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Comment by derek1800 | Hacker News Reader

Neither of these types align with my definition of a 10x engineer. From my experience, they are engineers that understand both product/business as well as the technical side such that they can drop requirements that add a very small amount of improvement and in turn it significantly reduces implementation cost/complexity. They have the ability to instantly visualize system design and architecture for any features/new items enabling to quickly make these realizations and move fast. At the end of the day the ROI is what matters and SDE resourcing/capacity is the most limited resource. I have seen 100 SDE week projects turned into 4 weeks from individuals with this skillset.

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This is exactly it. The idea of a 10x engineer isn't one who codes a similar implementation 10x quicker, that's ridicules and clearly taking the idea too literally. There's a clear upper bound on implementation efficiency, and it's probably below 10x. There is, however, no upper bound on efficiencies gained through creative problem solving.

The real magic, as you noted, is in understanding the business and being an expert in creative problem solving. A 10xer might develop a tool that thousands of people in the company use and saves millions of hours of time. Or they might design a system with the absolute minimum of complexity, that is a joy to work on and reduces turnover and increases feature velocity. Or, they might just learn to say NO a lot and cut scope creep and allow the company to deliver what's actually important.

I imagine some people don't believe in 10x engineers, because they work really boring jobs where creative problem solving isn't that important. When the implementation is straightforward there's not going to be that much of a gap between the worst and the best. But even in a boring job there is ample room to be a 10xer, you just have to think outside of the box more, understand the business, and understand what's causing friction in implementation.

I agree, the efficiencies of a 10xer are usually in creative solutions to business problems, and 10x would be on the conservative side of what I’ve personally seen achieved. Unfortunately there are also .1x developers that don’t understand the business, or it’s not part of their role. They crank out tickets of rote changes in a pre-existing system. Any large or architectural work is turned into tech debt because they hamfistedly cram it into some existing system or use whatever tech/pattern they’re used to rather than reasoning about the problem and solution from the ground up. This is an organizational problem as much as a personal one. I’ve seen this a lot with offshore workers because they don’t get to see and interact with as much of the business without a lot of effort and support from the org.

I've seen what you described as ".1x developers". It's not a big deal, usually because businesses, that hire .1x engineers, rewrite their entire products every 5 years or so. And when you start fresh from scratch, it doesn't matter if you are a 10x or a .1x: business only cares about pushing something to production as fast as possible. Technical debt will be fixed in the next batch in 5 years... by rewriting.

In more serious/long-term companies, since the interview process is more difficult, you don't usually encounter .1x engineers and what I've described doesn't happen.

All in all, there's room for everyone (.1x and 10x)

I agree with your statement. A 10x engineer doesn’t deliver code 10x faster but rather delivers 10x value to the company. They are more than an engineer who plugs code in an IDE. They are a company man/woman who understands the business, business processes and the customer. A 10x engineer can anticipate the needs of the sales and finance teams. They understand how technology can impact the customer or how the business generates revenue. A 10x engineer isn’t always the person who places 1st in a coding competition or knows how to write every sorting algorithm without reference.

Agree with your observation that there is a huge value in having someone that is super technical but still have a deep understanding of the product and business. Exactly for the reason you stated, being able to filter out implementation complexity without reducing the value to customers. In most organizations that I worked on this was done by the first line R&D managers, but I do agree that in some cases people that spent long period of time in managerial role might miss the technical complexity areas. Thx for your comment.

I’ve heard the term Product Engineer used to describe those qualities.

I'd prefer the term Engineer... I'm not sure why the best engineers need a separate job description!

Because there are many ways to be a developer, and it depends on your role and your product to say what is the most effective. Sometimes "10x" is a matter of fit.

Consider an engineer who is dedicated to performance. In the wrong organization, this kind of person can be harmful or neutral. However, if the same person at Twitter in the "fail whale" era, they may be a key contributor to keeping the organization afloat until more substantive changes take effect.

In a B2C company, product engineers are more evident. At a B2B in a sector that isn't self-evident, the same product engineer may not have the domain expertise to contribute in the same way.

It is one aptitude that many effective engineers have, though.

Sounds like you just want a unicorn.

Actually, what he describes is just ‘common sense’ from people that think for themselves. The problem is that these people don’t do well in the education-hiring-promotion pipeline. They’re seen as disagreeable and threatening. You can’t change a 100-week project into a 4-week result without trashing a lot of people’s big ideas. They might have one home run, but then get isolated into a corner because nobody wants their work criticized. Then they learn to keep quiet and count out the days to retirement just like everybody else.

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