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Comment by Herval_freire | Hacker News Reader

>Yeah that was an interesting read. I like the concept of a -10x engineer because they definitely exist

I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5x, 2x, or 3x engineers exist at most. 10x is a huge exaggeration of human capability.

Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. If such a person exists it will be so rare I estimate that most people haven't ever encountered an actual "10x" engineer. Even a 3x engineer is super rare. I can see something like 2x happening where a project that takes a year is done in 6 months. That is rare but plausible.

You also might get a lead who can ramp up the effectiveness of an entire team by say 3x at most. If the size of the team was N, then it's N*3X. If N is like 4 then it's a 12x increase. This is the closest thing to an actual 10x engineer. But it's not actually a 10x engineer here it's just better management.

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> You also might get a lead who can ramp up the effectiveness of an entire team by say 3x at most. If the size of the team was N, then it's N*3X. If N is like 4 then it's a 12x increase. This is the closest thing to an actual 10x engineer. But it's not actually a 10x engineer here it's just better management.

All of that are arbitrary numbers. 10 is arbitrary and not actually measurable, but your 3, 4 are as well.

But I think you're on the right track with this thinking. "10x engineer" does not make things 10 times as fast as "1x" engineer does, they do qualitatively different things

Take an example of an engineer who sees through the bullshit of a "cloud architect" who specifies a complicated architecture with novel technologies to pad his resume. Cutting down on this can easily save the project / deliver much faster.

This is kind of an interesting view - 10x engineer does not make projects run 10x faster, but they prevent mistakes which would slow down the project by factor of 10.

Another thing to think about is how basically every human trait follows a normal distribution.

If mean = 1x (by definition 1x should be the mean) and the std is the maximum possible value (also 1x). Then 10x would be 10 std past the norm.

This makes my numbers not arbitrary. 2x or 3x would only be 2 or 3 std past the norm. Which is reasonable (only if the std = 1x which is likely not the case and is most likely lower).

If a 10xer existed, That's like saying you found a human who runs 10x faster then the mean (10mph) or you found a human 10x taller than the mean (5'10"). 10 is arbitrary but 2 or 3 is less arbitrary. Ever heard of the company 3sigma? The name represents Rarest non arbitrary anomaly from the norm.

It is actually fundamentally illogical to think of human ability in terms of a multiple of the mean because no other measurable human quality follows that kind of distribution. Almost all of these measured things follow the normal distribution.

You are therefore highly highly unlikely to find a 10x engineer or a -10x engineer. This applies even to things like engineering leadership.

When viewed from this lens you can actually see that it's actually very unlikely for even the best leader to improve the productivity of every member of his team by even 2x. So I take that back. Likely what we are seeing is something like a 1.1x.or 1.2x increase and our minds are exaggerating the effect like an optical illusion.

The concept of measuring any human trait along multiples of the mean via 1x or 2x or 3x or 10x is fundamentally unrealistic when you take a data driven viewpoint of normal distributions. Everyone on this thread is erroneously following this model and while my instincts were more tempered, to a certain extent even I'm following this erroneous model as I declared 3x to be within the realm of reality.

We are all going about this all wrong (including me), the data driven conclusion is that at best you can find 2x engineers and they are freaking rare (because the actual std is nowhere near 1x). The maximum likely delta between the best engineer and worst engineer is 4z, where in this case the z represents 1/2x or an engineer half as good as the average.

Likely people are anecdotally seeing this 4z delta and their mind is exaggerating the delta to 10x. From what we know of statistical reality an actual 10x is unlikely to happen at all.

> ...and the std is the maximum possible value (also 1x). Then 10x would be 10 std past the norm.

Sorry, but this is a completely arbitrary definition and honestly one I've never seen so far.

It's not arbitrary. Theoretically the max range of the std is infinite. However because the input values are limited in range the std also becomes limited. You're thinking of it in terms of an infinite range from negative infinity to positive infinite. In terms of what we are dealing with practically things like IQ, height or engineering effectiveness are on a scale of 0 to infinite.

So for IQ, or height, no one can have negative or zero height. This limit effectively limits the std. It is not arbitrary. Try it.

For a distribution of integers on a range from 0 to infinite, let's say the mean is 1. The std will also have a maximum value of 1.

If you add extreme data points to change std, you will also change the mean.

This makes sense right? If you add say 9999999 to a distribution of numbers to keep the average the same you have to counterbalance it with a -9999999 or something like that. But however because the domain is limited from 0 to infinite you can't do that. So effectively the maximum value of the std is the mean itself assuming that the system is normally distributed.

> So for IQ, or height, no one can have negative or zero height.

For height, sure, but since IQ scores are defined by the standard deviation of 15, a negative score is possible (you’d expect a single-digit number of people in the world population to have such scores.) Not sure if the typical test resolution is sufficient to distinguish that, though.

Negative IQ? The test should be the definition of IQ, the statistical distribution doesn't define IQ. If the statistical distribution is saying you can have negative IQ but it is fundamentally impossible to score that amount on the test then the statistical model is the one that doesn't make any sense.

In other words the statistical model is not an entirely accurate model of the IQ test. Which to me is what IQ is. If negative IQ exists what does it even mean? These numbers have to have some physical actualization. It doesn't make sense for IQ to be some measure of some factor that's impossible to ever actualize.

That's just my interpretation though. Regardless of this though, it is highly highly unlikely for engineering productivity to go that deep into the negative. It's also fundamentally impossible to have infinite productivity too. The real domain is for sure some fixed range of numbers which makes the std for sure limited by the distance of the mean to the first number in the range.

By this logic, A 10x engineer is analogous to someone with 1000 IQ or 58 feet in height. We have intuitions about this that is inline with the statistical outcomes I outlined above... and it makes sense to apply these intuitions to the concept of 10x engineers.

