likely to find 10000-x or better software developers that don't do it like that (I would argue that people like Linus Torvalds or Elon Musk would rate at around the million-x level, but not infinite-x )
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        I didn't say the numerator could be infinite, because again, the whole thread was talking about the relative change. Pretty obvious from the name, 10x Pretty big hint there, it's clearly a ratio. And what I was talking about are very complex or new problems, and here are absolutely infinite-x people. Things where the average engineer will create exactly zero value on over time. I don't know about Musk, but Linus is of course one of them. Task someone to write a scalable distributed version control system before 2005, and the average engineer will be incapable of doing that. If you wanted to talk about something else entirely like working on simpler things, fine.