10x Engineers

14 minute read | Last updated 16-Jul-2019 |  Rant

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Bad Robot Transcript

Morning, everybody. How you doing today in this episode of the show. We’re going to talk about the major nerd fight that happened on Twitter this weekend discussing the 10x engineer. Okay. So what is this fabled 10x engineer will the idea is there are the set of nerdy Engineers are sometimes it’s a hundred X throw out a number X the normal engineers and the idea is no matter what these people are like you should put up with them because they’re going to push your project forward and you’re going to see huge results because these are basically the all stars of code development.

So Shankar Ki Rani who is an investor based in India kicks us off and basically said hey Founders if you find a 10x engineer just grab on do whatever it takes to get them on board because they are going to help your startup get out of those early stages better than anybody it’s worth paying them what you need to pay them to get on because you’re going to get that 10 x result and guess what things.

Savage you think somebody would have dropped. It is better than emacs Remax is better than them or if use tabs versus Is you’re an idiot some sort of Hill fundamental nerd level was really really disgusted. There’s a whole bunch of people who supported Ki Rani and said, yes, absolutely.

If you see a 10x engineer, you should jump on board. Let me summarize my experience because this is not necessarily about just building a product. This is a boat a team that builds that product in the sustainability of that product down the throat of life cycle Sookie running might be actually right in the fact that if you can get a text engineer on board out the door quicker than you normally would but at what cost in his argument is it doesn’t really matter what the cost is because a good manager would be able to handle that cost.

So if you have somebody who’s basically at an a-hole and won’t work with the jerk that’s fine. You can isolate them in an individual contributor in what’s the value of a normal engineering? Caesura output but I would argue that there’s a ton of challenges here. So I’ve been a Active Athlete despite my parents for most of my life.

I’ve played on teams that have had amazing amount of success. I’ve played on teams that were absolutely disastrous now later in life. I’m coaching I coach novice basketball. I was involved in leaving Scouts, which is a non athletic team. I’ve been obviously involved in professional teams my entire life.

I’ve seen this from every angle that I can conceivably think of and here’s what my opinion is in the supplies directly to security teams as well because we’re hitting this guy grasping for any security Talent. You can to meet this need that we have teamfit is absolutely critical. It is by far the most important thing.

So let’s take a sports analogy. If you look at all star teams, especially like in the NBA or if you look on for pro American football or even at you know, you’re peeing football. When you throw the all stars together the ideas like how you’re going to see some amazing things and you do absolutely see some crazy Place fails on basic stuff because the team’s not used to working together in the idea is basically saying hey these people have enough talent that they’re going to overcome the lack of familiar in the lack of teamwork and often they can but there’s also a place with this breaks down because this is sort of the analogy that a lot of people point do is go out tax Engineers are like all stars in sports, but the difference is an All-Star in sports as you have a coach and you’ve management guide these people to make sure that they’re moving forward and there’s only one ball.

You can’t have a tennis player and All-Star player off to the side just doing everything themselves. It’s not going to work. So you need to be able to share and it’s a different analogy but it’s still being applied. So here’s what I would go back and going back to the tech World Hears hears.

What I would say is that if you have a 10x engineer who is producing the output on their own and isolation and you’re trying to get the product out the door. Maybe the right call but that 10x is also called something else technical debt because of the team isn’t up to speed on it.

If the team doesn’t understand the code that’s written the way the solution was how this price houses code actually solve the customer problem. Then it’s not sustainable moving forward. Now you’re locked in and this is where I think a lot of teams find themselves it is that they finally put them in a despite the social cost to swipe teamwork off, but now you have to deal with their output and while it may have passed that flag.

Now you have to live with that reality and that is not worth the cost. I’ve never seen that be worth the cost. What you really need to be hiring here is 14 fit and there are going to be some people who are fantastic just you know, individual turn turn turn in their great with the team, but they’re not going to make everyone around them better.

