Yes this is how hyperagents work. They keep track of their different attempts to see which results in success. It does require tasks that can be measured.
This is how hyperagents work. They Have the ability to measure improvement in both the meta agent and task agents. There approach requires task agents to tackle tasks that can be empirically evaluated.
A competent manager of a software team or org should also be able to do all the things you mention for ICs minus the coding part while also inspiring, leading, people managing. Hiring an MBA to lead/manage a software product group and engineers without those capabilities is asking for sub par results.
Neither of these types align with my definition of a 10x engineer. From my experience, they are engineers that understand both product/business as well as the technical side such that they can drop requirements that add a very small amount of improvement and in turn it significantly reduces implementation cost/complexity. They have the ability to instantly visualize system design and architecture for any features/new items enabling to quickly make these realizations and move fast. At the end of the day the ROI is what matters and SDE resourcing/capacity is the most limited resource. I have seen 100 SDE week projects turned into 4 weeks from individuals with this skillset.
This is exactly it. The idea of a 10x engineer isn't one who codes a similar implementation 10x quicker, that's ridicules and clearly taking the idea too literally. There's a clear upper bound on implementation efficiency, and it's probably below 10x. There is, however, no upper bound on efficiencies gained through creative problem solving.
The real magic, as you noted, is in understanding the business and being an expert in creative problem solving. A 10xer might develop a tool that thousands of people in the company use and saves millions of hours of time. Or they might design a system with the absolute minimum of complexity, that is a joy to work on and reduces turnover and increases feature velocity. Or, they might just learn to say NO a lot and cut scope creep and allow the company to deliver what's actually important.
I imagine some people don't believe in 10x engineers, because they work really boring jobs where creative problem solving isn't that important. When the implementation is straightforward there's not going to be that much of a gap between the worst and the best. But even in a boring job there is ample room to be a 10xer, you just have to think outside of the box more, understand the business, and understand what's causing friction in implementation.
I agree, the efficiencies of a 10xer are usually in creative solutions to business problems, and 10x would be on the conservative side of what I’ve personally seen achieved. Unfortunately there are also .1x developers that don’t understand the business, or it’s not part of their role. They crank out tickets of rote changes in a pre-existing system. Any large or architectural work is turned into tech debt because they hamfistedly cram it into some existing system or use whatever tech/pattern they’re used to rather than reasoning about the problem and solution from the ground up. This is an organizational problem as much as a personal one. I’ve seen this a lot with offshore workers because they don’t get to see and interact with as much of the business without a lot of effort and support from the org.
I've seen what you described as ".1x developers". It's not a big deal, usually because businesses, that hire .1x engineers, rewrite their entire products every 5 years or so. And when you start fresh from scratch, it doesn't matter if you are a 10x or a .1x: business only cares about pushing something to production as fast as possible. Technical debt will be fixed in the next batch in 5 years... by rewriting.
In more serious/long-term companies, since the interview process is more difficult, you don't usually encounter .1x engineers and what I've described doesn't happen.
All in all, there's room for everyone (.1x and 10x)
I agree with your statement. A 10x engineer doesn’t deliver code 10x faster but rather delivers 10x value to the company. They are more than an engineer who plugs code in an IDE. They are a company man/woman who understands the business, business processes and the customer. A 10x engineer can anticipate the needs of the sales and finance teams. They understand how technology can impact the customer or how the business generates revenue. A 10x engineer isn’t always the person who places 1st in a coding competition or knows how to write every sorting algorithm without reference.
Agree with your observation that there is a huge value in having someone that is super technical but still have a deep understanding of the product and business. Exactly for the reason you stated, being able to filter out implementation complexity without reducing the value to customers. In most organizations that I worked on this was done by the first line R&D managers, but I do agree that in some cases people that spent long period of time in managerial role might miss the technical complexity areas. Thx for your comment.
Because there are many ways to be a developer, and it depends on your role and your product to say what is the most effective. Sometimes "10x" is a matter of fit.
