Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1-KB-OK | Hacker News Reader

How much of being a 10x dev comes down to understanding the existing system really well and being able to iterate quickly?

I wouldn't call myself a 10x dev but at my last startup I was very productive, definitely more than expected at my skill level, because early on I had a lot of access to the people who designed our (undocumented, untested, and buggy) backend system. Then when I got a feature ticket (consisting of 3 words) I was able to quickly bang it out and deliver it, whereas other more senior engineers struggled because they didn't fully understand how the backend microservices actually worked and talked to each other.

Now I work at a big tech co and I'm in the latter position: I have a hard time understanding our complex CI/CD, and don't have nearly as much understanding of all the existing components. As a result I'm not nearly as productive and back to feeling like a 1x or 0.1x dev.

View on HN

Of course a 10x dev understands the existing system, but it's more than that. A 10x dev IMO, understands how to logically take apart and put together a system. I find it amusing that we recognize grand masters in chess and elite performs in other fields, but don't wish to acknowledge that such people exist in our fields.

What I have seen with such developers is that they can jump into a system they have no idea about and ramp up faster than most people. I don't believe that everyone can be a 10x, I also don't believe that everyone that can be a 10x is even going to reach that field. From what I have seen, these folks are the sorts that enjoy working on non user centric app. They hate those ambiguities, so you might find them in security, or working on compilers, networking and lower level sort of codes where it's possible to conquer whatever demon that will arise from the code. It's almost impossible to WIN in user centric app where what's correct is subjective.

> I find it amusing that we recognize grand masters in chess and elite performs in other fields, but don't wish to acknowledge that such people exist in our fields.

It’s easy to rank people playing a zero-sum game where the only thing that varies is opponent, use ELO and call it a day. Software development is more complicated because the problems and quality of solutions aren’t even clear. So to me it makes sense that we don’t have software development grandmasters outside of things like IOI.

I personal believe problems and quality are pretty clear. The challenge is in understanding what the problem is, which is not a "programming" activity, but rather a communication activity. You could have 2 customers who want a solution that clash and conflict, if you make one happy, you make the other sad. No matter how you tackle it, you lose.

e.g. You build something for sales that makes customer service unhappy or vice versa.

You build something and keep it backwards compatible and that makes your prior users happy but puts off new users who were willing to adopt or vice versa.

At this point, it's no longer about programming. Doesn't diminish that those activities are just important. We could also argue that there are 10x user interface and interaction designers, 10x project managers, 10x product managers, etc. The confluence of such folks is a beautiful thing to experience, however it's not needed, just 1 or 2 of those with a bunch of "average" folks can ship and release a really good product.

I disagree that it’s almost impossible to win with what is essentially UI and UX challenges.

Part of it is subjective yes but a lot of the field can be measured and ranked in terms of quality and effectiveness.

> I find it amusing that we recognize grand masters in chess

What would you consider the chess of software development?

How would you rank the participants?

I took a new job this past fall, and I found our "git push to production" pipeline to be quite opaque. I solved this by taking on small projects to implement incremental improvements: improving log level configuration for production, simplifying database migrations, etc. I learned a bunch about different parts of the system, and it gave me a chance to gain some visibility in a good way. And each improvement helps me feel more productive, and that increase in perceived/actual productivity comes from better tooling or having knowledge of how the system works.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com