Like so many discussions that bring out the same old discussions year after year, this one is marred by
1) Oversimplification
2) Arguing over semantics
The term 10x engineer is particularly bad because it implies something: that some engineers are just generally 10 times more productive than others. I'm pretty sure most engineers would be vehemently opposed to their performance or value being quantified, so why do we even bother arguing about it?
If I remember right, this term was inspired by some study that showed that some students did their CS homework at a school (CMU?) 10x faster than other students, and the implication that some engineers are just that much better than others as to deserve distinction.
Anyway, this is obviously true. There are some things that simply can't be written or designed by the average coder (or teams of average coders, for that matter), say important bits of the Linux kernel, key optimizations for your latest AAA titles, hairy distributed protocols, etc. No amount of project management will turn a team of average coders into one able to produce such things. In these case, the exceptional coders are more like ∞x than 10x.
And in other cases, you might only see a marginal improvement in performance if at all. If the task is particularly dull, a previously ∞x coder might turn completely unproductive.
Can we just all agree the term is stupid, evokes a sort of reliance on metrics we all hate, that hiring a team is more complicated than assigning value to coders and maximizing, and just move on?
1) Oversimplification
2) Arguing over semantics
The term 10x engineer is particularly bad because it implies something: that some engineers are just generally 10 times more productive than others. I'm pretty sure most engineers would be vehemently opposed to their performance or value being quantified, so why do we even bother arguing about it?
If I remember right, this term was inspired by some study that showed that some students did their CS homework at a school (CMU?) 10x faster than other students, and the implication that some engineers are just that much better than others as to deserve distinction.
Anyway, this is obviously true. There are some things that simply can't be written or designed by the average coder (or teams of average coders, for that matter), say important bits of the Linux kernel, key optimizations for your latest AAA titles, hairy distributed protocols, etc. No amount of project management will turn a team of average coders into one able to produce such things. In these case, the exceptional coders are more like ∞x than 10x.
And in other cases, you might only see a marginal improvement in performance if at all. If the task is particularly dull, a previously ∞x coder might turn completely unproductive.
Can we just all agree the term is stupid, evokes a sort of reliance on metrics we all hate, that hiring a team is more complicated than assigning value to coders and maximizing, and just move on?