Ask HN: How to Become a 100x Engineer?

I know a few people who I would consider to be in the 10x to 100x range. It really requires the extraordinary convergence of a few RNG factors. All these people I know are the types of people who are extremely intense about everything they do - marathon runners, extremely jacked bodybuilders, etc. They generally don't waste any time with vices such as drugs, video games, binge watching, etc - instead they really enjoy coding and spend every waking minute writing or reading code because it just genuinely interests them. That's what's tough - you need to be predisposed to being obsessive about things, and you need to naturally be able to redirect this energy into computers. Oh, and you also need good social skills, because nobody will want to work with you if you're weird. I'm honestly not sure if these things can be cultivated if you aren't naturally like this. I like computers and I'm obsessive, but not enough to give up all my vices, haha.

The quickest way to become a 100x Engineer is to first be a 1000x Engineer and start slacking by about 10x.

I think there's a better idea: how should you become a better you.

Attempting to be 100x better "than the rest" strikes me as a _very_ unhealthy approach. To paraphrase an answer I read somewhere else:

"The best way to be a 10x developer is to make 10 of your colleagues twice as effective"

Note that _you_ don't achieve anything more - you've just unlocked the potential elsewhere. It's also immensely satisfying - much more so than being a "rockstar" developer (also known in many circles as the "a*hole").

Looping back to your question:

- look around you - solving a key problem currently ignored could be the best thing you can do for the company - compound interest - invest in making repeated actions better (automation, cookie-cutters etc) - improve efficiency - IMO docs, single source of truth are typically seriously undervalued leading to questions and mistakes both of which waste a lot of time - take a healthier attitude - it comes across to me as a rather immature "look at me, aren't I _amazing_" desire which will rub people up the wrong way. - learn at every opportunity - senior devs don't know everything - I've also learnt from kids still at school, sales people, friends...

You could do it by specializing in a specific area and building automation tools as you go. No reason this can't keep increasing the multiplier. Finding others who want to join you can accelerate the process. Certainly a pair of you could do 100x better than 2 regular engineers doing these as one-off tasks.

Constantly push your boundaries with your comfort level. E.g. always be working on newer and harder problems.

As an engineering manager, I only really care about hiring for the 1x that the job requires

You have to be working on something that creates a huge amount of economic value.

100x, meaning 100x as productive as the avg? Arguably impossible.

Build up and lead a team of good engineers. You can reach 100x

Step 1: find one Step 2: emulate them

I’ve never gotten past step 1.

How do i become michael jordan?

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