10x (engineer, context) pairs(benkuhn.net)
benkuhn.net
10x (engineer, context) pairs
https://www.benkuhn.net/10x/
131 comments
So have I. And that’s why this tiresome perennial argument will never die. You’ve either worked with one and seen fit to give them due credit, or only the first, or neither. And yes the ones I’ve worked with have also been helpful, humble, and kind.
> there are plenty of fake 10x engineers out there, or temporary 10x-ers who are only doing well because of their working environment.
Isn’t that just really obvious truism that someone who is hyper specialized and really good in one area say video codecs is probably not a 10x’er in frontend dev? Doesn’t make it fake, still a jackpot as far as employers and probably coworkers are concerned. Unless you’re someone like like Fabrice Bellard but he’s more like a 1000x’er so probably still be better than most at anything programming related
Isn’t that just really obvious truism that someone who is hyper specialized and really good in one area say video codecs is probably not a 10x’er in frontend dev? Doesn’t make it fake, still a jackpot as far as employers and probably coworkers are concerned. Unless you’re someone like like Fabrice Bellard but he’s more like a 1000x’er so probably still be better than most at anything programming related
I think what the parent meant was that “true” 10x engineers can apply their skills to a wide variety of problems, and it isn’t just applicable to a narrow problem domain and/or for a very short period. This makes clear he isn’t talking someone who just happens to be specialized in a specific codebase or one specific problem, for example.
Most companies won’t have structure to accommodate such generalists anyway so they will get pissed or bored and quit so you probably should look for “fake” ones then.
Perhaps they are consultants who gig hop?
i think the major advantage is much more rooted in general problem solving ability
familiarity might be able to give you 1-2x edge but 10x+ comes from raw problem solving skill and research aptitude
familiarity might be able to give you 1-2x edge but 10x+ comes from raw problem solving skill and research aptitude
From the ones I've witnessed it's pure focus and endurance.
They are intelligent but so are many of their less impressive peers. They do have problem solving skills but most developers develop the same problem solving vocabulary after few years. They however don't chit chat much when they work, don't wander away to unrelated activities (like hanging out over here in worktime) and if disrupted recover their focus quickly.
They are intelligent but so are many of their less impressive peers. They do have problem solving skills but most developers develop the same problem solving vocabulary after few years. They however don't chit chat much when they work, don't wander away to unrelated activities (like hanging out over here in worktime) and if disrupted recover their focus quickly.
How do you build this raw, generically-applicable problem solving skill? Everything I come across ends up being frameworks for probables specific to a discipline.
I think it can come from natural curiosity, strong fundamentals, and experience. Search for problems that don't have canned answers and try to solve them.
I think anyone can improve if they're willing to put in the time, though of course natural ability does help.
Think about learning to write a compiler for a programming language. You'd have to learn: - Computer architecture - Assembly language - Caching - Recursion and Parsing - Type theory - Translations - Performance testing
Or attempt to write your own database. That would cover at least: - File Systems - Transaction semantics - Algorithms
I think tackling problems like this would help a great deal. Or just look for areas where you don't know how to do something, and work on them.
Things like: - How deeply do you know your favorite programming language? - How easily can you setup a Linux server to host a web application? - Are you an expert at your editor? - Can you write a usable GUI, either for the web or a phone, etc.
I think anyone can improve if they're willing to put in the time, though of course natural ability does help.
Think about learning to write a compiler for a programming language. You'd have to learn: - Computer architecture - Assembly language - Caching - Recursion and Parsing - Type theory - Translations - Performance testing
Or attempt to write your own database. That would cover at least: - File Systems - Transaction semantics - Algorithms
I think tackling problems like this would help a great deal. Or just look for areas where you don't know how to do something, and work on them.
Things like: - How deeply do you know your favorite programming language? - How easily can you setup a Linux server to host a web application? - Are you an expert at your editor? - Can you write a usable GUI, either for the web or a phone, etc.
These are great example exercises, thank you for sharing them.
I think they may get at the heart of what I was trying to say though: while these clearly would make one better at solving software engineering problems, I'm not certain they would improve one's raw, general problem solving ability in an orthogonal discipline.
Some (likely imperfect) examples are:
- solving salary negotiation of a job/contract offer
- solving socio-political organizational problems in a company
I think they may get at the heart of what I was trying to say though: while these clearly would make one better at solving software engineering problems, I'm not certain they would improve one's raw, general problem solving ability in an orthogonal discipline.
Some (likely imperfect) examples are:
- solving salary negotiation of a job/contract offer
- solving socio-political organizational problems in a company
Not everything is acquirable.
Fabrice certainly is good but most of what people think he did in video codecs was mostly Michael Niedermayer, who is that good, but I don't think you'd also want to be a schizophrenic Austrian who can't leave his house.
Some people are just smarter than others - much smarter. These engineers have their brains wired differently, helping them be more suited to programming/design work. If we accept the existence of 10x chess players (state champions) and 1000x chess players (grandmasters), why not 10x engineers?
I personally worked with (and managed) amazing engineers that are AT LEAST 10x more productive than the worst AND average engineers.
Assuming that they are toxic or hard to work with is something people say to feel "the same when all is taken into account". That's not the case, a lot of these great engineers are great people too making them objectively a lot better than the average engineer.
I personally worked with (and managed) amazing engineers that are AT LEAST 10x more productive than the worst AND average engineers.
Assuming that they are toxic or hard to work with is something people say to feel "the same when all is taken into account". That's not the case, a lot of these great engineers are great people too making them objectively a lot better than the average engineer.
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I'm 10X if I do everything by hand with only efficient and natively supported abstractions. If you ask me to use the latest trendy framework, I go back to 1x or 0.5X.
My experience rings true with this. They are very few. In a single organization you may not ever meet one.
Another thing that sort of matches your experience is that they are 10x nicer. 10x engineers don't show off at all. They don't need to. What I've been finding is that engineers that think they're smart are probably smart, but they are NEVER 10xers.
Another thing that sort of matches your experience is that they are 10x nicer. 10x engineers don't show off at all. They don't need to. What I've been finding is that engineers that think they're smart are probably smart, but they are NEVER 10xers.
Yep my experience as well. I have worked with 10x developers that will quickly outperform any other developers in any area they start working on. I worked with a 10x that started with zero knowledge on a specific programming language and it’s ecosystem and in a few months delivered a well written, easy to maintain large business applications that a whole team of more experienced developers (in that language/ecosystem) had failed to deliver. Developing software is like any other activity. Some people simply are more talented than others. People who refuse to acknowledge this needs to explain why software development is the only activity where talent doesn’t matter. They can’t.
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. So much so that it actually created friction with the rest of the dev team go figure.
Next summer they tried to get him back but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. Of course, he wouldn't return. That's when they realized a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to them; they lucked out hiring him that summer but there was no chance they could attract someone like him full time.
Next summer they tried to get him back but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. Of course, he wouldn't return. That's when they realized a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to them; they lucked out hiring him that summer but there was no chance they could attract someone like him full time.
There are main personality traits that are associated with being not nice:
1. Being a know-it-all
2. Unwilling to admit mistakes
3. Not collaborative
4. Not sharing knowledge
5. Unwilling to be coached
There are many more. These “not nice” traits are the same ones that will lead to stunting your growth as a software engineer.
1. Being a know-it-all
2. Unwilling to admit mistakes
3. Not collaborative
4. Not sharing knowledge
5. Unwilling to be coached
There are many more. These “not nice” traits are the same ones that will lead to stunting your growth as a software engineer.
Except people are incredibly bad judges of character. Naming the traits is the easiest part. Realizing these traits aren't binary and not as easy to judge in the open as they are in a vacuum, not so much. Meanwhile, the people in charge are all to eager to pass "not a team player" judgments over something far more complex than "not nice".
This also needs a fair reminder, people suck at communicating.
This also needs a fair reminder, people suck at communicating.
> The only downside of working with them is going home and looking in the mirror and wondering why you can't match their pace.
One could imagine a society expending not insignificant proportion of GDP on R&D towards human cognitive enhancement. Same society could allow anyone to volunteer for the corresponding enhancement programs.
If one starts to ponder why we don't live in such a society, one is led to reconsider major incentives governing our public sphere and key institutions.
I don't think in the end there is a rational excuse for obvious lack of government-led or private-funded research into nootropics, neurophysiology of exceptionally bright individuals, and non-therapeutic gene therapy. The amount of research done so far is laughable, compared to obvious transformative impact in case of a breakthrough. As a "tech worker" and as a taxpayer I have to admit that the current nexus of large-scale sociopolitical trends is aggressively coercing me to spend my individual and very limited peak of energy, competence, intelligence and willpower towards advancing mostly deadbeat goals of the attention economy.
The small (in absolute terms) fundamental physical difference between the best and merely good enough should not be an insurmountable abyss we take it for.
I don't want to be a 2x engineer for your corporate monstrosity or yet another fast-growing CRUD app. I want to be a 2x engineer putting in meaningful work towards implementing the timeline where anyone, myself included, could become a 10x or a 100x engineer by undergoing affordable and safe gene therapy.
One could imagine a society expending not insignificant proportion of GDP on R&D towards human cognitive enhancement. Same society could allow anyone to volunteer for the corresponding enhancement programs.
If one starts to ponder why we don't live in such a society, one is led to reconsider major incentives governing our public sphere and key institutions.
I don't think in the end there is a rational excuse for obvious lack of government-led or private-funded research into nootropics, neurophysiology of exceptionally bright individuals, and non-therapeutic gene therapy. The amount of research done so far is laughable, compared to obvious transformative impact in case of a breakthrough. As a "tech worker" and as a taxpayer I have to admit that the current nexus of large-scale sociopolitical trends is aggressively coercing me to spend my individual and very limited peak of energy, competence, intelligence and willpower towards advancing mostly deadbeat goals of the attention economy.
