You just described something which is trivial to learn in less than one minute. This lack of experience does not directly speak to their skills or abilities.
Extending your example to illustrate its irrelevance, were I to have spent 60 seconds with this engineer alone just before your little ssh test, he would instead still appear to be a 10x engineer to you.
Focus more on ability and less on what one has or hasn't seen just yet in their careers. I could easily find the limits in your knowledge in seconds and I'm quite sure you could return the favor. I'd gladly hire someone who demonstrates the ability to become a wizard in X and not care in the slightest if they've seen Y and Z yet. I can teach Y and Z to someone like that very easily.
I am not able to ssh into any production instance I’ve deployed. I know how I would but it’s just not organizationally allowed.
The “ecosystem” of development is very large. I’m sure there are parts of the ecosystem that others would know that you wouldn’t.
Maybe this person doesn't quite get how to properly not use a comma between dependent clauses. How could one trust this person to communicate well?
> networking, DNS, firewalls, shell scripting commands, or how to configure the services upon which the application's stack runs, like web servers, application servers, caching services, or even databases...
I have known plenty of gainfully employed, 25-year-old software engineers who didn't have experience with each item on this list. That's perfectly fine; it's easy to teach in one brown-bag lunch session. I'll still take the wizard because those innate abilities can't be taught.
You can teach "networking, DNS, firewalls, shell scripting commands, or how to configure the services upon which the application's stack runs" in a day? This is "Teach yourself C++ in 21 days"-type of stuff.
At any rate, I didn't read that it's not "fine" in TheRealDunkirk's comment. They were just saying that people can have wildly varying skill-sets.
I would say I've been a .1x (uninteresting drudgery, poorly defined goals, toxic workplace) to 5x developer.
The single biggest factor in the 5x instances was a lack of interference. In one particular case, I completely ignored my manager, much to his dismay, and built the system I wanted to. He stopped complaining when integration of new hardware went from weeks to less than an hour.
I don't understand why people demand experience and skills during interviews and then seem to do everything they can to ignore said experience and undermine their workers.
I didn't call you any names. I've also worked in high-functioning teams since before a lot of folks on this site were born. In most cases, I was not the top dog, and there's a good chance that someone else was annoyed by my "contributions." There's also a tiny, tiny chance that I may have had some positive experiences, along the way.
And isn't there a saying, somewhere, about "walking a mile in someone's shoes," or something?
You've got a skewed idea of "nasty". Have a good rest of your day.
I have been working on a project with a bunch of folks, for the last couple of years, that has had its ups and downs, but hasn't had any of that nastiness that was so depressing, in my work life. I now know that it can be better. It's no longer just "wishful thinking." I now have proof. I had to go through a pretty rough patch, to get here, and I don't recommend the process to anyone.
I was sharing that. For me, it's a good thing.
And your post definitely was "nasty," and I was supposed to understand it as a personal attack. It was delivered as such, and was received as such.
Have a great day.
I can confirm.
I have no idea, whether or not I'm a "10X" programmer, but I do tend to work quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I often piss off the people I'm working with, because the job is done, before they have had a chance to interfere with^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h contribute to the project.