
1x.engineer - dcu
https://1x.engineer/
======
yongjik

        Writes code that others can read.
        Reads the Docs.
        Updates the Docs.
    

Hey, if you can do that, you are already more than a 1x engineer. I'd say you
are at least 1.5x. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
closeparen
\- Writes tedious, multiplicative code and never stops to reflect on
opportunities to express things more efficiently.

\- Writes docs littered with misused buzzwords (especially "leverage" and
"platform") that are at best useless, and more often actively misleading.

\- When not sure what to do, muddles through with the first nightmarish idea
to come to mind, rather than taking a step back and trying to simplify or
seeking prior art. No aesthetic sensibility, no innate revulsion to garbage
code.

\- Has no sense of how long things should take, and no problem spinning for 3
weeks on a half-day task they're delegated.

\- Approves train-wreck pull requests.

\- Executes every CR suggestion, even those that make things worse.

\- Attempts a bad deploy 3 or 4 times before wondering why they are hitting
the auto-rollback trigger; assumes something is wrong with the deployment
system.

\- After 30 seconds of shallow thought, writes off any production issue
they're asked to debug (including emergency pages) as "must be network" or
"must be database" and fires off a vague bug report to sit in somebody's queue
for 6 months before being closed for insufficient detail while the fire
continues to burn.

\- Gracefully acknowledges design feedback, but goes with their original plan
anyways. Or more likely, built the thing weeks before soliciting design
approval and won't go back to change it.

\- Very interested in getting promoted; not at all interested in technical
depth, novelty, or quality.

~~~
Nicksil
Sorry, what are you enumerating/describing?

~~~
Crinus
Opinions on a coworker they look down on, most likely.

------
havermeyer
Context for anyone who missed the original thread on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/skirani/status/1149302828420067328](https://twitter.com/skirani/status/1149302828420067328)

~~~
yongjik
Wait, this must be a troll, right? Please somebody tell me it's trolling.

> 10x engineers laptop screen background color is typically black (they always
> change defaults).

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh

~~~
brodsky
they also wear all black, and use at least two keyboards simultaneously to
hack twice as fast.

~~~
rvz
Legend has it that the 10x engineer is a distinguished engineer and Turing
Award laurette that uses 6+ monitors simultaneously at home/work, solves team
blockers on the first meeting (Hence why they hate meetings), writes ground
breaking research papers in their sleep and also hacks on the Linux kernel in
their spare time. /s

Now if we could try to hire this person in a startup, how much compensation
should we give them to stop going else where?

More than your first seed round. /s

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alex_young
The 10x engineer exists. What do they do differently? They have 10 times the
average impact on the organization around them.

We got over measuring lines of code a long time ago. We should measure impact
on the people around you and the culture you create.

This list looks a lot like 10x stuff to me.

~~~
a3n
What is the unit of "impact?" What is the unit of "impact x time?"

How many units does an average engineer ... emit? I presume a 10x engineer
will emit 10 times those units?

~~~
drewcoo
The unit is the x. Please don't try to understand and measure it like an
engineer. This is software.

~~~
stallmanite
A very similar unit to ‘G’ used to measure how badass a mobile network is. eg
AT&T’s 5G service

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wanone
Why doesn't anyone talk about compensation? Does 10x engineer gets paid 10x as
well? Or taking 1x compensation is another feature of the 10x engineer?

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charles_f
What's with the sudden 10x engineer craze? Been seeing posts like that
everywhere today, did I miss something?

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dwaltrip
The ability to create useful software is a complex, dynamic set of skills that
that varies across people and across time. It isn't easily assessed through a
short list of simple characteristics. It can be somewhat assessed, with
difficulty and mixed results.

Yay, we can all go home now.

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fellellor
That was one of the funnier things I saw on Twitter recently.

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m463
Does a 10x manager make all his 1x engineers 10x engineers?

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je42
all properties of 10x.

~~~
je42
10x has a couple of additional properties.

"magically" make the right architectural decisions, such that the project
doesn't need a rewrite, when new requirements "appear".

use time effectively.

retain details about work around, land-mines, technical+functional/biz+ops
requirements, frameworks in-use,

picks up new tech if required, removes tech if required...

talks to the right people to talk to about the right topics

try to stay out of politics but not disregard it...