Consider an engineer who is dedicated to performance. In the wrong organization, this kind of person can be harmful or neutral. However, if the same person at Twitter in the "fail whale" era, they may be a key contributor to keeping the organization afloat until more substantive changes take effect.
In a B2C company, product engineers are more evident. At a B2B in a sector that isn't self-evident, the same product engineer may not have the domain expertise to contribute in the same way.
It is one aptitude that many effective engineers have, though.
Actually, what he describes is just ‘common sense’ from people that think for themselves. The problem is that these people don’t do well in the education-hiring-promotion pipeline. They’re seen as disagreeable and threatening. You can’t change a 100-week project into a 4-week result without trashing a lot of people’s big ideas. They might have one home run, but then get isolated into a corner because nobody wants their work criticized. Then they learn to keep quiet and count out the days to retirement just like everybody else.
I moved back to the Midwest from the West Coast once having kids to be close to family and be able to afford a house. I do think it is hard to find the pockets of exciting jobs in the Midwest that pay reasonably well. I personally got lucky with Amazon in Detroit which is an engineering office with exciting projects. One good thing is the pay for Amazon doesn’t change from Seattle to Detroit which is awesome.
I have a book from the 1920's that describes what additives to put into water to prevent it from eroding the lead pipes. Of course back they were only concerned about the pipes and didn't know about (or at least didn't admit) the health problems. Lead used to be very common, up until the 1980s lead was used for nearly all pipes in some way (generally only in solder though so not much - though I don't know how harmful that amount is. Pipes in the ground are generally expected to last for a long time (last I heard Boston still had wood pipes from before the revolution in use), so it is safe to say all towns have lead in their water system somewhere.
Thus all water supplies should be managing to reduce the ability of their water supply to reduce lead. I would also suggest that you should go to your town board and say your number one issue is getting rid of all the lead - and you are fine with reverting major roads to gravel to pay for it. (and seriously consider what other services are can be eliminated to find more money)
You misunderstand the situation. As the other commenter stated Flint decided to restart their own water treatment due to costs. They were not prepared to fully treat the water from the nearby river. They also ignored the water plant manager.
A lot of people don’t realize there was (and maybe still is) a huge outbreak of Legionnaires disease. Somehow the city suppressed the news about it.
The contamination is the result of the water being drawn from the nearby river. The river water eroded the lead solder in the towns pipes. It started in 2014. All per Wikipedia.
The city of Flint has extremely high poverty and the schools were very bad well before the water issue came to light. I wonder how much of this is due to the lead in water vs just the situation of the city, high poverty, and poor schools, etc. anecdotally I don’t think the things mentioned in this article are all that different from other cities in similar situations without the lead in water issue.
Either case hopefully they can turn things around for the kids who have to grow up in this situation.
I remember reading a very interesting article about a case that showed lead could be a major factor in poor school performance. The article was in a newspaper or news magazine in the '80s or early '90s, and I've not been able to remember enough details to find anything online about it.
Anyway, it was about a school district that had given IQ tests to all the kids. The black kids on average scored significantly lower than the white kids. This could not be explained by the white kids going to better or richer schools, because this district was well integrated. Black kids and white kids that had been together in the same classrooms for their entire school history showed the same IQ gap.
The district concluded that the test was biased and was going to ignore it. One teacher decided to look deeper, and started looking to see if he could find some other factor besides race that was significantly different between the black and white kids.
He realized that all the white kids lived in relatively new housing, and all that black kids lived in much older housing. The black kids' houses were all built long before lead paint was banned. The white kids' house all came after that ban.
They arranged to test the kids for lead, and to test their houses, and they found that most of the black kids were suffering from lead exposure. None of the white kids were.
The lead paint was removed from the black kids' houses, and the kids were treated for lead poisoning.
A couple years later, when the district gave another IQ test, most of the gap between the black and white students was done.
I’m guessing OP was aware of this but was more questioning whether we know this was because of lead exposure or just the fact the school system isn’t good. It seems it would be hard to separate the two. Like was said: there are plenty of cities with similar results but without the lead exposure. The lead could definitely be a contributing factor, it’s just hard to know.