The small (in absolute terms) fundamental physical difference between the best and merely good enough should not be an insurmountable abyss we take it for.
I don't want to be a 2x engineer for your corporate monstrosity or yet another fast-growing CRUD app. I want to be a 2x engineer putting in meaningful work towards implementing the timeline where anyone, myself included, could become a 10x or a 100x engineer by undergoing affordable and safe gene therapy.
I think you might have overdosed on the fancy personal optimization literature and skipped the basics. Having a bigger brain metaphorically doesn't necessarily lead to productivity so much as increased ability to delude yourself.
The basics for being productive are 1. be in good shape (sleep and exercise) 2. not having to do less important stuff (someone cooks for you) 3. not having any more important stuff to do (no side business, spouse and kids don't demand more of your time).
Similarly, the best way to get moderately wealthy isn't to make a lot of complicated investments, it's to marry someone else who works and buy a house together.
The basics for being productive are 1. be in good shape (sleep and exercise) 2. not having to do less important stuff (someone cooks for you) 3. not having any more important stuff to do (no side business, spouse and kids don't demand more of your time).
Similarly, the best way to get moderately wealthy isn't to make a lot of complicated investments, it's to marry someone else who works and buy a house together.
Please don't pattern match me lazily onto typical silicon valley archetypes. I know and follow basic healthy living advice, yet it is still perfectly obvious where I'm lacking regardless. There shouldn't be this abyss between tiers of people and this burning need for verbal copes should not exist either.
Platitudes are a mind killer.
Platitudes are a mind killer.
Following it is good, but if that’s not enough the answer is still going be something else basic. It’s probably never nootropics in practice until you get past several more kinds of boring stuff.
For instance, the best society wide interventions for kids still aren’t going to be fancy chemicals, it’s going to be better air quality esp. near highways and in schools, and that’s assuming we took care of maternal nutrition.
For instance, the best society wide interventions for kids still aren’t going to be fancy chemicals, it’s going to be better air quality esp. near highways and in schools, and that’s assuming we took care of maternal nutrition.
> but if that’s not enough the answer is still going be something else basic.
Why should it be this way, is there a Law of the Universe mandating every human shortcoming being some regrettable lifestyle flaw?
> For instance, the best society wide interventions for kids
... it's better to avoid this beaten topic, this is not a hill I'm willing to die on today.
Why should it be this way, is there a Law of the Universe mandating every human shortcoming being some regrettable lifestyle flaw?
> For instance, the best society wide interventions for kids
... it's better to avoid this beaten topic, this is not a hill I'm willing to die on today.
> Why should it be this way, is there a Law of the Universe mandating every human shortcoming being some regrettable lifestyle flaw?
Oh, I don't mean only basic things are helpful, I mean if it works it'll become "basic". Like if a nootropic really worked that well we'd call it either a vitamin or a medication. (NAC and modafinil are here, and half the other effective ones like Semax are medications in Russia.)
> ... it's better to avoid this beaten topic, this is not a hill I'm willing to die on today.
That's funny since I don't think anything I said there is common wisdom yet, it's my personal hot take.
Oh, I don't mean only basic things are helpful, I mean if it works it'll become "basic". Like if a nootropic really worked that well we'd call it either a vitamin or a medication. (NAC and modafinil are here, and half the other effective ones like Semax are medications in Russia.)
> ... it's better to avoid this beaten topic, this is not a hill I'm willing to die on today.
That's funny since I don't think anything I said there is common wisdom yet, it's my personal hot take.
With respect, I think you missed the point of the article! It's that we are all 10x engineers in the right context, even if that's providing the context for someone else to be 10x, which of sounds like you are 10x at!
That's highschool thought process. Adult thought process is to give your best, for your best.
> Everything they worked on they did better and faster and cleaner. They could often solve problems that other skilled people couldn't even get started on.
They may have actually closed tickets 10x faster (which I doubt), but that wasn't providing 10x the value to the company. If there was one person who was resolving 10x the issues of everyone else, that person would be a (very overworked) legend. And I doubt they could keep it up. But it isn't like the company they work for will make 10x the revenue or produce software that is ten times better than the previous version.
The person you're describing is good at their job. There's no need for a number. We don't describe fast food workers as "10x fry cooks", even if they are faster than everyone else in the kitchen.
They may have actually closed tickets 10x faster (which I doubt), but that wasn't providing 10x the value to the company. If there was one person who was resolving 10x the issues of everyone else, that person would be a (very overworked) legend. And I doubt they could keep it up. But it isn't like the company they work for will make 10x the revenue or produce software that is ten times better than the previous version.
The person you're describing is good at their job. There's no need for a number. We don't describe fast food workers as "10x fry cooks", even if they are faster than everyone else in the kitchen.
I contend that the only reason their existence is debated or controversial, is because the concept hurts the pride of those who like to think of themselves as best-of-the-best engineers, but are afraid they're really not.
I've worked with 10x engineers maybe 2-3 times in 20 years. One single-handedly wrote 85% of <extremely popular and complex app you've used> and another wrote most of the internal libraries at <company you've heard of>. They would regularly take tasks that most people would take a month+ to do, and just knock it out in a couple of days -- over and over.
I've worked with 10x engineers maybe 2-3 times in 20 years. One single-handedly wrote 85% of <extremely popular and complex app you've used> and another wrote most of the internal libraries at <company you've heard of>. They would regularly take tasks that most people would take a month+ to do, and just knock it out in a couple of days -- over and over.
> One single-handedly wrote 85% of <extremely popular and complex app you've used> and another wrote most of the internal libraries at <company you've heard of>.
There is a trap here, though. There is another group of engineers, who jump on any greenfield project before everyone else manages to discuss the plan and then they write some code very quickly, showing you a "finished" solution. Those people often appear 10x to management as well. However, after deploying their code to production, it turns out it has many issues and is a source of never ending frustration for the people who maintain it. Unfortunately at that time the "super hero" has moved to a new greenfield project, and is not willing to fix their bugs or help because they are "busy" or "in a flow".
I don't think those people are really 10x. They are often an annoyance to the rest of the team and if the management doesnt break this pattern early, you end up with a team where one person codes 90% of stuff, gets most of the credit, but 10 other people get frustrated maintaining it, and overall the team pace is not 10x higher, but may be even slower than a similarly sized group of average devs.
So if you are in a management position, don't just look at how much code a person writes in a short time or what percentage of the product they created, but also look at the quality of their work and how good they are at sharing their knowledge with the rest of the team.
Having said that, I have met some true 10xers who created high quality stuff fast and were very helpful to their teammates, but they are quite rare and often don't get all the praise they deserve, particularly in environments valuing the "ship fast and break things" strategy.
There is a trap here, though. There is another group of engineers, who jump on any greenfield project before everyone else manages to discuss the plan and then they write some code very quickly, showing you a "finished" solution. Those people often appear 10x to management as well. However, after deploying their code to production, it turns out it has many issues and is a source of never ending frustration for the people who maintain it. Unfortunately at that time the "super hero" has moved to a new greenfield project, and is not willing to fix their bugs or help because they are "busy" or "in a flow".
I don't think those people are really 10x. They are often an annoyance to the rest of the team and if the management doesnt break this pattern early, you end up with a team where one person codes 90% of stuff, gets most of the credit, but 10 other people get frustrated maintaining it, and overall the team pace is not 10x higher, but may be even slower than a similarly sized group of average devs.
So if you are in a management position, don't just look at how much code a person writes in a short time or what percentage of the product they created, but also look at the quality of their work and how good they are at sharing their knowledge with the rest of the team.
Having said that, I have met some true 10xers who created high quality stuff fast and were very helpful to their teammates, but they are quite rare and often don't get all the praise they deserve, particularly in environments valuing the "ship fast and break things" strategy.
Engineers often overestimate how bad the “greenfielder” is for the business. In most cases you aren’t selling an elegant technical solution, you’re just selling a solution. And if you don’t ship it ASAP you won’t have time to worry about maintainability, you’ll be bankrupt.
For most businesses, a greenfielder is a 10x engineer.
(This is just an aside, I agree that there exist “true” 10x-ers having had the joy of working with 2 of them over the last 20 years).
For most businesses, a greenfielder is a 10x engineer.
(This is just an aside, I agree that there exist “true” 10x-ers having had the joy of working with 2 of them over the last 20 years).
I didn't mean just inelegant code, but buggy, incorrect, incomprehensible code that does not meet business requirements and, after being demoed internally to management and getting all the praise, requires significantly more work to get to production level quality.
Anybody can be a 10x if they don't have to solve the problem correctly.
Also, pushing a very low quality product to production too early might just as well kill the company as pushing a great product too late. History knows plenty of late comers who won the market.
A programmer comes to an interview.
- What are your strengths?
- I'm fast at maths.
- Cool, how much is 1563 * 74?
- 66689
- That's not even close to correct!
- But it was fast.
Anybody can be a 10x if they don't have to solve the problem correctly.
Also, pushing a very low quality product to production too early might just as well kill the company as pushing a great product too late. History knows plenty of late comers who won the market.
A programmer comes to an interview.
- What are your strengths?
- I'm fast at maths.
- Cool, how much is 1563 * 74?
- 66689
- That's not even close to correct!
- But it was fast.
The one idea I don't like surrounding 10x engineers is the rhetoric by startups or companies around hiring is "we're only looking for rockstars and 10x engineers", which naturally denigrates the majority of (1x) engineers. This launches a broader discussion of whether success in business manifests by scaling up or scaling out, and I tend to be a proponent of Locke than Hobbes.
