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Most 10x engineers I've met are usually very creative and care deeply about the user experience and keeping code maintainable over time. Most 1x developers jus

Most 10x engineers I've met are usually very creative and care deeply about the user experience and keeping code maintainable over time. Most 1x developers just care about getting the job done regardless of care or code quality, which in my experience has led to conflict.

iwontberude 2y ago
I like 5x developers that get the job done and don’t spend the additional 5x over engineering the work — causing the 1x engineers to disengage. Some engineers have an obsessive, sometimes compulsive, nature which is actually at odds with the business. These types usually spent a large amount of time in institutionalized learning settings and will be far more opinionated about how their labor is allocated.
- nullpoint420 2y ago
  Agreed. I prefer collaboration between engineers, regardless of Nx they are.
n_ary 2y ago
I believe, you have got the multipliers switched. Most 1x engineers/developers care deeply about users and the end product, and also likes to keep the code well maintained and performant, so they can do their peaceful work and go home, while not making the life of the user any more miserable. Most 10x engineers are too brilliant and remain busy rocking the boat and doing so many mind blowing things at any given time that the destruction trail is only materialising slowly once their presence has faded for a while and the remnants are being pieced together. I think, we equate the frenzy with 10x(productivity & excellence) while the less creative and cautious ones tend to be the most valuable over long term with most boring stuff. Of course to each their own, but the too many destructions of the 10x stars had made me very weary these days.
- gmm1990 2y ago
  Are there any open source repositories where this is an example? I keep hearing the 10x people ruin everything but I wouldn’t call that person 10x. I don’t understand how it’s objectionable that some people are more productive than others.
  - alfalfasprout 2y ago
    The question is in how they're productive. If they're productive because they're effectively cutting corners and leaving a wake of tech debt others have to clean up then they are productive while slowing down their team (or worse, the company) as a whole.
    - whstl 2y ago
      Anyone that has been doing this job knows that the majority of average developers in any workplace will also cut corners every once in a while and leave a lot of tech debt to others, with very few exceptions. This myth that more productive developers are somehow worse and will ruin projects is just rationalization without any ground in reality.
      - alfalfasprout 2y ago
        Except it’s not a myth. Many of us have encountered the perceived more productive developers that ship barely passable garbage.
        whstl 2y ago
        The myth I’m criticizing is that sloppiness has a stronger correlation with being productive. It doesn’t. Plenty of slow developers who suck. This is just rationalization.
  - pests 2y ago
    I have a buddy that helped me out with some DIY/construction projects. He thinks he is a 10x as well since he gets so much done so quickly. He will finish up and sit down saying its done. I go look and every tool is literally everywhere, garbage and debris thrown about, and half the stuff is incorrectly installed as he didn't think he needed to read the instructions and missed key details.
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  Hard disagree. If they don't consistently write maintainable and reliable code, they are not 10x engineer no matter how smart they are. e.g. Linus is a classic 10x or 100x engineer and his code(Linux, Git etc) has been maintained by a completely uncoordinated team for decades.
- whstl 2y ago
  Wait... "Most" 1x engineers? "Most" in any profession will be average. Which is completely normal and fine. This kind of reply is just flipping the stereotype and going in another insane extreme without any evidence at all, just conflating productivity with recklessness...
  - Izkata 2y ago
    Their very next line also used "Most 10x engineers". Neither of those are talking about "most" in the profession, it's "most" in the subgroup. Average in the profession will be somewhere in between.
    - whstl 2y ago
      Are you really sure? If 1x is the absolute rock-bottom lowest possible productivity, are them really the precious angels who care deeply about the user while making amazing code? This is even more absurd.
      - Izkata 2y ago
        > If 1x is the absolute rock-bottom lowest possible productivity You understand the original meaning of the term. This is not how most people use it nowadays.
        whstl 2y ago
        No, I don’t. You’re reading too much into my post. I haven’t made any judgement of whether 1x means average or rock bottom, because it doesn’t matter. The assertion made by GP is absurd regardless of the definition, period.
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  Most "1x" engineers are a drag on the business. Complacent. Don't care about business goals. And the 10x you mentioned are not 10x. They are 1x with frenzy. If one is not multiplying the team output, they are simply 1x or lower (maybe a few exceptions)
- Nevermark 2y ago
  Someone imagining they are brilliant doesn’t make them brilliant. More so if in the light of day their work sucks. Discussions about 10x engineers are not about “wannabe 10x engineers”. — I have yet to come across an intellectual area where there isn’t a long tail of higher talent. As the “x” goes up they just get more rare in reality, and even rarer to see. Because they are not always being optimally challenged. Most problems are mundane. And optimally challenging workers isn’t really a business plan for anything. I think there is such thing as a 10x problem, which you have to find before your 10x engineer really shines. Identifying hard but exceptionally valuable problems to solve takes 10x vision. And time and luck.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    You really can over-hire and I've seen it happen in many shops If a "10x engineer" is not given 10x problems, they will.. create some.
