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One hypothesis, admittedly based on a premise I don't believe. We've been told by a lot of sources that 10x engineers don't exist, and only the team matters [1

One hypothesis, admittedly based on a premise I don't believe. We've been told by a lot of sources that 10x engineers don't exist, and only the team matters [1]. Suppose this is true, or at least suppose the company decision makers believe this. In that case, there is no point paying any engineer more than 2-3X what another one makes - why pay more for the same productivity? In contrast, management matters a lot. All your engineers might be more or less interchangeable cogs, but the manager is a force multiplier. A good manager might increase the productivity of 20-40 engineers by 25% each - as such, he's as valuable as 5-10 engineers. (Having worked with engineers both 1/10 and 10x as good as me, I personally do believe that 100x engineers exist. But assuming you don't believe such things are possible, then engineers being wildly underpaid relative to managers is simply people being paid for their marginal productivity.) [1] e.g. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheMythOfTheRockstarProgrammer.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheMythOfTheRockstarProgrammer... https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/hacker-mythologies-and-mismanagement https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/hacker-mythologies-and-m... http://leftoblique.net/wp/2014/12/27/on-the-myth-of-the-10x-engineer/ http://leftoblique.net/wp/2014/12/27/on-the-myth-of-the-10x-...

hawkice 12y ago
I think you're right about the mental modelling that leads to these market outcomes. I am perplexed by the weak arguments from sources -- comparing dev work to 9 mothers trying to have a baby in one month? What point are they trying to even make there? My crystal ball is cloudy but I think they mean delivery time is immutable? The other, saying productivity differences encourage lack of communication? That's not even relevant to the exploration of the fact of how much productivity difference there is! The whole question is somewhat beside the point: I don't understand the benefit of homogeneity. I don't have amazing productive work every minute of the day, heck, I don't have good productive work every week of the year. Making a system that homogenizes output would limit _all_ employees, because we all have times we are 100x better than us at our worst. And yet, in order to get predictability, we strive to build systems where engineers are cogs, because if things are predictable, targets are met, and managers get their bonuses. But it ultimately doesn't serve the best interests of the business.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Homogeneity in developers is useful in the same way that homogeneity in servers is; it reduces the dimensionality of the problem. Instead of having 1 unit of 20 different resources to allocate, you have 20 units of 1 resource. That said, sometimes (read: 10-100x developers) you sometimes have only 1 unit of 1 resource. And if you don't pay for it, you wind up with 0 units.
deleted 12y ago
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hawkice 12y ago

I think you're right about the mental modelling that leads to these market outcomes. I am perplexed by the weak arguments from sources -- comparing dev work to 9 mothers trying to have a baby in one month? What point are they trying to even make there? My crystal ball is cloudy but I think they mean delivery time is immutable? The other, saying productivity differences encourage lack of communication? That's not even relevant to the exploration of the fact of how much productivity difference there is! The whole question is somewhat beside the point: I don't understand the benefit of homogeneity. I don't have amazing productive work every minute of the day, heck, I don't have good productive work every week of the year. Making a system that homogenizes output would limit _all_ employees, because we all have times we are 100x better than us at our worst. And yet, in order to get predictability, we strive to build systems where engineers are cogs, because if things are predictable, targets are met, and managers get their bonuses. But it ultimately doesn't serve the best interests of the business.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Homogeneity in developers is useful in the same way that homogeneity in servers is; it reduces the dimensionality of the problem. Instead of having 1 unit of 20 different resources to allocate, you have 20 units of 1 resource. That said, sometimes (read: 10-100x developers) you sometimes have only 1 unit of 1 resource. And if you don't pay for it, you wind up with 0 units.

deleted 12y ago

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