So the controversial nature comes from the implication that most of the workforce (1x engineers like myself) are worthless and not worth hiring, and also the hubris of thinking a 1x company can hire and retain a/only 10x engineers (these same startups/companies usually offer a 1x or less compensation package). If you think I'm wrong, then fire 90% of your engineers and see where that gets you; that would be an interesting result if productivity increased!
I think this is separate from mere jealousy or denial; 10x engineers definitely do exist and I look up to them for inspiration and example.
So the controversial nature comes from the implication that most of the workforce (1x engineers like myself) are worthless and not worth hiring, and also the hubris of thinking a 1x company can hire and retain a/only 10x engineers (these same startups/companies usually offer a 1x or less compensation package). If you think I'm wrong, then fire 90% of your engineers and see where that gets you; that would be an interesting result if productivity increased!
I think this is separate from mere jealousy or denial; 10x engineers definitely do exist and I look up to them for inspiration and example.
> The one idea I don't like about 10x engineers is the rhetoric by startups or companies around hiring is "we're only looking for rockstars and 10x engineers"
Completely agree. That's recruiting/marketing bullshit. They're trying to appeal to people's egos, but probably have the opposite effect, as you say.
Also, I doubt one could actually recognize these top-tier engineers, at least not in today's standard interviews. But... I did actually job-interview a 10x'er for a startup years ago. It wasn't a standard interview but rather a long, casual lunch (he was a friend-of-a-friend). After two hours of talking about engineering/coding/etc, I started to suspect: "Huh, I think this guy might be a better than me." What I didn't realize is just how much better than me he would turn out to be -- it was amazing and a joy to learn from him.
Completely agree. That's recruiting/marketing bullshit. They're trying to appeal to people's egos, but probably have the opposite effect, as you say.
Also, I doubt one could actually recognize these top-tier engineers, at least not in today's standard interviews. But... I did actually job-interview a 10x'er for a startup years ago. It wasn't a standard interview but rather a long, casual lunch (he was a friend-of-a-friend). After two hours of talking about engineering/coding/etc, I started to suspect: "Huh, I think this guy might be a better than me." What I didn't realize is just how much better than me he would turn out to be -- it was amazing and a joy to learn from him.
You are 100% correct. Talent matters in any activity. Including software development. Pretending that software developers is the one exception to this rule is just silly. But it does protect the ego of insecure developers.
I have no idea why this is so contentious in the engineering discipline like it’s some unique question.
When you were in school, weren’t their students just far more capable than others? When you look at sports, aren’t there just players far more capable than everyone else (any pro player vs any non pro)? When you look at art, aren’t there just artists so much better than others (professional artists vs a hobbyist)? Salespersons? Dog trainers? Snowboarders? Etc
Every discipline has a bell curve of skill, and there are engineers who are just significantly better than others and it’s not even close (like any profession). There are limits, but software engineering isn’t anything special here where the idea of outliers warrants this much controversy.
Yes there are “10x engineers”, obviously, because every domain has skill levels spanning magnitudes. It seems like the only thing preventing recognition of this fact is ego (and to be clear, I don’t think I’m a 10x engineer at all)
When you were in school, weren’t their students just far more capable than others? When you look at sports, aren’t there just players far more capable than everyone else (any pro player vs any non pro)? When you look at art, aren’t there just artists so much better than others (professional artists vs a hobbyist)? Salespersons? Dog trainers? Snowboarders? Etc
Every discipline has a bell curve of skill, and there are engineers who are just significantly better than others and it’s not even close (like any profession). There are limits, but software engineering isn’t anything special here where the idea of outliers warrants this much controversy.
Yes there are “10x engineers”, obviously, because every domain has skill levels spanning magnitudes. It seems like the only thing preventing recognition of this fact is ego (and to be clear, I don’t think I’m a 10x engineer at all)
Yeah I'm happy with my little toys and I've hacked some cool things together quickly, but I've known people who could really do 10x the work just because it was that easy for them. They knew what the problem was immediately and how to fix it well. Working on their code was (and, lucky me, is) a dream.
i think i was a 10x engineer at my last job, but the bar was much lower. now I'm just average. it's all relative
I have found the one distinction of 10x engineers is originality. They can write an original solution to a problem and be done. They don’t need a 1000 different tools to do their job for them, which has second and third order consequences.
That also means not having a petrified terror of failure.
Yes, there are 10x developers and this is measurable. It’s a progression of the Pareto Distribution. People scared shitless of originality, most people, cannot see this because their life goal is to crush it with internal processes.
That also means not having a petrified terror of failure.
Yes, there are 10x developers and this is measurable. It’s a progression of the Pareto Distribution. People scared shitless of originality, most people, cannot see this because their life goal is to crush it with internal processes.
I've found different. 10x engineers differentiate with normal people by lacking brain fog. They see solutions with utter clarity, sharpness and speed. This is very different from originality. They are just able to see the most logical solution while most engineers have to wander through fog to find it and many times they just can't peer past the fog to see it. This may appear like it's originality but it is not. The solution is efficient and lacks unnecessary elements but it is not a novel solution.
There are literally two different aspects of intelligence: "lack of brain fog" and creativity. Both aspects of intelligence are different and being strong in one doesn't necessarily mean you're weaker in the other. Lacking brain fog does help with creativity, but creativity is still an independent pillar.
Creativity and originality is actually less evident so it's less recognized. 90% of the 10xers you see are just super sharp, and they likely only have average or slightly above average creativity. Someone who has high skill in originality is much harder to recognize and their solutions are so novel that many times the solutions are ridiculed, unrecognized and dismissed.
Two famous people who excelled in these different aspects of intelligence are Von Neumann and Einstien. To quote someone who knew them both:
"I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi [John] von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed.
But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything as original."
There are literally two different aspects of intelligence: "lack of brain fog" and creativity. Both aspects of intelligence are different and being strong in one doesn't necessarily mean you're weaker in the other. Lacking brain fog does help with creativity, but creativity is still an independent pillar.
Creativity and originality is actually less evident so it's less recognized. 90% of the 10xers you see are just super sharp, and they likely only have average or slightly above average creativity. Someone who has high skill in originality is much harder to recognize and their solutions are so novel that many times the solutions are ridiculed, unrecognized and dismissed.
Two famous people who excelled in these different aspects of intelligence are Von Neumann and Einstien. To quote someone who knew them both:
"I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi [John] von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed.
But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything as original."
> I've found different. 10x engineers differentiate with normal people by lacking brain fog. They see solutions with utter clarity, sharpness and speed. This is very different from originality. They are just able to see the most logical solution while most engineers have to wander through fog to find it and many times they just can't peer past the fog to see it. This may appear like it's originality but it is not. The solution is efficient and lacks unnecessary elements but it is not a novel solution.
I love this description and it matches my experience. Most people will both lose time with false-start approaches that are scrapped, and then with a sometimes endless series of commits at the end to patch up problems. The top engineers I've worked with (1-2 a decade) somehow just manage to avoid all that lost time.
I love this description and it matches my experience. Most people will both lose time with false-start approaches that are scrapped, and then with a sometimes endless series of commits at the end to patch up problems. The top engineers I've worked with (1-2 a decade) somehow just manage to avoid all that lost time.
> Most people will both lose time with false-start approaches that are scrapped
To a discerning eye this pattern looks like stronger minds implementing higher quality tree search[1], either through implementing higher quality neural search heuristics for tree pruning or via greater search depth.
Given relative NP-hardness of the problems[2] we are usually dealing with at our line of work and what we know about planning in machines and animals[3], it doesn't look immediately implausible.
With planning capability strong enough, one doesn't need trial and error in the real world for moderately complex problems: the plan devised through internal search is good enough to work on the first try. Weaker planners have to compensate by executing more rollouts and using the real world as a ground truth model.
1. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265
2. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ejn.13851
To a discerning eye this pattern looks like stronger minds implementing higher quality tree search[1], either through implementing higher quality neural search heuristics for tree pruning or via greater search depth.
Given relative NP-hardness of the problems[2] we are usually dealing with at our line of work and what we know about planning in machines and animals[3], it doesn't look immediately implausible.
With planning capability strong enough, one doesn't need trial and error in the real world for moderately complex problems: the plan devised through internal search is good enough to work on the first try. Weaker planners have to compensate by executing more rollouts and using the real world as a ground truth model.
1. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265
2. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ejn.13851
And also it implies lack of creativity.. Novel solutions lie in places that aren't part of the efficient search and can be filtered out by heuristics. Some solutions can only be found by random walk similar to biology and natural selection.
Your train of thought fits with my statement on how there are two pillars of intelligence. Creativity and "lack of brain fog"
Your train of thought fits with my statement on how there are two pillars of intelligence. Creativity and "lack of brain fog"
Wait till you meet someone who is creative. These people are even rarer, and their solutions to problems tend to be like holy shit how can someone even think in that direction??
The one I knew actually had hugely novel solutions but was forgetful and absent minded.
The one I knew actually had hugely novel solutions but was forgetful and absent minded.
Von Neumann and Einstein's contributions to humanity are incomparable to a 10x engineer. I don't think metrics such as productivity (which 10x crudely approximates) can begin to address this level of innovation. Both unquestionably drove paradigm shifts in scientific and mathematical thinking.
It's not measuring the same thing. A 10x engineer might be compared to a full tenured professor with a high citation count. Einstein and Neumann are luminaries of human thought.
It's not measuring the same thing. A 10x engineer might be compared to a full tenured professor with a high citation count. Einstein and Neumann are luminaries of human thought.
> can begin to address this level of innovation.
