[3grdlurker]

It’s incredibly reductionist to think that productivity is inherent to an individual when the world is never that simple and there are always a lot of factors involved in any outcome. Even the people that you think are “10xers” will stumble under the right circumstances, and the converse is also true about the people you think are incompetent.

It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be said—I’m sure you have the freedom to say that to people if you’re prepared for the consequences. It’s just that it’s such a hasty, unnuanced thing to say, and business decisions should not be made on the basis of rash remarks that aren’t very well thought-out.

[philipswood]

I remember finding a site (a design patterns repository page of all things) that explained the nuance of different people having different expected outcomes on different domains well.

But despite searching for it for years I haven't been able to find it again - web searches tend to be bad at finding things that you found before, again.

Anyway, this was described as the "movie producer pattern" (maybe it was director)

I remember it going something like this:

As opposed to the factory worker pattern which describes people who perform simple tasks that are straightforward and are easy to learn and perform and are hence interchangeable, it is more accurate to use the movie producer pattern.

A producer will have shown his or her abilities in a specific set of movies, each with a certain style and genre, which will lend credence to their ability to perform similar work in a similar genres. It's clear however that the specific director will make a large impact to the final movie and will have a personal touch.

For engineers, Susan, who has spent the last decade honing her skills on language VM implementations is expected to be an all around star resource, but would probably be a more trustworthy choice for more VM work as opposed to implementing a graphics engine or database.

(In analogy to a director with a string of science fiction movies who might not be the best choice for a romantic comedy)

[csande17]

> It’s not so much that we built a culture that disallows these things to be said—I’m sure you have the freedom to say that to people if you’re prepared for the consequences.

When people say that "you aren't allowed to say" something, they don't mean the government uses magical mind control rays to prevent your mouth from physically producing the words. "Consequences" are the mechanism by which speech is prohibited in societies without access to magical mind control rays.

(Not to pick on you specifically; I've heard this line a lot lately.)

[3grdlurker]

I mean, I get your point about the government but now you’re just complaining about how being insensitive to other people has the consequence of them fighting back.

[teddyh]

Now you’re moving to assume that everything that has consequences is due to somebody being insensitive. It could also be, for example, that the person initiating consequences is entirely too sensitive.

[3grdlurker]

So you’re gonna go around the office to point fingers and tell on people that they’re not 10xers, and then call them too sensitive if they react? You’re talking in abstracts but if you put what you said in context (ie this discussion) it doesn’t make sense.

[teddyh]

> So you’re gonna go around the office […]

This discussion is not about me, nor did anyone advocate that behavior. You are making up scenarios in your mind about what other people in this thread are thinking and saying, but these things are all imaginary on your part.

[Jensson]

> Even the people that you think are “10xers” will stumble under the right circumstances, and the converse is also true about the people you think are incompetent.

Right, the 10x engineer isn't benching 10x more than you or running 10x faster than you, nobody thinks that 10x engineer means 10x at every possible task.

[topkai22]

Nah, it's beyond that. I know a dev that is the most brilliant ux dev I've ever met. He can create beautiful, dynamic, understandable UIs literally 20x than I can.

However, he is just medeicore at must other tasks- constructing a common data model, scaling the backend or analyzing the data be is slower than I am, if he engages at all.

More recently I told my manager that I was intimated by how effective one of my coworkers was at his job (data science and BI.) He laughed and said my coworker basically thought the same of me (doing more standard software engineering.

Highly effective engineers are often only effective at limited aspects of the business of software engineering and it takes a good team structure of diverse talents to make everyone effective, even in the domain of software.

[Jensson]

That was my point, arguments such as yours are just arguing with strawmen. 10x is compared to another professional in the same domain. Saying that the engineer isn't as effective at another domain as a professional of that other domain is arguing with a strawman.

[Jetrel]

It's not really a strawman considering it's EXACTLY what most companies are trying to do: make programmers fungible across domains. Critically; they're doing this because they typically have no visibility into these skillsets from the managerial level, and they typically only have one or two programmers "in a given domain" on a team - even in a very, very large company. The company would like to pretend these people are fungible, and can be interchangeably swapped out, but the reality is they have no immediately replacements on the team.

There's no sense in doing an apples-to-apples comparison when you've only got one apple, an orange, and a pear.

[3grdlurker]

But then you have to ask what metrics are being used to define a 10x engineer. You’ll see that everyone has a different version of that and therefore whether a 10x engineer exists solely depends on the ontological argument for a 10x engineer. By the end of the day 10x is subjective because teams have different needs.

[Jensson]

If you can replace an entire team of 10 engineers paid to work on something with a single engineer then that engineer is a 10x engineer, as long as the "10x engineer" didn't originally write the things they work with. That is my definition.

> By the end of the day 10x is subjective because teams have different needs.

Replacing 10 salaries with 1 salary isn't subjective at all.

[3grdlurker]

Of course it is subjective. This is literally what you said:

> That is my definition.

You obviously care about optimizing for salary expenses. Most companies have room to hire more people who can do a few things well, so their definition of 10x would be different because they’ll have different expectations of their employees.

And really, if your definition of a 10xer is some poor fool who’s willing to take the job of 10 people for a single person’s salary, good luck finding someone who wants to spend their lives living that way.

[Jensson]

> And really, if your definition of a 10xer is some poor fool who’s willing to take the job of 10 people for a single person’s salary, good luck finding someone who wants to spend their lives living that way.

Right, they are paid more. The going rate for good people is around 1.5x up to 10x for exceptional cases.

Edit: And I am not talking about minimizing cost of salaries, I am talking about how much a good software engineer should demand. If he can replace 10 salaries with one then he has a lot of leverage he should use to get a higher salary, if the company isn't paying him then he should leave for a company that appreciates his skills. Plenty of companies pays premium money for premium talent.

[3grdlurker]

I mean, if all you’re saying is that “better programmers deserve better pay”, then you’re not exactly saying anything groundbreaking and the concept of “10xer” is not going to be necessary to make that point. It should also be noted that the salary that you get isn’t just a product of your talent but also of how well you sell yourself. Amongst many other factors, of course.

[mostertoaster]

So y’all don’t disagree with the main point.

There are some specific individual engineers who will get a specific individual task, faster than some other specific engineers.

If those same specific engineers get done many general tasks faster than another group of specific engineers on general tasks than they are just better in general. If some other specific task gets done by the other specific engineers better then it is just different domains.

Either way the individuals matter.

[3grdlurker]

So a fast programmer is necessarily better than one who takes a little more time but pushes out stabler code?

[mostertoaster]

Touché, same quality just one done twice as fast let’s say. Just a hypothetical.

[Swizec]

> will stumble under the right circumstances

Exactly. Not every task or goal fits every person equally well. A good leader understands this and does their best to find that fit.

But it is in my experience not considered okay to talk about this too openly because people get offended.

You wouldn’t ask your best engineer to lead a marketing campaign or your best marketer to design your servers. They’re smart and would figure something out eventually, but who gets the task matters.