Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw2016 | Hacker News Reader

throw2016

The whole 10x great developer seems to be an attempt to build an elaborate mythology to con immature and young workers to work themselves to death trying to prove something that is vague, extremely subjective, illdefined and thus unattainble.

Let's spice it up with 10x HR people, 10X CXO's and 10X VPs and hell while we are at it why not throw in the 10x Barista to get Starbucks HR fired up.

Here is a better idea, forget the 10x developer. Show us the 10x code.

View on HN

The famous 10x developers seem pretty easy to find. Carmack, Torvalds, etc. I don't know what "10x" code means, but you could certainly look to codebases from those two to learn. Similiarly with CEOs, with people like Musk or Jobs. Even in fields like writing you have outliers like Asimov or King. Even with your joke example of HR, while I can't think of any examples, you can imagine an HR manager that improves culture and hiring so much the effect is enormous. I don't know if people should bet their careers on becoming an outlier, and there aren't a ton, but these people exist.

By definition exceptional people are difficult to find or they would not be exceptional. Everyone is not a Torvalds or Carmack.

That recognition has come after decades of exceptional work and experience, not by solving test questions in an interview process.

How are you going to find Torvalds or Carmack in an interview process before they have had the opportunity to do all the decades of work and gain the recognition?

This 10x fantasy needs to stop or let's see some 10x code.

Anyone seeking a 10x engineer needs to ask themselves whether they can afford them and if the work on offer is exceptional enough to require that level of talent.

Maybe it's so that "x"'s compound over time.

10x code is the code you didn't write because you knew how to solve a problem simply (usually by knowing about the existence of available tools and approaches, instead of building things from scratch),

Watch this talk [1] if you want to see someone transform horrible code into 10x code.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE

I guess I don't get what you're saying. It seems like your argument is that exceptional people are hard to find so we should give up trying? What on earth is 10x code, or the 10x fantasy? I already gave you easy examples of people that are probably 100x more productive than average in terms of impact, so it's not like someone 10x better than average is a unicorn. I'm not trying to be rude, but "10x code not 10x developers" sounds like a delusional platitude you'd hear from a faux populist politician or something. It means practically nothing.

So this 10x bullshit you're talking about is about people being leaders. Higher up the ladder you are your power to increase productivity or hamper is multiplied.

Comparing impact of regular line developer with leader is comparing apples to oranges.

Becoming leader is a different thing - not everybody wants to or have what it takes to do it.

It's very clear to me what the parent is saying. The people you give as example only got that recognition long after doing the work that established their career. In an interview process at the start of their careers this work had not been done and their talent could hardly have been recognized in an interview process. Actually, after reading Masters of Doom I am pretty sure that a 20 year old Carmack or Romero would not get hired at any company in the entire state of California that has an HR team. This due to personality traits, lacking educational pedigree and poor work history.

Is 10X solely about quantity? I like Asimov, but his stuff is pretty simple. On the other hand, Tolkien didn't write a lot, but it's a lot deeper. Was Tolkien not 10X? Then again, what do you need? CRUD apps probably want an Asimov, but a site that needs high reliability or high scale probably wants a Tolkien.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com