... this level of innovation? Come on, there clearly is something more profound happening here:
> Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe said "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man"
> Seeing von Neumann's mind at work, Eugene Wigner wrote, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch."
> Edward Teller admitted that he "never could keep up with him".[296] Teller also said "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
Modern science has started to discern fundamental differences in neural architecture[1] and function[2] between very bright and moderately bright individuals. Surely there is a multitude of small differences, which, by virtue of adding up at the right side of the distribution's tail, bring forward a mind superior to ours.
1. https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/brains-o...
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052339/
... this level of innovation? Come on, there clearly is something more profound happening here:
> Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe said "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man"
> Seeing von Neumann's mind at work, Eugene Wigner wrote, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch."
> Edward Teller admitted that he "never could keep up with him".[296] Teller also said "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
Modern science has started to discern fundamental differences in neural architecture[1] and function[2] between very bright and moderately bright individuals. Surely there is a multitude of small differences, which, by virtue of adding up at the right side of the distribution's tail, bring forward a mind superior to ours.
1. https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/brains-o...
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052339/
Yes they are at the top of their game, but you can certainly map differences from the top end of the spectrum to another part of the spectrum.
The difference between Von Neuman and a 10x engineer is vast. However the Delta between Einstien and Von neumann vs. the Delta between a 10x engineer and a regular engineer is a mappable concept.
You can do this with the "spectrum" of numbers too.
I would expect a 10x engineer to realize the above automatically without elaboration... jk.
The difference between Von Neuman and a 10x engineer is vast. However the Delta between Einstien and Von neumann vs. the Delta between a 10x engineer and a regular engineer is a mappable concept.
You can do this with the "spectrum" of numbers too.
|100010 - 1000000| = 10
| 10 - 0 | = 10
I would expect a 10x engineer to realize the above automatically without elaboration... jk.
That's not the best way to describe it.
A 'Medical Researcher' can be less intelligent than a surgeon, but impact billions of lives.
A 'Brain Surgeon' can only do one surgery at a time.
I think we should get away with the 'net impact' of 10x engineers because that's too contextual.
A lot of crap startups, might have 10x engineers, but it may make no difference. Or 10x-ers caught up in Corporate Bureaucracy, same result.
So this whole mapping 'some project to revenues' really is something else, quite different. Maybe useful, but not in the context we are thinking here.
A 'Medical Researcher' can be less intelligent than a surgeon, but impact billions of lives.
A 'Brain Surgeon' can only do one surgery at a time.
I think we should get away with the 'net impact' of 10x engineers because that's too contextual.
A lot of crap startups, might have 10x engineers, but it may make no difference. Or 10x-ers caught up in Corporate Bureaucracy, same result.
So this whole mapping 'some project to revenues' really is something else, quite different. Maybe useful, but not in the context we are thinking here.
> I think we should get away with the 'net impact' of 10x engineers because that's too contextual
Disagree. My experience is that 10x engineers ARE inherently contextual. When we are talking about the cream of the crop, this requires evaluating impact.
You need the opportunity to thrive, which can be deeply contextual. Luck is an element of life. Napoleon would have been nothing without the French revolution. Einstein was fortunate (but capitalized!) that no one had put together Minkowski distance with open questions from michelson-morley.
> A 'Brain Surgeon' can only do one surgery at a time
A brain surgeon can publish the results of a cutting edge surgery, which can save many more lives that a single hand wielding a scalpel. I don't think anyone here is arguing that surgeon's are evaluated on scalpel technique any more than we are comparing programmers by SLOC/day.
Disagree. My experience is that 10x engineers ARE inherently contextual. When we are talking about the cream of the crop, this requires evaluating impact.
You need the opportunity to thrive, which can be deeply contextual. Luck is an element of life. Napoleon would have been nothing without the French revolution. Einstein was fortunate (but capitalized!) that no one had put together Minkowski distance with open questions from michelson-morley.
> A 'Brain Surgeon' can only do one surgery at a time
A brain surgeon can publish the results of a cutting edge surgery, which can save many more lives that a single hand wielding a scalpel. I don't think anyone here is arguing that surgeon's are evaluated on scalpel technique any more than we are comparing programmers by SLOC/day.
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Are you sure it's intelligence?
The great engineers I know have done it all before. They've worked on similar problems. They're not really breaking new territory.
I think this is where being 'prolific' matters.
Beethoven was a genius, but it makes no difference that he was smart if he didn't spend years and years just 'writing' music, transposing, experimenting etc..
That's the advice big composers give today i.e. 'you have to move quickly'.
If you were to watch someone build something, relatively quickly, you might be just amazed. But there is a lot of practice and trade-craft / craftmanship going on.
The great engineers I know have done it all before. They've worked on similar problems. They're not really breaking new territory.
I think this is where being 'prolific' matters.
Beethoven was a genius, but it makes no difference that he was smart if he didn't spend years and years just 'writing' music, transposing, experimenting etc..
That's the advice big composers give today i.e. 'you have to move quickly'.
If you were to watch someone build something, relatively quickly, you might be just amazed. But there is a lot of practice and trade-craft / craftmanship going on.
Domain knowledge definitely is a factor. I guess you can call the people with domain knowledge 10x engineers, but there is a different class of engineers who have raw intelligence that make them a class well above those with only domain knowledge.
I don't even mean domain knowledge so much as an intimacy with the stack, the tools ... and not even so much 'knowledge' but 'know-how'.
I work with a company that sells IP in the form of patents, but it's only 1/2 the value. You have to know how to use the components, and the resulting data and finesse it.
I work with a company that sells IP in the form of patents, but it's only 1/2 the value. You have to know how to use the components, and the resulting data and finesse it.
That's what domain knowledge is. 'Know how.'
The engineers who are a class above the ones who rely on 'domain knowledge' aren't limited by the stack or the tools. They can switch to a different stack and the tools aren't so important to them.
For example I move faster on servers with ssh and tmux. I can do multiple things and configure stuff and test things really quickly with these tools.
A 10x engineer doesn't have patience learning about tmux and he doesn't need it.
In fact if you ever actually seen one of these guys (and they are rare) they actually tend to move slower with tooling. They just use the default terminal app on the Mac, they don't download iterm, tmux, neovim, vimplug or zsh to take their tooling to the next level.
The engineers who are a class above the ones who rely on 'domain knowledge' aren't limited by the stack or the tools. They can switch to a different stack and the tools aren't so important to them.
For example I move faster on servers with ssh and tmux. I can do multiple things and configure stuff and test things really quickly with these tools.
A 10x engineer doesn't have patience learning about tmux and he doesn't need it.
In fact if you ever actually seen one of these guys (and they are rare) they actually tend to move slower with tooling. They just use the default terminal app on the Mac, they don't download iterm, tmux, neovim, vimplug or zsh to take their tooling to the next level.
I would even go further to say because they are so efficient they lack the practice needed to get fast with tooling. Other engineers take a more brute force approach and thus as a result they get really familiar with the tools. 10x people don't have the opportunity to practice because they find the solution on their first try.
Quickly like, at 10x normal speed?
A 2nd edition of Peopleware summarises it; the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it's comparing the best to the worst; NOT best to median. It's also not about programming specifically; it's simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance.
The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on the best outperforming the median by a factor of 2.5. This of course indicates that a median developer, middle of the pack, is a 4x developer. Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you've got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we're all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.
Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources. [ "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]
The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on the best outperforming the median by a factor of 2.5. This of course indicates that a median developer, middle of the pack, is a 4x developer. Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you've got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we're all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.
Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources. [ "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]
Yeah - how this is has been misinterpreted bothers me a lot.
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Can someone explain why this has been downvoted? It seems like a genuine insight backed by a study.
Technically it’s not backed by a study, but by the personal observations of a pair of engineers who started a consulting firm with the goal of helping other companies succeed at engineering. After doing that for twenty or thirty years, they wrote Peopleware to try to put to paper everything that they had learned.
The 10× number was intended to be qualitative rather than quantitative. They openly acknowledge that there is no one single measure of productivity by which all engineers can be measured, but point out that productivity does vary quite a lot from person to person, and that you shouldn’t expect engineers to be fungible. If you have a 10× engineer, you should do your level best not to lose or misuse them; replacing them might involve hiring a lot of people. That includes not just paying them more, but also allowing them to choose what they work on. Salary is an extrinsic motivation, but choosing what to work on is an intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivations trump extrinsic every time.
They also take the time to point out that productivity cannot be the only way that you value the people in your engineering teams. For one thing, not everybody in an engineering organization is actually an engineer, and they matter just as much. Even the project and people managers matter a lot to the ultimate success of an engineering project.
They also point out that there are very frequently team members who are average or below average engineers, but who still manage to improve every team that they are a member of. They’re the ones with non–engineering skills that they use to bring the team together, get everyone to like each other, build esprit de corps, etc.
A lot of advice in the book will seem quaint by today’s standards. For example, there is a whole chapter about offices. It recommends putting no more than two or three people in a single office, and recommends that part of that space be used for communal furniture like couches, coffee tables, bookshelves, etc. Engineers should design those offices themselves, drawing on a pool of real estate and furniture owned by the company. The offices used by an engineering team should all be near each other, but not near the offices of their managers, lest the managers get the idea that they are supposed to be involved in the engineering in any way. Of course today most companies would rather cram hundreds of people into a crowded and noisy open–plan office. On the other hand, it is possible today to do good engineering work from home, and not need offices at all. That wasn’t possible at all in the 80’s when Peopleware was written, let alone the 60’s.
But the insights about building high–functioning teams by understanding the individual people that those teams are made of are timeless.
