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>Yeah that was an interesting read. I like the concept of a -10x engineer because they definitely exist I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5

>Yeah that was an interesting read. I like the concept of a -10x engineer because they definitely exist I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5x, 2x, or 3x engineers exist at most. 10x is a huge exaggeration of human capability. Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. If such a person exists it will be so rare I estimate that most people haven't ever encountered an actual "10x" engineer. Even a 3x engineer is super rare. I can see something like 2x happening where a project that takes a year is done in 6 months. That is rare but plausible. You also might get a lead who can ramp up the effectiveness of an entire team by say 3x at most. If the size of the team was N, then it's N*3X. If N is like 4 then it's a 12x increase. This is the closest thing to an actual 10x engineer. But it's not actually a 10x engineer here it's just better management.

hcs 4y ago
Negative 10x
- Herval_freire 4y ago
  Oh man. My eyes just skipped over that negative sign every time. Now it makes sense. I thought the article was sarcastic. I'm blind.
nrclark 4y ago
a 10x engineer might not exist. A -10x engineer (or more accurately: a 1/10x engineer) definitely does. This article isn't about engineers that make your team better; it's about engineers that make your team worse.
- rzzzt 4y ago
  The distinction is important: someone else already wrote that the -10× person will move you further away from the goalpost, while the 10⁻¹× counterpart is still moving towards it, only slower.
  - nrclark 4y ago
    That's a good point. If your team has an 0.1x engineer, you'll still get to your goal eventually. If you have a -1x engineer, you might be going in the wrong direction to ever finish your project.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > a 10x engineer might not exist 10x engineers do exist, but they're vanishingly rare. I actually met one once. He eventually burnt out and left the industry permanently.
debatem1 4y ago
> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. You've really never met this person? Feels like more or less everyone with real expertise should be able to do this in the right job.
- Herval_freire 4y ago
  Every competent and qualified engineer should be able to do the job of 10 competent and qualified engineers? The statement that every engineer can be a 10x engineer is recursively paradoxical. If a 10x engineer existed, in my mind, he would immediately be able to identify this logical error.
  - debatem1 4y ago
    I didn't say "competent and qualified engineers". I said "experts". I won't waste any more words on someone who willfully misunderstands them.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > You've really never met this person? Nope. I've never met anyone who can complete in a month what it takes an average coder a year to complete. Neither have you.
  - mr_00ff00 4y ago
    TempleOS anyone?
    - whstl 4y ago
      I don't know. It was really made over a long, long time by a person working at it virtually full-time, I bet much more than 40h/week. I remember Terry posting LoseThos (or whatever it was called at before that) it in the OsDev forums in the early 2000s, and he had already been working at it for quite a while. Plus, at least back then, it was more of a novelty toy-like OS-simulacrum than a real OS. There were much more impressive projects at the OsDev forums at the time, with people running real app, connecting to the internet and talking to 3d cards.
tijsvd 4y ago
> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. The true 10x engineer looks at the project, sees the inherent needless complexity, goes back to the sponsor and uses his business knowledge to renegotiate the specs. Leading to a reduced scope with 98% of the business value and 10% of the work.
908B64B197 4y ago
> I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5x, 2x, or 3x engineers exist at most. 10x is a huge exaggeration of human capability. I think the reason so many people have doubts on the existence of 10x is that they might have never encountered one. I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Useless to say they loved him and the next summer they tried to get him back, even offering a signing bonus for an internship (something they considered unheard of) but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. You can guess the comp was probably already 3x what his previous job was offering. Of course, he wouldn't return. There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0][1] (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning [2]). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally). When hiring is red hot, they might completely disappear from the hiring pool by junior year. > Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. If such a person exists it will be so rare I estimate that most people haven't ever encountered an actual "10x" engineer. Even a 3x engineer is super rare. I can see something like 2x happening where a project that takes a year is done in 6 months. That is rare but plausible. That's thinking in terms of bricklaying. 10x, like Carmack or Woz for example, bring completely new ideas and paradigm shifts. Think of the engineering happening at Xerox PARC for instance. [0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... [1] http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ [2] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...
The_Colonel 4y ago
> You also might get a lead who can ramp up the effectiveness of an entire team by say 3x at most. If the size of the team was N, then it's N*3X. If N is like 4 then it's a 12x increase. This is the closest thing to an actual 10x engineer. But it's not actually a 10x engineer here it's just better management. All of that are arbitrary numbers. 10 is arbitrary and not actually measurable, but your 3, 4 are as well. But I think you're on the right track with this thinking. "10x engineer" does not make things 10 times as fast as "1x" engineer does, they do qualitatively different things Take an example of an engineer who sees through the bullshit of a "cloud architect" who specifies a complicated architecture with novel technologies to pad his resume. Cutting down on this can easily save the project / deliver much faster. This is kind of an interesting view - 10x engineer does not make projects run 10x faster, but they prevent mistakes which would slow down the project by factor of 10.
- Herval_freire 4y ago
  Another thing to think about is how basically every human trait follows a normal distribution. If mean = 1x (by definition 1x should be the mean) and the std is the maximum possible value (also 1x). Then 10x would be 10 std past the norm. This makes my numbers not arbitrary. 2x or 3x would only be 2 or 3 std past the norm. Which is reasonable (only if the std = 1x which is likely not the case and is most likely lower). If a 10xer existed, That's like saying you found a human who runs 10x faster then the mean (10mph) or you found a human 10x taller than the mean (5'10"). 10 is arbitrary but 2 or 3 is less arbitrary. Ever heard of the company 3sigma? The name represents Rarest non arbitrary anomaly from the norm. It is actually fundamentally illogical to think of human ability in terms of a multiple of the mean because no other measurable human quality follows that kind of distribution. Almost all of these measured things follow the normal distribution. You are therefore highly highly unlikely to find a 10x engineer or a -10x engineer. This applies even to things like engineering leadership. When viewed from this lens you can actually see that it's actually very unlikely for even the best leader to improve the productivity of every member of his team by even 2x. So I take that back. Likely what we are seeing is something like a 1.1x.or 1.2x increase and our minds are exaggerating the effect like an optical illusion. The concept of measuring any human trait along multiples of the mean via 1x or 2x or 3x or 10x is fundamentally unrealistic when you take a data driven viewpoint of normal distributions. Everyone on this thread is erroneously following this model and while my instincts were more tempered, to a certain extent even I'm following this erroneous model as I declared 3x to be within the realm of reality. We are all going about this all wrong (including me), the data driven conclusion is that at best you can find 2x engineers and they are freaking rare (because the actual std is nowhere near 1x). The maximum likely delta between the best engineer and worst engineer is 4z, where in this case the z represents 1/2x or an engineer half as good as the average. Likely people are anecdotally seeing this 4z delta and their mind is exaggerating the delta to 10x. From what we know of statistical reality an actual 10x is unlikely to happen at all.
enneff 4y ago
A 10x engineer is someone who helps ten people around them be twice as good.
epolanski 4y ago
Why do you assume 3 is an okay number but 10 isn't, it seems quite arbitrary. At the end of the day it is 10x what, tasks closed (features, bugs, etc) at same or higher quality? Terrible metric but those people exist. But you can also be a 50/100x engineer if the metric becomes value rather than tasks closed. E.g. convincing key stakeholders their project is a bad idea can save millions, years and companies. There's plenty of such moments to make huge differences and they compound.
- Herval_freire 4y ago
  [flagged]

