I was a 10x engineer and I’m sorry

Re:I was a 10x engineer and I’m sorry by jimbokun on Thursday July 18, 2019 @11:46AM (#20471029)

Of course there are far more productive engineers, but this man, while good at his job, and the description of a "10x" engineer in the cited twitter thread, are nothing like actual 10x engineers.

The ultimate "10x" engineer, to me, is Peter Norvig. (Maybe a 100x engineer?)

For fun, he knocks out a spell checker on a plane ride:

https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

In very concise, well documented, easy to read and understand code, with good performance.

This isn't because Peter doesn't have to look at documentation or has a black desktop background. It's because he can look at a problem and come up with elegant and creative solutions other engineers wouldn't even think of.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I was a 10x engineer and I’m sorry by 4ntonius8lock on Thursday July 18, 2019 @05:49PM (#20474237)

Thank you for explaining so succinctly what a 10x engineer is. In fact, that's a 10x for many professions that lend to high creativity and experience.

This out of the way reply to a comment on a post that's a reply to a twitter storm.

This here, this is a major issue I have with 'news'. We are many times busy discussing crap, which is well defined and easy to understand. But the mundane, easy explanation fails to be bait worthy.

Instead what gets picked up is the most extreme, strident and far out explanations. And these seem to dominate public commentary.

jimbokun summarized what a 10x engineer is, in an off hand comment, better than all the fuss that started his comment.

[ Parent | on HN ]