The 10× number was intended to be qualitative rather than quantitative. They openly acknowledge that there is no one single measure of productivity by which all engineers can be measured, but point out that productivity does vary quite a lot from person to person, and that you shouldn’t expect engineers to be fungible. If you have a 10× engineer, you should do your level best not to lose or misuse them; replacing them might involve hiring a lot of people. That includes not just paying them more, but also allowing them to choose what they work on. Salary is an extrinsic motivation, but choosing what to work on is an intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivations trump extrinsic every time.
They also take the time to point out that productivity cannot be the only way that you value the people in your engineering teams. For one thing, not everybody in an engineering organization is actually an engineer, and they matter just as much. Even the project and people managers matter a lot to the ultimate success of an engineering project.
They also point out that there are very frequently team members who are average or below average engineers, but who still manage to improve every team that they are a member of. They’re the ones with non–engineering skills that they use to bring the team together, get everyone to like each other, build esprit de corps, etc.
A lot of advice in the book will seem quaint by today’s standards. For example, there is a whole chapter about offices. It recommends putting no more than two or three people in a single office, and recommends that part of that space be used for communal furniture like couches, coffee tables, bookshelves, etc. Engineers should design those offices themselves, drawing on a pool of real estate and furniture owned by the company. The offices used by an engineering team should all be near each other, but not near the offices of their managers, lest the managers get the idea that they are supposed to be involved in the engineering in any way. Of course today most companies would rather cram hundreds of people into a crowded and noisy open–plan office. On the other hand, it is possible today to do good engineering work from home, and not need offices at all. That wasn’t possible at all in the 80’s when Peopleware was written, let alone the 60’s.
But the insights about building high–functioning teams by understanding the individual people that those teams are made of are timeless.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
The notion of context is exceptionally important because it relates to Price's law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_J._de_Solla_Price ). You see this in big tech like crazy where most engineers are trying to get a few things done in a massive code base, and then many decisions come from on-high via principal engineers. As a former senior principal engineer, I've been there, seen it, and enjoyed it.
The question that haunted me was how to help more people grow into higher roles, and the problem is a lack of scope. This lack of scope is oppressive as there are only so many creative needs and the volume of toil is hard to avoid.
So, yes, if you have the right context, then you can do great.
However, we also can't dismiss intelligence, memory, or experience as multipliers. The unfortunate fact is that these are not uniformly shared, so there are a bunch of people talking over each other.
Worst yet, we don't have a common way of thinking about experience, and here Price's Law reveals an ugly truth: deep experience is rare.
The notion of context is exceptionally important because it relates to Price's law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_J._de_Solla_Price ). You see this in big tech like crazy where most engineers are trying to get a few things done in a massive code base, and then many decisions come from on-high via principal engineers. As a former senior principal engineer, I've been there, seen it, and enjoyed it.
The question that haunted me was how to help more people grow into higher roles, and the problem is a lack of scope. This lack of scope is oppressive as there are only so many creative needs and the volume of toil is hard to avoid.
So, yes, if you have the right context, then you can do great.
However, we also can't dismiss intelligence, memory, or experience as multipliers. The unfortunate fact is that these are not uniformly shared, so there are a bunch of people talking over each other.
Worst yet, we don't have a common way of thinking about experience, and here Price's Law reveals an ugly truth: deep experience is rare.
Ffs, the claim is that the great engineers are 10x better than the worst engineers. Stop asking if 10x engineers exist and ask if some engineers are only 1x of the best. I've worked with people who spend months on a story that I can do in 3 days. I've seen engineers so bad that they provide negative value with all the time they suck from others. 10x is an understatement.
The difference between exceptional and average programmers is not something special. It can been seen in all creative fields.
The important factor is not speed but output.
Some people can do things that almost everyone else would consider impossible.
Having even a single one of those in your company can be the most important factor of success.
Fabrice Bellard https://bellard.org/ and Justine Tunney https://justine.lol/ are good examples of this kind of people, but there are of course many others.
The important factor is not speed but output.
Some people can do things that almost everyone else would consider impossible.
Having even a single one of those in your company can be the most important factor of success.
Fabrice Bellard https://bellard.org/ and Justine Tunney https://justine.lol/ are good examples of this kind of people, but there are of course many others.
I'm not sure I really "got distracted" by building those tools. Building the tools was kind of the point for me and the class was simply a good way to focus the tools on a concrete effort. I acknowledge that it ended up occasionally getting me in trouble when forward progress on class projects was stalled on seemingly unrelated tooling and I got an appropriate admonition about it at the end of the year from the professor, but on the other hand, doing the class this way was way more impactful long-term. A lot of that tooling is still in active use across the Julia ecosystem, while the actual code it was used for at the time never got touched again after the end of the semester.
That's pretty much my general philosophy when it comes to writing software though. Whenever possible, figure out what tooling would have made the task easy and then build that and solve the problem simultaneously. You're probably gonna have to throw away the latter code, but at least the next time it'll be easier, because you now have the tooling. Even better if you happen to be in a position like mine where you already build tools for others, because that way other people will end up benefiting too.
Anyway, does it still occasionally get me in trouble? Yes. I not infrequently end up in situations where the software is essentially done, but I have to write a compiler pass to make it actually work, because I decided to write the code in a way that I thought it should be written, rather than a way that would be performant out of the box. But hey, at least I'm aware of it (https://twitter.com/KenoFischer/status/1529814861693259777) ;).
That's pretty much my general philosophy when it comes to writing software though. Whenever possible, figure out what tooling would have made the task easy and then build that and solve the problem simultaneously. You're probably gonna have to throw away the latter code, but at least the next time it'll be easier, because you now have the tooling. Even better if you happen to be in a position like mine where you already build tools for others, because that way other people will end up benefiting too.
Anyway, does it still occasionally get me in trouble? Yes. I not infrequently end up in situations where the software is essentially done, but I have to write a compiler pass to make it actually work, because I decided to write the code in a way that I thought it should be written, rather than a way that would be performant out of the box. But hey, at least I'm aware of it (https://twitter.com/KenoFischer/status/1529814861693259777) ;).
It benefits nobody to be a 10x engineer unless they are making 10x salary. In fact, once you have the job, the absolute best play is to do as little as possible and not get fired. We are businesses ourselves, don’t forget that. You work for money, and once you have the money, there is no reason to ever give more value than you are getting.
Want more money? Study for an interview and then return to your minimal effort process. Believing that you need to give more is the company winning. Treat yourself like a shrewd startup business.
Want more money? Study for an interview and then return to your minimal effort process. Believing that you need to give more is the company winning. Treat yourself like a shrewd startup business.
The flipside of the 10x engineer is the 1/10 engineer, generally "codemonkeys" that learned to "program" at a bootcamp.
Their skills are limited to the particular framework and tools they used at their bootcamp, and they have less ability to learn new tools and languages than the average designer or marketing person. Despite their poor skills, 1/10 engineers generally think that they are the best, smartest, and most productive programmers at whatever company is unfortunate/dumb enough to employ them. Mostly because they take so much time to do everything, and they think that time spent is equivalent to productivity. But their code is so brittle, it can only handle limited scenarios and tends to fall apart under load. The 1/10 engineers frequently get into arguments related to tech issues into which they have no knowledge or insight, because they assume that being able to code makes them omniscient gods (this afflictions also affects many 1x programmers as well).
1/10 engineers are the reason so many LA tech companies (my employer included) no longer hire bootcamp graduates.
Their skills are limited to the particular framework and tools they used at their bootcamp, and they have less ability to learn new tools and languages than the average designer or marketing person. Despite their poor skills, 1/10 engineers generally think that they are the best, smartest, and most productive programmers at whatever company is unfortunate/dumb enough to employ them. Mostly because they take so much time to do everything, and they think that time spent is equivalent to productivity. But their code is so brittle, it can only handle limited scenarios and tends to fall apart under load. The 1/10 engineers frequently get into arguments related to tech issues into which they have no knowledge or insight, because they assume that being able to code makes them omniscient gods (this afflictions also affects many 1x programmers as well).
1/10 engineers are the reason so many LA tech companies (my employer included) no longer hire bootcamp graduates.
I'm not quite sold on the first bullet point that if the impact of your company/project is 10x, then you are a 10x engineer.
Here is my case. In my previous (small) company we achieved a yearly revenue of ~1M eur. I was super proud that I directly contributed 10% of that revenue.
My current team in Big Tech generates millions of revenue per month. I could do a small improvement in a week and generate more than 100k in value.
Does that mean that I am 100x because my impact is 100x? is it even my achievement at all?
It's true that high performing engineers perform high leverage activities, but if we take it at face value then excellent engineers stuck in low value companies/products would be much worse than mediocre engineers working in high impact products.
Surely the answer is somewhere in between. Great engineers do the best with what they have available. Sometimes they might influence their environment to increase leverage but this isn't a given.
Here is my case. In my previous (small) company we achieved a yearly revenue of ~1M eur. I was super proud that I directly contributed 10% of that revenue.
My current team in Big Tech generates millions of revenue per month. I could do a small improvement in a week and generate more than 100k in value.
Does that mean that I am 100x because my impact is 100x? is it even my achievement at all?
It's true that high performing engineers perform high leverage activities, but if we take it at face value then excellent engineers stuck in low value companies/products would be much worse than mediocre engineers working in high impact products.
Surely the answer is somewhere in between. Great engineers do the best with what they have available. Sometimes they might influence their environment to increase leverage but this isn't a given.
you’re not making the right comparison. The right comparison would be within the same org. Is there someone on your team that generates $1M per week? Then they’re 10x you. Or does everyone else generate $10k per week? Then you’re 10x them.
That's exactly my point. The comparison is not mine, but from the article.
> but my work at Sendwave led to saving well over 10x more money, because the scale of the product was bigger and the improvements I was making were more important.