And that’s fine. You people doing the work you’re going to have people who don’t individually contribute a tongue, but the way they contributed by making everyone around them better. So if you’re looking at one metric Mac hate marks not at putting a ton of code, but anytime works on the team everybody else has a kalpudding 2X.

Well, that’s normally probably worth it for a lot of people right? Or maybe it’s the opposite maybe you know, when marks on the team everybody’s if you don’t put is half but he’s doing tax. That’s the bad situation. That’s just technical. That’s that’s immoral debt, right that’s culture deck because he was the other child has been danced around online.

Is that when you bring someone like that in your culture it is absolutely poison So what’s with this over the last couple minutes here on this broadcast on this show to the security angle right now in security. We’re desperate for Town. You’ve been to the show, you know that I think we’re doing a really bad job of how we solve these problems.

But even if we do fix how we solve the problems we are not at we don’t have enough people so many people have security skills, but that should not mean that you drop your standards to grab just anybody what you need to be looking for his people who are a great team workers great communicators and willing to learn and collaborate not the 10x security engineer.

If you hire a tenant security engineer that cost that culture cost is going to kill any chance you have at retaining the other town. So I think while it’s an interesting discussion and software development when it comes to security teams, it’s absolutely critical to understand that it’s not worth the cost.

There’s no point when you should be killing your team culture, you need to be building on this team culture. You need to be really supporting things because your security team is one piece of a larger Cog where they Be going out and talking to other teams and getting them on board to spread the security responsibilities around remember, it’s everybody’s job to make sure that what you’re building works as intended and only as intended regardless of discussion to see on Twitter.

Also some me a low-grade trolling some witty remarks all that kind of stuff, but it didn’t generate some fantastic legitimate response is a link to some of them down on the descriptions, so you can read through them yourselves. What do you think about the 10x engineer as it applies in software development and especially in security? Let me know.

Hit me up online at Mark and CIA in the comments down below and it’s always by email me at Mark n. C. I hope your setup for fantastic day. We’ll talk to online and see you in the next episode of the show. Morning, everybody. How you doing today in this episode of the show.

We’re going to talk about the major nerd fight that happened on Twitter this weekend discussing the 10x engineer. Okay. So what is this fabled 10x engineer will the idea is there are the set of nerdy Engineers are sometimes it’s a hundred X throw out a number X the normal engineers and the idea is no matter what these people are like you should put up with them because they’re going to push your project forward and you’re going to see huge results because these are basically the all stars of code development.

So Shankar Ki Rani who is an investor based in India kicks us off and basically said hey Founders if you find a 10x engineer just grab on do whatever it takes to get them on board because they are going to help your startup get out of those early stages better than anybody it’s worth paying them what you need to pay them to get on because you’re going to get that 10 x result and guess what things.

Savage you think somebody would have dropped. It is better than emacs Remax is better than them or if use tabs versus Is you’re an idiot some sort of Hill fundamental nerd level was really really disgusted. There’s a whole bunch of people who supported Ki Rani and said, yes, absolutely.

If you see a 10x engineer, you should jump on board. Let me summarize my experience because this is not necessarily about just building a product. This is a boat a team that builds that product in the sustainability of that product down the throat of life cycle Sookie running might be actually right in the fact that if you can get a text engineer on board out the door quicker than you normally would but at what cost in his argument is it doesn’t really matter what the cost is because a good manager would be able to handle that cost.

So if you have somebody who’s basically at an a-hole and won’t work with the jerk that’s fine. You can isolate them in an individual contributor in what’s the value of a normal engineering? Caesura output but I would argue that there’s a ton of challenges here. So I’ve been a Active Athlete despite my parents for most of my life.

I’ve played on teams that have had amazing amount of success. I’ve played on teams that were absolutely disastrous now later in life. I’m coaching I coach novice basketball. I was involved in leaving Scouts, which is a non athletic team. I’ve been obviously involved in professional teams my entire life.

