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Comment by throwthis | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve never met the legendary “10x jerk”. Anecdotally the outperforming engineers are generally nice and humble.

Anecdotally, I have.

During the past 19 years in software I have had the pleasure of working closely with five different 10x engineers.

None of them have been assholes - the opposite actually - once you've gotten to know them. If I were to generalize: most of them are not particularly extroverted, so that may be a cause of misunderstanding.

Some of the 3-5x engineers (they also exist!) have a tendency to treat people as "idiots" until they have proven themselves worthy intellectually/engineering-wise.

That might be a social dynamic thing. Think of how say high school dynamics work. It's never the most popular person that puts others down (it doesn't do them any good), it's the kids that are popular, but not quite.

I would not be surprised if this also held true for engineers. 10x engineers already distinguish themselves through their work output. It's the 3-5x engineers that are good enough to tell themselves that they produce more than your vanilla engineer, but not good enough that they couldn't get lumped up with them. It's that uncertainty that produces viciousness in the attempt to remove yourself from that set.

Unless your show them that your are a "3+x engineer", they'll try to distance themselves from you to not be tainted by association. I guess it also follows that they will be the ones obsessed with 10+x engineers.

Kings aren't vicious, it's their courts that are.

Of all the observations of social dynamics in this thread; this one was so on point that I had to follow up with some sort of affirmation; it's a good point to think about and to watch for in people, whether that's yourself (and I've certainly had to) or your people as a manager, due to the symptoms this situation can breed.

To provide some context for while I feel this is important, when I first moved into BigCO, there was a period of reorgs in my org entirely out of the control of anyone not in "the powers that be". As such; there was a "generation" of new engineers brought in as juniors who were laterally moved multiple times in a few years. New engineers continued to be brought in, but due to the promotion structure of the org, a lateral transition essentially "resets" you, so new grads were coming in at the same level of people who had been delivering for years.

Now; there's another discussion if this relates to the "3x engineer" thing, which I wasn't even going to get into, but for practical purposes these engineers WEREon average performing multiple X better simply by nature of domain experience and rampup. This resulted in different symptoms from different people; the more zen of my peers simply got saddened about feeling looked over for promotions and started considering other options. Many left for other companies. The less zen (myself included) got more "fierce" as a sister post elsewhere put it, realizing that to "catch up" with the career track, high visibility, high impact projects were needed, and that required pushing harder.

To bring some sort of conclusion out of this rambling mess; I'm not sure your statement of "vicious" is the right word, but needing to stand out from that set seems to be an inevitable consequence of how many promotion structures are built, and being aware of this dynamic, engineers can be both better at their job by staying on top of their internal responses and keeping them productive (why I differentiate "fierce" and "vicious"; you can have the former without the latter I think), and Managers can better stay on top of their team dynamic and keep employees happy by realizing these emotions happen, since I find it's an oft under-appreciated dynamic.

Man that ended up being FAR more of an essay than I intended. Hope there was at least one well expressed thought in there.

A lot of people suggest that 10x programmers aren't jerks because they reflexively disqualify jerks from the 10x category. That's wrong and reflects wishful thinking. Do they think Linus is a middling developer because he's also a jerk?

What were they like?

I had typed up a point-wise list but decided against it.

In short, they bullied, insulted and did not inspire co-workers positively, instead demotivating them by acting impatient and making fun whenever interacting about work.

Vague statements, but don't really want to get any more specific.

Trying to recall/summarize how the 10x:ers I worked with behaved, particularly against people who hadn't proven themselves (or were.. well, doing stupid stuff):

Some patterns I have noticed:

They are really eager to share their knowledge if you invest serious amounts of time with them AND you are capable of intellectually challenging them. The only way I have made this work is in-person. It is really time-consuming, but also quite rewarding.

When communicating with random people/strangers in the company via email they can appear cold/hostile.

None of the people I've worked with have made fun of people. The more common (but still as disruptive) reaction when dealing with "stupid" people over email is to "shut down communication" - only delivering the minimum bare facts that a competent person would require.

I can think of two people who might fit this bill. Both have a propensity to jump to conclusions and not fully understand various perspectives before passing judgements and weighting their judgements significantly more than others who are more knowledgeable and familiar with a problem (aka big ego). Brilliant by themselves but very difficult interacting with others.

Imagine a quick thinker from an accomplished competitive programming and math background who has a raging ego and a chip on their shoulder. From what I've observed some companies see this in interviews and won't hire despite solving the technical challenges significantly better than others.

I work with people who, while smart enough, aren't mature enough. Common statements include why "(insert technology or platform or editor) is made by idiots" or whatever because they made a decision to look at certain design choices as strawmen in their argument.

HFS+ not supporting true case sensitivity was one example. Or "I hate spring/struts/etc." just because they once had to deal with a bad codebase.

A lot of it is just tripping over one's ego to me. I don't think you can become a mythical 10x by placing so many filters in front of your work.

Some of the people I've worked with who fit this description have this tendency to jump to conclusions. But they also love debating, and correctly feel no shame in changing their positions once proven wrong.

I have found that many people find debates uncomfortable. I love them. They create value.

(In fact, whenever I meet these people I've met from previous jobs, inevitably we end up arguing intensely about random stuff. And enjoying it...)

The no shame in changing positions is key; it describes the difference between humble and egotistical or science and religion.

I think you're right that many 10xrs like to debate, and that value can come out of debate. However the best 10xr Ive worked with was equally at home with a 3+ hour technical debate or collaborating with folks who don't give their best contributions during debates. Brilliant, efficient, effective, collaborative, quick, and humble.

Somewhat off-topic:

I'm not sure I can be described as "humble". I do however place extreme importance on sincerity, particularly in debates. (Being able to switch positions when proven wrong is another essential part, of course.)

Of course, we are.

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