> but my work at Sendwave led to saving well over 10x more money, because the scale of the product was bigger and the improvements I was making were more important.
Dealing with this right now actually. We (a start-up) got bought. The product was split into two teams - we originally did BOTH HW and SW. Their HW team was pretty good so we let them do the HW and we did the SW. The problem can from the HW actually being HW + FW (a form of SW) and turns out they are mediocre at best FW and digital design and that's become a problem (we have to hook into what they are doing).
We (the original startup crew) finally figured out what the problem was: their commitment to ANYTHING (our HW project but also every other product they've ever worked on) is exactly the same as how most people treat school and homework, namely, how much can get away with NOT thinking and doing about it and still get a passing grade.
They can't be "fixed" because that's how deep the problem is: they've been trained for this attitude since they were children and they wouldn't know how to break out if their lives depended on it; they are not dumb or low-IQ. But they've been trained to achieve the lowest-common-denominator of anything they design or engineer.
This has never been how any of us have approached anything in life. For us, it's:
1. Do the best job regardless of what you could get away with
2. Focus on the big picture and little picture integration
3. Know who actually makes the product a success: the customer and the market
Significantly IMO I went to elite schools on merit rather than legacy/money while my co-founder was home-schooled and didn't actually finish his BS but he has more drive and commitment than 99 out of 100 BS EE or CS degree holders I've ever met or worked with.
Most people mouth the words but either don't actually know what they mean or do not mean what they are saying when they say them. This may not be sufficient but I think it's a necessary difference between normie engineers and 10x engineers.
We (the original startup crew) finally figured out what the problem was: their commitment to ANYTHING (our HW project but also every other product they've ever worked on) is exactly the same as how most people treat school and homework, namely, how much can get away with NOT thinking and doing about it and still get a passing grade.
They can't be "fixed" because that's how deep the problem is: they've been trained for this attitude since they were children and they wouldn't know how to break out if their lives depended on it; they are not dumb or low-IQ. But they've been trained to achieve the lowest-common-denominator of anything they design or engineer.
This has never been how any of us have approached anything in life. For us, it's:
1. Do the best job regardless of what you could get away with
2. Focus on the big picture and little picture integration
3. Know who actually makes the product a success: the customer and the market
Significantly IMO I went to elite schools on merit rather than legacy/money while my co-founder was home-schooled and didn't actually finish his BS but he has more drive and commitment than 99 out of 100 BS EE or CS degree holders I've ever met or worked with.
Most people mouth the words but either don't actually know what they mean or do not mean what they are saying when they say them. This may not be sufficient but I think it's a necessary difference between normie engineers and 10x engineers.
I feel like we discuss this once a week/month and it always breaks down to the same things bc of the number 10.
- Yes, some engs write code faster than others. 10x seems really high, so therefore 10x engs don't exist.
- Yes, some engs are more productive / pick better problems to solve / force multiply their teammates, but 10x seems pretty high, so 10x engs don't exist.
If we hadn't anchored on 10, we wouldn't be disputing that some people are more productive or faster, so I find proving or disproving the 10x eng to be pretty tired.
Good article though on the context for why some people are faster or more productive.
- Yes, some engs write code faster than others. 10x seems really high, so therefore 10x engs don't exist.
- Yes, some engs are more productive / pick better problems to solve / force multiply their teammates, but 10x seems pretty high, so 10x engs don't exist.
If we hadn't anchored on 10, we wouldn't be disputing that some people are more productive or faster, so I find proving or disproving the 10x eng to be pretty tired.
Good article though on the context for why some people are faster or more productive.
10x is a big multiplier, but I met plenty of developers that would write 5x the amount of code compared to others, in the same time, and to solve the same problem.
Now, is that a good or a bad thing?
Now, is that a good or a bad thing?
Of course 10 can’t be interpreted in a superficial silly way, otherwise many postdocs can be considered as 10x Einstein.
10x seems really high? 10x is just twice as fast
"10x engineer" is a signpost that means "run away fast" if I see it in job posts or from leadership.
One needs to be careful of that term in general.
Once upon a time, I was tasked with creating a new social media api based off of existing work by our "rockstar engineer." This is a guy who spend every single free second reading Code Complete and Code and Programming Pearls and seemed to have injected Design Patterns directly into his veins.
The last time he created a new API based off of his existing work, it took him about 2 days. I had zero experience with it, so it took me a little over 3. He was a person who was very proud of his work and declared that there was no reason for me to take that long to implement the new code.
The code review process at the company has a lot to be desired, and he being the "rockstar," basically got his code handwaved through by our CTO, who was filling in as our last manager had taken another position. Deciding I had enough, I went to the new manager who had no inkling of this dev's reputation and asked him to code review the original commit to the base social API with me for real this time. I asked him to keep in mind that other devs were going to have to build their work based off of this base system. It was a convoluted, entirely over-engineered pile of crap. A wankfest masquerading as code.
See, I read and was familiar with all of the books that sat proudly displayed in his cubicle. But there's a time and a place for everything, and the only 10x about this guy was the amount of unnecessary code he produced in order to do something as simple as interfacing with Facebook.
Once upon a time, I was tasked with creating a new social media api based off of existing work by our "rockstar engineer." This is a guy who spend every single free second reading Code Complete and Code and Programming Pearls and seemed to have injected Design Patterns directly into his veins.
The last time he created a new API based off of his existing work, it took him about 2 days. I had zero experience with it, so it took me a little over 3. He was a person who was very proud of his work and declared that there was no reason for me to take that long to implement the new code.
The code review process at the company has a lot to be desired, and he being the "rockstar," basically got his code handwaved through by our CTO, who was filling in as our last manager had taken another position. Deciding I had enough, I went to the new manager who had no inkling of this dev's reputation and asked him to code review the original commit to the base social API with me for real this time. I asked him to keep in mind that other devs were going to have to build their work based off of this base system. It was a convoluted, entirely over-engineered pile of crap. A wankfest masquerading as code.
See, I read and was familiar with all of the books that sat proudly displayed in his cubicle. But there's a time and a place for everything, and the only 10x about this guy was the amount of unnecessary code he produced in order to do something as simple as interfacing with Facebook.
I hate that term "10x", because it assumes there is a known quantifiable metric to find these people. (A skepticism appreciated in this article, though I don't know that it really comes to a clear conclusion either on the "reality".)
There are definitely people of a certain caliber who can solve problems others cannot, or way faster, from soup to nuts.
But when it comes to a large preexisting code base, solving prohlems in code can be done in different valid ways, which reflects our thinking patterns. Each of these ways then has corollaries about how the next set of problems is better solved in it. When one developer who has been with the company longer, given more clout for some reason, lucked out to be the green fields guy, or maybe really was somewhat better than the others gets to have his thinking pattern become the first principles of the major feature set, he may seem like he's 10x, but I'm not so sure with a different set of initial conditions that it would be so. And I think a lot of the measurements are taken on code bases in this gray area: not solving code interview problems.
Then there's the question of speed to full execution vs. maintainability, quality of the solution to deal with the next set of business demands, etc... I'm just not so sure it's that easily measurable.
There are definitely people of a certain caliber who can solve problems others cannot, or way faster, from soup to nuts.
But when it comes to a large preexisting code base, solving prohlems in code can be done in different valid ways, which reflects our thinking patterns. Each of these ways then has corollaries about how the next set of problems is better solved in it. When one developer who has been with the company longer, given more clout for some reason, lucked out to be the green fields guy, or maybe really was somewhat better than the others gets to have his thinking pattern become the first principles of the major feature set, he may seem like he's 10x, but I'm not so sure with a different set of initial conditions that it would be so. And I think a lot of the measurements are taken on code bases in this gray area: not solving code interview problems.
Then there's the question of speed to full execution vs. maintainability, quality of the solution to deal with the next set of business demands, etc... I'm just not so sure it's that easily measurable.
I know an objectively-measured 500x engineer.
On a 6-month crash project with 1000 engineers assigned, at the end, fully half the code delivered was his. You can't get any more objective than that.
To be clear: this was a project where, if not delivered on the 6-month mark, the company would not be paid. It is hard to see how, without his work, the project could have delivered on time.
I have worked with a few others of similar ability. I have never had a bad experience with one.
On a 6-month crash project with 1000 engineers assigned, at the end, fully half the code delivered was his. You can't get any more objective than that.
To be clear: this was a project where, if not delivered on the 6-month mark, the company would not be paid. It is hard to see how, without his work, the project could have delivered on time.
I have worked with a few others of similar ability. I have never had a bad experience with one.
It may be that this developer really did single-handedly save the day, but:
> half the code delivered was his. You can't get any more objective than that.
Counting lines of code is a famously ineffective way to measure productivity. It encourages low-density code style, and encourages working on easy development tasks. It also encourages prioritising velocity over quality, although in many contexts that may be what you want.
> half the code delivered was his. You can't get any more objective than that.
Counting lines of code is a famously ineffective way to measure productivity. It encourages low-density code style, and encourages working on easy development tasks. It also encourages prioritising velocity over quality, although in many contexts that may be what you want.
It can be quite effective after the fact. Our 500x engineer had no reason to pad, and every reason to avoid wasting time writing anything nonfunctional.
In the event, he assigned two-week tasks, and where not done on time he would do them himself over the weekend. During the two weeks, he would do up to ten such tasks, despite that he reserved the harder tasks for himself.
In the event, he assigned two-week tasks, and where not done on time he would do them himself over the weekend. During the two weeks, he would do up to ten such tasks, despite that he reserved the harder tasks for himself.
There’s 10x in almost every profession, why is engineering different?
