Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer

Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by com2kid on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:24PM (#25171582)

I once had an employee who was by no means a 10x engineer, he was honestly lacking in a couple of technical areas.

He was a 10x catalyst for the team though. Everyone came and talked to him about their problems, he motivated people to learn new skills, and he knew at least a couple developers on every one of our partner teams.

If I wanted to cut through the BS and find out what was really going on, I'd just ask him. "Oh John's team is actually behind schedule, their PM is full of it and their lead is in denial, they'll actually ship a couple weeks late at best."

Was he a 10x engineer in terms of code written? He had his moments for sure (some of which had huge business impact), but his real value was all the connections he had formed.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by sali0 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @07:17PM (#25173741)

The senior engineer on my past team was also this way. He had strong domain expertise, but he was definitely not the best technically. But his greatest gift was his ability to bring everybody together and be a strong mentor the junior engineers. We called him a force multiplier, and he was awarded many times for this.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by dctoedt on Saturday November 21, 2020 @06:23PM (#25173499)

Was this person rewarded for his "glue" contributions?

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by SteveNuts on Saturday November 21, 2020 @06:59PM (#25173663)

As a manager this is the most difficult type of skill to quantify in order to get raises approved.

If anyone has tips for how to sell the value in this, please let me know

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by mixmastamyk on Saturday November 21, 2020 @07:18PM (#25173750)

“We can’t afford to lose this person.” Managers love status and insight. If that’s not enough, improvement is not a primary goal, and likely it’s time to move on.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by SteveNuts on Saturday November 21, 2020 @08:32PM (#25174110)

Might work in a startup but senior leadership at enterprisey companies will not accept that as an answer.

They love metrics and that sort of thing, that's why it's hard to quantify even though it's clearly valuable.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by 737maxtw on Saturday November 21, 2020 @09:22PM (#25174349)

Good leaders will help you and can recall instances where your knowledge helped.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by mixmastamyk on Sunday November 22, 2020 @03:36AM (#25175944)

Then they can lose two valuable folks. Sucks to be them.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by mindhash on Saturday November 21, 2020 @10:30PM (#25174721)

We had a people choice award for such work. And then you could use that in your appraisal.

But yeah, I used to do this just for my own interest of learning. Companies can't accept that only one or two persons are doing this. They would say - its a part of the job.

One thing you can do is keep tab of problems and create a common resource point for all the team. And use some kind of way to show hours saved. Long shot but it holds a substantial promise.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by mehrdadn on Sunday November 22, 2020 @07:23AM (#25176892)

Off the top of my head: how about quantifying it like, "If we didn't have this person, we'd waste X person-hours over the course of the year"? That should help you put a number on it.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by com2kid on Saturday November 21, 2020 @11:11PM (#25174867)

Yes, but I had to constantly fight for it! I'd have to explain to other leads that, yes, his code velocity isn't that good, but he's also the reason I knew I needed to lend your team support last sprint.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by SwiftyBug on Saturday November 21, 2020 @03:53PM (#25172679)

This is what I hope to be for my team as I feel like I'm at least a -3x engineer.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by mixmastamyk on Saturday November 21, 2020 @07:20PM (#25173763)

Embrace a growth mindset and develop your skills.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by blackoil on Sunday November 22, 2020 @08:28AM (#25177269)

He seems like to be a highly skilled product manager than a developer, both are different roles and people should be motivated for the right track.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by hiptobecubic on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:05AM (#25177957)

No. This idea that developers just write code and leave all the "squishy" problems to the pointy-haired bosses is not only wrong, but actively hurts teams. If you move this person from engineering to PM, they will not function in the same way.

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by Fire-Dragon-DoL on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @12:23AM (#25206240)

I don't think the 10x engineer idea was targeted at the coding skills itself. Given that, the engineer you mentioned is definitely a 10x

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Re:Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer by b20000 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @09:24PM (#25174369)

so you valued him for being a little snitch?

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