There was a nice natural experiment that happened a while ago where children with sufficiently high blood lead concentrations had the government perform lead abatements in their homes. And then see how much better the kids with the newly lead free homes do compared to the kids who were just a little too low lead to get these abatements but who were otherwise very similar.
There's lead in paint all over America, just dripping off old buildings into the soil in some places. And asbestos in insulation and other building products. So?
Probably all of the factors you mention are important, but lead certainly didn't help. The main reason to mention lead specifically is the horrible way the situation with water pollution was handled by pretty much everyone, from city officials to Obama himself with his completely disrespectful "take a picture of me pretending to drink the Flint water" media stunt.
I agree that's disrespectful if the water he was drinking was not actually Flint water, so I went looking. It appears that what he drank (an admittedly small amount of) was actually filtered Flint water (and he identified it as such).
I fail to see the disrespect or anything else untoward about his actions there.
I would guess the "stunt" here is that everyone knows that drinking one glass of Flint water won't really hurt you. It's the long-time exposure from childhood that is the problem.
OK, so when the reporter specifically asks him if he'd drink the water in front of him, what's his least bad option? If he makes the speech he does, saying "I don't do stunts" asserting its safety and takes a sip, he's handling the situation as gracefully and productively as he can.
If instead he starts in with a lecture about how it's cumulative exposure, affects children more severely, and that is why he won't take a drink as a publicity stunt, he knows that all that will be reported is "Obama refuses to drink Flint water!"
This wasn't a planned stunt in my estimation (unless you think the reporter was "in on it").
First of all -- it was clearly a stunt. The question from the reporter where he "drinks" some water[1] happened after he asked for water in the middle of a speech[2] -- the moment in his speech was so obviously staged that it's not worth elaborating past including the link to the video. With that in mind, it's pretty clear that his answer to the reporter's (probably genuine) question was just doubling-down on the point he'd made with his earlier stunt -- that it's safe to drink.
But ignoring all of that -- why is it a good thing that he said the water was safe? The water wasn't safe to drink, and the video of the President sipping water from Flint means that the entire country collectively agreed that the situation was fixed. But it wasn't fixed -- the water in Flint is still contaminated with lead today.
It doesn't seem obviously staged to me? The first video you linked he says the water is filtered, emphasizes it multiple times, and says "this doesn't mean we don't need to still replace some pipes". Is there more to the story?
As far as I can tell, the second video I linked to (where he asks for water during a speech) happened before the first one (where a reporter asks him about the water he drank). The first one is a reporter following up to check that the water actually was from Flint (and he says it is, but it's filtered) -- and was probably a genuine question from a reporter after his speech (it's probably one of the first questions I'd ask).
The thing I'm referring to as being clearly staged is when he asks in the middle of a speech (where he was talking about things that need to be done in Flint) for some water, takes a tiny sip (he must've been really thirsty!) and continues. If you don't see that as being staged, I really don't know what I could possibly say to convince you otherwise. People from the crowd were shouting "don't drink" and he counters with "I know I'm going to be okay, because I've already had some Flint water."
And you're right that he mentions it's filtered (after being asked that in a follow-up and not when he first did the stunt, but whatever) -- but just because he's not outright lying about the situation doesn't make it the earlier stunt any less staged. There has been very little further outcry about Flint in the past 6 years, because most people you talk to will say "Oh, wasn't that thing in Flint solved years ago? Obama drank the water when he was there!
Right - it probably is safe, but I am not sure most people in flint can afford the triple carbon filter reverse osmosis water system that I would want to use in their situation. Raw sewage water is “safe to drink” if it’s filtered enough.
Sorry, but those little faucet attachable kind are complete junk. If they weren't handing out decent R/O systems then it wasn't and isn't good enough and people should feel safe with their kids drinking that.
>OK, so when the reporter specifically asks him if he'd drink the water in front of him, what's his least bad option?
