Feeling burnt out from my 10x colleague, how to move on from this? | Hacker News Reader

Feeling burnt out from my 10x colleague, how to move on from this?

15 pointsbirdyrooster17 comments

Part of why I have liked my job in the past is because I feel useful. I have a colleague that is so incredibly good and applies himself constantly (works after hours, weekends, during vacations). He writes at least 5x more code than me and its giving me an inferiority complex something fierce. How the heck do I break out of this mentality and become more productive? I feel like I am going off the rails and I often sit down to work and do nothing all day feeling this way. I don't want to end up on a PIP. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thanks!

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Your coworker isn't a 10x developer. He's a workaholic in dire need of an intervention that he won't get because he has a "respectable" addiction. As long as your bosses are happy with your work, he only matters because you let him matter. Cut it out. And if your bosses compare you to him in front of you, start job-hunting.

Some people are passionate and spend so much time working because it’s their fun thing. You enjoy watching sports, playing video games, or travel. This person gets the same joy from their work. And they might feel that way for some time before their priorities change or their tastes shift.

Other people work so much because they are in an organization where it’s expected. And yet others work extra because they think it’s expected (when it may not be expected at all).

I wouldn’t assume the person needs an “intervention”, and frankly I don’t think it’s even appropriate unless it’s somehow detrimental to their well being or family.

> And if your bosses compare you to him in front of you, start job-hunting.

If the other guy delivers 10x the expectation and you deliver 0x the expectation, I don’t think the right decision is to just quit. IMO - get your productivity to what’s a sustainable, realistic level for you. If THAT is measured as 0, then the issue is yours to fix. Changing companies won’t resolve it. On the other hand, if you’re being forced to meet some bar set by some extraordinary individual - irrespective of their motivations for being 10x - then yes, the healthy choice is to find something else.

Op clearly said they have days where they produce basically nothing because they’re paralyzed thinking about others. Frankly that is ops problem to fix. Focus on yourself and tune out the noise.

"If the other guy delivers 10x the expectation and you deliver 0x the expectation, I don’t think the right decision is to just quit. IMO - get your productivity to what’s a sustainable, realistic level for you. If THAT is measured as 0, then the issue is yours to fix."

If the environment is causing the 0x, then I would leave. The more likely thing is that they can do 1x, but 1x will start to look like .5x next to the 10x. When standards are vague and require subjective evaluation, there will be a lot of drift for what 1x looks like relative to the others.

I agree with you. In my opinion,a person should be called a 10x developer if they really do put in the work AND are working for yourself.

Let me give you the old belichick speech: just Do Your Job. Control what you can control, don’t worry about the rest. You aren’t competing with this guy, and if he wants to do the lions share of the work you might as well let him and just focus on the things you want to do.

I understand why that makes you uncomfortable because it sounds like he is so far ahead of you that you can't compete. However, perhaps you can help him become a 20x developer? 20x is much more than your current 11x (1x from you and 10x from him). Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month suggested organizing developer teams as an operating theater. E.g. he would be the surgeon and you would be his nurse helping him whatever tasks needs to be done to keep his speed as high as possible. While doing this you would also learn from his expertise.

For example, you could do QA on his code to find bugs, write documentation, manage deployment, merge branches, write glue code etc. If you do this make sure you demand and get equal credit. If, as a consequence of your work, his productivity increases from 10x to 20x, then you are also a 10x colleague.

How do you actually get a job like this? All job ads expect you to be the 'surgeon'.

Intern at a place that isn't hiring with ads like that.

I am long past the intern stage

Stop comparing to others. It can be hard to do but it’s the simple answer. Compare your progress to yourself and what you accomplished yesterday, last week, last month.

Working outside of working hours doesn't make your colleague a 10x developer.

Your question reminded me on an episode of Soft Skills Engineering where they answered basically the same question - https://softskills.audio/2018/08/20/episode-120-layoff-decis... - the relevant part starts at 19:57. It's a great podcast in general.

> (works after hours, weekends, during vacations)

I was working for a company and employees there were working for long hours and weekends. Managers too were doing the same. It was sort of a badge of honour that an employee is working beyond the office hours and also on weekends. It was the culture of the company. Then one day the managers were sent to a workshop on how to identify talent, increase productivity and build a more happy culture.

When they came back from the workshop, a strict dictat was passed that no one will be in the office for more than 8 hours and no work on weekends. So one day I asked one of the managers, why the sudden change? what has changed? And he replied, in the workshop they attended the speakers there said, if an employee is working long hours and working on weekends then either the employee is incompetent, has no ability to delegate or the company has serious problem of allocating tasks to people so that one person is not overloaded with work. This amounts to burnout, sets wrong example to other employees and overtime decreases productivity. All this is not good for the company and the employees.

So, this comparison of 10x with "works after hours, weekends, during vacations" is wrong on so many levels.

That workshop does miss out on acknowledging the "because I want to" aspect which is driven by passion / high interest. Although in that case it still sets a bad example, and I would say also perpetuates a single point of dependency as (depending on the work) you are building systems that only one person knows about.

> applies himself constantly (works after hours, weekends, during vacations). He writes at least 5x more code than me

These are not good things. Ideally you should want to ship as many features with as little code as possible, more parts mean more ways it can break. Working nights and weekends isn't good either, the schedule or scope need changed if people feel that's necessary. Please don't work during vacations barring emergencies, there's nothing good that comes out of that.

I worked with someone like that too, and even though I'm pretty sure we made about the same, I made a lot more hour-for-hour, and my boss found my work perfectly satisfactory. He got more accolades, but I got more time with my family and friends. He also took more time than he thought to get things done, which deteriorated the situation further for him. I hope he's happy at the role he moved on to.

In the face of something like this, I'd maximize my reliability. Sure you'll ship fewer features, but make sure you finish the stuff you start when you say you will, and make sure it absolutely is tested, documented, and functional.

Hope that helped!

There's no magic bullet to solve this because it's an emotional thing you're going through. I can tell you it's irrational (it totally is) all day but I'm not sure it will solve it. On a hunch you sound young, like below 30. It's very possible these things won't disturb you as much when you grow older (you will have other stuff going on like family and you won't feel your entire self worth is defined by your career).

Learn from him until you find someone even stronger than him. Compete with others at your level in the meantime.

Don't measure your self worth in lines of code: it's good neither for you nor for the code.

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