Your interpretation that "10x engineer" has to mean 10 standard deviations is completely arbitrary.

I didn't say it has to mean that. 1x is the average. We agree on that. The std can be anything. But the max possible std is 1x. that's all I'm saying.

You can now define the std to be whatever you want up to 1x. So I take the most ludicrously large std then interpret what the term 10x means in terms of the maximum std.

10x is in this case, 10 std from the norm IF 1x was the std. So the 10x concept is ludicrously improbable. The real std is likely much lower than 1x this making the existence of a 10x engineer even less likely.

This isn't arbitrary. This is the definitive interpretation using statistics. Science so to speak. If you like to interpret 10x under some crazy uneven scaling or use some other methodology other then science, be my guest. But such actions wouldn't be conducive of a 10xer would it? Which further supports my point.

> The std can be anything. But the max possible std is 1x. that's all I'm saying.

And it's wrong. Read the title of this discussion again, "How to be a -10x Engineer" and think about what it means for max. std value.

> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month.

You've really never met this person? Feels like more or less everyone with real expertise should be able to do this in the right job.

Every competent and qualified engineer should be able to do the job of 10 competent and qualified engineers?

The statement that every engineer can be a 10x engineer is recursively paradoxical. If a 10x engineer existed, in my mind, he would immediately be able to identify this logical error.

I didn't say "competent and qualified engineers". I said "experts".

I won't waste any more words on someone who willfully misunderstands them.

> You've really never met this person?

Nope. I've never met anyone who can complete in a month what it takes an average coder a year to complete.

Neither have you.

TempleOS anyone?

I don't know. It was really made over a long, long time by a person working at it virtually full-time, I bet much more than 40h/week. I remember Terry posting LoseThos (or whatever it was called at before that) it in the OsDev forums in the early 2000s, and he had already been working at it for quite a while. Plus, at least back then, it was more of a novelty toy-like OS-simulacrum than a real OS. There were much more impressive projects at the OsDev forums at the time, with people running real app, connecting to the internet and talking to 3d cards.

> Nope. I've never met anyone who can complete in a month what it takes an average coder a year to complete.

i've built in two weeks something that took another guy 5 years to not even quite finish. with better performance, reliability and extensibility across the board.

that's a factor of 130x (or more!). how do you want to divide that up between the two of us? if he's 0.01x, how rare must he be for the "average" to still be sitting at 1x?

In my time at Google, I saw numerous projects completed that a whole army of me could never complete (according to the required standards). There are many such problems where throwing more bodies at it won't help; genuine insight is necessary. I'm surprised you haven't encountered this.

In some domains and markets they're probably a genuine myth.

Remember, for every Bellard, Carmack or jart: there's at least 100,000 glue engineers who are just trying to cash in some easy VC checks - can't blame them at all.

I don't know... As you imply, there's a lot of mediocrity among those 100,000+ glue engineers trying to cash-in. Being 10x faster/better/whatever than the average of that is nowhere near as challenging as being 10x compared to the average kernel contributor or systems programmer. Which makes being Bellard and Carmack even more impressive.

a 10x engineer might not exist. A -10x engineer (or more accurately: a 1/10x engineer) definitely does.

This article isn't about engineers that make your team better; it's about engineers that make your team worse.

The distinction is important: someone else already wrote that the -10× person will move you further away from the goalpost, while the 10⁻¹× counterpart is still moving towards it, only slower.

That's a good point. If your team has an 0.1x engineer, you'll still get to your goal eventually. If you have a -1x engineer, you might be going in the wrong direction to ever finish your project.

> a 10x engineer might not exist

10x engineers do exist, but they're vanishingly rare. I actually met one once. He eventually burnt out and left the industry permanently.

> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month.

The true 10x engineer looks at the project, sees the inherent needless complexity, goes back to the sponsor and uses his business knowledge to renegotiate the specs. Leading to a reduced scope with 98% of the business value and 10% of the work.

> I don't believe 10x engineers actually exist. Maybe 1.5x, 2x, or 3x engineers exist at most. 10x is a huge exaggeration of human capability.

I think the reason so many people have doubts on the existence of 10x is that they might have never encountered one.

I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Useless to say they loved him and the next summer they tried to get him back, even offering a signing bonus for an internship (something they considered unheard of) but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. You can guess the comp was probably already 3x what his previous job was offering. Of course, he wouldn't return.

There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0][1] (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning [2]). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally). When hiring is red hot, they might completely disappear from the hiring pool by junior year.

> Get this, say a project takes a year to complete. The concept is saying a 10x engineer can do this in about month. If such a person exists it will be so rare I estimate that most people haven't ever encountered an actual "10x" engineer. Even a 3x engineer is super rare. I can see something like 2x happening where a project that takes a year is done in 6 months. That is rare but plausible.

That's thinking in terms of bricklaying. 10x, like Carmack or Woz for example, bring completely new ideas and paradigm shifts. Think of the engineering happening at Xerox PARC for instance.

[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

[1] http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/

[2] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...

A 10x engineer is someone who helps ten people around them be twice as good.

Negative 10x

Oh man. My eyes just skipped over that negative sign every time. Now it makes sense. I thought the article was sarcastic. I'm blind.

Why do you assume 3 is an okay number but 10 isn't, it seems quite arbitrary.

At the end of the day it is 10x what, tasks closed (features, bugs, etc) at same or higher quality? Terrible metric but those people exist.

But you can also be a 50/100x engineer if the metric becomes value rather than tasks closed. E.g. convincing key stakeholders their project is a bad idea can save millions, years and companies.

There's plenty of such moments to make huge differences and they compound.

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