
The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers - ericxtang
http://www.erictang.org/blog/2014/01/17/dirty-secret-of-10x-engineers/
======
doctorwho
Some people are just better at exploring problem spaces, avoiding dead ends
and making insightful connections that lead to solutions. It doesn't always
come with experience, some people could work forever and never solve even a
moderately difficult problem. These people build websites. The 10x engineer
has a mindset and an approach that yields results more consistently than
his/her peers.

~~~
ericxtang
Very true. Engineers like that are extremely rare, and usually have serious
golden handcuffs. However, there are a lot more people with similar mindset
but limited programming experience. With the right culture, those are the
usually the people who can make a big different at a startup.

------
pasbesoin
The dirty secret of 10x engineers is that you have to learn to prevent the
other crabs from dragging you back down into the bucket (whether deliberately
or out of ignorance).

Crap workspace? Leave. Crap cohabitants (not just in need of assistance, but
willfully negligent or _so_ far behind that you can't get your job done)? Find
better people to be around.

The hard part: If you're a nice person, it can take a while to really learn
and internalize this, and it can remain difficult to execute.

It's not about being "better than". It's about circumstances that hinder your
own performance and leave you counter-productively frustrated. No situation is
perfect, but there are points past which they become destructively counter-
productive.

~~~
kosma
It takes just one bad apple to spoil the entire team.

I've been in this situation three times. Reporting that your teammate is
dragging the entire project down is a horrible feeling - but it's the only
responsible thing to do. If you don't, you buy one person's peace of mind at
the cost of the whole team's well-being.

PS. Dr Glover was right: nice guys are _not_ nice. They just try to cover
their asses and stay quiet.

------
memracom
You know why CRUD apps are called that? Because skilled developers know that
once you have built a CRUD app a half dozen times, the work is simple and
straightforward with no challenge. This work is called crud work because it is
not very desirable by people who look for challenges.

On the other hand, it is easy to build these CRUD apps 10 times faster than a
developer who has not learned all the ins and outs of such work. CRUD apps
happen to be highly useful in most companies, i.e. there is a lot of market
demand. Some people like this kind of work just like some people like to work
on an assembly line. And it may even be worthwhile to pay someone a higher
salary to churn out apps like this.

But that does not make someone a 10x engineer. It just means that they happen
to be working in a 10x environment right now. Next year they may be struggling
to keep up with iOS developers who are all on their 3rd iOS app.

My takeaway is that if a company really needs and wants 10x engineers, they
should advertise the narrow details of the job that needs to be done and avoid
listing irrelevant stuff like education and all the technologies involved. The
ad should say something like Ruby on Rails for over 3 years with at least 10
apps built using MySQL backends.

But if you need someone who is creative, can adapt to change and new
technology, has experience with certain generic technologies like async
servers, then please say that in so many words. And pay them more than
average.

Because the majority of developers are average developers and they share some
characteristics. They have been working with more than one kind of technology.
They are good at learning new things. They know how to adapt to new tools and
new business requirements. They have used some stuff in the past, but because
they have no desire to become 10x well-paid developers using that exact same
set of technology, you should not be judging them by matching up lists of
acronyms and names.

------
CmonDev
"Startups work on problems that have not been solved, and they are usually
extremely challenging." \- Web/mobile apps on average?

"We hire ridiculously intelligent people", another London company I know says
"We only hire top 5% of candidates". The truth is both of you hire the best
people out of the small subset that was interested enough to interview with
you. Just like anyone else.

The general idea is true though :).

~~~
memracom
Companies that really hire the top 5% of candidates, never advertise open
positions. At most, their careers page says that they accept applications at
any time if you think that you fill the bill.

Most of their hires will come from reaching out to people and referrals.

~~~
CmonDev
The point is nobody hires the actual top 5% of the best people, just the
subset that happens available and interested in them within given period.

~~~
ericxtang
top 5% is a very relative description. There is no hard measure, and everyone
have a different standard on what they are "measuring in their head". Our
perceptions are extremely biased by our own experiences. 90% of the time I
really have to get to know the candidate before making any decisions. Of
course the biggest constraint is available qualified candidates at the time.
That's why hiring is so hard, and people who are really good at it tend to be
veterans who have been in the industry for a long time.

------
kosma
There's nothing dirty about shipping.

10x means shipping - and nothing else. It's just one trait - being able to
attack small chunks of work and finish them before moving to the next one -
and it doesn't say anything about the quality of one's work. Here's why: you
can _learn to ship_.

Being a "10x" is half of Joel's "smart and get things done". Don't ever forget
about the other half.

------
pmichaud
The thesis is that everyone is a 10x engineer at certain moments. But that if
that same person is put in a more challenging situation, they no longer will
be 10x. Also, that's the situation they should consistently be in. Otherwise,
a consistently 10x engineer indicates coasting.

It's a workable hypothesis, but where is the data?

~~~
placeybordeaux
The dirty secret of the blog-o-sphere.

~~~
memracom
The dirty secret of all science. People only study things that someone will
pay for. And often the questions that you or I would like to see answered
never attract funding. Recently someone discovered that booth babes do not
work as a marketing tool by spending their own company's money on some
experiments. Unfortunately this kind of thing is rare in the public eye.

Some people think that Google has done such studies but they are part of its
secret sauce.

~~~
ericxtang
I've heard Google has a special process, unfortunately even if they make it
public, it would only help startups in a very limited scope. The hiring
requires are different, especially when it comes to a lot of the "soft
skills".

------
RyanZAG
If a '10x' engineer is going ten times slower than a normal and is therefore
not a '10x' engineer anymore, wouldn't a '1x' engineer on the same difficult
problem also go ten times slower and be a '0.1x' engineer?

------
sopooneo
Take as given that under condition X all people can exhibit Y behavior. It
does not necessarily follow that a particular person can exhibit Y behavior
_only_ under condition X.

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j45
10x engineers wouldn't read this because they're busy doing something

