[thr_ddv]

The reason why we don't have rockstar engineers is because the markets been filled with talentless hacks who can't code their way out of a paper bag without a jira epic breaking it down for them.

I had the pleasure of pair programming with ye olde rockstar for two weeks and we added more value in those two weeks to the company than the rest of the team did in a year.

I'm the cto I should know.

[rockstar-guy-23]

Appreciate the candor. But we're all just here to get our fill, baby. B)

I only rockstar when my incentive structure has an unbounded ceiling. If you're paying me a salary, plus meager bonus, plus some bennies, plus some lottery tickets -- you're gonna get me at my 40-60%. Just enough to be above average.

Throw in some profit-sharing, and now we're talking, baby. What ever happened to that? Share some of the pie and I'll jump as high as you need me to.

Anything else is just foolish!

[apsurd]

Why is it foolish? I get the cynical attitude around not feeling like you're being taken advantage of; feeling like a fool. Is that the core reason? It's the sentiment (nothing wrong with that)

I ask because while I don't reject this position, isn't there something to be said for intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation: one's internal notion of excellence, pride, discipline, respect, mastery, craft, grit... insert various honoring-self words.

Seems precarious to me, to let external dictate ones concept of value. Btw, I suffer from "doing my best" so that's why I'm curious, I am not shilling for BigCo.

[rockstar-guy-23]

You bring up good points. And like all good points, they stand off to the side and proclaim nothing -- or atleast not enough that it's easy to refute them. So the only guiding light left is our values -- and what we personally believe.

I do not have notions of excellence, pride, discipline, respect, mastery, craft, grit, or anything of higher substance inside of me. At one point in my life, I'm sure I did, but they have been beaten out of me. Some have been taken advantage of by the ulterior motives of others; and some have simply not been conducive to achieving my goals (i.e. having fun, putting bread on the table, not ending up in the streets, living a leisurely and relaxed life, etc.).

In another vein, one could make the argument that the precarious thing is to tie one's intrinsic motivations -- those little devils inside of us -- onto a "job." That job will one day end, and you will have to find another as an effective outlet for those little devils; otherwise depression and all sorts of psychological illness will start encroaching. If one wishes to keep one's values strong, why make them dependent on uncontrollable things? Unless you are independently wealthy (if that is the case, I can offer nothing), there will be times you will be required to make sacrifice of your values to "get the job done." You will have to be sloppy, amateur, lazy, selfish, and maybe even villainous to do what needs to be done. At that point, you can hold strong and suffer the consequences, or you can relent, tell yourself you are temporarily setting aside higher ideals (it never is temporary), get the job done... and suffer the consequences.

Tying your soul, your essence to such a thing is precarious. Putting your heart into things that will require you to abdicate your integrity is foolish. You will end up hurt, broken, and missing pieces of yourself. It is better, and more sustainable, to save that sort of thing to matters that aren't directly related to your survival. Otherwise, to charge steadfastly into what one knows will be suffering is noble, but foolish.

[manicennui]

I think I'm falling for you.

[apsurd]

This is a really helpful reply. Thank you. Some thoughts:

Excellence is not in contrast to fun, leisure, and relaxation; it's made that way via Capitalism and hustle culture.

> In another vein, one could make the argument that the precarious thing is to tie one's intrinsic motivations -- those little devils inside of us -- onto a "job."

Well said. I suppose it does take more energy, effort and soul really, to constantly decouple one's job from identity and worth. That one's internal values _ought_ to permeate through one's life "authentically" is certainly easier said than done.

Thanks again for responding in earnest. I'm convinced lol.

[nathants]

amen. first rule of economics. incentives drive behavior.

to ignore incentives is folly. they drive the behavior of others around you as well.

bad incentives lead to endless kingdom building and mediocrity. good incentives lead to a brighter future.

[mjr00]

"Talentless hacks" is a bit too far, but it's very true that over the past decade, software development has been flooded with people who don't care about software development: people who never touched a desktop computer until university, where they only went into CS because they knew a $150k starting salary at a cushy job was waiting on the other side.

Nothing wrong with them doing this, of course. And they're very smart people. But you really can tell the difference between "software developer who takes pride in their work and wants to build something great" versus "software developer who wants to pay their bills". It's the difference between the developer who responds to a packaging problem by learning their build and dependency management system inside out to understand what's going on, versus the developer who copies and pastes from SO/ChatGPT until it works for some reason and moves on with their life.

Granted, not all software development companies deserve the former. But a tightly focused startup with 50 developers from the former category can absolutely dominate the market, at least until they get acquired, as we've seen so many times before: e.g. WhatsApp, Instagram, OpenAI.

[mindentropy]

>Nothing wrong with them doing this, of course. And they're very smart people.

On what basis are they smart?