If you take physicists with Ph.D. plus 3 years of post-doc as the baseline, of course top physicists are 10x the baseline. And don't interpret the 10x in a superficial silly way which makes post-docs stronger than Einstein.
This goes the same in sports, arts, academics, etc. As long as the field has enough depth for growth, the top players can easily be 10x compare to the majority.
If you take physicists with Ph.D. plus 3 years of post-doc as the baseline, of course top physicists are 10x the baseline. And don't interpret the 10x in a superficial silly way which makes post-docs stronger than Einstein.
This goes the same in sports, arts, academics, etc. As long as the field has enough depth for growth, the top players can easily be 10x compare to the majority.
You mention sports. I don't think most sports have a 10x difference between the worst and best professional athletes. Being 10 times faster or 10 times stronger is beyond human limits.
> I don't think most sports have a 10x difference between the worst and best professional athletes.
Aggregate productivity metrics are...difficult. But if one assumes that salaries are roughly proportional to value produced, it's not uncommon to have >10:1 ratio in the top professional tier of a sport, much less the whole of a professional sport.
E.g., the NFL has about a 25:1 ratio https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-nfl-footbal...
MLB has a 700k minimum salary, a 1.1M median salary, a 4.4M mean salary, and a top salaries of $43.3M (that's a more than a 6:1 mean to minimum, and almost a 10:1 maximum to mean ratio, and over 60:1 overall ratio.)
https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Minimum_salary
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2021/04/16/ap-stud...
https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/average/
> Being 10 times faster or 10 times stronger is beyond human limits.
“Fast” and “strong” measured in ways in which this is true are contributors to value produced, but not the measure of value produced by a player. A wide receiver that is the same in all other ways but runs half as fast as the fastest in the league isn't contributing half as much value.
Aggregate productivity metrics are...difficult. But if one assumes that salaries are roughly proportional to value produced, it's not uncommon to have >10:1 ratio in the top professional tier of a sport, much less the whole of a professional sport.
E.g., the NFL has about a 25:1 ratio https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-nfl-footbal...
MLB has a 700k minimum salary, a 1.1M median salary, a 4.4M mean salary, and a top salaries of $43.3M (that's a more than a 6:1 mean to minimum, and almost a 10:1 maximum to mean ratio, and over 60:1 overall ratio.)
https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Minimum_salary
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2021/04/16/ap-stud...
https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/average/
> Being 10 times faster or 10 times stronger is beyond human limits.
“Fast” and “strong” measured in ways in which this is true are contributors to value produced, but not the measure of value produced by a player. A wide receiver that is the same in all other ways but runs half as fast as the fastest in the league isn't contributing half as much value.
For the 10x programmer thing, the premise (as I understand it) is that the programmer can produce a working program in 1/10th of the time of a (terrible/average, the exact definition varies) programmer. So literally 10 times as fast.
I think a reasonable sports comparison for the 10x dev must be a sport where people can perform/compete individually, such as athletics, weightlifting, diving, etc. Otherwise you get into handwavey arguments about contributed value. As for wages, having the best players can be worth 10x or 25x compared to having average players. This may be true even if the best players are "only" 2x as good as the worst ones. So I don't think the wages mean much.
I think a reasonable sports comparison for the 10x dev must be a sport where people can perform/compete individually, such as athletics, weightlifting, diving, etc. Otherwise you get into handwavey arguments about contributed value. As for wages, having the best players can be worth 10x or 25x compared to having average players. This may be true even if the best players are "only" 2x as good as the worst ones. So I don't think the wages mean much.
Did I say don’t interpret 10x in a superficial silly way? A runner can be 10x better than another runner, but 10x better is not 10x faster.
When is a runner 10 times better, then? For comparison, the mythical 10x developer can literally do tasks in 1/10th of the time.
> the mythical 10x developer can literally do tasks in 1/10th of the time.
Every form of the idea I’ve encountered other than from people criticizing it without identifying the source of the idea they were responding to has been about 10x overall value delivery, not 10x speed on individual microbenchmark tasks.
Every form of the idea I’ve encountered other than from people criticizing it without identifying the source of the idea they were responding to has been about 10x overall value delivery, not 10x speed on individual microbenchmark tasks.
Often overlooked is just the breadth of experience and insight aka 'Technical Wisdom'.
It took 5 years of various clusterf**s with Unicode, but now whenever I approach it, I have an intuition for the cost of string manipulation, UTF8 v 16, what's pragmatic, what is needed, what is 'overdoing it'.
It's like building a deck - after you build 100 of them 'all the little details' become instinct.
So if you can do that across all sorts of technologies ... then you just walk through stuff like butter.
Whenever I see someone whip through something, I'm not amazed so much by talent or genius, but how they 'know so much'.
It's like the academic who's read literally 1000 books and remembers a lot of it.
Whether they are 10x or not really depends.
Some architectural decisions make a 10x difference.
Some business related decisions also make a difference.
Sometimes it's not apparent until later, or never apparent.
And sometimes it doesn't matter that much.
Finally - I'll say that 'speed of execution' is not remotely the issue. If someone can saunter along at a reasonable pace but actually produce the 'correct thing' - that's worth it's weight in gold right there.
It took 5 years of various clusterf**s with Unicode, but now whenever I approach it, I have an intuition for the cost of string manipulation, UTF8 v 16, what's pragmatic, what is needed, what is 'overdoing it'.
It's like building a deck - after you build 100 of them 'all the little details' become instinct.
So if you can do that across all sorts of technologies ... then you just walk through stuff like butter.
Whenever I see someone whip through something, I'm not amazed so much by talent or genius, but how they 'know so much'.
It's like the academic who's read literally 1000 books and remembers a lot of it.
Whether they are 10x or not really depends.
Some architectural decisions make a 10x difference.
Some business related decisions also make a difference.
Sometimes it's not apparent until later, or never apparent.
And sometimes it doesn't matter that much.
Finally - I'll say that 'speed of execution' is not remotely the issue. If someone can saunter along at a reasonable pace but actually produce the 'correct thing' - that's worth it's weight in gold right there.
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Software industry would really benefit once we grow out of discussing this 10x notion - it's the same level of juvenile (high-school/undergrad) discussion as whether geniuses and gifted people really exist (they do) but in professional settings, it matters very little.
It is just a matter of the frame of reference. In an organization with a large number of 0.1x developers, skilled developers may look like 10x.
The 0.1x ones don't really understand the problem they are working on, nor can they write even a few lines of coherent code, often with only a minimalistic understanding of the language they are using. Spotting them is easy: Watching them use the editor of their choice to work on code feels like watching a toddler learning to walk.
Different organizations happen to hire different kind of people. For some organizations hiring skilled developers is a matter of luck. The skilled ones they manage to hire are outliers, easily perceived as 10x. Other organization manage to hire mostly skilled developers and PIP the rest. In that kind of environment 10x does not exist.
That's the perfect base for an argument. Depending on the individuals background it is very obvious that 10x exists / does not exist.
The 0.1x ones don't really understand the problem they are working on, nor can they write even a few lines of coherent code, often with only a minimalistic understanding of the language they are using. Spotting them is easy: Watching them use the editor of their choice to work on code feels like watching a toddler learning to walk.
Different organizations happen to hire different kind of people. For some organizations hiring skilled developers is a matter of luck. The skilled ones they manage to hire are outliers, easily perceived as 10x. Other organization manage to hire mostly skilled developers and PIP the rest. In that kind of environment 10x does not exist.
That's the perfect base for an argument. Depending on the individuals background it is very obvious that 10x exists / does not exist.
The concept of the "10x engineer" has vastly outlived its usefulness. Remember, it originally was a response to clueless non-technical management who thought that programmers were completely fungible—the type of thinking that led to early waves of offshoring based on headcount costs, and a willful ignorance that the details that technical staff spend their time working on actually matter.
But once you get past the pointy-hairs, all this framing does is set up a falsely quantitative comparison between broad swathes of engineers whose work can not and should not be compared in this way. Is it really any surprise that a meme created for the bean counters is going to draw ire and vitriol from passionate, diligent and opinionated software professionals?
There is absolutely no point in the general debate about what "10x engineer" is (or whether it really exists). Yes, people have vastly different skills. Yes, there are things which some engineers can do which others could never do. Yes, there are Dunning-Kruger cases without the chops, humility or awareness to acknowledge this. Trying to quantify and strictly define those things though? Pointless.
But once you get past the pointy-hairs, all this framing does is set up a falsely quantitative comparison between broad swathes of engineers whose work can not and should not be compared in this way. Is it really any surprise that a meme created for the bean counters is going to draw ire and vitriol from passionate, diligent and opinionated software professionals?
There is absolutely no point in the general debate about what "10x engineer" is (or whether it really exists). Yes, people have vastly different skills. Yes, there are things which some engineers can do which others could never do. Yes, there are Dunning-Kruger cases without the chops, humility or awareness to acknowledge this. Trying to quantify and strictly define those things though? Pointless.
i mean there are so many factors to this equation, writing code is the least of my problems. i try to focus more on enabling my teammates to avoid making bigger mistakes and growing them to be decent engineers, rather than optimizing my own work by a few percent. After all software engineering is a team effort for most of the times. What does it matter if i am 10x more productive and crank out all the solutions and code and the rest are all juniors and i have a bus factor of 1?
sometime it feels like people have to show-off or be the shining knights how save the day and want to be padded on the back constantly for that.
sometime it feels like people have to show-off or be the shining knights how save the day and want to be padded on the back constantly for that.
I never understood why this is controversial. I'd say the majority of engineers I've worked with have been 10x engineers.
Maybe I've just been incredibly lucky with the teams I've ended up on.
Maybe I've just been incredibly lucky with the teams I've ended up on.
