4 ms·

And, given that the median software engineering in Silicon Valley seems to be around $140K (+/- $10K) - are the high performance 10x engineers compensated accor

And, given that the median software engineering in Silicon Valley seems to be around $140K (+/- $10K) - are the high performance 10x engineers compensated accordingly? (I think the answer is to the second question is "Yes", but you need to go work for a startup and use those 10x skills to make it successful, so that you can get your 10x compensation in the form of equity)

joe_the_user 11y ago
Well, The argument of the article, as far as I can follow it, seems to be people making 500k/year are essentially entrepreneurs/inventors - they are paid for the possibility/probability that they will invent something for the company rather than for a steady stream of assigned tasks. That seems different than the legendary "x10" programmer who theoretically just does the same task ten times as fast as the "ordinary programmer".
- collyw 11y ago
  As someone who considers himself "a few times better" programmer than I was a few years ago, I wouldn't say that the 10x thing is down to raw programming speed. More that I think through the problem better, and come up with a more elegant solution that will require less debugging and maintenance.
frostmatthew 11y ago
> so that you can get your 10x compensation in the form of equity You're saying the average salary is $140K and "10x engineers" are compensated accordingly via equity - that would be $1.4M! Many startups fail, and even if they're successful that doesn't automatically mean the equity is ever worth anything - and when it is worth something it's usually been greatly diluted by the time an exit rolls around. If you're lucky enough to be an early employee at the next Google or Facebook sure you can hit a seven figure payout - but for the vast majority they'll never seen 10x (or even 2x) compensation. And value of equity tends to have a lot more to do with getting in early rather than skill. The equity of a very early hire is almost always going to be substantially more than much later hires.

joe_the_user 11y ago

Well, The argument of the article, as far as I can follow it, seems to be people making 500k/year are essentially entrepreneurs/inventors - they are paid for the possibility/probability that they will invent something for the company rather than for a steady stream of assigned tasks. That seems different than the legendary "x10" programmer who theoretically just does the same task ten times as fast as the "ordinary programmer".

collyw 11y ago
As someone who considers himself "a few times better" programmer than I was a few years ago, I wouldn't say that the 10x thing is down to raw programming speed. More that I think through the problem better, and come up with a more elegant solution that will require less debugging and maintenance.

frostmatthew 11y ago

> so that you can get your 10x compensation in the form of equity You're saying the average salary is $140K and "10x engineers" are compensated accordingly via equity - that would be $1.4M! Many startups fail, and even if they're successful that doesn't automatically mean the equity is ever worth anything - and when it is worth something it's usually been greatly diluted by the time an exit rolls around. If you're lucky enough to be an early employee at the next Google or Facebook sure you can hit a seven figure payout - but for the vast majority they'll never seen 10x (or even 2x) compensation. And value of equity tends to have a lot more to do with getting in early rather than skill. The equity of a very early hire is almost always going to be substantially more than much later hires.