Probably to laugh and say instead of "trying the water" he will see the water is sent to a lab for proper scientific testing and the results published to the public.
Perhaps it was a stunt planned by the reporter only, but anyway, I can see how some people can see it as disrespectful.
There are similarities with people who virtue-signal by working with children in a ghetto of a 3rd world country, and get photographed doing it - while actually living in the comfort of a luxury hotel and just showing up in the ghetto for a brief time. The intentions may be very good but people may still perceive it as hypocrisy. (Not particularly blaming Obama for this, he maybe in fact came to a situation where there is no good way out.)
>I would guess the "stunt" here is that everyone knows that drinking one glass of Flint water won't really hurt you. It's the long-time exposure from childhood that is the problem.
The general public doesn't really know that. People think that lead is this magical chemical that manically makes people stupid if they so much as lay eyes upon it. I guess that's better than thinking it's harmless but it's certainly non-optimal from a societal decision making standpoint. I would be very surprised if the reporter knew that the lead content of the water was mostly irrelevant to an middle aged man drinking one glass.
On youtube you find many respectable and smart people massively overestimating the risk of lead exposure when coming in contact with it for a project, making sure nobody ever touches lead without gloves.
The fact that he's been "drinking" (actually barely sipping) water all over Flint for cameras turns it into a cheap media stunt, but I actually was referring to this fake-as-hell "Can I have some water":
Yeah the problem was entirely with Obama and the city officials, never mind the fact that Governor Rick Snyder had put the city under emergency management with his appointees deciding everything.
Looks like the highest one was about 140ppb in Canada. In Flint it was 158ppb.
But at those levels, it makes no difference at all. They may as well be equal. If there are 10 elephants sitting down on top of you, it probably won't matter if an eleventh elephant comes along and takes a seat on that stack as well.
Now that I'm actually seeing the data, I kind of think we shouldn't even be talking about schools for these people. They have way bigger problems. I thought we were talking about levels maybe 2 or 3 times the globally accepted standard. Which is still too much, I get that. But that's all the more reason that levels 25 to 30 times that standard are just not even on the charts. These are levels literally an order of magnitude higher than I thought they were.
Flint may be slightly worse numerically, but at those levels, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of material difference in impact?
Is it a matter of discussion there? Is there proper support for the people who live there? Do Canadian institutions, such as universal healthcare, make for different outcomes?
Why wouldn’t it be possible to get worse? The murder rate of 19 per 50K is still fairly low in overall terms and could dramatically increase without triggering any “natural limit”.
Combine that with the adverse selection of population, it could get quite a bit more dire. If you had significant resources and flexibility, you’ve probably already moved your family out of Flint. As things get worse, people with “any” rather than “significant” resources/flexibility will move out. As you remove swaths of population who (for whatever reason) tend to commit less violent crime, your remaining violent crime rate gets worse.
What you described in the second paragraph was happening well before the water crisis. Which is why Flint is in the shape it is. How much the water crisis increased or contributed to this would be interesting to know vs people who did it before.
It can technically And definitely get worse but if you are using that statistic only you wouldn’t understand the totality of how bad it is in Flint. You really have to see it to understand how bad it is. My point is you cannot make it seem like all of sudden flint is going to become high crime rate going forward due to this.
That was not at all their point or what they were getting at. Things can always get worse, and this single statistic can be the tipping point to make it worse. I say this as someone who LIVES in the area. Betting you do not.
The big advantage from my perspective is component reusability independent of Framework (React, JSP, Angular, none, etc). A couple scenarios come in mind, you have many teams working on web app(s) that need to have the same styling, CX, controls. You can distribute them this way without tying them to a framework. Another example is complex controls that can be downloaded to speed up development.
There is also robustness. Today you can't take a React component from one application and drop it in another React application and expect it to just work. You may need to also copy CSS classes, make sure the class names are unique, remove any conflicting ids, global variables and so on. Thanks to Shadow DOM, web components are much more robust. You can just drop a web component in an existing application and expect it to just work, regardless of what framework (Angular, React etc) it is using.
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