    - rockemsockem 2y ago
      No, they'll leave. You're talking about the wannabes.
      - steveBK123 2y ago
        There’s easily 10x as many 10x wannabes though
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      Yes but it will never reach production. A 10x engineer that pushes a problem to prod is not a 10x. You get to 10x by not making mistakes, any issue you create sets you back ten squares.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - lowbloodsugar 2y ago
jajko 2y ago
I've rarely seen those 10x engineers to bring massive long term added value. Most are/were well aware of their skills and detested working on anything but newest and shiniest, desperately trying to make work a fun park for them regardless whether its actually a good idea for the company giving them paychecks. Which works for some time, or when extensively coached, but eventually they move since their time is oh so precious and now you have the rest of the team to work with their work. Not that great. Then people wonder or complain when business doesn't appreciate devs. How would you look at folks who are critical to your success yet often don't have your company's best interest at the center of their efforts. To use your terms, those 1x devs always end up maintaining and evolving that code of 10x guys. Their velocity with changes is massively lower and error rate is significantly higher compared to code created by 1x devs. This is what business sees and there is not much love for that.
- lysace 2y ago
  > I've rarely seen those 10x engineers to bring massive long term added value. I've seen it first-hand. We ended up building a support team around the 10x:er to keep things working, but it was easily worth it. It worked very well for the life span of the product - about a decade. Many eventually graduated to pretty fancy places. They learned a lot. This particular 10x:er loved sharing knowledge via pair-programming. Well, he was always in command of the keyboard (typing insanely fast), but you'd sit next to him and he'd delight in explaining. Eventually you would challenge him on something and then the collaboration/adventure began. I have had the most intellectually exhilarating times of my life working with this guy. So yeah, 10x:ers can bring massive value if they are wired to be really nice.
  - imetatroll 2y ago
    I'm a bit jealous. I currently work with an exceptional engineer but he is very condescending and acts somewhat pissed off by "simple" questions or people asking for help. The product is fantastic thanks to his work and I am learning, I think, what it really means to attempt to write excellent code - he really nit picks the hell out of my PRs - but to be honest I wish I didn't have to work with him. He has really demotivated me.
TZubiri 2y ago
I think multiple 10x engineers will fight amongst themselves, and that is good. You don't have a 10x without there being a 0.1x engineer. And we can't all be right.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
And lets not talk about the 0.1x developers who are probably also a thing. If you get enough of those together, team productivity completely collapses. I've seen that happen. 1x is normal. Some people are less, some people are more. Normal is good and predictable. There's nothing wrong with normal. Normal people that put in a decent effort will produce results. That's a good thing. For a lot of long lived software, normal is what you want. You can't reasonably ask normal people to be more than normal. That would be abnormal. Putting in 120% of your best is not a thing. It doesn't work that way. You are doing pretty OK if you are getting 70-80% of your theoretical best. That's what normal is. There are of course people who are a bit more capable than their average peers. This is often confused with working long hours. The ability to work longer is mostly something young, relatively healthy people are good at. But there's a difference between working longer and working smarter. You can't work 10x more than a normal person. There's only 24 hours in a day. The only logical way to get 10x more done is to work smarter. There is no other way. And some people really just are that good that they get more work done in the same amount of time. Part of that is experience, brains, and just being really efficient with their time. An exhausted 10x developer is not a 10x developer. Because they'll be perpetually too tired to work smart. So they might be producing a lot of code but it will be the type of code that will need a lot of maintenance. A true 10x developer consistently writes less code with high impact without wearing themselves out too much. Doing that requires skill and experience. The best code is code you don't have to write. Use the right libraries, avoid reinventing wheels, make your code testable (so you don't get bogged down debugging it), don't repeat yourself, etc. If you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, automate it. That's your job. Don't keep on doing the same thing. That would be stupid and somebody else will do something smarter eventually.
- Izkata 2y ago
  > And lets not talk about the 0.1x developers who are probably also a thing. If you get enough of those together, team productivity completely collapses. I've seen that happen. > 1x is normal. IIRC the post that came up with the 10x and 1x terminology used 1x as the worst performer. Normal/average was somewhere in between 10x and 1x. The change to 1x being average in the common understanding seems to have happened because even the people criticizing it have an intuitive understanding that it's correct, they just want the boundaries somewhere else.