[anthomtb]

Two weeks? You're the CTO and had a rockstar programmer sitting next to you. Why didn't it take one?

[Solvency]

Since when is the CTO expected to be to be a rockstar programmer? CTOs communicate technology matters to the board that they are beholden to. And they manage the technology teams within a small region towards the top of their departments pyramid.

These are different skills and responsibilities from being an elite rockstar developer.

[indymike]

CTO here. I spend little time with the board, and most of my time with customers and employees figuring out how to use tech to make life better (and make more money) for those customers and employees. I do a good job, the main interaction I have with the board is, "Good job, have more options and a raise... and the valuation of your shares has doubled." The other interaction: "Help us go raise some money." I do a bad job, and the interaction will be, "we need a new CTO".

Oh, and I still code. Because I like to code. A lot.

[Conscat]

It's not that uncommon for the CTO of a small startup to personally develop a huge portion of the technology.

[muh_gradle]

Why hire these people then

[lukebitts]

It's always so funny seeing these kinds of comments from throwaway accounts

[eterm]

Not so funny: someone wrote a tool which attributes throwaways with alarming accuracy.

[swores]

I found the tool submission you're talking about, I remember putting my username into it when it was first shown and it did produce a list of accounts with % probabilities (in my case all unrelated to me), but when I tried doing it again now it says "This user does not have any public activity in the previous three years." for "swores" (and I've multiple comments just this week).

Luckily for the throwaway person above, it says the same for them. But does still show results for some, maybe only big accounts now?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709

edit: ahh, I think it just took a one-time snapshot of the three years leading up to its 2021 creation, as my old username that I changed to swores does show up. So it's an interesting proof of concept that someone could do similar analysis, but not an ongoing tool. So it won't be telling us which CTO to avoid :P

[eterm]

That's not the tool I remember, the tool I remember was similar but it correctly found all my alts, whereas that one does not.

Edit: I think it was this one that has been shut down: https://stylometry.net/

[swores]

Ah, I wonder if any other people have made similar for private use...

[metalforever]

The comment mirrors my experience in the industry over a long period.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

They're not wrong, though.

[thr_ddv]

Because I'd sink the company I'm golden hand cuffed to if I said what I think about the engineers I have to manage. But I do think I'll be bringing in SAP timesheets to share my pain with everyone:

> We need to keep track of the time your spending on your opex KIPs. We can't pay your expected bonus if you don't.

[apsurd]

you're the CTO of a company mostly composed of talentless hack engineers that can't code their way out of a paper bag? You're literally the apex engineering lead; that's so... sad. Do something about it.

[majormajor]

So as cto did you just totally screw up at hiring, or were you brought in later but somehow don't have authority or ability to fix anything??

IME when I've seen a "1/10th engineer" it's almost always been a total management failure.

[thr_ddv]

The budget I have for hiring is tiny and no one on the board believes 10x engineers exist. The choise is between not shipping anything at all or having to deal with said talentless hacks who happen to know more than me about tool X but otherwise slow development to a crawl.

Turns out reading HN comments is not a good way to run a company. Who would have thought?

[majormajor]

I mean I also sure hope nobody is reading your comments to learn about running a company! They'd learn about "not answering the question," though, I guess.

Remind me, whose job is it to convince other execs and the board of the most appropriate talent strategy? Maybe lesson 1 here is "if you're running a company and don't trust your CTO, look for a new one"?

[jstarfish]

It sounds like you hired a personal mercenary, not a 10x engineer. Everybody is more productive when they ignore the rules everyone else is expected to follow.

There's probably nothing wrong with your existing team except it being too large and democratic. One guy can bounce ideas around in his head faster than a dozen negotiating them with each other. I've seen teams like yours, and IME the issue isn't always incompetence, sometimes each of them thinks they're the rockstar. Anytime one of them doesn't get their way, they jam everything up for everyone else.

We've become too democratic as a whole. Nobody follows orders from above; everybody expects to have a say in things they don't even have a stake in. Whenever you get to hiring again, try stacking your team with 2-4 ex-military types and see how it works out for you (it works well for UPS well beyond that scale). You don't get bleeding-edge experience (and never a 10x-er), but you get tax breaks, competence, obedience, people trained to work as a cohesive unit, and you can wave the flag and call yourself a patriot (which helps with government contracts if that's your business).

[cjg]

This: "Everybody is more productive when they ignore the rules everyone else is expected to follow"

[muh_gradle]

> Turns out reading HN comments is not a good way to run a company. Who would have thought?

Literally everyone thought this, and probably even the talentless hacks that you hired. Strange that you had to create a throwaway account to figure this one out.

[sumeno]

Sounds like the company needs a new CTO if all your engineers are talentless hacks

[chinchilla2020]

this is satire, right?