[nvarsj]

It's possible, but harder than almost any other role. There are people at Google/Meta like this. Usually E7/E8 levels, "coding machines". It's much easier to go into a pseudo PM/TL/Director role though to hit those levels and income, so it's uncommon.

You really have to have a passion for coding to put in the hours and be very good at it. Incredibly rare, believe it or not. Lots of people think they are good coders but this is another level. Proof is in your commit/code review count/async comms being 10x-100x of everyone else in your org, and it's clear you're single-handedly enabling delivery of major projects earlier than anyone else could. Think of the pressure of doing this continuously.

[NhanH]

It's not about being rockstar or 10x. He was the chairman of the board (and President of the LLC). Practically speaking, he can work however he wishes within the company. Seeing that he went from CTO role to President role, it's fairly obvious that he got the opportunity to structure the role and the work to best fit him (and probably the company, too).

[ramraj07]

There’s always a hoarde of people second guessing the 10x engineer. Of course it looks impossible to regular folks. I have seen a few people like this. They’re real. Sometimes it’s even worth the dysfunction they cause to see this in action.

[kpandit]

Not commenting about the ppl who are subject of this thread but talking in general. I have been lucky enough to have seen some of these 10x engineers but what is much more common is a 1x engineer feeling and treated like a 10x engineer because they are surrounded by 0.1x engineers.

[Xcelerate]

Haha, that reminds me a lot of this quote from an Atlantic article on Freeman Dyson:

I asked him whether as a boy he had speculated much about his gift. Had he asked himself why he had this special power? Why he was so bright?

Dyson is almost infallibly a modest and self-effacing man, but tonight his eyes were blank with fatigue, and his answer was uncharacteristic.

“That’s not how the question phrases itself,” he said. “The question is: why is everyone else so stupid?”

[wavewrangler]

That’s still 10x. If you think that’s worth mentioning, you should see the 10x engineers swoon over the 100x unicorn.

[vasco]

Same, I've seen it in practice and the numbers didn't lie, week on week on week. But you know, some people are very uncomfortable with someone else being called smart. Worse yet what if they're called smarter than what they actually are? Like an injustice in the universe, but comes from defensiveness I think.

I don't know this guy in particular so I have no clue though.

[NhanH]

I am not second guessing the 10x engineer, that topic is not the one under discussion.

The topic at hand is “how did a high level engineer got to focus on programming”. And I am saying that the reason has to do more with his influence and role within the organization, rather than other reason.

[pydry]

>There’s always a hoarde of people second guessing the 10x engineer.

Because most 10x engineers recognized by management as such are characterized chiefly by building out shoddy software extremely quickly that only they can understand.

In a similar dynamic, Doctors that are scored highly by patients often have pretty bad medical outcomes.

[blurbleblurble]

I've seen the bugs of multiple 10x engineers multiply together for 10^n x bugs

[datameta]

In my experience I have encountered two 10x engineers:

1) Moves fast, flexes their authority to sweep small stuff under the rug until it is out of scope and can be "fixed real quick" later. Often leverages many subject matter experts through effective and persistent communication and learns quick enough to get PRs through the door (that sometimes need "quick" fixes later). Enjoys selecting items that benefit their career the most, at the expense of others on their team. Mentors only enough to onboard and increase his team's yield, not to aid their careers. Fueled by the recognition and validation of peers through PR/project completion.

2) Gets shit done, is the SMI themself. Solo code cannon, but PRs go in clean, beautiful to look at. May not get along well with some but not necessarily abrasive to work with especially being part of their direct team. Can be a great altruistic mentor if they spare 5% of their time. Enjoys what they do, and the technologies they work with. Fueled by personal satisfaction in their achievements, and in uplifting their team.

[pixl97]

Typically when you see the type 2 engineer, they are also an architect. It is very rare that they don't seem to have knowledge of nearly the entire system and all its interactions.

[chucke1992]

Sorry, but what is SMI?

[datameta]

I just engaged in the kind of acronym abuse I don't enjoy receiving! It stands for Subject Matter Expert.

[potatopatch]

> and it's clear you're single-handedly enabling delivery of major projects earlier than anyone else could.

You have to watch out with that.. I've seen whole projects pushed through by management where no one else was involved enough to review normally, but everyone had an interaction that implied they had only seen the top of the iceberg of problems with it.

[throwawaaarrgh]

This is a well debunked myth. You can commit a lot of code and commit better quality code, but there is an upper bound on productivity. If you don't get enough rest the quality diminishes.

Management and leadership of a team has a way bigger impact than any single individual contributor could ever have. Humans are generally limited not by intelligence but by motivation and vision. Directing people to achieve what you want is what allows the scaling of innovation.

Hero worship is a very human thing, but unscientific.

[nvarsj]

I'm not discounting management or leadership. These are also very critical roles that can make or break organisations. But I'd challenge your assertion that management has a "way bigger impact" than a single IC can have. Both are critical at companies doing internet scale products.

[sasaf5]

Maybe Google and Meta are different than my company, or maybe I am not in the league of such star coder, but in my experience as soon as a demo of my code is delivered I am immediately launched into managerial mode coordinating other devs working on my code. I came to just accept it.

[mindesc]

It could be also a sign of dependency hoarding and making you the bottleneck of the whole project. Bad architectural decisions, narcissistic need of importance or both. With those hours your partner starts to date with your friend. With experience I can assure you that position is not worth it. Not for you and not for the project. You end up draining your imagination. Over fitting is emerging in programming like it is emerging in the machine learning.

[visarga]

> Over fitting is emerging in programming like it is emerging in the machine learning.

That's a nice insight. I have been in that place many times, I was overfitting on my own imagination.

[mindesc]

Filling up that mana bar is not easy.