iwontberude 2y ago

I like 5x developers that get the job done and don’t spend the additional 5x over engineering the work — causing the 1x engineers to disengage. Some engineers have an obsessive, sometimes compulsive, nature which is actually at odds with the business. These types usually spent a large amount of time in institutionalized learning settings and will be far more opinionated about how their labor is allocated.

nullpoint420 2y ago
Agreed. I prefer collaboration between engineers, regardless of Nx they are.

n_ary 2y ago

I believe, you have got the multipliers switched. Most 1x engineers/developers care deeply about users and the end product, and also likes to keep the code well maintained and performant, so they can do their peaceful work and go home, while not making the life of the user any more miserable. Most 10x engineers are too brilliant and remain busy rocking the boat and doing so many mind blowing things at any given time that the destruction trail is only materialising slowly once their presence has faded for a while and the remnants are being pieced together. I think, we equate the frenzy with 10x(productivity & excellence) while the less creative and cautious ones tend to be the most valuable over long term with most boring stuff. Of course to each their own, but the too many destructions of the 10x stars had made me very weary these days.

gmm1990 2y ago
Are there any open source repositories where this is an example? I keep hearing the 10x people ruin everything but I wouldn’t call that person 10x. I don’t understand how it’s objectionable that some people are more productive than others.
- alfalfasprout 2y ago
  The question is in how they're productive. If they're productive because they're effectively cutting corners and leaving a wake of tech debt others have to clean up then they are productive while slowing down their team (or worse, the company) as a whole.
  - whstl 2y ago
    Anyone that has been doing this job knows that the majority of average developers in any workplace will also cut corners every once in a while and leave a lot of tech debt to others, with very few exceptions. This myth that more productive developers are somehow worse and will ruin projects is just rationalization without any ground in reality.
    - alfalfasprout 2y ago
      Except it’s not a myth. Many of us have encountered the perceived more productive developers that ship barely passable garbage.
      - whstl 2y ago
        The myth I’m criticizing is that sloppiness has a stronger correlation with being productive. It doesn’t. Plenty of slow developers who suck. This is just rationalization.
- pests 2y ago
  I have a buddy that helped me out with some DIY/construction projects. He thinks he is a 10x as well since he gets so much done so quickly. He will finish up and sit down saying its done. I go look and every tool is literally everywhere, garbage and debris thrown about, and half the stuff is incorrectly installed as he didn't think he needed to read the instructions and missed key details.
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
Hard disagree. If they don't consistently write maintainable and reliable code, they are not 10x engineer no matter how smart they are. e.g. Linus is a classic 10x or 100x engineer and his code(Linux, Git etc) has been maintained by a completely uncoordinated team for decades.
whstl 2y ago
Wait... "Most" 1x engineers? "Most" in any profession will be average. Which is completely normal and fine. This kind of reply is just flipping the stereotype and going in another insane extreme without any evidence at all, just conflating productivity with recklessness...
- Izkata 2y ago
  Their very next line also used "Most 10x engineers". Neither of those are talking about "most" in the profession, it's "most" in the subgroup. Average in the profession will be somewhere in between.
  - whstl 2y ago
    Are you really sure? If 1x is the absolute rock-bottom lowest possible productivity, are them really the precious angels who care deeply about the user while making amazing code? This is even more absurd.
    - Izkata 2y ago
      > If 1x is the absolute rock-bottom lowest possible productivity You understand the original meaning of the term. This is not how most people use it nowadays.
      - whstl 2y ago
        No, I don’t. You’re reading too much into my post. I haven’t made any judgement of whether 1x means average or rock bottom, because it doesn’t matter. The assertion made by GP is absurd regardless of the definition, period.
CrimsonRain 2y ago
Most "1x" engineers are a drag on the business. Complacent. Don't care about business goals. And the 10x you mentioned are not 10x. They are 1x with frenzy. If one is not multiplying the team output, they are simply 1x or lower (maybe a few exceptions)
Nevermark 2y ago
Someone imagining they are brilliant doesn’t make them brilliant. More so if in the light of day their work sucks. Discussions about 10x engineers are not about “wannabe 10x engineers”. — I have yet to come across an intellectual area where there isn’t a long tail of higher talent. As the “x” goes up they just get more rare in reality, and even rarer to see. Because they are not always being optimally challenged. Most problems are mundane. And optimally challenging workers isn’t really a business plan for anything. I think there is such thing as a 10x problem, which you have to find before your 10x engineer really shines. Identifying hard but exceptionally valuable problems to solve takes 10x vision. And time and luck.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  You really can over-hire and I've seen it happen in many shops If a "10x engineer" is not given 10x problems, they will.. create some.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    No, they'll leave. You're talking about the wannabes.
    - steveBK123 2y ago
      There’s easily 10x as many 10x wannabes though
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    Yes but it will never reach production. A 10x engineer that pushes a problem to prod is not a 10x. You get to 10x by not making mistakes, any issue you create sets you back ten squares.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - lowbloodsugar 2y ago

