I think I am a 10x engineer sometimes. It's kind of like the tide. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. Also, if you think you are something, are you really that something?

Last week I was pulled into the tail end of a project which had just got pushed back to the end of February for complications. The project was now billed at 3 guys, 3 weeks. After spending an hour in a meeting I came up with a solution that is going to be implemented on Tuesday by one guy. Same risk, but a fraction of the work.

I know most of the time when you think about 10xers you think about some kind of math / programming / algorithm god, but don't discount big picture skills. Unfortunately I'm not sure how you teach big picture skills or put them down on a resume.

I don't think it is possible to really be sure that you are a 10x engineer - it's more of an outside validation thing. Everyone thinks they're really good and that only they run into weird emotional issues that slow them down. People like to rationalize.

If you see one of your co-workers doing 10x the work of your other co-workers at high quality, then it's much easier to label them at a 10x engineer than trying to label yourself. Objective vs subjective.

You are profitable on fix-cost projects only. :-)

can you tell us more about the design alternatives?

grep and a server with 64gb of memory instead of a 4 rack Hadoop deployment.

Congratulations, you are now better than 99% of "data scientists" out there.

I worked with a guy who everyone thought was 10x, I thought he was shit. This guy and another built all the systems for this company, and a product that was the cash cow. Started in 2005 using struts. Everything they built was struts. They duplicated the entire code base for the next web app. There were like four versions of this thing customized to do different things (ie trivial shit like the web sign up form). These guys couldn't even factor out the data access/service stuff into separate modules for reuse.

When it came time to learn Spring, this guy flailed, and wrote Spring like it was struts. In addition, he was a pontificating jack ass, real abrasive personality.

The non technical and business users thought this guy was a super star. I've only quit a job once because of personalities, and this was that time.

If he built all the systems and especially the cash cow, isn't that some objective measure that he's more valuable than the average employee?

Maybe he's messy, but nobody pays the janitor millions of dollars to clean up everyone else's messes even if they tell themselves he's important. Rather, they pay the people who made it worth cleaning up the building in the first place.

One issue some programmers have is discerning that not all code has the same value. I think with code it's harder than with physical things to "know where the value is".

It's obvious, for example, that we don't need titanium cupholders in a car, but maybe titanium rods _are_ necessary to achieve a particular level of performance.

But in software, you'll see programmers doing the ethical equivalent of putting in titanium cupholders "because it's the best" or whatever, with no regard to the cost.

In my experience, a 10x programmer is a 1x programmer who knows where the value is and spends their time on that.

No. It's not creator-janitor thing. It's rather the situation that programmer A makes a huge technical debt, and programmer B must pay him off.

It's poor code design, poor code management.

It's more like:

- irresponsible house developer builds house very fast and very cheaply but he doesn't care about safety or design

- then building is beginning to collapse and tennants have to hire another developer to fix mistakes of previous developer.

They must pay twice! One time - for creation of the building. Second time - for fixing.

Absolutely, I was attempting to illustrate the difference in perspective, and how subjective '10x' is. My comment above fails in this regard.

I sometimes feel like the guy you describe (although perhaps because I do indicates that I am not?)

I have a webapp that I maintain for a family member written, by me, in 2005. It was using WebWork (which became Struts 2) and still is, and I am trying to move it to something more modern in bits and pieces. But it's requiring me to learn a lot, which I am trying to do in the limited time I have.

At my work we do way more modern thing, but so much so that I'm not able to do any UI stuff since they use tech I'm not "hit the ground running" capable of doing. But I'm trying.

I hope I'm not abrasive however.

>> This guy and another built all the systems for this company, and a product that was the cash cow.

Anecdotal, of course, but .. I've worked with quite a few 10x guys in my time, none of them liked Java, most of them would consider Java a reason to quit. It's been a while, I would guess some of them would find Scala acceptable.

I know several 10x Java coders. Honestly though 10x should transcend a language...

Why would it? Suddenly having to always look up your standard library's basic functions will slow anyone down.

10x guys let the tools do the hard work, like IDE to look up standard library's basic functions.

Which language has standard library small enough that people can memorize the whole thing?

JavaScript :) Although I keep forgetting some functions even from JS.

What are the parameters for Date.setFullYear() again? :)

You can learn stuff like that pretty quick.

You are wrong. 10x guys care about product outcome rather than fretting languages. 10x guys certainly use Java in their toolset.

There's no need to turn this into an anti-(fill in the blank) thread.

At present time, Java8 is acceptable (wit lambdas, RxJava, etc.). But yes, you are right: Spring, Hibernate, JBoss, etc. are huge reason to quit.

My own web projects in java 15 years ago were coded in java and glued by JavaScript (Rhino) with templates in JavaScript, which were compiled into bytecode for speed: fast, secure, simple, 10x faster to code.

Yes, just think how many throwaway unicorn greenfield projects these Java developers didn't participate in because they absolutely have to insist on maintaining crufty decade old code bases that actually solve a tangible business problem instead of thinking software is an afterthought to a fluffy full page HTML5 marketing video about revolutionizing the world.

Please don't.

Java actually allows for 10x work because it's so simple and let's you work quickly.

My experience was that most Java apps have a terrible compilation and startup time. I hated working with Java because of this.

10x engineers definitely exist. Know a few and have hired a few. They are not 10x compared to anyone ever, but generally 10x to their currently aged or experienced peers.

They learn for fun. They are endlessly curious. They are incredibly humble and get things done.

They do get more done in their part time hours in the evenings than a full time equivalent. More importantly, 10x really helps with building the quick things quickly and growing them as quickly as possible.

10x developers are 10x more curious, 10x less assumptive, 10x more capable of putting themselves in user's shoes... and much more.

Why would you want to work with someone who is "fierce and mean"? Sounds totally unprofessional.

Ha! Good question. I wrote this comment with out much thought really. He CAN be... maybe "stern" is a better word? He's generally totally professional, nice and friendly, but he doesn't let people push him around, and he pushes back when he needs to. He's "well rounded", how's that?

Good lord I sound like a ridiculous fan boy.

Ah, OK. It's been a few years since I've worked in the sort of place where anybody would need to be "stern" to anyone, but I can remember it! thanks for the clarification.

I imagine it's just a phrasing thing, he probably means someone that sticks up for themselves. I've seen a lot of very effective engineers get bogged down in bad work because they wouldn't push back on ideas/projects that were obviously not great ideas.

This describes me in the past. Don't let him date someone from HR, it opens up Pandora's box about relative value and standard practices with salary negotiation. The largest factor for salary at most companies is how much you ask for rather than your skills or contributions.

However there may be other things he values besides money. Continue to make those great and I'm sure he will continue to enjoy being your coworker.