I’ve seen this from every angle that I can conceivably think of and here’s what my opinion is in the supplies directly to security teams as well because we’re hitting this guy grasping for any security Talent. You can to meet this need that we have teamfit is absolutely critical. It is by far the most important thing.

So let’s take a sports analogy. If you look at all star teams, especially like in the NBA or if you look on for pro American football or even at you know, you’re peeing football. When you throw the all stars together the ideas like how you’re going to see some amazing things and you do absolutely see some crazy Place fails on basic stuff because the team’s not used to working together in the idea is basically saying hey these people have enough talent that they’re going to overcome the lack of familiar in the lack of teamwork and often they can but there’s also a place with this breaks down because this is sort of the analogy that a lot of people point do is go out tax Engineers are like all stars in sports, but the difference is an All-Star in sports as you have a coach and you’ve management guide these people to make sure that they’re moving forward and there’s only one ball.

You can’t have a tennis player and All-Star player off to the side just doing everything themselves. It’s not going to work. So you need to be able to share and it’s a different analogy but it’s still being applied. So here’s what I would go back and going back to the tech World Hears hears.

What I would say is that if you have a 10x engineer who is producing the output on their own and isolation and you’re trying to get the product out the door. Maybe the right call but that 10x is also called something else technical debt because of the team isn’t up to speed on it.

If the team doesn’t understand the code that’s written the way the solution was how this price houses code actually solve the customer problem. Then it’s not sustainable moving forward. Now you’re locked in and this is where I think a lot of teams find themselves it is that they finally put them in a despite the social cost to swipe teamwork off, but now you have to deal with their output and while it may have passed that flag.

Now you have to live with that reality and that is not worth the cost. I’ve never seen that be worth the cost. What you really need to be hiring here is 14 fit and there are going to be some people who are fantastic just you know, individual turn turn turn in their great with the team, but they’re not going to make everyone around them better.

And that’s fine. You people doing the work you’re going to have people who don’t individually contribute a tongue, but the way they contributed by making everyone around them better. So if you’re looking at one metric Mac hate marks not at putting a ton of code, but anytime works on the team everybody else has a kalpudding 2X.

Well, that’s normally probably worth it for a lot of people right? Or maybe it’s the opposite maybe you know, when marks on the team everybody’s if you don’t put is half but he’s doing tax. That’s the bad situation. That’s just technical. That’s that’s immoral debt, right that’s culture deck because he was the other child has been danced around online.

Is that when you bring someone like that in your culture it is absolutely poison So what’s with this over the last couple minutes here on this broadcast on this show to the security angle right now in security. We’re desperate for Town. You’ve been to the show, you know that I think we’re doing a really bad job of how we solve these problems.

But even if we do fix how we solve the problems we are not at we don’t have enough people so many people have security skills, but that should not mean that you drop your standards to grab just anybody what you need to be looking for his people who are a great team workers great communicators and willing to learn and collaborate not the 10x security engineer.

If you hire a tenant security engineer that cost that culture cost is going to kill any chance you have at retaining the other town. So I think while it’s an interesting discussion and software development when it comes to security teams, it’s absolutely critical to understand that it’s not worth the cost.

There’s no point when you should be killing your team culture, you need to be building on this team culture. You need to be really supporting things because your security team is one piece of a larger Cog where they Be going out and talking to other teams and getting them on board to spread the security responsibilities around remember, it’s everybody’s job to make sure that what you’re building works as intended and only as intended regardless of discussion to see on Twitter.

Also some me a low-grade trolling some witty remarks all that kind of stuff, but it didn’t generate some fantastic legitimate response is a link to some of them down on the descriptions, so you can read through them yourselves. What do you think about the 10x engineer as it applies in software development and especially in security? Let me know.

Hit me up online at Mark and CIA in the comments down below and it’s always by email me at Mark n. C. I hope your setup for fantastic day. We’ll talk to online and see you in the next episode of the show.