hcs 4y ago

Negative 10x

Herval_freire 4y ago
Oh man. My eyes just skipped over that negative sign every time. Now it makes sense. I thought the article was sarcastic. I'm blind.

nrclark 4y ago

a 10x engineer might not exist. A -10x engineer (or more accurately: a 1/10x engineer) definitely does. This article isn't about engineers that make your team better; it's about engineers that make your team worse.

rzzzt 4y ago
The distinction is important: someone else already wrote that the -10× person will move you further away from the goalpost, while the 10⁻¹× counterpart is still moving towards it, only slower.
- nrclark 4y ago
  That's a good point. If your team has an 0.1x engineer, you'll still get to your goal eventually. If you have a -1x engineer, you might be going in the wrong direction to ever finish your project.
JohnFen 4y ago
> a 10x engineer might not exist 10x engineers do exist, but they're vanishingly rare. I actually met one once. He eventually burnt out and left the industry permanently.

debatem1 4y ago

> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. You've really never met this person? Feels like more or less everyone with real expertise should be able to do this in the right job.

Herval_freire 4y ago
Every competent and qualified engineer should be able to do the job of 10 competent and qualified engineers? The statement that every engineer can be a 10x engineer is recursively paradoxical. If a 10x engineer existed, in my mind, he would immediately be able to identify this logical error.
- debatem1 4y ago
  I didn't say "competent and qualified engineers". I said "experts". I won't waste any more words on someone who willfully misunderstands them.
lelanthran 4y ago
> You've really never met this person? Nope. I've never met anyone who can complete in a month what it takes an average coder a year to complete. Neither have you.
- mr_00ff00 4y ago
  TempleOS anyone?
  - whstl 4y ago
    I don't know. It was really made over a long, long time by a person working at it virtually full-time, I bet much more than 40h/week. I remember Terry posting LoseThos (or whatever it was called at before that) it in the OsDev forums in the early 2000s, and he had already been working at it for quite a while. Plus, at least back then, it was more of a novelty toy-like OS-simulacrum than a real OS. There were much more impressive projects at the OsDev forums at the time, with people running real app, connecting to the internet and talking to 3d cards.

tijsvd 4y ago

> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. The true 10x engineer looks at the project, sees the inherent needless complexity, goes back to the sponsor and uses his business knowledge to renegotiate the specs. Leading to a reduced scope with 98% of the business value and 10% of the work.