jajko 2y ago

I've rarely seen those 10x engineers to bring massive long term added value. Most are/were well aware of their skills and detested working on anything but newest and shiniest, desperately trying to make work a fun park for them regardless whether its actually a good idea for the company giving them paychecks. Which works for some time, or when extensively coached, but eventually they move since their time is oh so precious and now you have the rest of the team to work with their work. Not that great. Then people wonder or complain when business doesn't appreciate devs. How would you look at folks who are critical to your success yet often don't have your company's best interest at the center of their efforts. To use your terms, those 1x devs always end up maintaining and evolving that code of 10x guys. Their velocity with changes is massively lower and error rate is significantly higher compared to code created by 1x devs. This is what business sees and there is not much love for that.

lysace 2y ago
> I've rarely seen those 10x engineers to bring massive long term added value. I've seen it first-hand. We ended up building a support team around the 10x:er to keep things working, but it was easily worth it. It worked very well for the life span of the product - about a decade. Many eventually graduated to pretty fancy places. They learned a lot. This particular 10x:er loved sharing knowledge via pair-programming. Well, he was always in command of the keyboard (typing insanely fast), but you'd sit next to him and he'd delight in explaining. Eventually you would challenge him on something and then the collaboration/adventure began. I have had the most intellectually exhilarating times of my life working with this guy. So yeah, 10x:ers can bring massive value if they are wired to be really nice.
- imetatroll 2y ago
  I'm a bit jealous. I currently work with an exceptional engineer but he is very condescending and acts somewhat pissed off by "simple" questions or people asking for help. The product is fantastic thanks to his work and I am learning, I think, what it really means to attempt to write excellent code - he really nit picks the hell out of my PRs - but to be honest I wish I didn't have to work with him. He has really demotivated me.

TZubiri 2y ago

I think multiple 10x engineers will fight amongst themselves, and that is good. You don't have a 10x without there being a 0.1x engineer. And we can't all be right.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

And lets not talk about the 0.1x developers who are probably also a thing. If you get enough of those together, team productivity completely collapses. I've seen that happen. 1x is normal. Some people are less, some people are more. Normal is good and predictable. There's nothing wrong with normal. Normal people that put in a decent effort will produce results. That's a good thing. For a lot of long lived software, normal is what you want. You can't reasonably ask normal people to be more than normal. That would be abnormal. Putting in 120% of your best is not a thing. It doesn't work that way. You are doing pretty OK if you are getting 70-80% of your theoretical best. That's what normal is. There are of course people who are a bit more capable than their average peers. This is often confused with working long hours. The ability to work longer is mostly something young, relatively healthy people are good at. But there's a difference between working longer and working smarter. You can't work 10x more than a normal person. There's only 24 hours in a day. The only logical way to get 10x more done is to work smarter. There is no other way. And some people really just are that good that they get more work done in the same amount of time. Part of that is experience, brains, and just being really efficient with their time. An exhausted 10x developer is not a 10x developer. Because they'll be perpetually too tired to work smart. So they might be producing a lot of code but it will be the type of code that will need a lot of maintenance. A true 10x developer consistently writes less code with high impact without wearing themselves out too much. Doing that requires skill and experience. The best code is code you don't have to write. Use the right libraries, avoid reinventing wheels, make your code testable (so you don't get bogged down debugging it), don't repeat yourself, etc. If you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, automate it. That's your job. Don't keep on doing the same thing. That would be stupid and somebody else will do something smarter eventually.

Izkata 2y ago
> And lets not talk about the 0.1x developers who are probably also a thing. If you get enough of those together, team productivity completely collapses. I've seen that happen. > 1x is normal. IIRC the post that came up with the 10x and 1x terminology used 1x as the worst performer. Normal/average was somewhere in between 10x and 1x. The change to 1x being average in the common understanding seems to have happened because even the people criticizing it have an intuitive understanding that it's correct, they just want the boundaries somewhere else.