This is very subjective. ( obviously ) You can go 10x speed in a direction that is pointless. Not all work equates to value. The best product is the simplest that makes the most money. Duct tape and hacks make money. There is zero value in going beyond that. Over-engineering is an epidemic. “cool” means nothing. Engineering is a tool for a job, it’s not a product in itself. If your internal parser fails when you see a comment in code with bad grammar and you strive to fix it, that is you being neurotic not useful. Engineers love to build kingdoms in the details that nobody gives a fuck about.
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What makes an engineer 10x is if he does shit or he talks on the internet about the absence of 10x engineers.
Just take a look at big tech salaries on levels.fyi. Very senior engineers (L8/L9) easily make 10x the salary of entry to mid-level engineers (L3/L4/L5). For a lot of tech companies, L5 is a terminal level meaning most engineers will spend the rest of their careers there. Clearly the market thinks 10x engineers exist.
The title of the article is "10x (engineer, context) pairs" and the submitted title is... clickbait-y.
Yes. We've reverted the title now (submitted title was "On the myth versus reality of ten-x engineers").
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They must exist. If IQ can range from 80 to 200 and IQ correlates with programming ability then of course there are engineers out there at the far end of the spectrum.
this is a pretty weak statement. even given such a correlation, what is the scale? how sensitive does programming skill need to be related to IQ to make a 10x engineer sufficiently probable given the population.
the real problem though is that IQ and 'programming ability' aren't really well defined.
the real problem though is that IQ and 'programming ability' aren't really well defined.
IQ is well defined. Programming ability is not.
A sign of low IQ is requiring everything to be well defined and scientifically validated in order to move forward in analyzing a problem. Science is slow and has huge limitations. Formally defining complex concepts like "what is life" is also incredibly tedious and so complex that it's often nearly impossible. Do you want to formally define "programming ability" before ever making a statement that intelligence is highly correlated with intelligence? Are we really stuck in some limbo of being unable to come to a fuzzy conclusion on such a simple concept because we can't formally define something?
Look at the world around you. What does your gut tell you? Do you really need a scientific study to tell you that walking into a wall is unhealthy? Do you really need a scientific study to tell you intelligence correlates with programming ability? The former is obvious, the latter is also obvious... but not to stupid people.
You're absolutely not stupid, but sometimes people end up limiting themselves by trying too hard to be more intelligent.
A sign of low IQ is requiring everything to be well defined and scientifically validated in order to move forward in analyzing a problem. Science is slow and has huge limitations. Formally defining complex concepts like "what is life" is also incredibly tedious and so complex that it's often nearly impossible. Do you want to formally define "programming ability" before ever making a statement that intelligence is highly correlated with intelligence? Are we really stuck in some limbo of being unable to come to a fuzzy conclusion on such a simple concept because we can't formally define something?
Look at the world around you. What does your gut tell you? Do you really need a scientific study to tell you that walking into a wall is unhealthy? Do you really need a scientific study to tell you intelligence correlates with programming ability? The former is obvious, the latter is also obvious... but not to stupid people.
You're absolutely not stupid, but sometimes people end up limiting themselves by trying too hard to be more intelligent.
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Also the IQ is a pretty narrow measurement for a persons abilities. It might map to 'logical thinking ability' which probably would be related to programming skills. But what if that person has no social skills whatsoever?
I've talked to some of these people in depth and analyzed them.
The difference with these people is incredible lack of brain fog. Everything is utterly clear for them. If you're a 10xer then this post characterizes the difference between you and others. It's not that other people are stupider, but there's a sort of brain fog that prevents people from seeing a solution. We sort of have to wander through a fog and look things up to arrive at a solution.
What you will find is that this brain fog is independent of creativity. There are many 10xers who aren't that creative.
The difference with these people is incredible lack of brain fog. Everything is utterly clear for them. If you're a 10xer then this post characterizes the difference between you and others. It's not that other people are stupider, but there's a sort of brain fog that prevents people from seeing a solution. We sort of have to wander through a fog and look things up to arrive at a solution.
What you will find is that this brain fog is independent of creativity. There are many 10xers who aren't that creative.
I think there is a deeper truth behind this observation. At least we know that smarter people often have larger brains, better control of alpha-rhythm, better fronto-parietal gamma synchronization, longer dendrites.
It is plausible to hypothesize that all these differences add up to larger representational capacity and better separation of concept representations, which subjectively could feel like less brain fog while performing demanding mental tasks.
Anecdotally what I have found is 10xers or high IQ people tend to find the solution that makes utter and complete sense. The simplest most efficient solution is the one they come up with.
The thing that they miss is the novel solution. The WTF solution that's so left field it changes fundamental understanding of everything. It is even rarer to find these types of people. I believe the "creativity" skill is highly independent of "lack of brain fog" so often times the creative people aren't noticeably more intelligent because they have brain fog and aren't as sharp as the classically intelligent person.
They say that Einstein once called his secretary to ask about his address because forgot where he lived.
The thing that they miss is the novel solution. The WTF solution that's so left field it changes fundamental understanding of everything. It is even rarer to find these types of people. I believe the "creativity" skill is highly independent of "lack of brain fog" so often times the creative people aren't noticeably more intelligent because they have brain fog and aren't as sharp as the classically intelligent person.
They say that Einstein once called his secretary to ask about his address because forgot where he lived.
I think it's about breaking down things into abstracts. Sort of a mental principle component analysis.
I'll preface this by saying I've been described as a 10x-er by others my whole career. I do not consider myself one but I've noticed that what people respond to is my ability to break down problem spaces into very small pieces and think about it in the abstract.
I also notice that this is what I see in folks that I consider are 10x-ers.
It's also not that I think others can't do that. That would be hubris. However I think it takes practice, and practice first requires self reflection.
I'm currently mentoring interns and juniors, and I am trying to teach them to approach problems with that kind of thinking. The ones who can shift into breaking things down like that, are able to chew through stuff much faster and cleaner.
coincidentally the system architects I've worked with who can think like this are always the strongest at creating scalable solutions and adapting to change.
I'll preface this by saying I've been described as a 10x-er by others my whole career. I do not consider myself one but I've noticed that what people respond to is my ability to break down problem spaces into very small pieces and think about it in the abstract.
I also notice that this is what I see in folks that I consider are 10x-ers.
It's also not that I think others can't do that. That would be hubris. However I think it takes practice, and practice first requires self reflection.
I'm currently mentoring interns and juniors, and I am trying to teach them to approach problems with that kind of thinking. The ones who can shift into breaking things down like that, are able to chew through stuff much faster and cleaner.
coincidentally the system architects I've worked with who can think like this are always the strongest at creating scalable solutions and adapting to change.
I do not doubt that there are 10/ programmers. Programmers that are just lazy slackers.
There are 10x just because there are -10
Worked with one and couldnt help him
Worked with one and couldnt help him
it has to do with the organization to. As soon as they start with Jira and Scrum, your productivity goes down the drain.
What's wrong with Jira? I've found it very helpful in tracking progress and sharing information for problems involving many people in different teams.
I've worked at companies that moved quickly using jira and companies that we're bogged down using jira
the key difference I've noticed is that the slower the companies move the more obsessed they become with their tools adding piles upon piles of ceremony and requirements I guess jira helps folks do that but that's the case for almost any tool tbh
the key difference I've noticed is that the slower the companies move the more obsessed they become with their tools adding piles upon piles of ceremony and requirements I guess jira helps folks do that but that's the case for almost any tool tbh
Yes, but at least you'll have charts to tell you how far down the drain you've gone.
Not my experience at all. JIRA is a tool. How you use the tool matters greatly.
Why does this 10x meme exist about software engineers and no other profession? It's because the CEOs and VCs who spread this are preying on tech bro macho-ness so they can squeeze as much labor and "productivity" out of us as possible.
Let's stop with this juvenile dick measuring contest. We are not machines that have a speed that can be so easily measured like a new CPU in the bosses computer.
Let's stop with this juvenile dick measuring contest. We are not machines that have a speed that can be so easily measured like a new CPU in the bosses computer.
The "meme" exists because many of us have worked with engineers that are shockingly productive, and can write better code, faster than almost everyone else. Code that sticks around for 5-10+ years because it works well.
There's nothing juvenile about the observation that some people (and very few) are gifted with an order-of-magnitude stronger programming skills.
There's nothing juvenile about the observation that some people (and very few) are gifted with an order-of-magnitude stronger programming skills.
There are talented engineers all over the place.
But, the thing that makes "10x" engineers is rarely their own work, its mostly luck of being in the right place at the right time. The big problem is that most people cannot reliably differentiate a "10x" engineer from a gobshite.
The reason why the "myth" is so tedious is that people mistake volume(of code/self aggrandising/speaking in meetings) for being _good_. Just because someone ported code from one language to another, doesn't mean it was useful to the business, or humanity.
But, the thing that makes "10x" engineers is rarely their own work, its mostly luck of being in the right place at the right time. The big problem is that most people cannot reliably differentiate a "10x" engineer from a gobshite.
The reason why the "myth" is so tedious is that people mistake volume(of code/self aggrandising/speaking in meetings) for being _good_. Just because someone ported code from one language to another, doesn't mean it was useful to the business, or humanity.
But I have worked with a few people who were clear 10x engineers. Everything they worked on they did better and faster and cleaner. They could often solve problems that other skilled people couldn't even get started on. Yes, they usually picked important and impactful things to work on, but even when just assigned tasks from the grab bag of team tasks, they were still 10x faster.
Somehow these individuals were also 10x nicer too.
The only downside of working with them is going home and looking in the mirror and wondering why you can't match their pace. Oh well, I would trade the hit to my ego for getting to work in their codebase any day of the week.