908B64B197 4y ago

> I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5x, 2x, or 3x engineers exist at most. 10x is a huge exaggeration of human capability. I think the reason so many people have doubts on the existence of 10x is that they might have never encountered one. I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Useless to say they loved him and the next summer they tried to get him back, even offering a signing bonus for an internship (something they considered unheard of) but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. You can guess the comp was probably already 3x what his previous job was offering. Of course, he wouldn't return. There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0][1] (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning [2]). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally). When hiring is red hot, they might completely disappear from the hiring pool by junior year. > Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. If such a person exists it will be so rare I estimate that most people haven't ever encountered an actual "10x" engineer. Even a 3x engineer is super rare. I can see something like 2x happening where a project that takes a year is done in 6 months. That is rare but plausible. That's thinking in terms of bricklaying. 10x, like Carmack or Woz for example, bring completely new ideas and paradigm shifts. Think of the engineering happening at Xerox PARC for instance. [0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... [1] http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ [2] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...

The_Colonel 4y ago

> You also might get a lead who can ramp up the effectiveness of an entire team by say 3x at most. If the size of the team was N, then it's N*3X. If N is like 4 then it's a 12x increase. This is the closest thing to an actual 10x engineer. But it's not actually a 10x engineer here it's just better management. All of that are arbitrary numbers. 10 is arbitrary and not actually measurable, but your 3, 4 are as well. But I think you're on the right track with this thinking. "10x engineer" does not make things 10 times as fast as "1x" engineer does, they do qualitatively different things Take an example of an engineer who sees through the bullshit of a "cloud architect" who specifies a complicated architecture with novel technologies to pad his resume. Cutting down on this can easily save the project / deliver much faster. This is kind of an interesting view - 10x engineer does not make projects run 10x faster, but they prevent mistakes which would slow down the project by factor of 10.

Herval_freire 4y ago
Another thing to think about is how basically every human trait follows a normal distribution. If mean = 1x (by definition 1x should be the mean) and the std is the maximum possible value (also 1x). Then 10x would be 10 std past the norm. This makes my numbers not arbitrary. 2x or 3x would only be 2 or 3 std past the norm. Which is reasonable (only if the std = 1x which is likely not the case and is most likely lower). If a 10xer existed, That's like saying you found a human who runs 10x faster then the mean (10mph) or you found a human 10x taller than the mean (5'10"). 10 is arbitrary but 2 or 3 is less arbitrary. Ever heard of the company 3sigma? The name represents Rarest non arbitrary anomaly from the norm. It is actually fundamentally illogical to think of human ability in terms of a multiple of the mean because no other measurable human quality follows that kind of distribution. Almost all of these measured things follow the normal distribution. You are therefore highly highly unlikely to find a 10x engineer or a -10x engineer. This applies even to things like engineering leadership. When viewed from this lens you can actually see that it's actually very unlikely for even the best leader to improve the productivity of every member of his team by even 2x. So I take that back. Likely what we are seeing is something like a 1.1x.or 1.2x increase and our minds are exaggerating the effect like an optical illusion. The concept of measuring any human trait along multiples of the mean via 1x or 2x or 3x or 10x is fundamentally unrealistic when you take a data driven viewpoint of normal distributions. Everyone on this thread is erroneously following this model and while my instincts were more tempered, to a certain extent even I'm following this erroneous model as I declared 3x to be within the realm of reality. We are all going about this all wrong (including me), the data driven conclusion is that at best you can find 2x engineers and they are freaking rare (because the actual std is nowhere near 1x). The maximum likely delta between the best engineer and worst engineer is 4z, where in this case the z represents 1/2x or an engineer half as good as the average. Likely people are anecdotally seeing this 4z delta and their mind is exaggerating the delta to 10x. From what we know of statistical reality an actual 10x is unlikely to happen at all.

enneff 4y ago

A 10x engineer is someone who helps ten people around them be twice as good.

epolanski 4y ago

Why do you assume 3 is an okay number but 10 isn't, it seems quite arbitrary. At the end of the day it is 10x what, tasks closed (features, bugs, etc) at same or higher quality? Terrible metric but those people exist. But you can also be a 50/100x engineer if the metric becomes value rather than tasks closed. E.g. convincing key stakeholders their project is a bad idea can save millions, years and companies. There's plenty of such moments to make huge differences and they compound.

Herval_freire 4y ago
[flagged]